Western Animation / The Owl House

"So you have a different way of doing things, a different way of seeing things. That might make you weird, but it also makes you awesome, don't you see? Because us weirdos have to stick together. And nobody should be punished for who they are!" ^note From left to right: Owlbert, Luz, Eda, and King. In the background: Hooty.

"Welcome to... The Owl House. Where I hide away from the pressures of modern life. Also the cops, and also ex-boyfriends."

— Eda Clawthorne

The Owl House is an animated fantasy/horror comedy series produced by Disney Television Animation and created by Dana Terrace. The show premiered on January 10, 2020, serving as the first Disney Channel series of The New '20s.

Luz Noceda (Sarah-Nicole Robles) is an enthusiastic teenage girl who struggles to fit in with her peers due to her overwhelming love for the macabre. One day, whilst en route to summer camp, she stumbles upon a portal to the Demon Realm, a mystical dimension from which all of Earth's myths originate, where she ends up on the Boiling Isles, an archipelago formed from the decaying remains of a colossal humanoid creature. Upon her arrival, she finds herself crossing paths with a rebellious, gifted outlaw named Edalyn "Eda" Clawthorne (Wendie Malick) and her feisty, fuzzy roommate King (Alex Hirsch), both of whom reside in their living, breathing titular abode.

Though she initially wishes to return to Earth, Luz quickly takes to her magical new environment and makes herself Eda's apprentice, despite lacking any innate magical abilities of her own. Thus begins her journey as a witch-in-training; discovering the secrets of her new home, making new friends, trying new things, and figuring out where she truly belongs.

The first half of the show's second season premiered on June 12, 2021, and the second half premiered on March 19, 2022. A third season was also announced as being in production a month prior, on May 17, 2021. It consisted of three 44-minute specials, and Dana Terrace later confirmed that it would be the final season. The first special was released on October 15th, 2022, with the second released on January 21st, 2023, and the third, final episode on April 8th, 2023.

Officially has a Friendly Fandom with Amphibia, which the creators of both series have acknowledged and actively encouraged. The Season 2 finale confirms a prior reference in Amphibia that the two shows take place in a Shared Universe.

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General trope examples:

• All For Nothing
• Cerebus Call-Back
• Early Installment Weirdness
• Hate Sink
• Hidden Depths
• Irony

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Oh man, here we go - King's tropes of rage...

A-B

• Aborted Arc:
  • The Bat Queen gives Eda a whistle that is brought up a few times like it was being built up as a Chekhov's Gun, but it never gets used in a crucial moment.
  • Similarly, Luz offers to help the Bat Queen find out what happened to her former owner, but this is never mentioned again.
  • Anything involving Vee and the Basilisk project is pushed aside in favor of Hunter and The Collector, with Vee not returning to the Boiling Isles until the very end of the series.
• Abusive Parents:
  • In "Understanding Willow", we learn that Amity's parents, Alador and Odalia, forced her to end her friendship with Willow, under the threat that if she didn't, they would. Even if that meant preventing Willow from entering Hexside. It's implied to be a social class thing. In "Escaping Expulsion", Amity's parents keep their word and pressure Principal Bump into expelling Luz, Willow, and Gus from Hexside only because Odalia finds Amity's newfound friends to be a distraction.
  • Belos manages to be far, far worse than the Blights. While he's Hunter's uncle, he's still the boy's guardian and treats him only as a tool, constantly holding the threat of replacement over him and using emotional and implied physical abuse to keep him in line. It's then revealed any care he seemed to have for Hunter was just another part of his carefully calculated manipulation to control him, and Hunter is really a Grimwalker clone part of a long line Belos keeps killing off for betraying him. When Hunter questions him over the atrocities the emperor has committed, Belos doesn't even hesitate to try killing him. Belos even gave Hunter his name because he thought it would be funny to name all his Grimwalkers after his occupation.
• Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time Wendie Malick voiced an "owl lady".
• Aerith and Bob: People in the Boiling Isles can rather standard names, like Augustus (Gus), Willow, Gwendolyn, Lilith, Hunter, etc and unusual ones like Boscha, Skara, Alador, Odalia, Edric, and Emira. There are also names that are kind of in-between, like Amity.
• Against the Grain: A very recurrent theme in the series.
  • Starting with Luz, who decided to spend some time at the Boiling Isles and follow her dream of becoming a witch instead of going to a camp that was supposed to teach kids how to be "normal" (it didn't work for Vee's friends). In the first episode, she frees people imprisoned at the Conformatorium there because of their quirks (like writing fanfics about food falling in love), repeating Eda's phrase "Us weirdos have to stick together." In "First Day", she rebels against studying only one kind of magic and meets other kids who study secretly what they want. They eventually convince Principal Bump to allow all the students to learn whatever they like, and that makes them strong enough to defeat the Emperor's Coven and save Hexside in "Labyrinth Runners".
  • Eda spent years running away from Belos' coven and her sister because she didn't want to join them or have her magic sealed.
  • Amity was once forced to break up with Willow, her best friend, and have friends she hated but her parents considered suitable. They also expected her to join the coven when she was old enough, and she dyed her hair green like her mother. After befriending Luz and the rest of the owl gang, she learns she can be appreciated without having to follow others' expectations: she becomes Luz' girlfriend, dyes her hair purple, refuses to join the coven, and makes friends with Willow again.
  • Steve defects from the Emperor's Coven because he's tired of scaring and oppressing other people.
  • King refuses to be treated like a god just because he is a titan.
• Alchemy Is Magic: One of the nine main covens is the Potion Coven, which involves the creation and application of magic potions. It's also one of the only tracks to not require the user to inherently have magic capabilities, as proven by Luz, Barcus and Eda after being depowered. However, this is balanced out by the difficulty of potion-making.
• Alice Allusion: The story begins with Luz seeing a strange creature, which leads her to a strange, magical world.
• All Myths Are True: According to Eda, all the myths of Earth are the result of creatures from the Demon Realm bleeding over to ours. This includes griffons, vampires, and giraffes.
  Luz: Giraffes?
  Eda: Oh, yeah, we banished those guys. Bunch of freaks...
• All There in the Script: In "Once Upon a Swap", the leader of the vampire ladies that holds Eda-turned-King hostage is named in the credits as Roselle.
• And Call Him "George": When Luz first meets King:
  Luz: [hugging King] Eda, he's so cute! Who's a widdle guy? Who's a widdle guy? Is it you? Is it you?
• And Then What?: This is the one question that plagues Luz throughout the show. Because she Didn't Think This Through, she ends up with the realization that she really doesn't know what to do with herself and how this might affect her future.
• Animesque: The show's art style takes quite a few cues from anime despite being a Disney cartoon, particularly in the way most characters' eyes are drawn.
• Animation Bump:
  • During the Title Sequence, the section with Luz flying on Owlbert is incredibly fluid.
  • When King first encounters Eda's owl form, the sequence in which he runs away is animated differently from the rest of the show.
  • Happens again during Eda's fights with Lilith at both the Covention and at Belos' Castle.
  • Luz and Amity fighting Grom while dancing is also very detailed and fluid.
  • Amity's battle with Hunter is seemingly fluid and detailed.
  • Luz and Amity's Big Damn Kiss and their reactions afterwards are incredibly fluid. Additionally, Luz and Amity are more expressive than usual.
  • The kids' rematch against a Belos-possessed Hunter.
• Animation Evolution: Season 1's animation was already amazingly smooth due to the fact that a lot of the animation was done in-house. But season 2 amps this up with even smoother animation that wouldn't be off-putting on a Disney Film, more detailed shading, and darker and broader colors being used. You can definitely see the evolution by looking at the intros.
• Anti-Escapism Aesop: Downplayed in an "all things in moderation" sense. On the one hand, Luz's behavior at the beginning of the series was both legitimately disruptive and in desperate need of a reality check, while both Belos and the Collector are in part motivated by the desire to drag the entire world into their delusions rather than face reality. On the other hand, Luz's love of The Good Witch Azura is treated as perfectly healthy and good for her given that it both gave her an outlet to process her grief over her father's death and formed the Commonality Connection that led to her and Amity falling in love. This is even reflected in the ending of the series where Luz is able to freely travel between the human and demon realms rather than having to choose one over the other, showing that she's achieved balance between the fantasy and reality in her life.
• Apocalypse How: Belos originally intended the Day of Unity to result in a Class 3. However, the outcome of the season 2 finale "King's Tide" results in a class 2 as confirmed in the episode "For the Future."
• Arc Villainess: Lilith seems to be the primary antagonist for most of the first season, then Emperor Belos takes on a more active role.
• Arc Words: "Us weirdos have to stick together." It's said in the first episode and reappears in significant moments.
• Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: Emperor Belos is dressed in metallic gauntlets and wears a metallic helm around his mask, whereas the heroes — from the Owl House denizens to the B.A.T.T.'s directly opposing Belos — never really wear any armor. Additionally, the Coven Captain has a metal Cool Mask, whilst the Golden Guard wears a mask and a pauldron before he makes a complete Heel–Face Turn, and it's also worth noting the Abomatons which enter Belos' service in Season 2 have an armored look with their machine parts.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In "Eda's Requiem," Eda and Raine are in the middle of pulling a Taking You with Me on two of the Emperor's strongest allies, since they both agree that stopping the Emperor is worth it and they have nothing to lose. Then Raine sees a picture of Eda with Luz and King and demands, "Do you have kids?" While Eda tries to deny it, since she feels Luz and King don't care about her and plan on leaving anyway, she also stops casting the spell. Raine is able to help her realize that she does have something worth living for and they'll find another way to stop the Emperor.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The three examples of why Luz's weirdness is making problems at school: Made a fake Griffin and filled the mouth with spiders that swarmed over everything, starred in Romeo and Juliet and used lunchmeat to make fake human guts spill out during the suicide scene, and flipped her eyelids.
• Art Evolution: A minor but still noticeable example: by the second season, the majority of the characters' irises except Belos are given highlights underneath it giving them a more shinier look, compared to the first season where there was none and the eyes were simply shown with one color.
  • The color pallette of the second season in general seems to utilize darker colors and shadows than the first.
• Art Shift: The episodes animated by Sugarcube are done in Toon Boom, while the rest of the series is animated traditionally on paper with digital ink-and-paint. While there is more obvious tweening in Sugarcube's episodes, their animation for the series is nowhere near as off-model as their work on Star vs. the Forces of Evil (compare the two shows' animation from this studio to the work done for them by Rough Draft Korea).
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Due to her curse, Eda has developed a fascination and love for collecting all things shiny that catch her eye, ala a magpie.
  King: I think it's 'cause she gets distracted by shiny objects.
  Eda: No, I don't!
  King: *Takes out a pen with a flashing diamond end and flicks it on.*
  Eda: *Pupils dilate in excitement.* It sparkles and shimmers and shines and delights; I must have it for my nest!
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: In their first appearance Amity's older siblings came off as a couple of Jerkass bullies who passive-aggressively bullied their younger sibling, but in their next full appearance its shown that while their teasing can get out of hand all three do, in fact, love one another.
• Awful Truth:
  • King isn't the king of anything, and he never was. Eda told him stories and he truly believed her and she never bothered to correct him. When King finds out, he's devastated.
  • Hunter isn't Belos' nephew and the emperor was never working to help witches. Instead, Hunter is merely the latest Grimwalker created by Belos to act as an obedient servant, and his ultimate goal is actually the annihilation of everyone in the Boiling Isles.
• Background Magic Field:
  • The Isles has one, generated by the Titan the Isles formed around, which all life in the Isles eventually evolved to wield. When Lilith travels to Earth in the season 1 finale, she can still use magic by harnessing her own internal reserves while Luz's glyphs don't work anymore.
  • "Escaping Expulsion" reveals that the glyphs are basically a Language of Magic, commanding the ambient magic of the Isles to do different things depending on the glyphs and combinations of glyphs used.
  • "Yesterday's Lie" shows that while magical beings can use magic on Earth, without the magic field of the Titan to sustain the effect, it eventually wears off. For example, Eda's Hexas Hold'em cards, after being dumped on Earth, are rendered inert after a couple months.
• Backstory Horror:
  • Eda is introduced as a witch who sells human junk she knows nothing about and scams people while running from the law, yet is somehow the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. It turns out she was the more talented than her sister, but when they were teenagers they were made to compete for a spot in the Emperor's Coven. Lilith cursed Eda out of desperation, believing the curse would temporarily prevent Eda from using magic, only for her to willingly forfeit the spot and the curse to be permanent and incurable, turning Eda into the owl beast periodically and sapping her magic. This then resulted in the pushing away her loved ones, running away from home and dropping out of school. The main reasons the emperor wants her arrested are that she refuses to join a coven as his corrupt system dictates and because she owns a portal he wants to use to go home once he's killed everyone.
  • One of King's main character traits is his strange belief that he's actually an ancient and powerful demon who used to rule over all demons, despite being a toddler-sized, adorable creature who keeps trying to make armies out of stuffed animals and children. It's later revealed that these delusions came from Eda making a joke that he was a King after she took him in, but she kept playing along with him when she saw he was happy. In actuality, he's the last remaining Titan as the son of the Boiling Isles, who was left in a tower hidden from The Collector when he was a baby, where he remained alone until Eda found him.
  • The Golden Guard initially just seems to be a loyal right hand to Belos, but it's eventually revealed that he's actually a powerless witch who was taken in by the Emperor after something happened to his family, whose upbringing has left him with numerous hang-ups.Except no, that's a total lie, he's actually the latest in a long line of clone "Grimwalkers" that Belos/Philip has been making for centuries and killing whenever they fail or question him, and Hunter only barely escapes the same fate.
• The Bet: Luz is a big fan of this trope and will challenge her opponents to some sort of competition when she can, the prize being whatever it is she wants. This tendency has also begun to rub off on Eda.
  • In "I Was a Teenage Abomination", Eda and King make a bet as to which of them is a better teacher, with the loser being humiliated in some way.
  • In "Covention", Luz and Amity make a bet over a witches' duel. If Luz wins, Amity has to admit Luz can be a witch and apologize for being mean to King. If Amity wins, Luz has to give up learning magic.
  • In "Once Upon a Swap", Luz, Eda, and King swap bodies to see which of them has the easier life, with the winner being exempt from cleaning the house.
  • "Wing It Like Witches" has Luz challenge Boscha to a grudgby match on Willow's behalf. If Willow wins, Boscha stops bullying her. If Boscha wins, she gets to use Willow for target practice. Meanwhile, Lilith and Eda have a two-person match with the condition that Eda will surrender herself if she loses.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Hooty is a crazy house demon that's often eating bugs when he should be paying attention. But at the end of the day, he IS the Owl House Demon, and can take on both Lilith and an entire squadron of Imperial soldiers without breaking a sweat, or even taking things seriously.
• Big Bad: Emperor Belos, ruler of the Boiling Isles. It was through his violent conquering and subjugation of the Isles that led to the outlaw of Wild Magic and decree that no witch outside of himself and his personal Emperor's Coven are allowed to practice all fields of magic at once, keeping the Isles' citizens weak and limited to ensure they wouldn't rise up against him, as well as hoarding all the powerful magical artifacts of the Isles for himself.
• Big Shadow, Little Creature: King's introduction. There are quaking footsteps and a big monstrous shadow is cast on the wall... then the diminutive King emerges, wearing bath towels and clutching a rubber duck.
  • This is repeated in the opening of "Separate Tides" with a bounty Luz and King are seeking.
• Bilingual Bonus: Being Dominican-American, Luz occasionally speaks Spanish. The show also averts Gratuitous Spanish, as Luz only ever code-switches instinctively under understandable circumstances (overwhelming joy, anger), in season two Amity makes an effort to learn a bit of Spanish herself being Luz's girlfriend and all while Luz evidently starts giving King lessons.
  • Luz squeals, "¡Ay, qué lindo!" ("So cute!") when she locks eyes on King for the first time.
  • When Hooty refused to listen to Luz in "Hooty's Moving Hassle", she replied in frustration: "¡Oye, no me hable así!" (Hey! Don't talk to me like that!)
  • At the end of "Young Blood Old Souls", during a video for her mother, Luz signs off with ¡Deja una luz puesta para mí. Te quiero! (Leave a light on for me. I love you)
• Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...: Eda going through her mail in "Really Small Problems": "Junk... junk... death hex... Oh, carnival's in town!"
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The crown Eda had Luz get in the first episode is actually a paper crown from the obvious Burger King spoof Burger Queen.
  • In Luz' world they have a site called "Mew-Tube" (apparently an YouTube rip-off mostly (but not only) for cat videos).
  • In a flashback into Eda's time as student at Hexside, she was shown to drink (and to dislike) a drink named "Ghoul Aid", an obvious spoof of the American flavored drink mix "Kool-Aid".
  • There's a recurring snack food called "Hex Mix", a Boiling Isles-equivalent of "Chex Mix"
  • Luz's laptop has three games on the desktop: Moonfarm Valley and Holler Knight play this trope straight, but it's averted with Hades, which is simply depicted with a different icon than in real life.
• Blood Sport: Folks on the Boiling Isles play "grudgby", a rugby-like game where players try to navigate a booby-trapped field and toss a ball into a triangular goal.
• Breather Episode:
  • "Wing It Like Witches" is a very innocuous sports episode wedged between "Enchanting Grom Fright", where Luz begins to worry about her mom finding out about her not being at summer camp and the Wham Shot at the end where we find out someone has been writing letters as Luz and "Agony of a Witch" where we end on a cliffhanger of Eda being taken away by Lilith while possibly being stuck in her owlbeast form forever and we learn that it was Lilith who cursed Eda.
  • Similarly "Them's the Breaks, Kid" is a cute mostly stakes free story of how Eda and Raine first met sandwiched between the highly emotional "Reaching Out" where Luz deals with being stuck on the Boiling Isles on the anniversary of her father's death, and the absolutely horrifying "Hollow Mind" where Luz and Hunter learn the truth about Belos and just how evil he truly is.

