YOUNG BLOOD, OLD SOULS

it's actually pretty convenient that we left off last time talking about the balance of information density vs. character depth, because i think our proper, no-strings-attached season finale is an excellent test of that line of thinking. all the pieces have been set up just right, and now it's up to Young Blood, Old Souls to release the stored narrative tension. there's no real great way to intro this one, given it opens so immediately off the heels of last episode, so let's just get right into this!

the episode itself takes an unexpected approach to how we step back into the midway point of this ongoing conflict, with King of all characters giving us an uncharacteristically somber reading from The Unauthorized Boiling Isles History. it's an interesting tone-setter and it clicks a lot of pieces of this show's lore into place, namely confirming flat-out that the corpse forming the Boiling Isles is the Titan that Belos claims to have a connection to. not the hardest thing in the world to guess, but it's good to have the text put the connection in front of us - and there's a lot of other interesting details in the parts of the book King isn't reading out loud, about how there's other incomplete Titan skeletons out there in the seas, and how nobody seems to know where Titans came from or how they all died out.

and, speaking of Belos, the book's not too hot on him and his ideology, claiming that the coven system has stripped witches of their true potential and noting that at some point in his reign, Belos essentially disappeared into his castle to work on 'something big'. we've heard a lot about the Emperor's Coven throughout the first season, but we've only just now started hearing a lot about the Emperor himself across these final two episodes, and this is one of our first takes coming at him with a more skeptical eye. while a lot of his inner workings are still being kept appropriately mysterious, i like this introduction a lot as a way to lay out what a big deal his presence is.

if there's one thing that really conveys how serious things have gotten, though, it's that Luz isn't showing any of her trademark enthusiasm to learn about the lore of the world around her. in her own words, she doesn't care if Belos has some long-term nefarious plan. he's captured Eda, and Luz is fully prepared to take matters into her own hands. we once again get some emphasis on the Witch's Wool cloak - now getting to see the tag on it saying that it's 'to a young witch from her proud mentor' - and i have to say, i really enjoy the cloak as a symbol. in a classical heroic sense, sure, it's a powerful new tool that our protagonist has earned as a symbol of her growing expertise, but given the time Agony of a Witch spent on really examining how Eda had softened up on Luz and accepted her as part of her life, it does carry a lot of weight as a connection point between these characters. to lay it out in stronger, blunter terms - it's kind of the culmination of how Eda started to address Luz as 'my kid' more and more throughout the season, of how much she earnestly came to care about her pupil.

and, on a meta-textual presentational level, you know things are different because there's no intro sequence here! we cut right into Luz sorting through a previously unseen stash of weaponry in the Owl House and debating with King about the merits of this rescue mission, given Belos' supposed level of strength and the fact that even if they can get to Eda, she's currently transformed and incapable of recognizing them as allies. Luz insists this is her responsibility, given Eda burnt up her magic saving her - again showing that constant impulse to step in and fix things she perceives as her fault - and King does ultimately relent on going with her. as if i weren't laying it on thick enough a minute ago, he says outright that Eda's the closest thing he has to family. when i fixate so much on Lilith's choice of words last time about Eda returning to her 'real family', it's conversations like that that get the gears turning in my head about that contrast.

over in Belos' castle, Lilith is still shaken after her duel (and after having to corral her literal wild animal of a sister), but remains steadfast in her belief that this is for Eda's own good, that things are finally going to turn around and go the way she wants. we get maybe the most pure, distilled Lilith moment so far here when she insists she's above being drawn in by Eda blowing a raspberry at her, only to turn and be like, ten times as intense about retaliating - the head of the Emperor's Coven, assuming she's moments away from getting everything she's wanted, having an intensely childish argument with a sister who's currently unable to actually respond. this kind of goes for the entire season, but i hope when i write about Lilith in this way, it comes across that i find all these traits to be incredibly endearing and give her compelling depth as an antagonist. i like that she presents herself as very high and mighty and succumbs to this type of petty squabbling. that's fun, engaging character writing.

of course, Eda being transformed into a massive owl beast isn't the only thing stopping the two from arguing, as Emperor Belos quickly steps in to check on his newest captive. for as much doubt as i cast on his propagandizing last time, he does make it clear that his reputation as a powerful witch isn't just talk, as he effortlessly seems to melt his body out of the way of an attack from Eda. we also get our first glimpse at his staff (no Palisman on top, all mechanical hinges and a glowing red orb - very different, very cool) when he casts some kind of spell to put Eda in honestly a pretty horrific position, restoring her sentience and voice but leaving her struggling in the physical and magical confines of her beast form.

