AGONY OF A WITCH

so, with a name like Agony of a Witch, nothing particularly nice was going to happen for our heroes this episode, huh? i would say from the very first frame (please ignore Hooty up there, that comes after the opening theme), this episode is a pretty hard turn into some new territory for The Owl House. a lot of those plots that have been set up throughout the season are finally ready to come to fruition. things are about to get very, very real. i love a good character-focused breather as much as anyone else, but it's time for big picture plot to start kicking in, and it's kicking in hard.

but what good is big picture plot if it's not being driven by interesting characters? Lilith wasn't bluffing when she promised she'd be back soon last episode, as we open on our first real look at life inside the Emperor's Coven. right away, the presentational style has noticeably shifted to really drive the tone home - our first shots are of Lilith silently watching a group of prisoners being hauled into the castle, without any musical underpinnings, just the howling winds that tend to come from building a castle in what appears to be some kind of volcanic crater. when she heads back inside, the palette of the scene livens up a lot, but it's still just as ominous, given a lot of that color is coming from a massive stained glass portrait of Belos, giving us our first proper look at the emperor of the Boiling Isles.

Lilith thinks she's alone enough in these halls to do some thinking out loud about how she'll bring Eda before Belos, but the middle manager between her and the emperor is here to interrupt! it's Kikimora - a.k.a that delightful little goblin she was reporting to back at the end of Covention - and she's here to drop some important-sounding information on us. something called 'the Day of Unity' is coming up, and while other sects of the Emperor's Coven have assigned many wild witches to covens, Eda is still public enemy number one and Lilith's responsibility to deal with before this mysterious new milestone arrives. Kikimora openly speculates about if Lilith's been protecting her sister from capture, and no matter where you land on the question of 'does wagering your most important arrest on a grudgby match count as a form of protection', Lilith makes it quite clear that she's done playing any games here, assembling a whole platoon of masked imperial guards to get the job done once and for all.

and that's all just cold open! it's a very eventful episode.

unfortunately, even the return of Lilith's cool crow mask can't keep her operation from going sideways, as even trying to sneak up on the Owl House while its protective 'house demon' is asleep isn't a surefire ambush. after a whole season of mostly being played for laughs, it's an incredibly fun surprise to see Hooty suddenly get to show how good he is at his job of being Eda's security system, pretty effortlessly taking down Lilith's entire team and performing some weird tricks along the way, like somehow puppeteering one of them around after knocking them unconscious. Hooty's got layers! terrifying layers.

all things considered, Eda's not too worried about having imperial guards at her front door, given how well Hooty's doing, but she is noticing how the Coven is stepping up their game and has started preparing a few emergency measures. we get introduced here to Witch's Wool - nothing too complicated, Eda just needs a defensive cloak that can repel spells, but i do bring it up here because it's going to be a fun symbol across these last two episodes of the season. at first, Luz is taking this all about as seriously as her mentor, even joking that Belos might have a crush on her as a fun nod to the very first adventure they shared, which is a beat i really love. for as isolated as that first episode felt, now's the time to joke about it to bring the season full circle! it's cute and fun and shows the rapport they've developed! unfortunately, though, there's also an obstacle within the house that they can't quite brush off so easily - Eda's curse.

the show's been pretty clever in when it brings the curse to the forefront and when it slides it to the background - we haven't really heard about it in a while, and not only did that episode end with Eda privately noticing that the elixirs were becoming less effective, but it wasn't too long afterwards that Luz started attending Hexside and having a lot more time spent on her peers there. it's a bit of narrative sleight-of-hand that makes sense, and as we dive into big picture plot stuff, we also get another glimpse at Eda's dreams while she's transformed, getting a clearer picture that tells us she was cursed in her sleep when she was a young Hexside student.

when Eda wakes back up (as shown by a very fun match cut between her reaching out for the mysterious figure in her dreams, and her pushing on Luz's face), there's no more avoiding the fact that her elixirs have grown less and less effective in treating her condition. even the fashionable scarf she's been trying out for this episode was there to hide the fact that the gem on her chest is getting darker - as we find out, having the curse means spending some limited reserve of magic to help keep it at bay, and even that method's getting harder and harder, with Eda noting that running out of magic won't kill her, but it will consign her to 'a fate much worse than death' by permanently transforming her. no matter how many terrifying smiles she tries to get Luz to do, and how much she tries to stop everyone from worrying, things aren't looking great.

