ADVENTURES IN THE ELEMENTS

if you've been following along with these overviews, you might be coming into this one thinking about something i said all the way back in the fourth episode. i off-handedly mentioned that, having never gone back and rewatched the show in full (just because it hasn't been that long since my first viewing), the twelfth episode was one of the moments that stood out in my memories as a big shift towards The Owl House becoming the type of thing i might want to write about every other day. now that we've arrived at Adventure in the Elements, does it hold up as strongly as a tentpole of the season's arc as i remember? yes. the short answer is yes. but you come to this website to be told why i think things are good!

Luz is excited to begin attending Hexside - to the point of denying King his very important belly scratches, how could she - and is spending quite a bit of time brushing up on school history and daydreaming about attending the same classes as her friends, and maybe even her cool rival if she's lucky. bringing up Amity is enough to remind her that she's supposed to head off and retrieve the Good Witch Azura book she loaned out, leaving Eda and King to sort through their latest human trash haul alone, with King seeming fixated on collecting more stuffed animals to serve in his dark and terrible army.

in Bonesborough, we catch back up with Amity and her older siblings. Edric and Emira have supposedly been being extra-nice to their sister after learning how crazy things got at the library after they ditched her, which is a character beat i appreciate for them, because it feels like it'd be really easy to just have them get pigeonholed into always just being confrontational. in the ensuing conversation, Luz surprises Amity by revealing they'll be classmates, but quickly learns she's at risk of getting put into Hexside's 'baby class' if she doesn't display mastery over two spells, putting the potential for these dorks to start an Azura club in jeopardy. the two-spell requirement does feel perhaps a slight bit contrived in some sense, but it does provide us with a solid enough ticking-clock motivation for Luz to start expanding her knowledge of magic.

when pressed about this, Eda is at least willing to admit maybe it's her fault Luz hasn't picked up anything new since the light glyph, and Luz is once again smart enough to play into her mentor's sense of pride to get what she wants, willing to even 'the darkest evil' if it means clearing the placement exams and getting into proper classes with all her peers. it's also here that we get what i think is the first use of the term 'wild magic' as a sort of distinct way of thinking about magic outside of the type of stuff we've seen other witches doing, and as i'll probably keep saying throughout this entire episode, i'm a big fan of this concept.

oh, and we also stop here to set up this episode's B-plot, with King hearing Eda mention 'magic boot camp' and deciding he should run a boot camp of his own for his army of plushies, using a life-giving elixir that Eda made to try and get vegetables to cook themselves. there's really not a ton to this one, aside from a bit of King and Hooty bonding when forced to work together to deal with the increasingly out-of-control stuffed animals, so it's not going to come up very much, but it's also part of this episode, i guess?

anyways, to continue learning wild magic, Eda decides it's best to take Luz out into the wilderness and the two head for the Knee - as in, the raised knee of the giant corpse they live on, which has formed into a mountainous region - which is honestly one of my favorite locales we've seen so far. we've been getting a lot of adventures set in Bonesborough or the woods surrounding the Owl House, so it's a nice change of pace to see such a different side of the Demon Realm, the whole area's covered in mysterious ruins, and it also provides an excuse for us to see the characters decked out in some winter gear, which i'm a total sucker for.

unfortunately for Luz, this is also where Amity has chosen to train her magic, and while Eda's doing her best to be supportive and not give away that Luz doesn't know two spells yet, her ideas of how to reconnect with nature like ancient witches did to learn prove to be a bit disruptive and embarrassing for someone trying to impress their cool rival. Amity's not above needing a little assistance too, though, using some sort of powered 'training wand' that hasn't really come up before and, to my knowledge, doesn't really come up again in any major way. it's a cool bit of world-building though, and i like that in her own way, Amity is just as worked up about getting stronger and looking cool in front of her rival. one of the big takeaways from this entire episode, really, whether it's the training wand or the Azura fanart, is that Amity is maybe a lot closer to the type of dork Luz is than she initially appears, and i like that characterization a lot.

Eda's not oblivious to the fact that eating snow and sniffing moss isn't exactly the type of tutoring Luz was expecting, but she does earnestly believe that if a human's ever going to try and learn magic, they're going to need to start the unorthodox roots of what magic is, which makes for some fun friction between student and teacher. ultimately, though, Luz's self-doubt creeps in and she talks herself (by way of hand puppets) into trying to learn in the same way as Amity. once again, i want to stop and point out how pretty the Knee is, because the rest of this episode, taking place in the dead of night, looks pretty stunning with a nice ominous green tint washing over the landscape.

opting to silently 'borrow' the training wand, Luz gets the hang of things quickly and manages to shoot off a few fireworks before Eda catches her, reprimanding her pupil and saying that if Luz's magic is unique, then using the wand isn't going to actually help her deepen any sort of talent she might have. it's an interesting conflict, especially when framed against other stuff i've said about Luz being someone who's willing to put in the hard work. i'm not trying to say this type of thinking is contradictory - if anything, i think it's very easy to square away, honestly. the emotional stakes have risen. Luz has friends she cares about and people she's trying hard to impress, and for as much as the show has perhaps consciously avoided talking about it, there is something of a time limit on her stay here. if this is meant to be a sort of summer vacation in the Demon Realm, she's facing the prospect of having not caught up fast enough and losing her one shot at actually making something of her magical talents.