C-D

• Cain and Abel: Brotherhood, the relationship between siblings, forms the basis for most of the show's major character arcs and conflicts, with many a Character Development being reflected by reconciling with a sibling they once had beef with.
  • Lilith and Eda are sisters who have barely spoken in years, and stand on opposite sides of the law. Their relationship is the overarching conflict of season 1.
  • Amity initially has a very poor relationship to her siblings, who often bully her. Their relationship improves as all three of them get development.
  • "Hollow Mind" gives the story of Caleb and Philip, two brothers whose falling-out creates the entire conflict of the show. Having been witch hunters in Connecticut, Caleb fell in love with a witch and abandoned his brother, leading to a fight in which Philip killed him. Philip, later Emperor Belos, would never move on from this, and spent the next four hundred years seeking to recreate Caleb through Grimwalkers as the perfect brother he envisioned in his mind, only to then kill him again and again when the Grimwalkers keep failing his impossible expectations.
  • Even before any of those, the Collector was left in the Demon Realm by their siblings, the Archivists, for no known reason beyond them wanting to get rid of him.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • Abominations need verbal instructions in order to function (usually in the form of "Abomination, X"). Higher level Abomination spells don't require this since the user is directly controlling the goo with their magic.
  • Eda occasionally does this, though it's more a sign of her not taking things seriously rather than being truly necessary.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones:
  • At her worst, Lilith is willing to enforce Emperor Belos' police state and put Luz in mortal danger, but when Belos intends to have Lilith's sister Eda executed instead of curing her curse, it prompts Lilith's Heel–Face Turn to save her sister's life, giving up the organization she's devoted decades of her life to.
  • Implied. Hunter is obedient and loyal to Belos, his uncle, and becomes desperate after, instead of acquiring Palismen for the emperor to consume, he obtains his own Palisman named Flapjack. To make up for this failure, he sets out to find Titan's blood only to despair when he discovers it dried up. However, despite being so terrified of returning home empty-handed that he tries to dig his own grave, Hunter never even thinks of turning over Flapjack, the only being to show him unconditional love, to be killed by Belos as per his original assignment.
    • Taken further in the third season when Belos possesses Hunter and wounds Flapjack, intending to consume him, but Hunter manages to fight back and stop him from doing so. However, it's unknown if Flapjack could have survived his injuries or not, since he sacrifices himself to revive Hunter shortly after.
  • Averted hard by Belos himself, who is implied to not only have killed his own brother Caleb, but to have created numerous duplicates of him over the years, only to kill them as well.
• Canon Welding:
  • Both Dana Terrace and Alex Hirsch have long implied that The Owl House and Gravity Falls share a universe. As of "Yesterday's Lie" this seems to be confirmed, as Eda is mentioned as using "Marilyn" as an alias in the Human World, the same name as Grunkle Stan's purported ex-wife, who otherwise matches Eda's description to a T.
  • Seeing as how Stan makes an appearance (of sorts) in Amphibia. that means that The Owl House shares a universe with that show, too. The ending of "King's Tide" featuring a news article with Anne Boonchuy's picture on it confirms this.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The Boiling Isles has a large cast of unique Recurring Extras that populate background shots. Hexside alone has around 50 different students who all have an established magic track and are instantly recognizable despite usually being seen wearing the school uniform.
• Catching the Speedster: Downplayed. During their fight, Hunter repeatedly teleports around Amity while trying to get through her defense. However, she turns this against him by jabbing her staff right where he's about to appear, forcing Hunter to halt his attack and opening him up to a nasty punch.
• Central Theme:
  • There is nothing wrong about being different, From a human perspective quite literally everything about the Boiling Isles is weird and macabre but as soon as the second episode we are shown that from the right perspective it can be beautiful, and the main character arc for our protagonist, a neurodivergent, bisexual, bilingual, afro-latina, Genki Girl Cloudcuckoolander fantasy nerd, and general lovable weirdo, seemingly designed to be as unique an individual as possible is all about her gaining the acceptance and understanding of the people she loves most so that she can learn to love herself.
  • The difference between following a dream and indulging a delusion. The main cast all have ideals they strive for, but learn through Character Development to reevaluate their priorities and be more flexible. In contrast, the antagonists are people who prioritize their own desires so much that they hurt people, e.g. Belos, who plots genocide so he can be glorified as the greatest witch hunter, and the Collector, a child-like god who regards everyone and everything as toys.
  • There is also a subtle but powerful emphasis on the importance of mental health and how it is something everyone must deal with. While there are several characters confirmed or implied to be neurodivergent, just about every single named character with enough screen time to have a proper character arc has some sort of mental health issue (if not several). They demonstrate this a lot over the course of the show, whether that be something as mundane as stress and general anxiety, to something as fundamental to a person's personality like ADHD, or something as extreme as severe trauma and self-loathing. By extension, because everyone has problems they are dealing with, no one ever has to suffer alone. There are great, loving people who will help you overcome your problems if you just let them.
  • The show also directly addresses and critiques organized religion and the dangers of religious fundamentalism, especially religious extremism through the character of Emperor Belos, a human Witch Hunter who, through his unshakable religious beliefs alone, turns out to be far more evil and a far greater threat than anything else Luz encounter's in the Demon Realm. He surpasses even the Collector, a literal Reality Warper. This is seriously impressive for a kids' show that —outside some visual allegories— never once makes any direct mention of any real-world religion.
  • With the residents of the Boiling Isles, Witches and Demons alike being as morally complex as humans and the biggest threat around being a bigoted human religious extremist, this show makes a subtle but powerful point that, while mainstream religion tends to blame evil on "magic and the demonic", the fact is humans are fully capable of truly horrific evil all on our own.
  • The show also demonstrates the importance of emotional honesty and personal responsibility, the main characters avoid dealing with their issues which fester and grew into something worse and harmful in the long run. Repressing and ignoring your problems and blaming others for your own actions causes long-term damage to yourself and those around you, the only way to move forward, heal and improve something is to communicate openly and honestly with yourself and others and take accountability for your own faults, which'll leave you happier and mentally healthier.
    • Eda actively hid her curse and its effects from her loved ones to avoid hurting them, resulting in her alienating herself from her family and society until Luz came into her life and helped her open up and eventually make amends with her father.
    • Amity Blight spent her whole life under the thumb of her Abusive Parents, who pressured her with their high expectations and standards, making her a snobby elitist and Entitled Bitch who refuses to acknowledge her faults or be accountable for her hurtful actions and engages in Moral Myopia out of fear, pride and refusal to "show weakness", disregarding the fact that she endangered Luz to satisfy her own ego, blamed her for her Amity's misfortunes, and that her own sense of entitlement and superiority, her Jerkass attitude and self-centered behavior is what got her in trouble in the first place. She even bullied her former friend Willow and attempted to hide their friendship for her image, which fueled the latter's repressed anger until it became a problem for Amity to deal with, only after which they were able to reconcile and begin to mend their friendship.
    • Lilith had an estranged relationship with her sister Eda, due to constantly pushing the latter to join the emperor's coven to heal her curse, only for her to give a Freudian Slip that she was the one who cursed Eda when they were kids to obtain a spot in the coven, thinking that the curse will only last for one day, only for Eda to forfeit so Lilith can have the spot, leaving a guilt-ridden Lilith keeping it a secret to avoid facing the consequences, like backlash from Eda, and became obsessed with fixing her mistake.
    • Lastly, there's Philip Whitebane aka Emperor Belos, who centuries ago tried to save his brother Caleb from witchkind only to find out that Caleb left willingly and began a relationship with a witch named Evelyn, enraged Philip murdered Caleb and dedicated his life to exterminating witch and demon kind for "stealing" Caleb from him, taking the moniker of Belos and corrupting the once peaceful and friendly natives of the boiling isles in the process to rationalize his actions and support his delusion that he's the hero destined to vanquish the supposed "evil monsters", suppressing any guilt he had about killing Caleb and turning the Boiling Isles into a hellhole instead of admitting that he was wrong about everything, turning Philip into a decaying monster until his own death.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Season 1 is mostly a comedic, lighthearted Monster of the Week kind of show with some overarching elements here and there. Season 2 is a lot more dramatic and serialized, putting more emphasis on emotions and action.
• Character in the Logo: The hole in the "O" of "Owl" is shaped like Owlbert's inanimate form. Downplayed with Stringbean, who doesn't actually show up but has their existence foreshadowed by the "L" and "S" forming an upside down staff topped with a snake.
• Child Prodigy: All three of Luz's closest friends at Hexside qualify.
  • Amity Blight is initially introduced as an Academic Alpha Bitch and is stated to be the best student in school, quickly proving herself to be adept in Abomination magic. She later shows that she's more than capable in combat as well, able to hold her own against the Abomiton 2.0 and the Golden Guard and showing just as much, if not more, skill in Abomination magic as her father, who is no slouch himself.
  • Gus Porter is known as one in-universe as well as out; he's a Grade Skipper whose incredible talent with Illusion magic has, unfortunately, caused other students to take advantage of his genius by getting him to do their work for him. While the Illusions track is often looked down on by those in other tracks for not creating tangible magic, Gus proves that Heart Is an Awesome Power by defeating three older students with illusions in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", and later defeating the head of the Illusion Coven himself, by accident, in "Labyrinth Runners".
  • Willow Park is initially not one of these when she's on the Abomination track, getting poor grades and being known by her peers as "Half-a-Witch Willow" for her ineptitude in magic. Once she switches to the Plant track, though—the type of magic she truly has an affinity for—she quickly unlocks her vast potential and becomes another of the best students in school who is also skilled in combat, able to take down many adult coven scouts from the Emperor's Coven with ease.
• Children as Pawns: Belos is a Manipulative Bastard willing to use anyone and anything to get what he wants, children included.
  • In the past, while still using his real identity, Philip Wittebane, he met a time travelling Luz and tricked both her and Lilith into accompanying him on his trip into the Head to sacrifice to the Stonesleeper as a distraction in order to obtain the Collector's mirror. While no one ended up dying, still he got what wanted in the end.
  • When Luz and Hunter wind up in emperor's mind, the Inner Belos takes on the form of a small child to lead the kids around, pretending the amalgamation of Palismen souls within him is the real Inner Belos. This allows him to gather up materials for a trap and use Luz and Hunter as bait to catch and destroy the souls, much to their horror.
  • Hunter is the latest Grimwalker created by Belos and is only sixteen, but used as a Child Soldier and was raised to follow all orders without question. Belos, pretending to be his uncle, thus has Hunter unwittingly aid him in his horrific plots, convincing the boy it's all for the greater good.
  • Played With. The Collector is an incredibly old entity, but is physically and mentally a young child. Belos easily tricks them into helping him with his plans to annihilate the inhabitants of the Boiling Isles by promising to free them from their prison in exchange. Unfortunately for Belos, unlike the other children, after being freed The Collector has the power to fight back when he refuses to uphold his end and quickly makes him pay for his lies.
• The Chosen One:
  • Deconstructed and ultimately averted. A wizard offers Luz an opportunity to be the Chosen One and go on a magical quest, handing her a map to a magic staff. The quest is actually a trap created by a demon in order to get to Eda. Luz is disappointed to find that it was all fake and that she's not really The Chosen One. Eda consoles her and advises her to make herself The Unchosen One.
  • Ultimately, this is Reconstructed in a neat way as the Titan ends up choosing Luz as his true emissary leading her to finding the glyphs and ultimately bringing her back to life after her Disney Death, and giving her his remaining powers so that she can defeat Belos once and for all, however unlike in most examples this has absolutely nothing to do with Luz being "special" or having some sort of grand destiny but rather with who she is as a person, specifically due to his personal gratitude towards her for being a surrogate big sister to King who happens to be the Titan's long lost son.
• The Chooser of the One: The modern day use of Palismen pairing. Witches cannot choose the Palismen they want; the Palismen choose them based on what they want to do with their life.
• Color-Coded Elements: Luz's glyph magic glows in different colors depending on which glyph she's using (unlike with more traditional witch magic, where each character has their own color). Light is yellow, ice is blue, plant is green, and fire is red.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: The nine covens that are taught at Hexside are different colors, and the students each wear different colored uniforms which correspond to the coven they're studying:
  • Red: Bard.
  • Orange: Beast Keeping.
  • Yellow: Potions.
  • Green: Plants.
  • Blue: Illusions.
  • Indigo: Healing.