Eda is a girlboss, though, and neither fates worse than death nor the Emperor's Coven out front can stop her from sending Luz off to school. when her pupil's out the door and she doesn't have to worry about keeping up any sort of appearances, her reaction still isn't fear about her own condition. it's noticing how considerate Luz has been about things, and deciding that maybe she doesn't really need the Witch's Wool for herself that badly. like i brought up back during Grom, Eda's reached a point where she's just genuinely doing nice things for Luz with no mischief or ulterior motive. it's been sweet to watch her go through this change, but it's also terrifying because you just know it's a massive Bad Things Incoming flag.

and Eda's right! Luz is a good kid, as even on her way to school, she's still stuck on the whole curse thing, sympathizing with how hard it must be for Eda to be surrounded by enemies even within herself. catching Hooty holding some kind of tea party with the unconscious coven guards snaps her out of it and gets her moving to school (sidebar: props to the visuals here, because Hooty just got ten times scarier when you notice he's just staring off blankly and pouring tea on the ground), but it also gives us an opportunity to check in on Lilith. after this latest fumble, Kikimora's telling her that Belos wants to see her. as the funny little guy nested in her hair puts it - she's in trouble.

it just so happens that everything's falling into place for some potential solutions (or, let's be real - some major confrontations), though, because the Hexside students are going on a field trip to the emperor's castle today. at first, Luz says she '[doesn't] like the way they treat Eda' and objects, but when Gus and Willow start talking about the collection of powerful relics there, the notion of a 'Healing Hat' that could cure Eda is enough to get Luz scheming. we're in for a heist, folks! it's a fun hook, and i appreciate how it gets deployed here - i'll have more to expound upon in literally just a few seconds when it comes to the connections between Hexside and the Emperor's Coven, but for starters, i like that we've reached a point where Luz has an understanding of the demon realm and some moral principles about not participating in a fun field trip to the imperial capitol.

this is no fun field trip, though. it's a chance for Luz to do something reckless for someone she cares about - just like Eda is doing for her, by giving up her Witch's Wool! - and a chance to start giving our protagonists a glimpse at the inner workings of what has largely been a fairly vague opposition. as the flying bus approaches the castle, we get this doozy of a line, and we get it from Willow, of all people -

- and there's a whole lot to unpack there, huh? there's that recurring theme of 'unity' within the empire again. something a little more immediate, though, is where this information is coming from. we've understood that there's ties between the Emperor's Coven and Hexside before, most prominently in the fact that their cirriculum funnels right into Belos' coven system and their apparent reliance on the empire for funding, but for the first time we really do have to sit down and confront the fact that even Luz's friends - people who have stood by her side even when she doesn't fit in, who are seemingly fine being around Eda - might have been taught some... interesting narratives about the nature of Belos' reign.

there's a lot that the show is playing close to the chest with, when it comes to Belos, but i don't think it's a huge leap of logic given what we know to say that there's something incredibly sinister about the phrase 'folks were doing magic all wrong', given what we've seen out of Eda and how Luz has tapped into a seemingly 'lost' form of magic. and this is all coming from Willow! Willow, who's one of Luz's best friends in the whole world! long story short: Willow is not immune to propaganda.

oh, and to my surprise as a second-time viewer, this is actually the first time anyone singles out 'the Titan' as a concept. it'll keep coming out throughout this episode in sort of vague terms, so to lay out what we learn here, it's seemingly some sort of god-like figure, and the fact that Belos can apparently talk to it is a sign of his power. put a pin in that!