before these characters can hash those complicated emotions out, though, a wayward fireball angers a nearby demon - a large yeti-like creature called the Slitherbeast. i'm not exactly sure why it's called that? it's not much of a slither-er. it is, however, quite strong and quite angered, getting a hold of Eda and snatching Edric and Emira when they try to help wrangle it down. Amity's training wand is out of batteries after Luz's experiments in pyrotechnics, and Luz is forced to admit that she only knows one relatively simple spell that's not going to get them out of this jam. it's a solid chunk of action with some real tension to it!

with Eda and the twins getting taken through the woods by the Slitherbeast, Amity and Luz are left to their own devices to figure out a solution, and i find Amity's response here really interesting. she's upset that Luz took her wand and used up all its energy, sure, but her instinct is to draw a magical trap around Luz for her own good. it's a pretty stark contrast from how things have gone between these two before, without much anger or lashing out on Amity's behalf. i could see where someone might think this type of turnaround is going a little fast, but i'd like to offer the counterpoint that as of this episode, we're already about a fourth of the way through the entirety of this show. the burn can only get so slow, folks, and i appreciate unpacking these character turns even if we don't have dozens of episodes in-between major shifts in how characters interact.

the ensuing scene with Luz stuck alone inside the cage is, in fact, one of the moments i remember most strongly from this entire first season. it is the reason i latched on so tightly to this episode as one of the big turning points. with nothing but her own thoughts, Luz is left to confront herself, and in the process, ends up following Eda's advice to listen to the island, in a very literal way. for the first time, she notices that the constellations over the Boiling Isles seem to create the shape of the light glyph, and in learning to view these kinds of 'messages' from the world around her, spots a new glyph in the pattern of a snowflake.

i haven't talked much about the minutiae of how magic works in The Owl House, for a few reasons - we don't have all the information at this point in the show, it'd bog down the rhythm of my writing, and ultimately i usually don't think the exact 'rules' of magic are the part worth dissecting because it's all just there to service a story, anyways - but now seems like a really good time to stop for at least a second and dig into it. as Luz excitedly puts it when using her new ice glyph, 'magic is everywhere', and that's not just a catchy slogan or metaphor. it's a very literal way that Luz is going to have to approach the world. if magic exists to serve a story function, the story here is telling us that Luz's way of learning performing magic is different, and exciting, and relies on drawing passion and inspiration from unexpected places. it's an extension and embracing of the fact that Luz is, at her core, someone who's not necessarily going to do things the way she's expected to.

in more practical terms, i like the ice spell a lot and it does feel like a big moment of character progression - i like that it can, at this basic level, pretty much just form pillars, but that the pillars can be scaled up to as large as the glyph can be drawn, which means they make excellent Luz launchers. with her newfound second spell, Luz manages an escape and heads for the Slitherbeast's lair, where it's rather terrifyingly going through the trouble of seasoning its prey. honestly, pro tip for anyone writing a big scary monster - imply just the slightest, most benign bit of human-like intelligence and suddenly it's like, ten times as scary, at least to me.

managing to formulate a quick diversion-into-ice-launch plan with Amity (sidebar: glad to see her figuring out her fire spell on her own, too! everyone's getting better at magic today!), Luz manages to send the Slitherbeast into the air and onto its back, giving an escaped Eda enough time to subdue the demon with a sleep spell. this was a moment that, to me, played nicely off the back of the information we just received about magic - there's a sleep spell, sure, but is there a sleep glyph? how would you go about discovering that? how deep does the whole glyph thing go? suddenly, every bit of high-level magic we see is a much more attainable and interesting type of goal for Luz to strive towards as we begin to understand the mechanisms of how she'd start to learn those spells. maybe that's just me and my weird brain, but i love the feeling of understanding there's some systems underpinning this stuff and that Luz can draw power from understanding those systems better.

anyways, with the Slitherbeast dealt with, Eda dishes out some subdued pride in Luz's problem-solving and Amity excitedly promises to start that Azura book club with Luz, as long as it's secret (which it won't be for long, thanks to her twins). unfortunately, Eda is allergic to 'adorable banter' and insists on heading out, with the two heading back to the Owl House via ice glyph launch. back at the end of that B-plot i didn't bother talking about because basically nothing happened, King and Hooty are having a real moment of solidarity and bonding over having to massacre King's plushies, but the arrival of Eda and Luz is enough to throw the social balance of the house back off.

Adventure in the Elements is, especially in the context of the first season and how much time it has to spend setting things up, still pretty high on my list of favorite Owl House episodes. it represents a turning point where a lot of things happen, but just like when Luz learned her first glyph, it's not just the plot progression that has me hooked. we're at a point where we can really reap the benefits of what's come before - i can stop to compare and contrast things, because there's past things being contrasted against in the text. Amity's feelings about Luz, Luz's feelings about herself, the whole show's feelings towards magic if we want to zoom out and get metatextual up in here. from here on out, aside from maybe one or two weaker entries, the quality only keeps going up, in my opinion. The Owl House is, indeed, as i remembered, becoming the show i wound up loving so much, and i'm so excited to be hitting the point where we can really dig into that.

next time on The Owl House - Luz heads off to magic school. for real this time. promise!