  • Violet: Oracle.
  • Magenta: Abomination.
  • Brown: Construction.
• Coming of Age Story: Growing up is an important theme in the story. Luz chooses to stay in the Boiling Isles, hoping that finding it makes her a Chosen One like the heroes in her fantasy stories, only to learn that she doesn't need a grand destiny to make her special, and to learn to love who she is. Eda starts out a free spirit guided by self-interest, but becoming a mother figure for Luz turns her into a responsible adult. King becomes kinder and more confident by letting go of his delusions of grandeur and embracing real life.
• The Compliance Game: Played for Drama. After the Draining Spell is activated, everyone in the Boiling Isles begins to die slowly and painfully. King is then left with the choice to free The Collector- a childlike god who is the only one capable of stopping the spell. As the entity is solely interested in playing games, King convinces them to save everyone by suggesting they play a game called The Owl House, which requires an entire island's worth of players. Unfortunately, this subsequently results in the Boiling Isles becoming The Collector's personal playground.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Tiny Nose, who was in jail for this in the first episode.
• Contrived Clumsiness: In "Any Sport in a Storm", Professor Hermonculus makes Willow fall of her staff during the flyer derby match, saying that "his arm slipped". She could have been hurt if she hadn't conjured a giant flower to break her fall. No one in his team approved that.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In a place called The Boiling Isles, where all water surrounding and falling from the sky is literally causing burns on witches and humans alike, how is this place not a steam covered hell?
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: In "Covention", Amity starts as a total Jerkass, smashing King's cupcake and using Luz's challenge to keep her from studying magic. However, as soon as Eda reveals that Lilith cheated by increasing Amity's powers with a coven adhesive, the girl runs away ashamed, and later frees Luz from her "everlasting oath".
• Crapsack World: It's amazing how Luz's unquenchable thirst for novelty and adventure keeps the Boiling Isles such an enticing place, because by every objective metric, it sucks hard. The place is run by a tyrant, everything can and will kill you, and the majority of its people are self-centered Jerkasses. Dana Terrace even describe it as a "cesspool of despair". However it's revealed that it used to be a peaceful place with polite and helpful witches and demons, but Belos's arrival and rise of power corrupted the Demon Realm and its people.
• Creative Closing Credits:
  • The season 1 credits consist of several Match Cuts of Luz traversing through several landmarks of the Boiling Isles before meeting back at the Owl House with Eda and King. Luz's expressions and actions change to match the scenery.
  • The season 2 credits have various stylized paintings of the characters.
• Creator Cameo:
  • In addition to being the voice of Recurring Extra Tiny Nose, Dana Terrace voices a coven scout named Severine in "Labyrinth Runners". Her rant at the end of the episode also sounds suspiciously like her venting her frustrations at Disney's treatment of the show.
  • Multiple caricatures of the shows cast show up as background characters in "Thanks to Them", with Stephen Sandoval even voicing (and sharing a name with) his animated counterpart.
  • In the epilogue of the series finale "Watching and Dreaming", the signature on Luz's Gravesfield writing scholarship certificate looks very much like it says "Dana Terrace". Shortly afterwards, a student looking like a younger version of her can be seen entering Hexside.
• Creator Provincialism: "Hunting Palismen" revealed that Luz and her mother live in Connecticut, the home state of Dana Terrace.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Hooty is one of these, as he proves in the fight with the Emperor's Coven during the Season 1 penultimate, and during the first episode of season 2.
• Crown of Power: Subverted. The MacGuffin of the first episode, King's demonic crown of power, turns out to simply be an expy Burger King crown that he just really likes.
• Crush Blush:
  • Amity gets this around Luz multiple times. "Enchanting Grom Fright" reveals she does indeed have a serious crush on the latter, and that her greatest fear was getting rejected.
  • Luz comes down with the same condition after "Escaping Expulsion", accompanied by some very awkward attempts at smalltalk from then on.
• Cunning People Play Poker: The antagonistic character of Tibbles Grimhammer is established in his debut episode as a devious trickster character when he manages to hustle Eda the Owl Lady, herself a trickster character, in a magical card game called Hexus Hold-Em.
• Curse Cut Short: When Eda wants to express her contempt for the coven day parade by calling it "a fancy way to kiss the emperor's ass", a disapproving look from Luz and her covering King's ears reminds her, that it's not appropriate to curse that way within earshot of her eight year-old adoptive son, so she stops herself before saying "ass" and uses the euphemism "whatever" instead.
• Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: One of the beings in the first episode is a small fairy with an oversized mouth full of freakishly human teeth. Season 3 shows that giraffes are also this, as their mouths open as a flower full of tentacles.
• Cuteness Proximity: The moment Luz first lays her eyes on King, she goes completely nuts, hugs him tightly and talks to him as if he was the world's most adorable pet... much to his horror.
• Dark Fantasy: While a Denser and Wackier take on the genre (being a family-friendly Disney Channel series), a lot of the tropes that make up the setting it very much in-line with Dark Fantasy. Unlike many of the Summon Everyman Hero fiction novels that Luz is used to, the Boiling Isles is a dog-eat-dog Giant Corpse World populated by witches with inherently deadly Weird Weather, deadly curses, a Wizarding School that makes Hogwarts look safe and accommodating in comparison and all sorts of monsters that literally prowl the streets that are equally likely to eat you, imprison you or rip you off in every sense of the phrase. The plot itself is about a human who finds herself in this world and has had her life threatened and her childish notions of magic and wonder questioned multiple times, a small demon with aspirations of conquest and tyranny and a Con Artist witch under a curse that turns her into a mindless beast, all the while being hunted down by an oppressive regime that has all of the bells and whistles of a Corrupt Church.
• Death World: In early conceptions of the show, the Boiling Isles was literally Hell. Even toned down, the place makes it very clear right off the bat to any would-be adventurers that it is not fooling around. You want to stay there, you'd better learn not to die.
• Debut Queue: The first episode only introduced the main characters, Luz, Eda, King and Hooty. Willow, Gus, Amity and Principal Bump debut in the third episode "I Was a Teenage Abomination", Lilith debuts in the fifth episode "Covention", Boscha debuts in the sixth "Hooty's Moving Hassle", and Emperor Belos debuts in the second-to-last episode of Season 1, "Agony of a Witch".
• Deconstruction: The Owl House has fun tearing down the tropes associated with portal fantasies.
  • Often, the protagonist goes through a portal, gets trapped in another realm and is deemed The Chosen One to stop the Big Bad. That doesn't happen here. In fact, an early episode has Luz told she's the chosen one to go on a quest for a special staff, but it turns out the quest was just a scam from the start.
  • When most characters from Earth step into a fantasy world, they are treated as special and noteworthy. The inhabitants of the Boiling Isles know that humans exist, as they are the ones with round ears, but the general population doesn't have much interest in them. At best they see humans as rare sentient species.
• Descriptiveville: Due to the Giant Corpse World setting, most locations on the Boiling Isles are named after the body parts that they're built on or nearby. For example, the two cities that we see in series are Bonesborough (which is nestled in a series of rib-like bones) and Latissa (which is in the armpit, just above the latissimus dorsi).
• The Dictatorship: The Boiling Isles is on the verge of being one under Belos, if it isn't already. He has absolute power with no legal avenues in place to keep him from abusing his position, and can pick and choose who gets to use what kind of magic, only allowing those in his own personal army to use them all. Dissenters (or even people who just don't "fit in") get branded criminals, thrown in prison, stripped of their magic, or even turned to stone in a public execution. In true dictator fashion, even those closest to him aren't safe, creating a culture of paranoia, distrust, and fear among his inner circle. He also develops a habit of putting up statues of himself. Creepily, his propaganda, pushed on everyone from childhood on, is shown to be incredibly effective, as most citizens are in favor of his rule and don't see his blatant violation of their basic rights as anything other than normal.
• Didn't Think This Through: Played for Drama in "Agony of a Witch." On a field trip to the Emperor's Castle, Luz strays away from the class to steal the Healing Hat to cure Eda's curse. However, even when Willow and Gus help, they get caught immediately because they didn't consider that the Emperor's castle would have a security system protecting his powerful magic items.
  • This comes up again in "Hunting Palismen" as the main reason Luz can't form a bond with a Palisman; they need a clear long-term goal to do so, but not only is Luz's goal of "becoming a witch" too vague for it to work as one, her other goal of fixing the portal and going home to her mother isn't just fundamentally incompatible with the first, but the fact that she's never really considered what will happen afterward further prevents her from bonding with one.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In "Hunting Palismen", the Golden Guard can be heard humming the intro's music.
• Disciplines of Magic: Magic is divided into different disciplines, and witches and wizards are divided by covens, each dedicated exclusively to one form of magic, and are magically forced to suppress all other forms. Only those who belong to the Emperor's Coven are allowed access to all forms of magic. Eda, one of the main characters, has never joined a coven and is able to use the full magic spectrum, which is implied to be part of the reason she's wanted by the authorities.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: Eda is prone to this.
  • In the episode "Enchanting Grom Fright", when training Luz for her fight against Grom, Edric and Emira conjure the illusion of a giant Eda that treats Luz like a baby. Drawn out by the resulting screaming the real Eda is quite impressed with herself before realizing that somethings going on.
    Eda: Is that supposed to be me? [chuckles] Dang, I look great!
  • In "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door" Eda learns to cooperate with her curse and gains a harpy-like Super Mode. After seeing her new form in a reflection, Eda immediately starts posing and admiring herself.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Eda's curse is played similarly to a chronic illness, described as incurable but manageable with daily treatment. Despite a few episodes having a Hope Spot, it seems they really are stuck with it.
    • "Keeping Up A-fear-ances" plays with this even more, with Eda's mother spending years trying to find a way to cure Eda's curse through non-traditional methods, dismissing the potions that Eda normally takes to deal with it since they're not a perfect solution. Instead, she attempts to use folk remedies to cure her daughter, which never work, and in at least one case are seen to come from a Snake Oil Salesman. It works as a criticism against alternative medicine.
  • Emperor Belos is often seen consuming magic from Palismen. It's later revealed in "Hunting Palismen" that if he doesn't feed on a Palisman for too long, he would slowly mutate into an Ominous Obsidian Ooze monster due to an affliction related to wild magic. This situation can be compared to a drug addict going through withdrawal.
  • Most of Terra Snapdragon's interactions with Raine plays out like an abuser taking advantage of their victim by using tricks to get them to be obedient. She frequently uses a tea to try and brainwash them into "behaving properly," and is very affectionate with them to the point that they're visibly uncomfortable. That fact that she had held this special interest in Raine since they were a teenager makes things even more creepy. The last detail makes this feels like something a lot more worse in a different context.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Lilith is this way towards Eda. It's why she wants Eda to join the Emperor's Coven so they don't have to keep hunting her. Eda is not interested and insists she's more powerful without being in a coven. This is shown to be true in "Agony of a Witch" when Eda fights Lilith and only loses because of her curse and Lilith using Luz as a shield.
• Dramatic Irony: The teaser for the third season shows that after being stranded in the Human Realm, Luz and Hunter make a pact not to tell anyone about their revelations in "Hollow Mind" until they're ready, afraid their loved ones will hate them. The rest are left puzzling over how the Collector came into contact with Belos, while the audience is well aware that Luz accidentally facilitated their meeting after helping Philip in the past.
• Duality Motif: After Lilith performs a sharing spell on Eda, saving the latter from being completely consumed by her Owl Beast curse but also infecting Lilith with it and draining both witches' innate magic; one eye in either sister (Eda's left eye and Lilith's right eye) is now permanently grayed out (looking similar to the Owl Beast's monochrome palette), whilst the other eye retains their normal color.
• Drench Celebration: In "Any Sport in a Storm," after the Emerald Entrails win their Flyer Derby match, they dump a barrel full of red liquid over Hunter who made the game-winning play.
• Dungeon Punk: Boiling Isles is modeled after the Medieval European Fantasy setting but with the living standards and culture of the United States somewhere between The '80s and The New '10s.
• Dysfunction Junction: Over the course of the series it is shown that many of the main and supporting characters have issues and Dark and Troubled Past(s) to deal with. This ranges from Eda dealing with the complications of her curse, Luz's struggles with both the demon and human realms, King's Loss of Identity about his familial past, Lilith dealing with the effects of working for Belos and cursing her sister, Amity's self-worth and anxieties due to her abusive mother, and Willow having some self-esteem issues from getting bullied, among others.
  • Season 2B expands on this even more with Emperor Belos's backstory, and the introduction of his nephew Hunter, who is the latest in a long line of clones and basically the poster child for child abuse. Furthermore, even Gus is revealed to have some issues and anxieties as shown in "Labyrinth Runners".