Willow follows all this up by pointing out that Amity would have loved to have been here, and we get a quick glimpse at her, stuck at home healing from that broken leg and spitefully telling a poster of Lilith to shut up. as fun as it's been getting some deep dives into her character lately, i do think it's a smart narrative move to keep Amity on the sidelines for these last two episodes. a lot's going on, and not only would Amity and her crush on Luz add another plate to spin, but i'm not even sure she'd necessarily gain a lot of interesting new depth out of the experience. luckily, through the magic of watching a mostly complete show, it won't be too long before we get to see more of her, but for now, Amity's arc is shuffled into the background.

all of the sinister propagandizing to children only gets stronger when the bus lands at the castle, revealing Kikimora as the tour guide for this little field trip and giving her the chance to immediately emphasize that the students of Hexside are the future of the empire, destined to fit into one of Belos' covens. the inner halls of the castle make for an excellent visual aid in telling Belos' side of history, as the walls are adorned with some very stylish (by which i mean frightening) murals. as Kikimora tells it, the time before Belos was known as the 'Savage Ages', and he brought prosperity to the Boiling Isles by spreading his teachings of proper magic that respects their Titan.

i think the most striking element here is that while the term 'Savage Ages' sounds like ancient history, Kikimora does reiterate something we've already learned, which is that Belos has only been in power for about 50 years. this next tidbit of information hasn't been said outright in the show yet (and i can't remember if it ever is), but it doesn't feel like too much of a tipped hand to point out that the Clawthorne sisters are in their 40s. there are people alive in the Boiling Isles, people we know like Principal Bump, who probably remember how this whole thing started, and yet Belos has already successfully naturalized his reign as an inevitable and righteous good for society to the point where contemporary kids are fully bought in without a second thought. scary!

and, speaking of scary, Lilith's on her way to have a little chat with the emperor himself, with Luz just barely avoiding detection with Kikimora and the class cross paths with her. what isn't scary is Lilith and Kikimora's passive-aggressive exchanges, which end with Lilith very earnestly trying to roast a bunch of teenagers with a 'good luck with puberty', but what is very, very scary is when Luz follows Lilith to her meeting, giving us our first chance to actually see Belos. not his invisible influence, not the murals about how he nobly saved the wild witches from their own ignorance, just Emperor Belos himself.

weird as it might be that this show has held off on giving us any glimpse of the guy up until now, it's an effective choice. i respect them going for the long play, because it makes him such a frightening unknown factor. so, the run-down on what we can discern from this first meeting - for starters, there's a massive beating heart above his throne, hooked up to some kind of industrial piping. certainly looks like something that'd belong to, say, some kind of proper-noun Titan, and as we see later in this conversation, it starts beating faster when Belos is getting mad. when Lilith first enters, Belos seems to be struggling to breathe, and he restores himself to 'normal' by cutting open a withered Palisman with his finger, and pouring its... life essence? blood? its special Palisman goop right into the eye holes of his mask.

even when he's topped off on the energy of a familiar and ready to start talking, an expert vocal performance by Matthew Rhys goes a long way in making Belos' presence in this conversation scary. his intonation is just off in such an insidious way, rushing through words and taking breathy pauses in weird spots. he paints himself as benevolent and understanding of Lilith's shortcomings by giving her until the end of the day to capture Eda for him, but he's clearly anything but benevolent when he asks Lilith 'You do know what happens to covenless witches, right?' - both when it comes to Lilith facing potential banishment, and the implied suffering Eda will go through if she can't be apprehended. before Lilith can even bring herself to respond out loud, we get one of the most striking little moments in this entire show so far when she looks at one of the murals of Belos. Kikimora described the art as if it was a moment of celebration for witches discovering salvation through Belos, but the faces and poses are distinctly ambiguous, and what Lilith reads into it is a fearful crowd screaming. absolutely haunting.

we get a brief check-in with Eda here that mostly just reaffirms that, yes, Eda and King have both become big softies from having Luz around and are starting to notice that within each other and themselves (which means, yes, something terrible and tragic HAS to be coming, right?). after that, it's back to Luz, who ran off after seeing Belos straight-up drink a Palisman's essence through his eyes, which is a pretty sensible reaction to something that horrifying. we get a few quick fakeouts in a row here when she realizes the bus is going to be leaving now, but it turns out there's an illusory Luz (say it with me: il-Luz-ory) getting onboard, as conjured up by Gus. given what she had to say about Belos earlier, you might get a little tense when Willow cracks Luz's scheme and says she can't steal the Healing Hat, but it's quickly made clear that she and Gus have been practicing fakeout #2, about how Luz absolutely should 'borrow' it. sure, they might teach straight-up propaganda in history class, but especially having learned about Eda's curse, Willow cares way more about loyalty to her friends than any of that nonsense.

