In the first episode, King is sad when Luz considers leaving the Boiling Isles to go to Reality Check Camp. He then curls up with her in her sleeping bag when she decides to stay for the summer. In the season two premiere, when Luz promises her mother in a video message that she'll be returning home, King clings to her leg and says that he wants her to stay. He's even crying about the mere thought of Luz leaving.
In "Witches Before Wizards", Luz wonders if there was a reason she came to the Boiling Isles and that she might be The Chosen One. While she isn't any form of chosen one, "Elsewhere and Elsewhen" and "Hollow Mind" show that she does have a predetermined path... helping Belos' rise to power.
In "I Was A Teenage Abomination," Eda's Freak Out on learning that Luz sneaked to Hexside school is half-played for laughs, half-played for fears about Luz being brainwashed into conformity. She reveals in "Covention" that the magical systems require conformity to a coven, and it severely limits the power and freedom of witches after they make a choice. It's also implied that she hasn't talked to her sister Lilith since they attended school and Lilith joined the Emperor's Coven.
Likewise, Eda in the first episode makes light of the fact that she's a wanted criminal, and the Owl House hides her from the cops. It's because her own sister is one of the Emperor's attack dogs that would have to arrest her for refusing to join a coven.
Amity's angry breakdown at being inadvertently humiliated by Luz's antics in "I Was A Teenage Abomination" can come across as funny regardless of whether you think she deserves it or not. Then "Lost in Language" reveals that she has two older siblings who have a history of intentionally humiliating her in no small part because they find her angry reactions to be hilarious, and suddenly that earlier case of it stops being so funny.
On that note, Edric and Emira make it a point to mock "Mittens" for constantly tattling on them and being a stickler for rules. We find out in "Understanding Willow" that the Blight parents are emotionally abusive, having blackmailed Amity into ending her friendship with Willow. Suddenly you understand why the twins are so rebellious and why Amity is terrified of stepping out of line. To hammer the point home in "Escaping Explusion," Odalia also calls Amity "Mittens" but it's nowhere near as affectionate as when the twins use that nickname. Edric and Emira also help Amity, Gus and Willow sneak into an Abomiton demonstration to save Luz but ask her not to tell their mother about this insubordination.
In "Sense and Insensitivity," Eda saves Lilith from a crab-spider and jokingly says she did it because only she is allowed to defeat "Lily". The penultimate episode of the first season features them fighting for real, and Eda finding out her own sister cursed her and kidnapped her apprentice.
Eda admits in the first episode that she was humoring King about his crown because the little guy is family to her, thus anything important to him is important to the Owl Lady. Luz also notes that King is adorable when he tries to order around his rubber ducky and stuffed animals. King has a breakdown in "Echoes Of The Past" when learning that while he has a Mysterious Past, and there are hints that he's from a race of demons older than the Boiling Isles with automatons to protect him, as far as Eda knows he's not The King of Demons. She didn't intend to lie while raising him but simply went with his misapprehensions because she couldn't bear to break his heart and reveal that she has no answers about his past, only questions. At the least, King determines that he should find out who he really is and find the father that left him on the island under heavy guard.
Eda seriously tells Luz that she and King only have each other to care for in the world, at least until Luz begs to become Eda's apprentice. It's already sobering with how Eda is willing to steal back a paper crown for her roommate at a great personal risk, but learning that she's estranged from her older sister makes it that much worse. It gets even worse by "Agony of a Witch" when Eda tells Luz that until she showed up, she had been wasting both her life and her magic just trying to get by in a world that was out to get her all while she's using up the last of her magic to save Luz's life and slowly becomes completely consumed by her curse. And to top it off, it's revealed that Lilith, her own sister, cursed her when she was young. It gets even worse in the second season, when we learn Eda found King in an abandoned castle when he was a baby and, believing he was in danger and there was no one to care for him, took him home. When she finally tells him the truth, King realizes he had a father at some point, but has no idea where or what he is, or if he or anyone else of their kind is even still alive. King and Eda truly were all each other had.