E-F

• Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a lot of work (and trauma) on their parts, but the heroes all ultimately manage to defeat Belos for good and dismantle the Coven system, and end the series in much better circumstances where they are happy and content with their lives and rebuild the Isles into something even better than before:
  • Luz reconciles with Camila and a new portal door is built, meaning that she gets to keep her connections to both worlds, even going to university in the Boiling Isles with her friends and girlfriend, surrounded by loved ones who understand and appreciate her
  • Eda and Lilith both manage to move past all the lingering buried trauma the curse has caused, reconciling with each other, their entire family, Raine, and even the Owl Beast itself. The curse will never truly be cured, but it's now become a mild and manageable condition. Eda also escapes the life of a fugitive without losing her individualism, becoming the headmaster of a new, nonconformist magic university. While Lilith has finally learned to grow out of Eda's shadow by exploring her own strengths and interests, becoming a curator and historian.
  • King is content with knowing what he is and where he came from, and is now slowly exploring his growing powers as a Titan surrounded by his loved ones, he's also established a friendship with the Collector who visits semi-regularly.
  • Amity has found the freedom to choose her own path in life, repairing her friendship with Willow, happily dating Luz, and has gone on to become an Adventurer Archeologist working with Lilith, reconciling with her estranged mentor as well.
  • The rest of the Hexsquad are all in happy places, Vee is Happily Adopted into the Noceda family, Hunter is a Palisman carver and is implied to be dating Willow who's become a flyer derby player, and Gus teaches at Eda's university.
  • The Collector is off exploring the stars in search of greater perspective and maturity, but still returns to the Boiling Isles semi-regularly having managed to form genuine friendships that aren't coerced, namely with King.
• Easter Egg: There are certain parts of episodes of seasons 1 and 2 that have an eye symbol next to a code which translates into a word spelled in phonetic.
• Eats Babies: When the Bat Queen drops her babies on Eda's doorstep for her to babysit, King mistakes it for a food offering, calling it "fresh meat", to Luz' disgust, but Eda refuses that by says that "witches eating babies is so 1693".
• Eldritch Location: The Boiling Isles is a Giant Corpse World filled with Mix-and-Match Critters, borderline-Lovecraftian monsters, and Hostile Weather. It's basically what the world would be like if Weirdmageddon were its natural state.
• Establishing Character Moment: King makes his introduction with his shadow looking like a monstrous creature and him asking "Who dares?" in a deep booming voice...until he steps out in bath towels to show that he's not as evil and malicious as Luz thought he'd be.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: You can expect anything in the Boiling Isles to be a death trap.
• Evil Overlooker: In the Season 2 Poster, Emperor Belos is seen on a Bridge watching Luz, Eda, and King as the three wander the Boiling isles.
• Evolving Credits:
  • After "I Was A Teenage Abomination", Willow's uniform in the intro and outro changes from purple to green as it did at the end of the episode when she changed classes at school.
  • The credits at the end of "Young Blood, Old Souls" updates Eda's appearance to her gem being black and one of her eyes being grey as a result of Lilith sharing the curse with her to change her out of her owl form.
  • As of "Seperate Tides", the intro is completely overhauled: the portal is replaced with a flaming eyeball and the scene where Luz explores the Boiling Isles with Eda are changed to a showcase featuring each of the main and supporting cast performing the types of magic crucial to each other. The slides of Willow, Gus and Amity are replaced with ones for Lilith, the Golden Guard and Kikimora, King is replaced with Emperor Belos, and the scene where Luz flies through the Isles with Owlbert is changed to sunset, and the night scene at the Owl House is more detailed with visible Aurora Borealis lights. Finally, when the logo appears, the small gold poof of magic is replaced with magic bursts of the spells Luz learned up to that point — fire, light, ice, and plant magic — and has a border around it.
  • Starting from "Hunting Palismen", the intro changes to incorporate Eda's season 2 outfit, King getting his horn back, and Amity's new hairstyle and hair color, in addition to a different necklace. However, said changes are not reflected in the end credits until "Follies at the Coven Day Parade".
• Expy: The Titan Trappers share quite a few similarities with the Huntsclan from American Dragon: Jake Long, both are Malevolent Masked Men, are dedicated to hunting down and wiping out a particular group and even wear masks/helmets out of their Arch-Enemy's skull.
• Faceless Goons: The Emperor's guards all wear face-concealing plague masks. Anyone else serving the Emperor (like Warden Wrath) also wears that mask. It seems only high ranking members like Lilith can show their faces on duty.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Any attempt to cure Eda of her curse will either be a scam or unreachable.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: In Season 1, the identity of the one who cursed Eda is solvable. Since it happened when she was a child it can't be anyone who is younger than her, which removes a huge portion of the cast and leaves just the adults. Of the recurring adults who knew her as a child, it would further narrow it down to Principal Bump and Lilith. Bump turns out to a Reasonable Authority Figure who resolves his past troubles with Eda pretty easily to let Luz enroll at Hexside, so that would leave just her sister Lilith, who is already The Dragon to the Emperor but still has a Friendly Enemy dynamic with Eda because they are sisters. It is revealed to be Lilith in "Agony of a Witch".
• Faith in the Foe: Hunter and Amity battle for the portal key, arriving at a deadlock. However, Hunter admits that Amity is strong enough that he believes she will beat him and escape with the key should they continue to fight. Thus, he switches tactics and explains that if she doesn't hand over the key now, he can come after her and her girlfriend with the rest of the Emperor's Coven later, forcing her to give it to him.
• Famous for Being First: Luz is excited to learn magic and determined to be the first human to become a witch, overcoming her lack of innate magical ability by learning to utilize glyphs. However, it turns out that several centuries prior, a man named Philip arrived on the island and was able to wield magic, and after a time-travelling Luz taught him the final glyph, he went on to become Emperor Belos.
• Fantastic Firearms: Downplayed; Belos and the Golden Guard utilize Magitech staffs which provide them with the ability to use magic and can fire powerful blasts. After getting ahold of the Golden Guard staff, Luz tries fending off Hunter by firing warning shots and threatening to shoot him for real. Unfortunately, he's is able to tell she's bluffing and doesn't have it in her to kill.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Humans are not thought of highly in the Boiling Isles, best shown by Amity's early interactions with Luz. Despite this, Luz is able to become relatively well-liked among witches her own age as the series progresses, with Amity in particular ironically falling in love with her.
  • There are some subtle implications that witches look down on demons, with Amity at one point calling King Luz's pet, the basilisks having been wiped out before Belos arrived, and the government consisting mostly of witches.
  • Emperor Belos/Philip Wittebane considers all humans to be inherently good, while all witches and demons are inherently evil and a threat to humanity, and his plan for the Day of Unity is to kill them all in one fell swoop. His bigotry is so bad that he sees humans who are sympathetic to witches as being warped by their influences, and believes they'd be better off dead, a belief that led him to murder his own brother for falling in love with a witch.
• Fantastic Slurs: Willow is referred to as "half-a-witch" due to her ineptitude with magic. It turns out this isn't just a rude nickname but an actual offensive term mocking witches who either have trouble with magic or none at all.
• Fantasy Pantheon: There are two equivalents of gods in the world: the demonic Titans, who have all been wiped out and mostly exist as island-sized corpses making up the only land in the Boiling Isles, and the angelic Collectors, who travel from planet to planet trapping the beings they find in scrolls and destroying anyone who resisted. Most witches worship the Titans, but the Titan Trappers worship the Collectors as so-called "Grand Huntsmen".
• Fascist, but Inefficient:
  • The closest thing to a functioning government the Boiling Isles has seems to be the Emperor and his coven acting as peacekeepers. There seems to be no instituted checks and balances in place and law-enforcement can be as brutal as they want, Lilith's constant bending of the rules with no perceived demerits on her part implying that nobody can hold them accountable for any miscarriages of justice they could commit. All practitioners of magic are to join a Coven - which would cut them off from using any form of magic that is not their hat - or be branded a criminal. Any law-breakers, ranging from those who reject joining any covens like Eda or simply being "abnormal" (like making fanfiction or being a Conspiracy Theorist), are sent to the Conformatoriam where they will be imprisoned and tortured at the Warden's leisure. With this in mind, the Boiling Isles is still a lawless cesspit populated by demons who would kill you, eat you, enslave you, rip you off and every other manner of horror with law enforcement either absent or apathetic to it. Just the fact that the Owl House seems to be an Open Secret, yet it takes luring the Owl Lady to the Emperor's castle with Luz as bait in "Agony of the Witch" in order to capture her, is a sign that the Emperor's Coven only has a superficial grip on things.
  • This could be Justified when it is revealed that the Emperor's reign has only existed for 50 years, meaning that while the Emperor's Coven has been around long enough to establish its authority, such authority has yet to sink in ideologically for all of its inhabitants and thus his coven is prioritizing showing force over constructive order. Of course, given Belos' ultimate goal is to kill everyone in the Demon Realm, it's possible he simply doesn't care enough to enforce any rules that don't directly contribute to his plan.
• Fictional Currency: The inhabitants of the Boiling Isles use "snails" as currency. These aren't actual snails, but coins and notes that they name as such.
• Fictional Social Network: Social media exists in the Boiling Isles and their equivalent of Instagram is Penstagram.
• Fictional Sport: A couple have popped up throughout the show.
  • Grudgby is a sport a lot like rugby, but with hoops instead of goals, magic is allowed and whatever team has the highest score at the end of a certain amount of time wins, unless one of the teams catches the Rusty Smidge in which case they automatically win.
  • Flyer Derby is a mix of Tag and Capture the Flag. Two teams of five riding palisimans square off, every player has a flag on the end of their palisman staff. Whichever team captures all of the other teams flags and successfully pins them to their spiked tower wins.
• Finale Season: Season 3 is comprised of 3 hour-long specials all leading up to the Grand Finale.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning, Three of the four glyphs are fire, ice, and light.
• Flawed Prototype: Season 2 has a couple.
  • In "Yesterday's Lie", Luz's first attempt to create a new portal door to the Human Realm, using rough guidance, in replacement of the original door; results in a jagged, unstable door which transports Luz to the In-Between Realm, collapsing in on itself after a short life.
  • "Hollow Mind" reveals that in the past, Belos took a while to perfect the Coven Branding magic through trial and error, judging an early experiment which failed to kill the subjects outright as this trope.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The first letter of every episode spells out "A witch loses a true way".
  • The secret message of Season 1 spells out "Two sisters torn apart, now alone. Two hearts of stone. A curse of feathers and mud. A betrayal of blood".
  • In "The First Day", Luz creates a sock puppet of Eda with two differently colored buttons for eyes, one gold and the other gray, foreshadowing Eda's curse weakening, a side effect of which is mismatched eyes.
  • In "Elsewhere and Elsewhen", Philip's diary recounts that he has everything necessary to build a portal to the Human Realm but now needs to contact The Collector for his next steps. When he acquires The Collector's mirror, Luz asks how it relates to the portal, to which he replies it's for something else. This hints at the fact that the portal actually has nothing to do with the Draining Spell, and The Collector does not benefit from the Day of Unity.
  • In season 2, the first letter of each episode also spells out a message, "seek the key, fear the lock".
• Forbidden Friendship: Between Amity and Willow. Amity's parents forbade her from being friends with Willow because Willow wasn't the "correct" social class.
• Fossil Revival:
  • "Yesterday's Lie" reveals that the reason that the basilisk in "The First Day" was Not So Extinct is that the Emperor's Coven revived them somehow to study their abilities, and some escaped. One of them, "Vee", managed to slip through to Earth and managed to replace Luz when trying to hide from them.
  • Judging by one of Hunter's books about grimwalkers (see screencap), they were also brought back by Belos for some reason.
• Foul Medicine: In "Keeping Up A-fear-ances", Eda's gross-out noise when drinking the elixir which checks her Owl Beast curse in the morning reveals that the stuff tastes awful.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Gus's Bucket List, which includes the goals "Finish digging tunnel under Hexside" and "Be the surprise in a giant hollow cake."
  • In "Clouds on the Horizon", when the group scatters away from Kikimora, for a split second, Luz can be seen using Hunter's signature super-speed magic, and Gus can be seen casting magic with no obvious effect. As it's revealed after the ensuing fight scene, this is because Gus was using illusions to disguise Hunter as Luz and vice versa the whole time.
• Fugitive Arc:
  • The whole premise of the show is that Eda is on the run from the Emperor's guards because she rebelled against the Coven system. Luz has to minimize the amount of people who know of her apprenticeship with Eda as that makes her guilty by association. After Season 1 all Owl House residents (especially Luz) are officially fugitives of the Emperor's Coven, and now includes Lilith, who has become a fugitive for betraying her Emperor.
  • Averted in Season 2. Since Eda and Lilith lost their magic, Emperor Belos and his coven have no reason to subjugate either of them, so they're allowed to roam free without fear of being arrested. However, it's later implied that this is only because he needs them alive in order to complete a Stable Time Loop where Luz and Lilith meet his younger self and the former teaches him the Light Glyph. Once he gets confirmation from Luz that this has happened, he sends his coven after everyone at the Owl House.