there's enough room here for a fun montage of the kids using their magical talents to sneak by some of the low-level Coven guards, but given how things have been going, it shouldn't be any shock that there's not much fun to be had in the relic room. Luz goes straight for the Healing Hat with no hesitation, while Gus and Willow test out their respective fields' artifacts, granting Gus a look at his best self (the illusion is right: he's already his best self!) and Willow some seemingly major buffs to her plant magic. unfortunately, whether you read Belos' power as overhyped or not, he does at least possess eyes everywhere in his own castle, with the room seeming to turn gray when he insists that he knows everything that the trio is up to. the doors lock, and not too far away, Lilith's having a conversation with herself.

it's a very interesting conversation to think about, as far as one-person conversations go. the first words out of her mouth are that '[she's] given [her] entire life to this coven' and that she can't afford to lose it. there's a real sense of desperation here and you can trace it through every time we've seen her before - as far as we know, Lilith really doesn't have much of a life going on outside of her service to the Emperor's Coven. when you've licked that much imperial boot for so long, where do you go if you fail this important mission?

her second observation is that the life Eda has led is essentially the perfect defense. she's largely lived alone, with minimal attachments to anyone, and before the events of the show proper seemingly only came into town to hawk her human wares before once again retreating, to what we now know is actually a very well-fortified home. there's no real form of access to her or leverage to put over her... except for her newest pupil, who happens to be just a few short rooms away.

Lilith has always been an antagonist, but you can really see Belos' demands rubbing off on her here, because i think this is the first time i would describe her as being truly scary in the same way her boss is. every confrontation with her has come with some kind of built-in escape hatch, some way to depressurize the situation and put the bad things she's being ordered to do at arm's length. that's very much not the case this time, as shown by her wicked grin when Luz says that threatening her means incurring Eda's wrath. she even goes as far as ripping the Healing Hat apart when Luz tries to keep it away from her, claiming that 'these decrepit relics are useless'.

i try to keep my overviews moving at a solid pace, but we're already this deep in and ultimately, i don't see the point in doing these overviews if i don't talk about bits that interest me, so screw it, here's a whole chunk about how intriguing i find this line. is Lilith right in this assessment? the Green Thumb Gauntlet and Oracle Sphere clearly do something, but not necessarily the mind-blowing world-changing feats of magic that the empire claims - is that because they're useless, or because they're being used by witches-in-training instead of experts? is the idea that they're decrepit something Belos lets his inner circle in on, or is it Lilith displaying some unexpected critical thinking skills about certain parts of the emperor's propaganda? what if the Healing Hat does work and she's just destroying it to make Belos the only person who can fix the problem? if that's the case, what does that tell us about Lilith? it's all a little ambiguous and i love it that way because it really is like a launchpad for so many ways to approach Lilith's ideology.

with that question still lingering unanswered, Lilith captures Luz and sends Gus and Willow to the Owl House via her staff, intent on luring Eda into a duel. the emotional whiplash when this episode's two tones collide - King joking about being put inside a cake to surprise Luz and Willow having to break this terrible news - really makes all those little reminders we've been getting, of how close the Owl House crew has become, click into place and carry a lot of weight. and of course Eda goes for it. of course she does, because as this episode is about to lay out for us pretty clearly, this is a story about Eda's life being better, about Eda herself being better, through the act of having someone she cares about.

just like the last time the Clawthorne sisters had a duel, this scene is one of the most visually striking in the entire series thus far. the sunset and Belos watching from atop the castle walls gives us all the reminder we need that this really is the make-or-break moment for the entire life Lilith has chosen to lead. on the opposite side, the way Eda is animated here, effortlessly jetting around and often cast in silhouette, conveys how genuinely angry she is this time, and raises the exciting question of just how much she's really had to hold back this entire time. Lilith offers her sister one last chance to turn herself in peacefully and be healed, but Eda stands her ground, firm in the belief that any treatment she could get from Belos inherently comes with his imperialist strings attached. that's the last time the 'easy way out' is going to be offered, though - it's time for a duel.