Belos regards Eda with several intimidating titles, but what really gets under her skin is when he identifies her as Luz's mentor. as far as he's telling us - trust this as you will, given the source - he doesn't actually want to hurt Luz, at least, not for now. he's after the portal she arrived through, which really does kind of draw your attention to how little we know about the dimensional gateway Eda happens to use.

when Eda refuses to cooperate, he has her dragged off in magical chains, and Lilith, still somehow optimistic through all of this, asks if she's being taken to a healing ceremony. i don't think it's that much of a shock that Belos isn't the type of person who'd actually follow through on this deal, right? i mean, maybe i tipped my hand a little early with how i wrote about this whole situation last time, but of course he doesn't have room in his dogma for that kind of mercy towards a wild witch, and of course he deflects it back to how the Titan's telling him this is what needs to happen. it's a much subtler form of scariness than last time, but i will say i do find something pretty chilling about the fact that he still bothers asking 'You understand, don't you?', knowing all too well that Lilith's in no real position to start disagreeing. i mean, he follows up by immediately giving her Owlbert to destroy, which doesn't seem like the smartest play, but an antagonist's gotta have foibles somewhere for people to start exploiting, don't they?

meanwhile, Eda's capture and the announcement that she's been sentenced to irreversible petrification quickly become the talk of the town, as the Emperor's Coven uses the opportunity to gloat about finally defeating their most wanted criminal. Amity's still bed-ridden, but Gus and Willow both immediately recognize that they have a certain responsibility to try and help too, and Luz is in a pretty full-on rage, smashing one of the stylishly animated crystal ball displays when she sees Lilith's face. it definitely goes on the "angriest we've ever seen Luz" list, right next to takes about magical sports, but luckily King is present to help her calm down and start formulating a plan.

luckily, the sight of a familiar guard (higher-level? part of a different department? just first episode weirdness?) gives the two the idea to intentionally get themselves thrown into the Conformatorium, to break Eda out. one patch of grass illegally stepped on later, and they're in, where we get some more silent brooding out of Luz over seeing Lilith on recruitment posters and - hey, it's Warden Wrath! it's been so long, buddy! for as weird as his starter boss vibes were back then, it does make him an excellent target for showing how much stronger Luz has gotten this season, immediately getting him cornered and interrogated. i'm still not fully certain how intentional that lack of cohesion is, but i'll give the show major points for turning it around into an advantage here.

we get a brief diversion to show that Willow and Gus are savvy enough to guess that Luz has already snuck inside to handle things herself - and to show that Lilith is, in turn, savvy enough to spot Luz's friends in the crowd and maybe get a bit suspicious - but for the most part, it's right back to Luz and the path she's single-handedly carving through the Conformatorium with her glyphs and cloak. it's nice to see the finale putting in so much legwork to convey how Luz's strengths as a witch have grown - even if a lot of this is off-screen and we only really get to see the aftermath, it's probably the most magic we've actually seen her using, given a lot of her previous opponents have been defeated swiftly, usually with the help of her peers and/or Eda.

of course, speaking of Eda, Luz manages to find her pretty quickly thanks to Wrath's advice, and she's even able to use the light glyph to evoke a similar level of communication and sentience as Belos got out of her. her fire magic can't burn through the magically-reinforced chains, though, and Eda seems pretty insistent about Luz getting herself out of this dangerous situation. the Owl Lady's made her peace with this, to some extent - in her own words, 'I'm here because of my own actions. I went against Belos's law, and for a while I was able to get away with it.'. it's not that she regrets living her life the way she did, but she knows how she got here and she understands that it's probably important for Luz to not feel responsible for how things went.

when Luz protests about how she needs to stay, it's through the lens that at this point, they really have become something of a family - once again tapping back into that first episode by reminding Eda that 'us weirdos have to stick together'. do i think that every single episode and minute of this first season is perfectly spent setting up this deep degree of attachment between characters? not necessarily. do i think it absolutely makes sense for Luz, a fantasy-loving outcast with doubts about her place in her own world, to possess a deep connection with people who wholeheartedly accept her? and that, in turn, Eda is absolutely the type of gruff hardened mentor who needs people like Luz around to pull her out of the ambivalent shell she's built up around herself? yeah, for sure, on both counts.

and am i maybe just a sucker for a well-executed found family story? ...yeah, probably.