G-L

• Geometric Magic: The circle is the most commonly used shape in witchcraft to summon and contain magic power. In the Boiling Isles, witches have grown a new organ that stores their magic power and now a simple circle drawn in the air is all that needed to access it. The size of the drawn circle indicates how powerful the spell will be and in "The Intruder" it's revealed that a glyph component will briefly appear within the circle as the spell is cast. Because Luz is a human, she has to draw the circle and the glyph on a surface and then make physical contact with it to activate it, a practice used by witches back in the olden days.
• Giant Corpse World: The Boiling Isles are actually the decomposing remains of an unfathomably huge humanoid creature, as shown at the end of the second episode. The season finale episodes reveal that it's called the Titan, and it is apparently the source of all the magic in the Boiling Isles. Other bones exist, seemingly from the same species, but the Isles has the only known complete skeleton.
• Golden Snitch: Lampshaded in the episode "Wing it Like Witches," where Luz and her friends lose the grudgby match, despite getting more goals, because the opposing team caught a little doodad that automatically gives them the win. Luz wastes no time ranting about how stupid and nonsensical that is.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: Following Season 2, Luz (good) and Lilith (bad) vs. Emperor Belos (evil).
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • When King had Hooty destroy the "boot camp" with the recruits being animated plush puppets because they revolted against him, the "camera" is pointed at the door with stuffing and a bunny head flying around while the actual destruction of the puppets isn't shown.
  • Hooty is capable of separating his "head" from the rest of the owl house and moving to a smaller model house if he needs to travel anywhere. The one time this is demonstrated, the actual process isn't witnessed and we're only treated to Luz, King, and Lilith's horrified and disgusted reactions. All that's visible is the guts left behind in the hole in the door, and Luz has to keep herself from puking at the sight.
  • In a far less amusing example, When Belos possesses Hunter, he manages to grab Flapjack when the bird tries to free his witch and grips him hard. The camera immediately cuts to Belos' shadow as he impales the bird with his claws. It then cuts back to show Flapjack bleeding green liquid. It's likely that was the only way the scene could have been done on a children's show.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: Luz chases Eda across the Boiling Sea to an island, landing awkwardly by barreling into her guardian and knocking them both over. The Golden Guard then shows up and lands neatly on the shore in a kneeling position, establishing him as an intimidating new threat.
• Great Offscreen War: It's slowly revealed in seasons 2 and 3 that in the early history of the Demon Realm, there was a great war between the godlike Reality Warper Collectors, who travel from planet to planet to collect its inhabitants, destroying them if they try to resist, and the Titans, similarly godlike beings whose magic naturally counters Collectors. The outcome of this war is unclear, but it left the world littered with the corpses of titans, and only a single known survivor of each species, the Collector and King.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Subverted. At first, Emperor Belos claims the Titan itself is this, with Belos acting as a servant of its will — but it turns out this is a total lie, and Belos has no connection to it. Season 2 reveals that Belos is working with an entity known as the Collector, who appears to have their own agenda — but then it turns out the Collector is just a small child (albeit with incredible magic power) who Belos has been manipulating. In the end, Belos himself is the only real villain.
• Gross-Out Show: Far from the entire point but the setting of The Boiling Isles and the magic system definitely lean into this. Luz has her moments too when she was on Earth as she is socially awkward and doesn't seem to as easy to gross out as most people.
• Group-Identifying Feature: Students at Hexside wear dark gray tunics with different colored sleeves and leggings depending on which track they're enrolled in. Because Luz is enrolled in several different tracks, each of her sleeves have different colors. Also while all the Hexside students wear black boots with their uniforms, Luz keeps her regular white shoes.
• Growing Up Sucks: It is technically legal (though frowned upon) for young witches to use multiple types of magic, but upon joining a coven as an adult they have all magic aside from their chosen field permanently sealed away. Although, 50 years of propaganda has convinced most of the population that this is actually a good thing.
• Half-Human Hybrid: In the Hollow Mind portraits, Evelyn is shown being pregnant, and it's all but directly stated that Caleb was the father. This means witches and humans are capable of reproducing, although it's unknown what effects this has on the child.
• Half-Identical Twins: Emira and Edric Blight. Emira wears earrings and has longer hair, with a tamer fringe compared to Edric's messier quiff - but beyond that, they're essentially identical. They appear to consciously coordinate their outfits outside of school, wearing clothes that are either identical or cut very similarly with minor gender differences, and come in identical colors. And since they're in the same magical track, even their school uniforms are identical.
• Halloween Episode: The first season 3 episode, "Thanks to Them", was released in October and a good chunk of the story takes place on Halloween.
• Hammerspace Hair: Any item Eda needs, she seems to have in her hair.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Season 1 hammers one in about authority figures, both with its Big Bad and with authority figures at school. Just because somebody is an authority figure doesn't mean that they are reliable or trustworthy. Some may have flaws of their own that prevents them from doing what's right, apathetic to other's problems or be manipulative and with an ulterior motive.
• Haunting the Guilty: Belos' mental decline in season 3 comes complete with him either hallucinating or literally being haunted by the ghosts of Caleb and the many, many Golden Guards he's murdered. Belos has been repressing his guilt for four-hundred years and continues to clamp down on it even as his body and mind literally fall apart.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Lilith and King drown their sorrows in lots of ice cream in "Keeping Up A-fear-ances" (Lilith to cope with the stress of her curse and parental indifference, King with the latter). Then they get Drunk on Milk.
• Helping Hands: Eda gets off her staff and one of her hands detaches and is left clutching it. The hand cracks its knuckles, freaking out Luz.
• Heroes Act, Villains Hinder: In Season 3, the plot is driven more by the heroes acting to save the Isles, which has been taken over by the Collector. Belos however, isn't going to let that happen, determined to deny Luz her victory.
• Hired by the Oppressor: Subverted. As much as Emperor Belos hates witches, he has used them to form his armies, manipulating them through "the Titan's will" or promising them privileges in return for their loyalty. He has no qualms about abandoning all of them to die through the draining spell, forcing King to make a deal with the Collector to save everyone.
• Hostile Weather: The rain in the Boiling Isles is boiling hot. Eda says that the Boiling Isles gets this along with other phenomena that are better described as plagues than meteorological events; shale hale, gorenadoes, and painbows (rainbows that turn you inside out when you look at them).
• Hufflepuff House: The Construction, Healing, and Oracle covens are three of the nine major covens, but in of themselves, they have very little plot relevance. Little is shown of what their magic truly entails or the extent of what it can do, its covenheads are all given very little characterization, and its most prominent regular members are relatively minor characters or have rarely been shown doing their coven's magic.
• Hypocritical Humor: Eda calls giraffes a bunch of freaks only for a quick cut to show that one of her hands came off and is still clutching her staff. Her reaction implies that it's a regular occurrence.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes:
  • Residents of the Boiling Isles know that humans exist, but human culture is apparently rather exotic and mysterious. Eda thinks that deodorant is "human candy", and tosses out several valuable objects, including a literal golden chalice, in favor of a pair of gag springy eyeball glasses.
  • Later episodes show that human biology is just as mysterious. Gus was surprised that Luz didn't have gills when they first met, and Boscha makes a sarcastic comment in "Once Upon A Swap" that suggests she thinks that humans have venom. King even believes Boscha, despite having lived with Luz for weeks prior.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of the first episode, Luz decided to stay in the Boiling Isles rather than return home, at least for the summer, so that she can become a magical witch just like Eda. Eda isn't so sure about the arrangement since Luz is a human, but she reluctantly accepts. In the first season finale, Luz later makes the decision to stay indefinitely, by destroying the Portal Door so Emperor Belos can't use it to threaten Earth or her mother. She apologizes to "Mama" before doing it. In "Yesterday's Lie", she accidentally lets this slip to Camila, who's hurt by it. Making things worse in this regard is that by this point Luz actually wants to make her stay permanent and that literally the only reason she's even trying to find a way back to Earth in the first place is to keep her mom in her life.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The primary setting of the Boiling Isles isn't too bad, but the world the archipelago is in is a bit worse; The Demon Realm.
• Improbable Falling Save: During a fight, Hunter is knocked off his staff midair and starts to plummet. Willow proceeds to catch him by grabbing him around the waist with one arm, which neither bends nor strains despite also bearing Hunter's full weight for several seconds.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Warden Wrath imprisons people simply because they have quirks and strange personalities, like being a Conspiracy Theorist or writing fanfiction of anthropomorphic food falling in love.
• Innocent Means Naïve: Luz's naivete is a recurring theme in the first season, particularly in the episode "Witches Before Wizards", where she buys into a demon's childish illusion of her own personal YA fantasy quest.
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: A variation. The Boiling Isles uses Crow Phones, which instead of delivering paper messages, send calls to the intended recipient, who can pick them up and talk into them. They're also strong enough that the sender can instruct them to deliver the recipient to themselves.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: The theme song is a haunting, driven melody that lacks lyrics.
• Intergenerational Friendship: As of yet Eda's exact age hasn't been revealed in show, but she's 30 years older than 14-year-old Luz. She was probably designed to fit the witch stereotype, although her voice actress is 70 and doesn't look it.
• Interspecies Adoption: Despite not seeming like the maternal type, and outright hating the idea at first Eda Clawthorne, a Boiling Isles witch, is the adoptive mother of King, a baby titan, and is also the foster mother of Token Human Luz Noceda who despite having a loving if complex and slightly strained relationship with her own mom, might as well be Eda's own child as far as they or the denizens of the Demon Realm are concerned.
• Interspecies Romance: Seeing witches and demons pair up is not an uncommon sign, but by far the most significant example of this trope is between Luz the Human, and member of the local witch species Amity Blight, with some implication that Eda has some human ancestry herself.
• Internal Retcon: Heavily implied. Officially, there has been no petrifications in the Boiling Isles for decades. The statue garden, however, includes several of the wild witches seen in "Agony of a Witch".
• It's Personal with the Dragon: The Big Bad is Emperor Belos, who has a bounty out for Eda because she's a covenless witch, but otherwise has no personal connection to Eda or Luz. The Dragon for season 1 is Eda's sister, Lilith, who is desperately trying to reconnect with Eda while also getting her into custody in hopes of taming and curing her.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While Amity can act like a real jerk, her reasoning for not wanting Luz's company early on is that whenever she gets near Luz, things go badly for her. Objectively speaking, she's correct. Luz even admits it. However this is Downplayed and Subverted since while that is technically true, Luz never meant any harm and was trying to make up and talk to her, but because of Amity's attitude problem, she consistently refuses to hear her out and refuses to acknowledge that those incidents were mainly caused by her own antagonistic actions all while disregarding how she put Luz's life in danger and focuses on how she got in trouble or embarrassed.
  • Amity later gets very angry at Luz for reading her diary, even though it was an accident on Luz's part, and was manipulated by the Blight twins and was actually trying to stop them from stealing it. Luz admits that Amity is right and tries to say she's sorry. As an apology, Luz lends Amity a book from the Azura series that she hadn't read yet; this causes Amity to not only accept the apology, but also have a Heel Realization on her behavior towards Luz.
• Jesus Taboo: Luz's hometown Gravesfield has violent witch hunts in its history and Philip Wittebane/Emperor Belos is a witch hunter from 1600s Connecticut (the time and place of the Connecticut Witch Trials) who seeks to kill all witches in accordance with his beliefs. However, Christianity is never explicitly mentioned by either Philip or anyone else, with the closest being Philip claiming that he's doing it for "the good of your souls". Philip later outright relishes in the opportunity to 'cleanse this perdition (himself)', perdition being an archaic term for Hell in Christianity.
• Karma Houdini: Other than a series of mishaps that happen here and there, Boscha hardly gets any repercussions for her mistreatment of Amity's true friends Luz and Willow.
• Language of Magic: In "Escaping Expulsion", Eda, Lilith, and King compare the glyphs Luz uses, and is teaching them about, to words in a language, commanding the Background Magic Field to achieve an effect. Eda stacking the various glyphs on top of each other was like shouting several words at once, causing a Magic Misfire, but arranging them in an array forms a stable "sentence" that can theoretically cast any spell depending on the glyphs used. King even theorizes that the reason that Luz hasn't found any glyphs besides the Light, Fire, Ice, and Plant ones is because all other spells are just various combinations of the four.
• Last Day of Normalcy: The series opens with Luz and her mother Camila at the principal's office, because of trouble caused by Luz' wild creativity (she put living spiders in a school project and used fake guts — sausage — in a production of Romeo and Juliet). She is forced to go a reform camp to learn to be "normal", and it's shown that Camila means well but is worried because Luz' excessive imagination keeps her from making friends. After her mom leaves her at the bus stop, Luz runs to get back her favourite book (of fantasy, of course) she put on the trash bin, but it's taken by an owl that goes through a magic portal. Then Luz meets Eda, who sells human trash in a market, and King, a cute but self-centered creature that believes he is a real king who had his throne stolen, and has an "army" of plushies.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Eda proposes going to the beach, Luz replies that they could only do it if they had time for 20 more adventures, possibily referencing how the show could not receive a full-length third season.
• Like Brother and Sister: Luz has this with a few people.
  • After living with King and Eda for quite some time, she becomes quite close with King to the point that he openly calls her his sister and she in turn sees him as a little brother. Before forcing her back through the portal in a Heroic Sacrifice, King sadly tells Luz he was happy to have her as a big sister.
  • In season three, following Hunter's Heel–Face Turn and the two becoming each other's confidants, Luz declares him to be family, causing Hunter to break down in tears.
• Limited Wardrobe: For the most part everyone has one outfit, except Hexside students who have two, their uniform and their everyday wear. On special occasions someone might wear a different outfit, but the other 99% of the time it will be the same thing everyday.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Amity, who wears traditionally feminine clothing such as skirts and dresses, wears nail polish (albeit black), and has a pink school uniform as part of her Magic Track, and was confirmed to be a lesbian in a Reddit AMA.
• Literal-Minded:
  • When Eda asks Luz where magic comes from, she suggests, "from the heart?" Eda says it's true — magic is literally a giant sac of bile bound to a witch's heart.
    Luz: Gross! Can I keep that (illustration of the bile sac)?
    Eda: No.
  • In "Wing It Like Witches", after Amity explains how Boscha is obsessed with grudgby, Luz says that she's "picking up what [Amity is] putting down". Amity looks confused, glances at her armload of books, and says that she's not putting anything down.
  • When Willow tells him his flying skills are sick, Hunter simply stares in bewilderment and comments that he doesn't feel ill.
• Living Hat: The Choosy Hat, which used to be Hexside's method of sorting students into their magic tracks, but it was discontinued after an unfortunate incident involving the hat and a student.
  Choosy Hat: And now, I FEED!
• The Lonely Door: Played with. Not only does the trope work the reverse of usual—Luz goes through a normal door in an abandoned house before emerging from a free-standing one in the Demon Realm—but the door can actually be folded up into a suitcase and moved to be reopened elsewhere. Although after she destroys it, it gets rebuilt later as an immovable one in Belos's lair.
• Longing for Fictionland: Implied to be the case with Luz before arriving in the Boiling Isles. She remarks that it's clearly not the PG fantasy world she's dreamed of.

