ESCAPING EXPULSION

so, heyyy, funny story. remember last time, when i said The Owl House wasn't going to 'take a hard swerve into paying close attention to the socioeconomics of Belos's empire'? well, this one's kind of about arms dealers! whoops!

and other stuff, too, which is just as enticing to unpack. Escaping Expulsion isn't an episode that came to mind as a particular stand-out of season two for me before this rewatch, and i think part of that has to do with how good some of the episodes we're about to head into are, but honestly, this one's got a lot of great material, whether it's character moments ripe for a deep reading, implications about the underpinnings of this world's natural rules, or just some of the funniest bits this show has deployed up until now.

we open this episode on the proper reveal of Amity's parents, a not-quite-mystery that hasn't been pushed to the forefront yet what with all the big stakes imperial scheming going on, but i remember wondering a lot about them and their role in this world on my first viewing, so this does still feel like kind of a big deal. they're visually and tonally a bit of an odd couple, but they're in pretty perfect sync about their business, selling abomination soldiers to the highest bidder. the fact that they're holding a secretive auction in the dead of night with green cloaks for potential buyers already gives off VERY bad vibes, and involving their teenage daughter as a test dummy doesn't earn them any points.

while her father, Alador, seems pretty aloof about the whole thing aside from getting to show off his latest creation, Amity's mother Odalia is clearly both the public face of the business and the more directly insidious influence, using a telepathic necklace to remind her kid that this is all part of a deal to be forgiven for how things have been going at Hexside. Amity either doesn't have the knack for acting or is doing her best to only give this the bare minimum, up until the Abomaton risks her precious Grom photo, at which point she easily dismantles the drone. Odalia, terrible mom that she is, immediately judges a picture of her daughter smiling for once as proof that she's being distracted and set astray by the new friends she's made. can you guess yet that people generally don't like Odalia?

Amity and Luz might be the same dork on some level, but Luz definitely does have the knack for acting that Amity lacks, as we cut to her demonstrating her glyphs, complete with narration and fun colorful backgrounds. we've already seen it cropping up, but here, we're diving right into Luz's first proper lesson as Eda and Lilith's de facto new teacher! it's a process which involves two women well into their 40s sitting at little school desks out in the front yard, which is hilarious and adorable.

at face value, this is a nice refresher on glyphs - so far, there's four pretty basic ones, and Luz has pieced together some simple ways to direct and 'chain' them - but it's also a good primer for the different perspectives of the Clawthorne sisters, since that's going to be a real driving force for this B-plot. Lilith is a complete teacher's pet, focused on exact precise repetition of what she's been taught and calling Luz 'miss teacher' with full earnest respect, whereas Eda is quick to try carving glyphs into her desk with a knife to see if she can start combining them into more advanced spells. i don't think it's mind-blowing that this ends up being a 'you gotta have a bit of both styles' plot, but it is incredibly characterful, and it's another great example of one of my favorite recurring elements of Clawthorne sister plots, which is that these two will absolutely devolve into childish sibling rivalry when left unsupervised.

and, with Luz heading back to school for the first time since she busted her mentor out of imperial prison, they are pretty much left unsupervised, even if King is ostensibly supposed to play substitute. right away, she has a happy tearful reunion with her best friends, and notices Gus has gotten taller, which he off-handedly chalks up to 'witch puberty'. Gus's voice actor, Isaac Ryan Brown, did in fact grow up, since shows take a while to make (especially in a pandemic), and i appreciate that they just kind of stuck with him and rolled with it instead of recasting.

and Amity is here too, with a frighteningly fresh fairy pie! her monotone voice here reads to me as 'practicing monk-like focus and dedication to avoid forgetting her own name again', but even then, she does end up blushing about it. what a dork.