Willow's worry over being stuck in the Abomination track gets harder to look at in "Covention". Namely once you join a coven, your powers are limited to that specific coven's magic.
Amity's snobby behavior towards Willow in "I Was A Teenage Abomination" takes on this light when "Hooty's Moving Hassle" reveals that they used to be friends, but when Amity got her powers first, she looked down on her and left. "Understanding Willow" adds to this, where it's revealed that Amity was forced by her parents to stop being Willow's friend so that they could both attend Hexside. In other words, she was abused by her parents to stop being friends with her.
Lilith's snide remarks about how Eda's curse is negatively affecting her appearance and memory takes on a new turn when it's revealed that she is the one who cursed Eda. Even if she only wanted it to last for a day, that was disproportionate.
Season 2 shows the ramifications of Lilith casting the curse on her little sister at a young age. Owlbeast Eda lashed out at their father Dell when he attempted to surprise his daughters with fireworks, blinding him in one eye and rendering one arm unable to move. Eda never forgave herself for that, and didn't talk to him for twenty years. Gwendolyn, her mother, switched her attention to trying to cure Eda's curse while neglecting Lilith, something that didn't help Lilith's own guilt that she caused the situation. Eda ran away to avoid surgery on her bile sac, which led to her taking up refuge in the Owl House, one of her father's spare homes. No wonder Lilith says in "Separate Tides" that she doesn't blame Eda and Luz for not trusting her, and works to make a scrying potion as an Apology Gift.
Luz ends the first episode not telling her mother that she's in another dimension, with Eda's portal door providing cell service and knowing she can go home at the end of the summer. King even points out that lying to her mother is the best solution since Mrs. Noceda wouldn't take Luz's apprenticeship well. The season finale has Luz sacrifice the door to keep Earth and her mother safe from Emperor Belos, knowing she can't go home and her phone will no longer be able to send texts.
Willow gives herself up for Luz in "I Was a Teenage Abomination", stating that while Luz can lose her life, Willow will only get detention. In "Something Ventured, Someone Framed" it's shown that this is actually a much more serious sacrifice than it sounds, as detention is actually very dangerous.
The Bat Queen is overprotective of Palismen, saying that she rescues them from witches who don't treat them well. Luz sees dozens of Palismen, left without owners, during their confrontation. It may have to do with Belos executing rebel witches and eating Palismen, as shown in the season finale.
Eda's line in "Enchanting Grom Fright" about Teens Are Monsters and how their brand of public humiliation can stick with you for life becomes this when we learn that Eda first owlbeast transformation happened in front of her fellow Hexside students and they called her a monster and threw rocks at her until she ran away.
One Gut Punch in Season One was learning that Amity's parents blackmailed her into breaking off her friendship with Willow by threatening to get the latter blacklisted from Hexside. We find out in Season Two that they weren't bluffing; Odalia Blight forces Principal Bump to expel Gus, Willow, and Luz for the crime of being friends with her daughter, and dislikes Luz in particular for being a human as well as a troublemaker. When Luz bargains with Odalia, the latter comes up with a scheme to show off the Blight's newest weaponry...using Luz as target practice, and bluntly wants to murder her.
Despite the bad first impression of Luz that he received as a troublemaker, and threatening to dissect her for trespassing and posing as an abomination for a student's project, which led to him damaging the school in the process to capture her, Principal Bump becomes fond of Luz as he thanks her for saving the school and breaks tradition by letting her attend all the tracks to her heart's desire. He even comes to cheer her on when she takes Amity's place as Grom Queen. When the Blights force him to expel Luz, Gus and Willow, he cries Manly Tears about it out of guilt and helplessness and is relieved when they return.