M-P

• Mage-Hunting Monster: Basilisks are shapeshifting, reptilian monsters that can suck the magic out of witches, leaving them helpless.
• Mage Species: Eda, Willow, Gus, Amity, and the other pointy-eared humanoid denizens of the Boiling Isles are born with a natural capacity for magic. Luz is human, and lacks that inherent magical ability. Luz is still capable of magic, but, being human, she has to learn an alternate and more ancient version of it.
  • "Hunting Palismen" reveals that some witches, like Hunter and some members of his family, have the Witch Pointy Ears but are incapable of actually using magic normally. Hunter has only managed to join the Emperor's Coven because Belos made him a Magic Staff that he can use to cast spells, so without it he's powerless.
    • "Hollow Mind" indicates that Belos is a subverted case. He's actually a human, but he artificially gave himself the ability to cast magic the same way witches can.
  • "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hooty's Door" reveals that Biped demons like Tiny Nose have the same natural capacity for spells that Witches do.
• Magical Land: The Boiling Isles where Luz finds herself is an archipelago formed of a Titan's bones within Another Dimension, although Season 2 has begun exploring and dropping hints toward other locations and an entire universe in the Demon Realm beyond the Isles. The Isles are populated by witches and sapient demons, and although much of the human realm's technology is alien here, the Boiling Isles still has many societal and technological parallels with Earth. It's under the autocratic rule of Emperor Belos. Travel between Earth and the Isles is possible using Eda's portal door, or one of the door's key ingredients, the Titan's Blood.
• Magic Misfire: In "Escaping Expulsion", Eda's attempt to create a "super-glyph" by stacking all the known glyphs on top of each other creates an expanding spiky mass of ice. Lilith negates it by using a glyph array to cancel out the effect.
• Magic Potion: Potions is one of the nine major Covens under Emperor Belos' rule, and thus one of the tracks of magic taught at Hexside. Potions exist for a variety of effects, and whilst the exact mechanics are not gone into some are highly important. Due to the high training that is needed to make them, many are sold at high prices. A recurring plot point involves Eda attempting to ensure she has enough of a very complicated elixir (complicated enough that she can't make it herself despite being the most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles and a potions expert herself) which she uses to keep her curse under control.
• Magic Staff: Witches' staves are seen on occasion, most notably in the hands of Eda and Lilith. Eda describes witches' staves as having magic "embedded into them" and each one is topped with a palisman, an animated staturette that acts as a familiar. Eda also explains that they are awarded from magic schools, but she is implied to have made hers independently from the branch of an ancient tree. The staves themselves also seem to have little if any power, being more of a unique perch for the palismen, which actually DO have power.
  • The staff of Emperor Belos is unique in that it seems to be mechanical and lacks a palisman.
  • Word of God is that staves are carved from the wood of a magic tree, which is also implied to be a finite resource that is slowly dwindling.invoked
  • "Hunting Palismen" reveals that staffs are formed when a Palisman bonds with a witch that has a strong desire. The Golden Guard/Hunter's staff turns out to have been made by Belos, and channels artificial magic to make up for his inability to use it himself, implying that the similar staff that Belos wields also does this.
• The Magic Goes Away: Subverted in the finale. The Titan dying for good means that glyph-based magic no longer works, leaving Luz powerless. However, when she returns years later, King has started to develop his own magic field, with a new system of glyphs.
• Man-Eating Plant: Hexside School houses one of these in its plant magic homeroom/greenhouse, one that's apparently ticklish as shown when Willow quickly rescues a fellow student it tried to snatch up. Willow later learns to create or summon these plants for combat purposes.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Luz and Amity become this when they start dating in Season 2. The former is a Tomboy with a Girly Streak with Boyish Short Hair and an androgynous appearance. The latter is a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak who wears more feminine clothing such as skirts and dresses and a pink uniform.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Luz is Spanish for "light"; she casts light magic as her first spell.
  • Willow is named for a type of plant, and she can do plant magic.
  • Alpha Bitch Amity Blight prior to her Character Development; following such, Boscha takes her place. Her first name means "a friendly relationship" while her last name means "something that spoils or damages", especially plants. This foreshadows that she and Willow used to be friends, but Amity broke apart from her and now has an antagonistic dynamic with her, it also foreshadows that she is a deeply lonely individual who is not really allowed to have real friends that compliment her actual personality because of her abusive and status-obsessed parents.
  • Eda on its own means wealthy, and she's a successful potion brewer/ antique dealer. It's also sounds like Edith, which is not only old-fashioned, but means "warfare". A sorceress who proclaims to be the most powerful in the land and whose main element is fire, is not someone you want to ''anger.''
  • Belos is the Greek rendering of the semitic Belu, meaning "lord" or "master".
  • Hunter was named by a literal witch hunter to help carry out his mission.
• Merged Reality: In "Hunting Palismen" seemingly reveals that this is his plan, merging the Demon Realm with the human realm and eliminating wild magic in the process. Supposedly, this was the "paradise" Belos was referring to. This is a lie, as his real goal is much simpler.
• Might Makes Right: In the Boiling Isles, only the strong make the rules, and thus they are the ones who get respect. Willow however, challenges this notion.
• Minions Customized at Creation: The witches that deal in the creation of generally obedient "Abominations" made out of shaped purple matter. It appears that the completed humanoid forms cannot be altered, only dispelled, because there are shaping failures that apparently cannot be easily salvaged.
• Monster Progenitor: "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hooty's Door" reveals that as the Titan's body decayed, it spawned the various species of demons that call the Isles home. Whether this is the origin of Witches as well is unclear.
• Moral Disambiguation: The Boiling Isles is for the most part a World of Jerkass, the deuteragonist Eda is only really concerned about keeping herself and her household alive against the Isles' authoritarian system, and Big Bad Emperor Belos is Ambiguously Evil for a while. As Season 2 goes on, however, Belos is revealed to be a genocidal existential threat to all the Boiling Isles' denizens (and one who killed his own beloved brother and has been sadistically killing Expendable Clones of said brother for centuries afterward), and all the denizens of the Isles find themselves increasingly pushed to one of two sides in the conflict: Eda and many other characters who were originally varying degrees of jerkass join the resistance to thwart Belos, and generally those who remain on Belos' side up to the Day of Unity are established to be irredeemable and are among the vilest characters in the series short of Belos himself. However, there is also a third group of regular people who simply don't know that Belos plans to harm them and continue to put their trust in him even if they don't understand what he's doing.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: The normal human Luz is apprenticed to the Witch Eda in return for helping Luz learn magic.
• Muggles: Luz is a normal human being from Earth that has no magic abilities, though that doesn't stop her from making herself Eda's new apprentice. It's subverted as the series progresses and it's revealed that there are non-conventional ways that Luz can access magic, such as drawing glyphs on paper and using those to make magic work.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Several objects from the human world make their way to the Boiling Isles from time to time. So while people there know humans exist, the objects showing up without context means they have to fill in the blanks, and they quite often get it wrong.
  • As a way to make money, Eda sells things from the human world that she finds at a stall. Said stall has her throw away things like diamond rings while believing that googly-eyed novelty glasses are a valuable treasure.
  • Eda loves Luz's shiny clicky pen. Luz uses it to bribe her into teaching her magic.
  • The "Human Appreciation Society" at Hexside admires human artifacts such as "nail clippers" (a cheese grater), a "food bowl" (umbrella hat), a "weapon?" (Rubik's cube) and a "pay-per-clorp" (paperclip) that produces the "sound of the human ocean" when you flick it.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: Enforced. When a witch (or demon) joins a coven, they get a magical mark that prevents them from practicing magic from other covens, and joining a coven is mandatory. There seem to be a fair bit of leeway and overlap, however. All witches can apparently practice relatively minor magic like levitation even with a coven tattoo, and Hieronymous Bump has complete control over Hexside despite only being an Abomination witch.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: When Luz tries talking to a centaur, he says, "My eyes are down here," and it's revealed his face is on his chest.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Luz' hometown is named Gravesfield, presumably derived from "Field of graves", aka. a burial ground. Since American towns tend to be named after their most notable feature, Gravesfield was apparently known to be a place with a pretty big or otherwise important graveyard. In "Thanks to Them", the final battletakes place in what appears to be this graveyard, which is ancient and long since flooded.
• Never Say "Die": Downplayed. Death and several other words related to it are said openly throughout the show, but it always uses euphemistic terms when referring to characters who are actually dead.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Promos that show Luz presumably passing through the portal to the Boiling Isles is actually the scene where she passes through a magic-proof forcefield to find King's crown.
  • Also, in the promo narrated by Luz herself, when she's talking about the magic school and says "Look, I even got an A+" as the teacher is drawing an A+ on her forehead, that technically isn't true. The A+ was actually for Willow, who was passing off Luz as an Abomination she made, and the teacher was marking her assignment.
• Next Sunday A.D.: While the show began airing in 2020, a calendar visible in "Reaching Out" reveals that the show takes place over the summer and fall of 2022,^note Specifically, the episode takes place on August 22nd, with Luz having been in the Demon Realm for months by that point. with "Thanks to Them" ending on Halloween that year. Crosses into 20 Minutes into the Past as the final two episodes aired in 2023.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: At the end of Season 2 Belos is defeated by The Collector who was freed by King. The Collecter is the only one able to stop the Draining Spell and save the residents of the Boiling Isles. However, while they do end the Draining Spell, they quickly prove themselves to be a bigger threat than Belos could ever dream of being, turning the Boiling Isles into their own personal playground.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Zig-zagged. "Separate Tides" reveals that Luz is incapable of digesting many of the foodstuffs native to the Isles, but is otherwise fine. Unfortunately, what she can eat apparently tends to be rather pricey, and with the portal gone feeding her puts some additional strain on their finances. Season 3 shows this concern from the other end, with Camila Noceda keeping worrying about and keeping notes on what foods the Hexsquad can digest while they've been stuck on Earth; though they seem to be just fine, with one photo in Willow's scrapbook showing Luz and Amity sharing a milkshake on a date.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In one of the episodes, characters based on BTS's Jungkook, Shinee's Taemjn, Jessi, and Big Bang's Gdragon appear in a scene where they're all forced to go to jail.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Word of God has said that discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals is effectively non-existent in the Isles. The openly non-binary Raine was even able to rise up to become the Bard Coven head in season 2, a very prestigious position.
• No Saving Throw: Discussed. The Season 1 finale says that magic that turns the target to stone can't be blocked or defended against in any way. If someone gets turned into a statue, they're stuck. This is what Emperor Belos intends to do with Eda to Make an Example of Them in the Season 1 finale. He almost succeeds, but triggering Lilith's Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal allows Eda to escape with some help from Luz and her friends.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Emperor Belos is implied to be one. He claims his oppressive autocracy is a Necessary Evil to protect the Boiling Isles' denizens from the alleged dangers of wild magic, and that he's the enforcement of the Titan's will, but the series has been gradually dropping increasing hints that he's a power-hungry liar. The truth of him is revealed in "Hollow Mind", and it's pretty horrific.