Eda counters by saying Luz already has her family back home, but perhaps more urgently and convincingly, also passes along that Belos wants the portal, insisting that Luz burn the door down to keep it out of the emperor's hands even if they don't know what he wants to do with it. unfortunately, sticking around just long enough for one last desperate attempt to free Eda as her cage rises to the surface for her petrification means that Luz is still in the room when Lilith arrives. unfortunate for Lilith, really, because all that aggression that's been brewing comes to the surface, with Luz quickly launching into a full-on brawl even while Lilith insists she 'just wants to talk'.

even with Lilith going on the defensive, Luz is able to push her back through the portal door into the human realm, where it becomes clear that while Lilith can count on that good ol' magic bile sac, glyph magic doesn't work on Earth. luckily for Luz, Lilith really does mean it when she says she just wants to talk, and we finally get to dig into a long flashback to hear her side of the story about the curse - obviously coming from a bit of a biased source, but also a seemingly repentant one with very little left to gain by tricking Luz.

as Lilith tells it, the Clawthorne sibling rivalry used to be a much healthier sense of competition, as the two were once best friends. given what we've seen before - them pretty seamlessly working together when put in a situation with a common enemy, or the fact that we know they once shared a lot of the same goals - it's not really a shock, but it is nice to see in practice here after a whole season of wondering how things used to be. quite crucially (i don't mind putting a fine point on it - you're not pausing scene-by-scene and reading these, are you?), we see this extend to some kind of healing magic that allowed them to even split pain across each other. we'll loop back around to that in a bit, because clearly it's going to do something later.

where things went wrong, then, was in the latter days of their time at Hexside, when it became clear that only one of them would be able to join the Emperor's Coven, and that they'd have to duel one another to earn their place. Lilith immedately came to the conclusion that Eda would win, and i think there's a lot to unpack in even small choices of words here. even with Wing It Like Witches establishing that Eda was a prolific and well-known trickster back then, the way Lilith speaks about it, she believed Eda would win because she just worked crazy hard to get good at magic. it's a sign of respect between the two that really does sell how far things had to go for them to fall out like they have.

so, Lilith decided she needed an upper hand, and her line of thinking is one i'm going to talk about at length, so screw it, i'm breaking out the quotation block for it -

it might not be as on-its-face insidious as Willow uncritically repeating back Belos's propaganda last episode, but this one remark really does make a lot of his ideological footprint click into place for me. Lilith is convinced that what she's doing is sacrificial - that great people make tough choices, choices that might hurt but that shape you into your best self. what is sacrificial about throwing your sister under the bus? it's not a necessary burden you're carrying to make someone else's life better, but a way of justifying the guilt of hurting someone. it's a way of thinking that poisons people and poisons their connections to the people around them.

and while we're at it, let's think back to the first time we saw Lilith - a story in which both Clawthorne sisters, having something of a proxy conflict through Luz and Amity, had their students cheat to win. this thematic thread, this way of thinking that confuses selfishness with moral fiber and resolve, the hypocrisy Lilith has had in accusing her sister of cheating, has all been right there since day one, constantly informing her character without being heavy-handed in the slightest. it's a really strong narrative move, and i think moreover, it does a great job of showing just how infectous Belos's ideology can get for a devotee like Lilith. she's constantly been driven by the pain of hurting a loved one and wanting to make it right, but through the lens of an empire that drove her to hurt that loved one in the first place in the name of 'making sacrifices'. honestly, if you want to ride this train of thought a little further, maybe this tells us a lot about Eda, too - she got out of it, sure, but she's just as much a product of her upbringing as Lilith in some ways and that might give us insight into her more underhanded side.