unfortunately for Luz (and kind of fortunately for my personal taste in Owl House episodes, to be honest), things won't be back to normal at Hexside so quickly. Odalia and Alador are quick to deploy their influence as 'the Parent-Creature Association' - best new wordplay in this show since 'hocus-focus' - to force Principal Bump's hand, having him expel Luz, Willow, and Gus. Amity's gone through enough character development to look outraged by this, but the way her expression falls when Odalia breaks out the telepathy again says it all when it comes to how much hold the Blights still have over their daughter.

outside of Hexside, Luz takes a stand against Odalia with the kind of impassioned anger usually reserved for deadly monsters and evil emperors, and perhaps unfortunately, that kind of directness is the exact language of power Odalia loves to hear. while Alador's busy absent-mindedly chasing bugs, she offers up a business card (helpfully labelling their residence on 'RIGHT ARM', as we'll see later, which i love) and a potential meeting to figure out a new deal with Luz. Gus and Willow seem to pretty immediately pin this down as a bad idea, but if you've watched this much Owl House, you know Luz is a bit too much of a problem fixer for her own good.

back at home, Eda's still trying to master ways to expand on the potential of the glyphs, setting up a house of cards that ultimately fizzles out in a flash of blue fire. as she explains while puzzling the process out, the natural 'bile sacs' we've heard about before contain 'different spell phlegms' that mix together to form different results, but the glyphs don't quite translate one-to-one with the way she learned to do magic up until losing her powers. much like with how the curse read as a metaphor for chronic illness throughout season one, i like that the plot is now centering a lack of magic as a character beat about needing to relearn things that were once second nature.

if there's one thing that's great at getting in the way of relearning these talents, though, it's seeing that Lilith is already making great progress. as i promised last time, the Lilith and Hooty BFF arc is far from over, as she uses the ice glyph to produce popsicles to share and a giant Hooty swan sculpture. i will say that since most of the glyphs so far have come from nature rather than characters, we haven't seen them deployed for much classical elemental symbolism, but i don't think it's a coincidence that Lilith's colder demeanor and strict devotion to rigid structure lead to her getting really good with ice.

back in the A-plot, we get a montage of Luz and friends trying to convince Principal Bump to let them back in, where it's by bribery or disguise or just plain flying into school until thwarted by threat of a giant crossbow. this would be kind of funny played straight, i guess, but what really sells this scene as one of the funniest in the show is that Bump is devastated about this whole ordeal, wistfully lamenting over photos of trouble they've caused and having to hide his tears to look strong as a principal. i talked a lot about Bump being way less cool than i remember in the first season, but ah, here he is. here's this old man letting himself have a good cry the second his former students are out of earshot and out of range of his giant crossbow. THAT'S more like it.

the joke right after this too is also pretty high in the series-wide runnings, as we get reminded that one of the phone analogies in this magical world is crows, big ol' crows that can pick you up and take you away when you're grounded. we finally get to hear a bit of Willow's dads here, and we also get Gus's dad going full news anchor mode about grounding his son. it's great.

ultimately, though, there is also room for emotion here, as Luz has a run-in with Amity. in keeping with how far she's come, Amity immediately owns up and perhaps overdoes it by saying 'I was a coward in there', which Luz can immediately understand, perhaps relating to having confronted her own fears regarding her family in the recent past. she seems optimistic that she can still talk things out with Odalia, even with Amity hesitating and insisting she doesn't need to, but when it comes down to it, Amity can't bring herself to offer much direct help and go against her family.

the pacing on the B-plot gets a little slippery here, so i'll shuffle things around for now to say that when Eda's latest attempt at combining glyphs does finally produce some results, they're not pretty. layering different glyphs on top of one another creates some kind of ice blob, resembling the soft-spiked exterior of a jewel caterpillar (or, let's be real here, the Pokémon Snom) and intangibly expanding to begin freezing the entire room. i like the way this weird catastrophic magic actually does combine elements of the component glyphs, acting like some kind of 'ice fire' that grows like a plant, but clearly it's a bit of a problem. i'm jumping ahead here when i say Eda ends up swallowing her pride and asking Lilith for help, but the show itself weirdly sends us from that point into the aftermath and then explains the moments we missed immediately anyways via flashback, so... this is just a weird one and we'll cover the resolution when it happens.