  • Jacob Hopkins on Earth. He's convinced himself he's The Hero who's saving the world from teeth-stealing demons from Mars (yes, you read that right), but a lot of his cues, inflections and word choices when he's finally caught Vee and he thinks the President has sent someone to verify the find show that he's solely motivated by the attention and the perceived glory he believes he'll get for proving the existence of demons, and he doesn't care about the feelings of others.
• Offering a Hand:
  • Seems to be a recurring theme between Luz and Amity.
    • The first instance occurs in "Covention" with the Everlasting Oath.
    • Then there's a moment in "Understanding Willow" where Luz offers her hand for Amity to hold, right before Eda sends them into Willow's mind to fix her memories.
    • There's also the moment in "Enchanting Grom Fright" where Amity offers her hand asking for a dance with Luz before both go up against Grometheus the Fear Bringer.
    • Then there's the moment in "Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Hooty's Door" right after Luz and Amity become an Official Couple and Luz, unsure what to do next, awkwardly offers her hand for Amity to hold, with Amity awkwardly accepting.
  • There's a moment in "Eclipse Lake" where Amity, upon seeing Hunter in despair about not finding any Titan's Blood, tells him that he was right about there being similarities between them, and offers up a hand in friendship. However, Hunter, upon seeing the portal key around Amity's neck, tries attacking her in order to get the key, which contains the Titan's Blood he came to find.
    • There's a repeat of this in "Hollow Mind" where Luz offers her hand to Hunter to help him through the memory paintings, except this time he takes it. The parallel to the scene in "Eclipse Lake" is rather obvious.
• Oh, My Gods!: The inhabitants of the Boiling Islands invoke the Titan as we invoke the Abrahamic God ("So help me Titan", "For Titan's sake" and so on).
• Old Magic: The indigenous demons and witches of the Boiling Isles evolved a gland on their heart that allows its inhabitants to cast spells on command. However, it is implied that witches were originally able to draw power from the Isles itself in the form of glyphs found in the environment called "Wild Magic", something that Luz discovers and learns how to harness.
• Ominous Owl: Eda is a witch with an owl motif, owning a staff ending in an owl figurine and living in the eponymous Owl House. In one episode, Luz directly asks how she initially got the moniker of Owl Lady; Eda herself claims that it's because she's incredibly wise, while Hooty and King suggest that the connection might be more literal, due to her tendency to cough up owl pellets and hoard shiny objects in a nest. While those are part of it, the main reason turns out to be she's been cursed to turn into a demonic owl creature if she doesn't regularly take an elixir to prevent the transformation.
• Online Alias: Multiple account names for Penstagram are shown over the course of the series. Most of them are just some sort of play on their names (EM_IRA, ALABOMDOR_1, RAINEY.DAY, etc) but a few of them like Eberworlf's (RAISEDBYDIREWOLVES) and Hunter's (RULERZREACHF4N) do hint at some Hidden Depths.
• Open Sesame: When Eda first brings Luz to the Owl House, Hooty the owl face on the front door asks for a password, though Eda has no patience for this and pokes him in the eyes. Hooty complains that she never wants to have any fun, then opens his mouth to let them through.
• Otherworldly Technicolour Hair: Witches and demons have a far greater variety of hair shades than humans, with colors like magenta, mint, and navy being treated as completely normal. While a few (Amity's green and Lilith's blue for example) are canonically the result of hair dye, most of them are 100% natural.
• Our Archons Are Different: The Archivists certainly bring this trope to mind. They are immensely powerful beings who all wear robes bearing Cosmic Motifs. They consider themselves gods, and seal beings from planets in scrolls as they will. Should those planets resist, the Archivists destroy them. They are opposed to the Titans.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: The centaurs of the Boiling Isles have no face, with their eyes and mouth on their torso.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons are beings native to the Boiling Isles, having originally arisen from the Titan's corpse as it decayed. Most creatures in the show that are not witches or humans are demons. Some seem to be members of specific species, while others are apparently unique, or at least appear wildly different from their parents. Hooty also explains that they are divided into three categories, the so-called three B's:
  • Bug demons are somewhat insectoid, though what passes as insectoid on the Boiling Isles is somewhat loose; Hooty counts as a worm, despite appearing as an owl. The true signifier of a bug demon is that they communicate with each other through dance, though some, like Hooty, can also speak. In addition to Hooty, fairies and Adegast the puppeteer are in this category.
  • Bipedal demons are essentially witches in all but name. They walk on two legs, and have a bile sac that allows them to perform magic like witches. Unlike witches, they are distinctly non-human, and some may have natural abilities in addition to magic. Warden Wrath, Kikimora, Tibbles, and Selene the oracle track student are both in this category.
  • Beasts demons are neither insectoid nor humanoid, generally resembling wild beasts. These are the monsters you typically encounter in the wild, and most are non-sapient, though exceptions do exist. Basilisks, slitherbeasts, selkiedomus, griffons, trash slugs, ratworms, and giraffes are in this category.
  • Some demons are also hybrids between different types, such as the teacher of the Baby Class at Hexside, who is a Bug/Biped hybrid.
  • King is eventually revealed to not really belong in any of the categories; He can't communicate through dance, he can't cast spells, and his blood test for bestial demonhood came back negative. It's implied that he belongs to an unknown species, or could be completely unique. "Edge of the World" reveals he's a Titan.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Kikimora rides a dragon named Princess with bizarre hand-like features. Its limbs and jaws resemble fingers, its wings resemble massive hands, it has hundreds of legs like a centipede which resemble fingers, and it has another hand on the end of its tail. Princess is controlled by a whistle.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Upon arriving in the Boiling Isles, Luz bumps into a seemingly innocent fairy, who then proceeds to bare a mouthful of giant teeth and screams to have her skin. "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door" reveals that Fairies are a type of demon, belonging to the Bug category.
• Our Griffons Are Different: Griffons in the Boiling Isles resemble pigeons rather than eagles, and breathe out clouds of spiders. One named Puddles is kept as a pet by Viney.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts do exist in the Boiling Isles and there are different varieties. There are spirits summoned from crystal balls by the witches of the Oracle track. And then you have the classic Bedsheet Ghosts that roam Hexside.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: There seem to be two types.
  • Abominations are large golems made of purple slime. There is an entire Coven devoted to summoning and controlling them.
  • Grimwalkers are clones of already existing people. They are made using various ingredients, including a galdorstone, selkiedomus scales, palistrom wood, Stonesleeper lungs, and a bone from the person the Grimwalker is created from.
• Our Mages Are Different: Most magic users in the series are able to cast it innately thanks to a special organ attached to their heart called a bile sac. Luz later (re)discovers an more ancient form of magic involving drawing glyphs that instead relies on the Isles' Background Magic Field which means it doesn't work in other dimensions if you don't have some Titan's Blood nearby to act as a substitute source.
• Our Titans Are Different: Here, they're continent-sized, demonic beings who wield extremely powerful magic. They mostly seemed to be benevolent, but are extinct in the modern day. The majority of the series takes place on a Titan corpse known as the Boiling Isles. However, other Titan corpses lie scattered throughout the world. Despite being mammalian, they are also born out of eggs, and juveniles are the size of a puppy.
• Our Witches Are Different: Witches in the show are able to do magic thanks to an actual magic organ attached to their hearts. The bile in this organ helps fuel the casting of magic spells, with a major example being the use of spell circles (with the particular spell being cast being based on thought).
• Pass the Popcorn: Whenever Hooty wails on Lilith or Emperor's Coven members trying to assault the Owl House, Eda picks up binoculars to watch. She can't help but smirk and praise Hooty.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The logo has an owl symbol in the place of the "O" in "Owl".
• The Place: The titular Owl House is Eda and King's home.
• Pointy Ears: The more humanoid inhabitants of the Boiling Isles tend to have pointed ears, with older individuals usually having longer ones. In "I Was A Teenage Abomination" Willow is able to identify Luz as a human because her ears aren't pointed.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Hexside gang's character arcs have them keeping secrets from each other to their own psychological detriment.
  • While granted she was blackmailed into doing so, Amity never told Willow that she was forced to end their childhood friendship by her Abusive Parents. While she regretted it and Luz gets her to come around, Willow still resents Amity for the incident until the truth comes out in "Understanding Willow".
  • During the first half of Season 2, Luz and Amity struggle to admit their love for each other, resulting in some awkwardness. They eventually come out in "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door" and become a couple.
  • After The Reveals in "Hollow Mind", Luz and Hunter agree to keep each other's secrets—the former about her role in Belos' Evil Plan and the latter about his nature as the latest of Belos' Grimwalkers. However, their fears of how the others will react prove unfounded: when Belos spills the beans himself at the climax of "Thanks to Them", only Willow is taken aback (and briefly) to learn what Hunter is, and since Belos tricked Luz into helping him, no one holds it against her. Amity thereafter tells Luz to never keep secrets again, since all it did was make her more miserable.
    • Gus reveals in "For the Future" that he learned Hunter was a Grimwalker upon attacking Belos' mind in "King's Tide", but he, too, kept quiet about it for fear of causing his friend further distress. Hunter is more or less unfazed, the subject being all but a moot point by then.
  • Willow gets this in "For the Future" as her insecurities catch up with her and she fets about the fate of her fathers (whom the Collector captured and puppetized). Failing to admit how she feels her plant magic to go out of control until Hunter gets her to open up.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: A few episode titles are puns on the titles of famous works or notable phrases like:
  • S1E1 "A Lying Witch and a Warden" = The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
  • S1E3 "I Was A Teenage Abomination" = I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
  • S1E6 "Hooty's Moving Hassle" = Howl's Moving Castle.
  • S1E9 "Something Ventured, Someone Framed" = A play on the adage Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained.
  • S1E11 "Senses and Insensitivity" = Sense and Sensibility.
  • S1E17 "Wing It Like Witches" = Bend It Like Beckham.
  • S2E4 "Keeping Up A-fear-ances" = Keeping Up Appearances.
  • S2E5 "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" = Through the Looking Glass.
  • S2E19 "O Titan, Where Art Thou" = Gulliver's Travels or O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
• Power Limiter: The coven that a witch or wizard joins limits them to performing just that kind of magic. Eda's distaste for them is precisely because of this, as she greatly prefers being a Jack of All Trades.
• The Power of Friendship:
  • Oh it exists, as Principal Bump revealed in the "Welcome to Hexside" short. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints the class had to be axed from Hexside's curriculum.
  • Magic does, however, seem to be more powerful when performed alongside friends and loved ones; Luz' friends could animate the entire house during their moonlit conjuring, whereas Amity's "friends" couldn't even animate a doll. In the episode "Enchanting Grom Fright", Amity is able to conjure a much larger abomination than she was previously able to, and Luz' spell glyph is far more potent when they dance.
• Power Parasite: "Hunting Palismen" reveals that the Power Limiter marks of the Covens are designed to siphon off magic from the coven members. At first, it shown that this is to wipe out all wild magic by merging the human and demon realms, but this later turns out be a lie as Belos is actually planning to cast a massive draining spell that will kill everyone with a sigil.
• Purple Prose: The Good Witch Azura series seems to be a particularly bad In-Universe offender of this. Eda particularly despises it, to the point where Luz and King weaponize it against her to great effect.
  King: *reading from the book* "You shall not shant do'eth no more harm!" Azura callethed out...
  Eda: So flowery, so awful...