character analysis aside, i also really enjoy the literal events we're seeing unfold. the curse that's been such a foundational aspect of Eda's life has such a quaint, impersonal origin - Lilith found it in an alley at the night market, just one in a stack of scrolls that happened to do the trick. i absolutely love that. it'd be easy to make it something that had huge importance in the world even before it was cast on Eda, but there's something even more sinister about the idea that it could have come from anywhere, happened to anyone. further reinforcing this is the fact that Lilith didn't exactly know what she was unleashing, assuming the curse would only last for a day. this feels like the shorter path to her regrets as opposed to the deep reading of 'what does growing up wanting to be an imperial guard do to a person and their understanding of ethics', but it's still a nice touch that sells the unnecesary tragedy of her story.

and as if all that unnecessary tragedy wasn't enough, Eda forfeited. we don't really have a full picture of her end of things, but whatever the reason, she tells Lilith 'I've decided that covens aren't really my style.', and i honestly like how much you can read into this choice. was this a long conversation she'd been having with herself that Lilith wasn't clued into, or something spontaneous? did the idea of having to fight her sister upset her that badly? it's interesting to chew on. and then, of course, she turns into the owl beast in front of everyone and gets run off, leaving Lilith alone to steel herself for her future in the Emperor's Coven. one thing i do find interesting here is that, from Eda's perspective, this really isn't the moment where they fall out - she's choosing not to pursue life in a coven, but at least in this moment in their lives, she wasn't really hostile to the idea of Lilith being in one. it leaves some room for us to revisit Eda's past and how being cursed affected her later, and it also reinforces Lilith's struggle of being weighed down by her guilt.

with her past laid out and nothing really left to lose now that Belos has proven he has no intention of curing Eda, Lilith proposes a truce with Luz to try and save her sister, offering up Owlbert as a token of trust. Luz, understandably, still 'doesn't like [Lilith's] whole deal', but without many options, she's willing to work together for the time being. we get a really nice introspective moment here, too, as Luz looks out on the human world before heading back into the portal. the door dropped her and Lilith off at the same house that she initially stumbled upon at the start of her journey. she's literal minutes away from her home and her mother. there's not even really much to be said - Luz certainly doesn't say much. but there's feelings there. lots of 'em.

while Kikimora continues to make a big public display out of what is effectively a state execution for Eda, Luz and Lilith try to catch back up in time to do something about all this. when asked what she thinks she'll do from here, with so much of her life shaken up, Lilith says she'll 'stay in the Emperor's Coven, but [she] will make sure nothing like this ever happens again', which honestly just reinforces her naivety as her biggest weakness, both in terms of 'i alone can make the Emperor's Coven good from the inside' and 'Belos definitely won't catch on to all that treason i just did'. the latter point actually gets dispelled immediately, because Belos is already awaiting their arrival, having seemingly set up a secondary throne room underneath the petrification platform... just for the drama of it all, i guess? it's definitely delivering on that front.

Lilith and King both get sent up to be petrified with Eda, but true to his stated intentions at least for now, he spares Luz, wanting to talk to her. up on the surface, King vouches that Lilith is genuinely sticking her neck out to try and fix things, just moments before the petrification machine starts revving up. without much time left to step in, Gus finally acts, interrupting his dad (the reporter we've been seeing in this episode. neat? neat.) so that he and Willow can speak to the gathered crowd. given how dense these final episodes have been, this isn't a plot beat that gets zeroed in on too closely, but i do like it. i like that Gus and Willow have something to do here without having to wind up right in the middle of danger two episodes in a row, and i like the message here that while Bonesborough collectively seems to accept the empire, as a group of individual people, none of them are narcs and none of them want to see Eda get petrified. i can get down with a good 'the town's not full of narcs' moment.

back underground, Luz isn't exactly receptive to talking things out with Belos, almost managing to land an ice spike straight through his face and only getting a cold 'Okay. I'll play.' out of the emperor in response. Belos has a really visually exciting style of magic that's unlike anything we've seen up until now, and i can only really describe it as... fleshomancy? he twists and turns and melts in ways that people generally aren't supposed to, and he's capable of summoning up prehensile limbs or even an entire giant worm (it's the worm from the intro! the intro worm!) to do his bidding. it's not as intense as the big Clawthorne duels we've seen towards the beginning and end of the season, but it gets the job done and raises a lot of fun questions about what style of magic Belos is even performing, given this doesn't exactly look like the kind of mixed magic he declared as his holy right from the Titan.