as Luz takes matters into her own hands, we get what definitely feels like our first look inside Blight Manor, even if we've gotten brief glimpses of Amity's room occasionally by way of slumber party or broken leg. it's no real surprise that Amity comes from this bougie background, given the Blights' obsession with status, but it hits a little different, a little more outright sinister now that we know this status comes from selling weapons. Luz tries to make the best of a bad situation with flowers and sculpting a brand new kitty face for their abomination butler, but there's no real way to avoid the new deal being carved out for her, as we cut right to her taking Amity's place as the test dummy for the next Blight Industries presentation.

now that we're here getting a good look at the spoils of war Odalia and Alador get by on, it's a good time to mention that, socioeconomic implications aside, this is a really interesting swerve for abomination magic as a 'sub-class'. they really have primarily been deployed as temporary goons more often than not, so the idea that 'high-level abomination magic' means engineering more permanent and more lethally equipped golems is a cool touch, really emphasizing the Frankenstein half of the abomination vibes i emphasized when they first appeared. what else can you call a middle-aged man in goggles ripping chunks out of a big purple blob to replace them with weapons, other than mad science?

to let the socioeconomic implications back into the room, yowza, they're strong! Alador more-or-less says that they get away with selling all this stuff under the guise of 'home security', but home security sales definitely shouldn't involve anonymous men in cloaks cheering when you almost blast a kid with a flamethrower. almost like some kind of... theater performance, for security. like some kind of security theater that normalizes the presence of militarized hardware to protect the upper class. hrm.

Amity is quick to catch on to Luz once again taking the problem onto her own shoulders the instant she spots the now-cat-faced butler, and she's able to mobilize quickly to start setting things right. we get our first actual scene-scene with Willow's dads, who are leaning pretty hard into the life changes, saying they've quit their jobs to homeschool Willow full-time. luckily, one of her dads is certifiably cool enough to let it slide when he catches Gus trying to get a message through. the three head back to Blight Manor, squabbling over how to get in (root tunnels or 'distract [the guards] with beautiful lady guards', vote now!) until Edric and Emira step in, eager to help undermine their mom's authority by helping the group sneak in.

Luz continues to display the same kind of high-level glyph expertise to keep herself relatively safe through Odalia's various weapon tests, but when she unveils the Abomaton 2.0 and boasts that 'it won't rest until its enemy is completely eliminated', it becomes clear quickly that her insistence on upholding fair deals is just barely papering over a cutthroat eye for loopholes. don't need to unexpel this girl if she's dead! Alador tries to temper his wife's more maniacal side for now, but it's a full-blown chase through the Blight Industries show floor, with Luz pulling out some primo Spider-Man swings with the plant glyph and doing some surprisingly polished swordfighting with a shard of ice. i won't keep commenting on it every time, but ever since the season one finale, we really have seen Luz come into her own as a fighter in a way i really enjoy.

when the Abomaton's shapeshifting weaponry proves to be too much, though, it's Amity who gets to have the coolest hero moment of the episode, because cloaks are cool. in being so defensive of Luz, she even lets her guard down a bit and belts out a 'Stay away from my Luz', and when she asks if Luz is okay... hey, would you look at that, Luz's blushing back now!

it's here that we get to loop back to Enchanting Grom Fright and Wing It Like Witches a bit, and go over some notes i couldn't quite tackle at the time. although i wasn't an active viewer back then, it's my understanding that a lot of people, not knowing exactly where things were heading, read Luz as wildly oblivious to Amity's crush, a reading which Dana Terrace sort of supports in an AMA with the claim that she doesn't notice because of more pressing matters like Eda's curse. i don't necessarily disagree with this take - i see how you get there, that is the text at the forefront of all of this, and the creator of the show is backing it up. all i would add is just... is there not something maybe a little latently romantic about going through so much to spare someone suffering? is there not something a little 'knight in shining armor' about that scene where Luz agrees to become Grom Queen?