i'm relatively proud of my handle on using the written word, but i don't think i can really describe how breathtaking this fight sequence looks in motion without this whole overview devolving into a mess of 'wow, it looks like Dragon Ball Z and it's so cool and i love it'. so, consider that my opinion on this fight - it looks like Dragon Ball Z and it's so cool and i love it! on top of being incredibly fluid and stylish, it also has a ton of fun, creative moments like Eda having to go on the back foot when reassembling the bridge to roll Luz and her bubble prison out of the way. as if it wasn't enough of a treat to see the animation get so intense, this whole scene also serves as a powerful confrontation between the Clawthorne sisters' worldviews and opinions of one another.

somewhere underneath the ideological stakes of wild magic vs. imperial rule, this really does come down to Lilith and Eda still being competitive with each other all these years later. it's raw ego on display, as Eda claims 'You've always looked down on me because I'm wild' and proudly declares herself stronger, while Lilith says that this rivalry just pushed her to become 'smart, crafty' ('A lapdog for a tyrant', in Eda's own scathing words). Eda just keeps leaning harder and harder into the whole thing, taunting her sister for being unable to defeat her even with the curse holding her back, and with all these emotions running so high, it all boils over to this -

and even with how angry they are at each other, even with how many times today Lilith has doubled down on loyalty to Belos over any moral compass, even with the context we have about this struggle? she gasps. she covers her mouth. sure, it could be panic over admitting something of that magnitude, but it really does read as a realization of crossing the line, just for a second.

and just in case there were any doubts or second guesses - remember how we learned recently that Lilith wore big nerd glasses as a kid? and how the figure in Eda's dreams has always had big, round eyes as their one distinct trait? it was, indeed, her. whether you guessed it or not (if memory serves me correctly, yeah, this seemed possible but not to the point where i was fixated on hunting for clues), this is obviously one of the show's biggest current outstanding questions being given an answer, and it certainly carries that weight.

Lilith stays in shock for a moment, insisting she might be able to fix things if given the time to explain and work this out, but Eda, sounding the angriest we've ever heard her, rushes ahead and breaks through Lilith's shield. unfortunately, this is just the opportunity she needs to swing the fight back into her favor - now that she's been knocked back, she's in the perfect position to throw Luz off the bridge into the spikes below. Eda shifts priorities immediately to catch Luz in mid-air, but her magic is clearly getting burnt up faster and faster, especially once Lilith starts pushing Luz down, forcing Eda to pull against her. Luz is begging her mentor not to waste all her magic, but Eda refuses. not just in the sense that it's the right thing to do right now - she's come around to the personal belief that her magical prowess was being wasted on petty nonsense for years up until Luz came into her life. again, this is a story about Eda has become a better person through the act of having someone she cares about.

not to interrupt the moment with any sort of implication that Lilith "isn't that bad" for doing this, but i will say, she wasn't exactly wrong about becoming craftier. if she really wanted Luz or Eda dead, now's the time to go for it with any number of spells. this push-and-pull is the perfect way to burn through Eda's magic - in Lilith's head, this presumably ends with Eda going full owl monster and getting cured after an easy capture, while Luz can... honestly just go do whatever, because Lilith's only thinking about Luz as a point of access to her sister. pushing children into spike pits is still generally a bad thing (citation needed), but the win condition here is about outlasting Eda in an endurance match, and Lilith knows it's going to work.

and it does work, without a hitch. the curse is starting to overtake Eda, to the point where we can see her eyes going black, but she uses the last of her strength to more-or-less explode, pushing Lilith away and sending Owlbert in to catch Luz since she's about to be too monster-y to do it herself. what she says to Luz - what she believes to effectivly be her last words, said through a strained smile - are honestly the first moment i really remember crying at this show, and i don't tend to be much of a physical crier. so, here's that, to make you cry too, maybe.