King's misapprehensions of his backstory are hilarious, especially when he tries to exert his authority of the King of Demons over armies of toys and throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. Then comes "Echoes of the Past," which puts King's childish behavior in a whole new light, specifically that he is literally a child. Not only that, but he's a child with no clue where he came from or what he even is, and very few memories from before he was taken in by Eda. His mind conflated her stories of royalty with his faded memories and filled in the gaps with a comforting fantasy, creating the Small Name, Big Ego situation that was so often Played for Laughs in the first season. Eda never contradicting his misapprehensions isn't because she can't be bothered, but because she realizes she unintentionally created this mess and doesn't know how to break the truth to him without totally crushing his heart, so she just lets him believe what he wants to believe.
Alternatively, the "misunderstood" part could be interpreted how Philip sees himself as a hero and is delusionally convinced how witches are evil based on what he was taught during the 1700s, how he has the need to live out his witch hunting fantasy to avoid accepting the fact that he killed his brother for being in a relationship with a witch and how Philip was wrong about everything, making his actions toward his "noble crusade" were All for Nothing. The voice actor's statement can be taken as how he considers Belos' perception of himself, and how Philip is really just a pathetic Psychopathic Manchild who never grew up, admitted his faults, and is desperate to convince himself of his heroism. His manipulations into warping the Isles' communities into how he sees witchkind and plans at witch genocide implies that its all to suppress his guilt for murdering Caleb, rationalizing it and doing whatever it takes to avoid facing and dealing his problems.
Luz's worrying about Eda's curse worsening in "Agony of a Witch" and her immediate assumption that Eda will die when it fully consumes her hits a lot harder when we later learn that it's not the first time she's had to watch a parent waste away from a terminal illness.
In "Young Blood, Old Souls", Lilith mentioned how she decided to curse Eda to win the spot in the Emperor's Coven after asking herself what Emperor Belos would do in her situation. As we later find out in "Hollow Mind", he has done farworse to a sibling.
King's first line in "Separate Tides" has him saying that he'll never let go of Luz or let her return to the human realm while latching onto her leg. Come "King's Tide", he makes a Heroic Sacrifice to protect Luz from the Collector by letting go of her hand and blasting her through the portal door.
Early in "Echoes of the Past", Hooty protects Lilith from getting hit by one of King's thrown stuffed animals and pretends that he's dying, only for Lilith to get hit with another one anyway when she points out how the whole thing is make believe. In "For the Future", Hooty ends up being the first victim of the Collector's puppet magic while Taking the Bullet for Lilith, only for Lilith to get hit anyway immediately afterwards, all because the Collector wanted to use them as toys in his game of pretend.
In "Keeping Up A-fear-ances", when Lilith decides to move back in with their mother, she comments how it’ll give her an opportunity to reconnect with their father, which Eda gives an uncomfortable look in response. In "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hooty’s Door" we finally find out why; Not long after she was cursed, their father accidentally triggered the transformation by setting off a party popper, which resulting in the owl beast attacking him, seemingly clawing out his eye.
While Raine and Eda's relationship was always tinged with some degree of sadness, the sweet scene in "Eda's Requiem" where Eda plays a song for Raine after giving them emotional support becomes much harsher when Eda's flashback in the very next episode implies that they broke up that same day, mere minutes afterwards.
Luz convinces the Golden Guard that he doesn't want to be responsible for the deaths of multiple Palismen, and he lets her, and the beasties go. Amity tries the same thing a few episodes later in "Eclipse Lake", telling Hunter that if the emperor truly loved him, he wouldn't discard Hunter for being 'useless'. It ends up not taking, and Amity lampshades that Luz usually gets better results by being nicer to people.
The scene in "Eclipse Lake" gets even harsher after Hunter's (and Belos') true origins are revealed in "Hollow Mind" for everyone who can see the parallels between Hunter's current situation and that of a previous Disney character voiced by Amity's voice actress. In a meta sense, that scene could possibly now be reinterpreted as Rose recognizing the similarities between Belos and the Huntsman and trying to convince Hunter to turn against the Emperor's Coven like she did with the Huntsclan, only for Hunter to refuse.
