AN INTRODUCTION TO HYPERFIXT'S THE OWL HOUSE OVERVIEWS

i am not good at watching new television. i like a lot of television - there's shows that have come out in the last few years that have utterly blown me away, shows like Peacemaker or Andor that have used the modern long-form 'prestige' format to expand on worlds i love in ways i never could have expected. the thing is that, unless i'm sat down for something else, be it a meal or hanging out with friends, i don't go out of my way to watch a lot of TV. i have trouble fitting it into my schedule on any regular basis and a lot of stuff drifts off to the wayside.

there is one major exception to this rule that comes to mind. something that multiple people i trust with good taste in media told me to go watch for at least a year, and something that, with all the creative talent behind it, should have been an absolute no-brainer for me to keep track of from day one. if you haven't heard anything about it, let me tell you a bit about The Owl House.

The Owl House is a show created by Dana Terrace and aired on the Disney Channel. like a lot of animation on American television today, you can trace its roots back through the animation renaissance of the early 2010s, with Terrace's other credits with Disney including shows like Gravity Falls or the 2017 reboot of DuckTales. i could and quite frankly should write an article about how much i utterly adore Gravity Falls, but after its rather drawn-out second season and satisfying conclusion, i was really in a place where i was moving on from a lot of shows i had been enjoying. when looking to other channels, sure, Adventure Time and Steven Universe were still going and would keep going for years afterwards, but both had lost my attention one way or another. when tracking the vast, often interwoven scene of new shows springing up in the wake of that early 2010s boom, there was a lot of stuff i was missing out on, and a lot of it still hasn't made its way back to me yet.

you would think maybe a new show in this lineage debuting right as the world got thrust into a pandemic that gave everyone a lot of free time would be the thing that got me back in the saddle, but it still took a while. i heard a thing or two about The Owl House here and there, how it seemed to piss a lot of very dumb people off by featuring LGBT+ representation, or how ambitious its second season was getting, or the strangely short order for its third season. i cared enough to at least refrain from going all-in on spoilers, but i wasn't going out of my way to watch it. eventually, though, as more of my friends got into it and sung its praises, i decided on a whim to catch up, just weeks before the second season's finale.

in less than a week's time, i had watched 36 episodes in frenzied late-night binges, and i was hooked. i would not hesitate at all to call The Owl House the best animated series on television in over a decade, and some of the most compelling television i've watched at all in the last few years. there are shows that i might find more interesting to chew on from an intellectual, big picture, "ah yes, this has Themes" level, but i would say the cast of The Owl House is my favorite bunch of characters in a long, long time, and especially as the show has continued, it approaches tried-and-true fantasy tropes that i thought were already mined for all their potential and turns them on their head to weave together such an engaging story.

there's something about the world of The Owl House that invokes feelings in me that go back even further than the 2010s renaissance - feelings that shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender gave me back in some of my most formative years of watching cartoons, instilling a love of serialized intrigue, of characters who i was constantly rooting for, constantly getting more and more invested in their arcs. it's the type of thing that really invigorates that sense that animation is one of our most potent creative mediums, and that these stories can really matter to people, whether it's an introductory experience or something that i've gotten so invested in as a full-ass adult.

i had this very website up and running in its most barebones form as i first got into The Owl House, but i always sort of refrained from posting about it too much, whether it was a matter of how ready i was to tackle a project this big or a matter of timing. looking at the calendar, though, i think now is the time to pull the trigger on this. i strive to put more on this site in 2023, and as of this writing, the second-to-last episode of The Owl House aired two weeks ago, give or take a few days.

for as long as i've been into The Owl House, the ending has always been looming just off in the distance. it's an unfortunately close ending, with the show receiving a final season of three double-length specials. it's an ending that's been talked to death, by fans and the show's creative team alike. some short-sighted Disney executive decided that this show "doesn't fit within their brand identity" - do we take that in good faith and assume it's about trying to run such a serialized show on a linear network that thrives off reruns? do we look a little deeper and wonder if it has anything to do with the amount of progressive representation in this show's characters? probably a bit of both. probably some other things i'm not even thinking about, too. whatever the answer is, it probably doesn't fit neatly into one sentence and we'll probably never have the exact truth from all the big shots who approved the decision.

if there was ever a time to start doing this thing in the way i'm going to be doing it, it'd be now. this is going to be tricky, because i'm aiming at a target that's currently invisible. if you assume a similar gap between all these final specials, the show will probably end around late April, but we don't have an actual date to wait for yet. ideally, i'd like to have a new episode overview going up every day or two, lined up in such a way where the finale lands right at the end of this marathon. this is as much for my own sake as it is for anyone else's, because it's a good opportunity to go back and refresh my memory of the entire series as a whole before we approach the finale.

these overviews will be written by someone who's seen the entire series up to this point already, but i'll do my best to avoid outright spoilers where relevant, because i do want to encourage people to go watch these episodes for themselves. i might touch on things like "hey, this early episode is a bit weird in this way" or "oh, i'm very excited for where this arc is going", but the overall goal here is to be an approachable source of analysis and critique for anyone, beginner or super-fan. i'm not a narc, so i guess you're also free to read what will eventually be 43 separate episode overviews without ever checking the show out for yourself, but like, c'mon. c'monnn. you owe it to yourself. watch it. at least watch some clips on YouTube. hell, watch the multiple episodes Disney has just put on YouTube for free, even.

so, ground rules settled? cool. as mentioned earlier, the goal is more-or-less 'new post every other day', but i reserve the right to tweak that pace as needed, especially once we get an actual date on that finale. no, this will not preclude me from writing other things for HYPERFIXT, because this stuff will probably be done in batches, to some extent. if something really dumb happens with video games or i decide you all need to know about some weird internet thing from 2006, i can still do that duty for the sake of the people.

with all things settled, then, let's get started with this!

ENTER THE DEMON REALM