i guess what i'm saying here is, yeah, maybe Luz doesn't notice, but she exists in the world and has feelings too and might just be under the assumption that Amity wouldn't reciprocate. short version: oblivious, but i don't think it's for lack of trying. maybe the clues have always been there in both sides of this thing. given that we get some back-to-back blushing here, i don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say this is going to be an ongoing arc in this show now and that we'll revisit some more finalized reads on this situation another time. in the short term, i like that things are moving - especially in a show running on limited time, it's nice to see emotional arcs progress when the opportunity's on the table.

more importantly, though, Amity has taken the step of breaking the necklace that seems to channel her mother's telepathy. in the most literal sense, she's taking that toxic voice out of her head. as she uses her own abomination magic to physically wrangle the Abomaton back step by step, she has this to say -

- and, for all the character development she's already gone through, this is one of those big moments that sticks in my head about Amity's arc through this show. in some ways, i think you can tie this back to a lot of what i said about Lilith last time. there's a common thread here between these former enemies, and it's that their turns towards good require looking inward, because the things that have shaped them into bad people are frameworks that actively avoid the responsibility of self-reflection. it's not just making wrongs right with Willow that shapes Amity into a better person - it's the process of seeing people who treat each other right, understanding where she lacks that in her family, and wondering what she can keep doing to become more like the friends she admires.

leaping in like this certainly qualifies for 'how to be a better person' material, as does managing to bluff Odalia out by threatening to once again ruin her latest weapon in front of a crowd. even with her hand forced and the kids kept out of danger, Odalia insists she'll use her influence to keep Luz and co. out of Hexside, but Alador steps in and provides a pretty devious angle on the whole thing. sure, he's a little more hesistant about child murder, but he still gets to be insidious in his own way by playing the long game. he recognizes that, yes, the power of self-reflection and good friends really is making their daughter stronger... 'strong enough to become a coven head someday', in what the Blights kind of seem to have already talked about as the natural endgame for their influence in society. it's an interesting beat, and i find the idea interesting, looking at the power of friendship and deciding you can work with this as a manipulative toxic family dynasty.

so, as we see Eda ask, humbled by her magic disaster and accompanied by an adorably bundled-up King - how did Lilith actually go about fixing the ice blob? to quote her directly -

i have talked in the past about avoiding some of the nitty-gritty of how magic works in The Owl House, and i stand by some of the reasons i gave back then, but don't mistake my lack of writing about it for a general disdain. it's very easy to overdo it with rules about magic, but these are the kinds of rules that are exciting, because they lend themselves to being explored, tested, and broken. it actually ends up being King who puts the last piece of this puzzle together when he posits that 'maybe the reason Luz hasn't found any more glyphs is because there aren't any more'. our understanding right now is that there's essentially a periodic table of magic, with four core elements that can be chained and modified to accomplish just about anything.

this, for me, works on so many levels. it's the right amount of big-picture lore at the right time, not overwhelming but instead enriching our understanding of the type of magic our core cast is performing. the distinction between 'containing magic' and 'commanding the magic around them' is a pretty interesting one to draw, that feeds back into that idea that magic is everywhere. the idea that the glyphs are like words and that mastery over their potential can be likened to learning a language is so intriguing, and it fits so well with the fact that we know Luz to be something of a writer. all that stuff i've already said about how glyph magic reflects Luz's unique creative potential and perspective on the world? reinforced ten-fold here. plus, i love when there are just enough rules in a world for you to speculate, and for the characters to speculate. Luz, Eda, and Lilith now get to apply all kinds of creative thinking, and i love to watch characters experiment. we finally have an answer to 'is there a sleep glyph' - no, but if you speak and write glyphs well enough, you can make one, and maybe push it even further somehow.