While the scene of Camila begging Luz to not abandon her at the end of "Yesterday's Lie" is already depressing, it becomes even harder to watch when "Reaching Out" reveals that Camila is a widow and Luz is the only living connection she has to her late husband. Furthermore, Luz's recollection of events noticeably makes Camila's pleas much worse than they actually were, asking her daughter never to visit the Boiling isles ever again. As confirmed in "Edge of the World" Luz has a Guilt Complex that makes her remember events as being much more horrible than they actually were when she feels personally responsible for them, meaning she was even more emotionally broken up during that scene than she indicated.
Darius is shown in "Any Sport in a Storm" to dislike Hunter for his Extreme Doormat tendencies and inability to think for himself, seeing him as an Inadequate Inheritor to the previous Golden Guard, who was Darius' mentor. However, he starts to lighten up when Hunter proves he can act on his own. It gets a lot darker when it's revealed that Darius is working against Belos and all the Golden Guards were Grimwalkers the emperor kept making, but were always killed off because they always betrayed him in the end. Seeing the latest Golden Guard act with perfect, Blind Obedience cannot have been fun for Darius.
Likewise, Hunter remarking that he loves rules and authority was mostly Played for Laughs and to depict him being out of touch, however "Hollow Mind" suggests that this trait was likely bred into him by Belos.
In "Reaching Out", Luz texts Hunter to ask if Belos is evil, and "Hollow Mind" has her chase down and tackle him in an attempt to interview the Golden Guard and get proof that the emperor is evil, with her extreme bluntness being Played for Laughs. The rest of "Hollow Mind" has her and Hunter finding out just how much of a sociopath Belos is, with his long list of atrocities presented in graphic detail plus his future plans to commit genocide laid bare. The episode ends with both kids horribly traumatized and Hunter even having a full blown panic attack as he realizes his life is a lie and his father figure wants to murder him.
Across a variety of fan comics and videos, there has been a long running joke that Emperor Belos is an intense Lumity Shipper on Deck behind closed doors. Given the events of his backstory revealed in "Hollow Mind", the canonical Belos would not be so approving of a witch-human romantic relationship. Or a lesbian relationship, for that matter, given that the sort of Christian values that drove witch hunts, the Connecticut Witch Trials included, tend to come with rather repugnant views on homosexuality.
In "Eclipse Lake" Hunter in a dissonantly serene tone claims that Belos will replace him for being an useless failure when it seems that there's no Titan blood left for him to take back to the Emperor, seemingly an intense overreaction due to his particular issues, but "Hollow Mind" reveals that it very likely would've been the case, at least if Hunter hadn't gotten some blood; as that fate had befallen several past Golden Guards for "failing" Belos by betraying him, and Hunter almost got replaced himself once he found out the truth.
In "Wing It Like Witches", Luz responds to Eda's insistence that cheaters do prosper due to her being the top Grudgby player in her year with "can't reason with crazy". In "Hollow Mind", Belos uses that exact same phrase to ignore Luz rebuking his claim that witches are evil and declaring that he's the one who is evil.
"Eclipse Lake" also shows that Titan Blood has become rare, with the lake being completely dried up. Then "Edge of the World" reveals that King is a Titan, meaning that if the Emperor or anyone on his side were to find out, he could end up being captured and tortured for a new supply of blood. Not only that, but since "Knock Knock Knocking On Hooty's Door" involved King having a blood sample taken in what was seemingly a throwaway joke at the time, it means that if anyone at the Owl House had known, then the trip to Eclipse Lake wouldn't have been necessary.
Even worse, as of "O Titan, Where Art Thou," this means that the Emperor's Coven most likely has Titan Blood in their possession, since they ransacked the Owl House. This means that, if the meagre amount in the key wasn't enough already, then Belos has all of the Titan Blood he needs.