it's not quite a full spike through the face, but eventually Luz does manage to land a solid hit on Belos and chip away at his mask, and he responds as any creepily polite villain should, with 'I like your spirit'. he's seemingly had enough of this back-and-forth after having his mask damaged, and essentially plays into Luz's worst fears by saying that Eda's life was inconsequential to him until Luz showed up. honestly, like with many of the things he says, it's so transparently an attempt to establish control over people and situations. not only has he made it incredibly clear that dealing with wild witches is a massive priority to him, but Eda always had the portal he wants, seemingly long before Luz arrived. one way or another, he knows this type of thinking is going to put pressure on Luz in the moment, and in his mind, that's all he needs to get what he wants.

he promises to let Luz go save Eda if he can have the portal, and while he can tell that Luz's first assumption might be that he wants to invade her world, Belos claims that 'the Titan's will is not so boorish'. sure, he's shown us in this very episode that he's more than willing to walk promises back if it means acheiving his (and the Titan's) goals, but it does at least put the question on the table of what Belos might do if he actually got what he wanted here, and how it ties into that whole 'Day of Unity' thing we've started hearing about.

when Luz decides to hand over the portal door, it's with a lot of hesitation. it's with a whispered apology to her mother. it's with a promise that Belos has lost this fight just as much as her, and it's with enough fire glyphs attached to burn the door to ashes. more on that in a bit when we're wrapping things up.

just like Belos tried to say tauntingtly before getting what seems like a massive wrench thrown in his plans, Luz gets to go and be a hero - when she's decked out with her cloak and Eda's staff, and uses her glyphs to successfully disable the petrification machine, she winds up looking more than a bit like the type of fictional witch she started this series off idolizing so much. the show doesn't hit you over the head with the parallels, but i do think that once again, this episode's doing a pretty excellent job of showing Luz's character growth in this way. luckily (and thanks to Lilith's help), Eda's only mostly petrified, and feeling good enough to fly everyone out in quite the dramatic exit from her own public execution.

this escape really does leave Belos on the back foot, not physically, but psychologically, in terms of the control he's constantly trying to exert over others. he hurriedly arrives before the crowd and has to explain that the Titan instructed him to spare Eda's life, which definitely raised some early doubts and questions in my mind about this whole 'i can talk to our god' thing. even with this crack in the public image - and, hey, his mask is still literally cracked, fun use of visual language - he does manage to loop this back around into his vendetta against wild witches, saying that her cursed, magicless form should be a cautionary tale about the dangers of mixing magic.

back at the Owl House, Eda's tuckered out from carrying the whole gang (and Lilith) back home, and Luz is informed that even with whatever slight amount of healing Belos granted to let her talk, no amount of elixir can actually turn Eda back now. Lilith resolves to do something '[she] should have done a long time ago' and uses the pain-splitting spell we saw in the flashback to take on part of her sister's burden. Eda is returned to normal, but the Clawthornes now have a matching set of asymmetrical gray eyes and, more pressingly, an inability to perform magic.

my notes here, upon rewatch, are a bit mixed. on the one hand, i do find myself thinking that there might be something a little clumsy about introducing the pain split within this episode and deploying it as a solution to a major problem within the same 22-minute chunk. on the other hand, i'm not quite sure where else you would slot that set-up into this season's narrative arc without sacrificing some tension about how unavoidable the curse was becoming. i think any gripes aside, i do end up still feeling very positive overall about this plot beat - it's a moment where Lilith ultimately does have to make a real sacrifice to help someone she cares about, and it's symbolic of how the path towards healing these old emotional wounds is through standing side-by-side and sharing the pain rather than living in their own separate worlds.