Luz arrives just too late and just too exhausted to revel in this discovery with her students, but Lilith does have something to show miss teacher before she can head to bed - a little ice statue of herself kneeling before Luz in worship for a gold star. Eda tries to one-up her with a simple rolling ball of ice, and Luz decides they could both use the extra credit. keep this one in the back of your head for just a minute, because boy, can i fit this into a broader statement about this episode.

the actual scene we end on is one i had forgotten about, as while the Blights celebrate a successful sale, they're interrupted by the arrival of none other than the Golden Guard. in his own way, he congratulates them on the Abomaton 2.0, by letting them know that the Emperor's Coven is swooping in to buy out their entire stock, keeping them out of the hands of any of Blight Industries' customers. one of the things i pick up on the most here isn't even the dialogue - it's that Odalia kneels before imperial authority immediately, and has to silently remind Alador to follow her lead. as if to really make sure the hierarchy is set here, the Guard reminds them that 'Emperor Belos doesn't take kindly to citizens making a private army', and he leaves his scouts to presumably oversee the seizing of assets while the Blights sit with this uncomfortable new position of power.

i think it's these last two scenes, at just the right pace, that cement this episode's bigger themes for me. on paper, Escaping Expulsion is a fun episode about meeting Amity's parents, having a bit of an adventure, and learning more about glyphs. it checks all those boxes remarkably well, but if you look a layer deeper, this episode is really very much about authority - how people wield it and how people try to appeal to it.

the major example here is Odalia, who exerts very direct control over her daughter, and uses her ill-gotten influence in society to put pressure on Hexside to expel her new friends. she is a manipulative, controlling person, and we're shown the ways in which she and her husband have accrued so much control over people by way of a shady weapons business. for all that control, though, she is not at the top of the food chain - the second the emperor gets involved, she becomes the one trying to look good and subservient to a higher power. the business that gives her so much power is ultimately a dead end that can only ever lead to getting placed as a cog in the broader imperial machine. there is power in Blight Industries, but only so far as Belos allows it.

Alador is complicit in the ways Blight Industries has built up its power, but he expresses these same impulses for control differently and he seems a little oblivious to the order of things with Belos above everyone else. he's honorable enough to hold up the deal and let his daughter have a normal life, but he's quick to spin this as a way for Amity to become stronger in a way that benefits the family. his long game here is that even if he specifically doesn't have power, maybe the Blight dynasty still can.

and then, in a much more benign sense, there's Lilith. Lilith has spent most of her life inside of these hierarchies, constantly looking to appeal to Emperor Belos, and while she's gotten out and made strides in doing the right thing, that impulse to seek out a leader she can flatter is still very much alive in her. it's adorable that she's such a teacher's pet, yes, but when it gets to the point that she's making statues of herself in some kind of worship, it's definitely reflective of a deeper pattern in her mind. a person can be on a path to self-improvement, but deprogramming this kind of thinking is a layer deeper than kind and righteous deeds.

and, to tie this all back closer to our primary cast and how you overcome these problems, Amity's big moment here is rejecting these hierarchies. she is done looking nice and sitting aside while her family uses their power to manipulate her - she understands that real strength comes from standing side-by-side with people who care about each other, people who listen to each other as equals and challenge her to self-reflect about her place in the world.

i really did not come into this episode expecting to write so much, but it turns out this one's actually kind of killer? Escaping Expulsion works well on a basic, fundamental, 'good stuff happens on The Owl House this week' level, but it also gives me some very fun opportunties to really start digging into big-picture themes and how these characters parallel each other in interesting ways. as i've always promised, season two is when things really start to come together. and, dear reader, consider this - if i had completely overlooked how much i would have to say about this episode, what must be coming up ahead that overshadows it? how much better can things get? i'm excited to keep showing you.

next time on The Owl House - Luz goes to King's castle!