Eda succumbs to her curse and is, indeed, much easier to restrain when she's gone from powerful witch to raging beast. Belos walks away from his post, seemingly satisfied with Lilith's work but leaving her off-guard when Luz resorts to just full-on tackling her. when she casts Luz aside and starts retracting the bridge to the castle, she says that Eda is finally reunited with 'her real family', and demands that Luz goes to her own world, because 'this one is ours'. as a culmination of all the things Lilith has done wrong and the reasons why she did those things, this is a pretty chilling capstone to what has been an incredibly eventful episode.

the constant thread in how Lilith has approached things is that she has always, always tried to see if Eda will give up her freedom willingly, to believe despite everything that she might return to her old dream of wanting to join the Emperor's Coven together (see, there IS something relevant somewhere deep in Once Upon a Swap) even if they've drifted so far apart. with the knowledge that Lilith's directly responsible for one of the greatest burdens in her sister's life, this takes on an entirely new meaning - it's not just 'emotional insulation', as i called it last time, but perhaps even some form of seeking atonement. but it's all about her own feelings here. it's about reclaiming a fantasy they shared as children. it doesn't matter what Eda thinks about it. in fact, at this point, pretty much the only way down this path is to actively remove all of Eda's agency in the matter and assume that Belos is as benevolent as he says. so, with all that in mind, i think it speaks volumes that the last thing we hear out of her after all of this is to essentially renounce the people Eda has taken on as a second family. Lilith feels owed her dream of living what she perceives as 'the good life' side-by-side with her sister, and this kid Eda's chosen to care so much about needs to get lost for that to start happening, in her mind.

and we aren't even quite done yet, as the actual capstone to this episode is Luz returning to the Owl House - having seemingly walked the entire way back home, given Lilith also snatched Owlbert while she was splitting the bridge - to find King still hiding inside of the cake to surprise her, along with a finished cloak Eda made for her from the Witch's Wool. overcome with emotion, she falls to the floor crying, and we end on not just a 'TO BE CONTINUED', but also without our usual credits sequence, instead bookending where we started this whole thing with an ominously silent view of the emperor's castle.

finales - or, well, penultimate episodes, but let's just be real here and say this is part one of two on our season finale - are easy to write a lot about. this is, so far, one of the densest episodes of The Owl House in terms of sheer stuff happening per minute, because we're heading into a culmination of our story so far and we have a lot of ground to cover. once again, though, i hope i don't give off the impression that my enjoyment of this show is directly correlated to the amount of sheer things going on. the very first episode was similarly information-dense, but i had less to say because we were just getting to know these characters and a lot of my commentary came in the form of noting how weird and formless the show's world felt back then.

Agony of a Witch works not because of the sheer amount of things happening, but because it takes all those things, and weaves them together tightly to give you so much worth sitting and wondering about. it's a story about how Luz and Eda are increasingly vital to each other's lives and the lengths they're both willing to go to for each other, a true test of the show's initial thesis that 'weirdos have to stick together'. it's also our proper introduction to Belos, and the mode he operates in, turning wild witches into an ostracized class to be feared and shunned. it's also a story about Lilith, a witch who's essentially lost herself in the depths of both imperialist service and childhood fantasy. it gives us entirely new context to the Clawthorne sister feud that entices you to go back and rethink their previous confrontations, and it ties together some of this show's main mysteries just right so that they're all coming to a head all at once.

i've thought, recently, as i've pushed through this last stretch of the first season, about what exactly i'm doing here. i've tried my best to avoid these articles becoming simple recaps, because i don't want to just have this whole section of my site be a recap - you can go somewhere else for play-by-plays. ultimately, it's in watching this episode and trying to weave together my feelings about it in a presentable way that i think i have an answer. it is undeniable at this point that i think about The Owl House, a LOT, because it gives me things to think about with its characters. if i slip into recapping things, it comes from an impulse to capture the totality of what's put on the screen for us, because every bit i feel the need to recap here informs the characters and shapes the way i keep thinking about them. so, above all else, if there's one thing Agony of a Witch accomplishes, it's without a doubt making me do a lot of thinking.

next time on The Owl House - Luz tries to save Eda.