with Eda and Lilith both drained of their magic, Luz quickly resolves that she'll teach them her way of doing magic instead, adding that 'what we don't know, we can learn together'. it's a moment i love that really adds a very interesting wrinkle to where this show is heading - the student has become the master, not through complete control or understanding of magic, but through hard circumstances that they'll have to navigate together. seeing Eda in a genuine bit of awe that she's able to cast a light glyph, just like Luz was in awe the first time she did, is an excellent parallel to bring this season full circle in an unexpected way.

there's still two scenes to go, though, to cap things off on two sides of this world. Luz records a message to her mother, taking some well-earned pride in having a piece of Belos's mask as proof that he's not invincible, but mostly lamenting her current situation. for as hard as things were back home, something's not sitting right about not having her mom here to share these experiences with. much like with Eda and Lilith having to re-learn magic from Luz, i really enjoy this shift in the show's status quo as we head into the second season. so many stories about heading to another world like this immediately make it clear that it's a one-way trip, to avoid the tough questions about why someone would choose to avoid their 'real life'. The Owl House has spent a lot of its first season building those tough questions up, leaning into the fact that Luz is in the Demon Realm purely by choice and confronting why someone would choose that. the idea of being stuck there is a difficult change, one she bears responsibility for too, and i love that it gets deployed here as an extension of the situation rather than right off the bat.

elsewhere, deep in the catacombs of his castle, Belos is preparing his next move. Kikimora is concerned about allowing Eda and her cohorts to escape, but Belos assures her that he'll be keeping a close eye on the situation, seeming to assign the task to a mysterious masked figure with nothing more than a silent nod. we've actually seen this character before, standing at Belos's side when he was talking to Lilith last episode, but this is the first time the show's actually drawing our attention right towards them, and without saying too much about the role they end up playing, it's another one of those very enticing hooks heading into our second season. there's new bad guys! who doesn't love a new bad guy!

more immediately concerning, though, is that 'the Day of Unity is almost upon us', despite everything that went wrong in Belos's machinations today. we end our first season on a shot of the portal door being re-assembled within a massive frame, with a level of industrial and technological flair we haven't seen much of in this fantasy setting so far.

at the top of this overview, i mentioned that this episode provides us with a good test for what i've been saying, about how much i enjoy pure information density vs. how deeply i can read into that information. i hope this whole thing doesn't come across as overly negative - Young Blood, Old Souls is a solid conclusion to a strong season of storytelling, bringing together a variety of threads while leaving us with some exciting questions to look forward to seeing played out. ultimately, though, its function is more about the release of tension rather than the build, so i'm left with a lot less to chew on than Agony of a Witch, which was basically wall-to-wall 'what does this tell me about this person' moments.

some of that does come through the nature of this project and how i've chosen to write about this show. i have notes written down about this episode that i'm not going to get to bring up until we're over halfway into the second season, because generally speaking, i do want these to be approachable to someone who's watching the show for the first time and wants to read along. in that sense, Young Blood, Old Souls does have these interesting moments of interiority, but on a delayed release that makes it hard to dive into certain aspects right now. it's slow burn tension, which can be hard to write about in this format, but i promise, it'll be very worth it when we see these things through.

and, i mean, that's it! that's a whole season of television down. it's been interesting revisiting this first season, not only for spotting things i didn't recognize as long-term set-up the first go around, but also for seeing how The Owl House starts finding its voice. i've gotten to re-experience moments where this whole thing seemed like it could have gone down some way less interesting paths, and i've gotten excited all over again at moments like Luz and Amity's dance, or Eda and Lilith's duels, moments where you can see the excellent story the creators want to tell coming to fruition.

if you've read along with these overviews, whether you're an Owl House aficionado looking for a refresher, or a first-time viewer curious about what the deal is with this show, thank you so much. even with a few hiccups along the way, i've had a great time writing these so far, and as any other fan can attest to, season 2 has even more to look forward to. if you liked the same parts of this show i did, or really enjoyed it when i got to ramble on about a character's tiniest little choice of words, then i assure you, things are only going to keep getting better. given this project's original target of 'line up with the series finale' has proven itself impossible by way of a much closer airdate than i predicted, i'll probably take a few days off here to recharge before heading into the second season, but i wouldn't be shocked if my excitement to start digging into certain characters overcomes any exhaustion or impulse to rest.

next time, and next season on The Owl House - Luz gets to be a pirate!