Every scene with King before "Edge of the World" becomes this with the knowledge that he's living on a member of his own species, possibly even his father or ancestor.
In "Hunting Palismen", Hunter reveals his sigil to some coven scouts to prove he's the Golden Guard, but they assume it's fake due to his age, and the whole scene is Played for Laughs. It becomes horrifying in "King's Tide" as just like everyone else, he's affected by the Draining Spell and spends most of the episode slowly succumbing to it. It’s especially bad given that Belos knew what it did yet branded him anyway, meaning Belos never intended for Hunter to survive.
When Flapjack shows up on Hunter's windowsill in "Hunting Palisman", he grabs it and only stops when he realizes that he's crushing the poor thing before commenting that it'd be bad if Belos saw them. In "Thanks to Them", they end up mortally wounded when a Belos possessed Hunter grabs and impales them.
There's already a level of discomfort present in Luz and Belos's interactions from his unusual interest in the 'human' who came the the Boiling Isles and how overwhelmingly more powerful than her he is, but it gets worse in "Hollow Mind" and "King's Tide", the latter of which especially makes it clear that Philip sees Luz as a parallel to his own brother Caleb, another human who 'wrongfully' embraced the Boiling Isles and their magic rather than reject it, and Philip's obsession with his brother, demonstrated through the Grimwalkers, extends towards Luz as well, seeing her as another chance to 'save' a human from the 'evils' of the demon realm. This combines with the point above as well, as whilst Philip made the Grimwalkers in order to have an 'ideal version' of the brother who 'betrayed him' make the 'correct choice' in helping his enact his Final Solution plans, them being creations of magic ultimately meant he always planned to kill them in the end as well, a fate he only offers Luz, a genuine full human, the opportunity to avoid in the end out of every other living being in the Isles. When she refuses, he also makes it clear that her 'choice' was non-negotiable, and he's completely willing to kill her himself rather than allow a human to remain behind in the Boiling Isles at all, something she cannot defend herself against adequately thanks to the power gap between them.
Flapjack's reaction in "King's Tide" when Hunter is knocked off his staff and falls out of the sky. Given the suspicion that Hunter is a clone of Flapjack's original owner, Caleb Wittebane, it must have been a nightmare for the bird to believe that he would see his owner die again.
While Hunter wasn't himself, it doesn't make any less painful to know that in the last few moments he was able to spend with Flapjack, he was yelling at him to steal the rebus after Flapjack refused.
Hunter practically begging Belos to let him go on a mission at the start of "Eclipse Lake" already spoke to his self-worth issues, but gets worse after he describes his childhood to Gus in "Thanks to Them". Hunter was never allowed to leave the castle unless it was for a mission, and he'd only be given missions on the weekends. For Belos to take away one of Hunter's missions and give it to Kikimora didn't just make Hunter think Belos didn't trust him, it was taking away what very little freedom he had, keeping him trapped in the castle for yet another week. That's not even mentioning the fact that Hunter wasn’t even allowed to interact with other scouts, so these missions might have been his only way to socialize with people who weren’t Belos.
In "Agony of a Witch", Luz theorizes that Belos is after Eda is because he's attracted to her and she jokingly agrees. "Thanks to Them" reveals that the whole reason Belos came to the Boiling Isles and started his genocide plot was because his brother fell in love with a witch, hinted greatly to be Eda's distant ancestor, jumpstarting most of the major conflicts in the series.
In "Really Small Problems", Gus and Willow describe the scare-is wheel's ability to invoke nightmares, and in response Luz proclaims that "...This mama is ready for trauma!" Given everything she's experienced throughout the series, most everyone agrees that Luz wasn't ready at all.
In "Sense and Insensitivity", Luz is shocked to discover that King killed off the "Luzura" character in their book. It's mostly Played for Laughs, but becomes a lot less funny once Luz suffers a Disney Death in "Watching and Dreaming".