Q-S

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Owl House trio consists of Luz, a Nightmare Fetishist human girl who wants to be a witch, Eda, a renegade witch who doesn't play by the rules, and King, a tiny demon. In fact, according to the creators, them being a group of outcasts who find acceptance with each other is a major theme of the story.
  • A smaller example are the "Troublemakers" from debuting in "The First Day". A tomboy, coward, and doglike demon whose only trait in common is their tendency to mix magics.
• Rash Promise: At the end of "Yesterday's Lie", a character is pressured to make a promise which puts them into some pretty bad Conflicting Loyalty. As Luz is getting dragged back to the Boiling Isles, her mother Camila forces Luz to promise that once Luz finds a way back, she has to remain on Earth. Luz agrees in the heat of moment, but once she's back with her friends, it's made clear that she wishes that she hadn't said it. All of Luz's friends, as well as her Love Interest Amity, are on the Boiling Isles. The only reason that Luz wants to go back at all is because she loves her mother with all her heart.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Played with for Principal Bump. In his debut he threatens to dissect Luz when she was posing as an abomination and being an "intruder" in the school and hunts her with Amity through the halls, but then bans her after she escapes. He was also okay with the ethically questionable disciplinary acts the school takes such as brainwashing the students in detention and comments on how he would allow Boscha to get away with murder saying that "it's good for her to try new things". When Eda asks him to enroll Luz, he agrees that it would be a good idea and provide a more rounded education for the students, despite the trouble she caused in a previous episode. He's initially angry at the kids on the Detention Track for mixing magic, thus upsetting the status quo and potentially embarrassing him in front of the emperor's conven's representative, but it's only because he needs the funding the Emperor's Coven is offering (which wouldn't be an option if the students didn't conform), and once it's pointed out to him that the representative is really a basilisk who feeds on magic and that those kids actually saved the school, he quickly agrees to allow them to study whatever magic they like. He even speaks in defense of Eda, despite not personally liking her much, because he recognizes that branding her as a criminal is wrong.
  • Inner Willow is revealed to be this, which is amazing since Amity setting Willow's memories on fire warped Inner Willow into a vengeful brain guardian. She rightly points out that Amity has hurt Willow enough already and made things worse with her little pyrotechnics trick but stops to hear her out when Amity confesses the truth of why they stopped being friends. As soon as Amity does, Inner Willow calms down, letting her and Luz finish their work of repairing Willow's mind.
• The Red Mage:
  • Covens are restricted to a single type of magic, but the Emperor's Coven is exempt from that rule, letting them use all forms of magic.
  • Because Eda refuses to enter a coven, she is skilled in all forms of magic. This naturally causes the aforementioned Emperor's Coven to deem her as a threat who must join them or be eliminated.
  • Luz is on her way to this. After convincing Principal Bump to let her study all Coven tracks of magic to decide what she should eventually join, she becomes a Jack of All Trades of magic. This allows other students (Viney, Jerbo, Barcus, and as of "Labyrinth Runners", Edric, Emira and Mattholomule) to study different types of magic to a smaller degree.
• Reflective Teleportation: In "Yesterday's Lie", Luz enters a Void Between the Worlds where she can summon cubes that allow her to look into the Human Realm through reflective surfaces there, with anyone present able to see her inside said surface. Near the end, she appears as a life-sized hologram of sorts when a car's headlights shine through a rainy night.
• Reunion Vow: Played for drama in "Yesterday's Lie". Luz promises Camila that, once she finishes the portal to Earth, she will stay for good. This would mean leaving behind her girlfriend and her Found Family for the same friendless life she tried to escape in the first place.
• The Reveal: Oh, loads of them...
  • Amity was forced to end her friendship with Willow because her parents resented her.
  • Eda was cursed by Lilith when she was little.
  • King was never actually a king. Eda found him when he was a baby not after he lost any powers.
  • Luz is not the only human in the Demon Realm. Also, a basilisk named Vee is taking her place back on Earth.
  • Emperor Belos is actually a powered-up form of Philip Wittebane, the first human to enter the Boiling Isles, and he's a witch hunter working for a dangerous being called the Collector.
  • Hunter is not really Belos's nephew, but the latest in a long line of "Grimwalkers" (magical undead clones) created by Belos out of the remains of his deceased brother, and all of the previous Grimwalkers have been killed by Belos for betraying him.
  • King is a Titan, and probably the last one remaining in the Demon Realm.
• Riddle for the Ages: Due to the show being Cut Short, we never learn exactly what happened between Belos, Caleb, and Evelyn outside of some vague hints, and we also never learn about the history that led to The Collector (or one of the Archivists) sealing the Owl Beast in a scroll.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: King takes Eda's elixir in "The Intruder" with the belief that it makes her more powerful. As we see in "Hooty's Moving Hassle", Eda's curse actually weakens her magic, and drinking the elixir brings her back up to normal.
• Rousseau Was Right: The series generally tends to support that people are good by default and are only made bad by certain circumstances. For example, Amity was only an Academic Alpha Bitch because of her Abusive Parents, and she gets better later on. The same goes for Lilith and The Golden Guard/Hunter.
• Rule of Three:
  • In each season there is at least one episode where Luz introduces herself in a bombastic, overdramatic speech, before ending it with a "NOW EAT THIS, SUCKA!".
  • Played for Drama. Each season ends with one of the main "weirdos" giving up something for the sake of each other.
    • In Season 1, Eda gives up all her magic to save Luz from being killed by Lilith, at cost of nearly being stuck in her Owl Beast form Forever.
    • In Season 2, King gives up his chances of freedom from the Collector's "game", to let Luz and the Hexside kids escape from the "Child from the Stars"'s wraith.
    • In Season 3, Luz gives up her life when she takes Belos's blast that was meant to The Collector, only for her body being corrupted and dissolved into light orbs in the process (fortunately, it doesn't stick).
• Runic Magic: Luz, being a human, does not have the organ that witches on the Boiling Isles use to access and store magic and has to rely on the older technique of drawing a circle with a rune (or glyph as Luz calls it) inside to invoke a particular spell. In "Adventures in the Elements" it is revealed that these glyphs exist in nature and are perceivable to the eye when looked for, with the glyph for the light spell being a constellation, and the spell for ice being in the snowflakes. Once a glyph has been inscribed, the effect remains dormant until "activated". This makes it function like a scroll and allows Luz to build a stockpile and use them as spell "grenades".
• Sapient House: The Owl House is personified by a talking owl face named Hooty.
• Scam Religion: Most witches in the Boiling Isles worship the Titan, believing that Emperor Belos is his prophet and will lead them to utopia during the upcoming Day of Unity. While the Titan is alive to some extent, Belos is actually a human witch-hunter and plans to wipe out the entire witch species on the aforementioned Day of Unity. His various dogmas, such as the necessity of the Coven system, exist only to make the process go as smoothly as possible.
• School Rivalry: Hexside was built on the bones of its rival school after they conquered it, which a younger Principal Bump is implied to have led. Presently, Hexside is rivaling the other two magic schools, Glandus High and St. Epiderm.
• Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!: The Boiling Isles' coven system forces people to join one particular coven which prevents them from using any form of magic outside of it. The only exception the this is the Emperor's Coven but they have very strict recruitment requirements and are effectively the Emperor's Secret Police. Eda simply never joined a coven and this allows her to use any form of magic.
• Selkies and Wereseals: There is a monster known as a selkiedomus, which resembles a massive demonic seal. Although initially hostile when it thinks its child is threatened, when calm it is quite affectionate. This is quite similar to real-life seal behaviour. The selkidomus can regurgitate a substance known as selkigris, which is quite valuable, and its scales are used to make Grimwalkers.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: The first season ends with Luz handing over Eda's portal to Emperor Belos and destroying it, leaving her stranded in the Demon Realm —and as it later turns out, only hindering his plans since he's able to rebuild the portal). Meanwhile, Eda and Lilith, though now on better terms, have lost their ability to use magic. Despite this, it's still much more upbeat and less of a cliffhanger than the ending of the second season, where Luz and her friends are trapped in the Human Realm while the rest of the Boiling Isles are left at the mercy of the Collector thanks to King making a deal with him to save everyone from Belos' attempt to murder them all, and we don't see the other main characters recover onscreen so their fates are left up in the air.
• Security Blanket: King's crown works this way. When Luz finds it in the first episode, it turns out to be nothing more than a paper crown from Burger Queen. Eda explains that, if he thinks it makes him powerful, then it does.
• Series Goal: There are four major ones:
  • Luz's goal is to become a witch.
  • Eda's goal is to manage the curse placed upon her.
  • Lilith's goal is to apprehend Eda and make her join the Emperor's Coven. This is most likely abandoned by the end of the season after she chooses to save Eda from getting petrified, effectively betraying the Emperor in the process. She does apprehend Eda at the beginning though. Afterwards, she spends her time trying to redeem herself for her past actions
  • King's goal is to "reclaim his throne". After Eda reveals to him that she found him as a baby and gave him the idea that he was a king and that he never had a throne, this changes to finding out about his true heritage and finding his father. Said father turns out to be the Titan itself.
  • In season 2 Luz gets the new goal, finding a way to return home to Earth after destroying the portal to keep Belos from obtaining it, then halfway through a new goal is added on top of it, find a way to convince her mom to let her stay in the Boiling Isles, with her Found Family and her girlfriend.
• Shared Universe: The show is set in the same universe as Amphibia, which is confirmed in "King's Tide" with Camila reading an article about Anne Boonchuy. Previously, the Amphibia episode "If You Give A Frog A Cookie" had featured a blurred image of the Owl House itself in the background.
• Ship Tease:
  • Luz and Amity get a ton of this, especially in the second half of Season 1. It's made very clear that Amity does canonically have a huge crush on Luz; Luz is Oblivious to Love despite Amity eventually becoming barely able to function properly around her by the end of the season, but there are certainly indications that she would gladly reciprocate Amity's feelings if she knew about them. Season 2 would continue the trend when Luz does indeed fully develop a crush back after Amity comes to her rescue in "Escaping Expulsion". After a brief stint of the two being Twice Shy blushing messes around each other and more than a little bit of drama in "Knock, Knock, Knockin on Hooty's Door" with help from Hooty the two girls confess their feeling and become an Official Couple.
  • Raine and Eda get a lot of teasing during the season 2 episode "Eda's Requiem". The two are old friends and constantly blush around each other, while also lightly flirting. "Knock, Knock, Knockin on Hooty's Door" reveals the two use to date but Eda was worried she would hurt Raine and ended up pushing them away.
  • Willow and Hunter begin getting a lot, mostly on Hunter's side who makes it very obvious he is crushing, after they start interacting in "Any Sport In A Storm" and continues to pretty much every episode the two appear together in.
  • In the first episode of season three, there is a bit between Vee and Masha, a non-binary human who Vee met at camp. When Vee tells Masha, in her new form, she is new in town they offer to give her a personal tour, which leaves Vee blushing madly. The end credits show that the two do end up hanging out together later.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Show Within a Show: Luz's favorite book is Good Witch Azura. In "Lost in Language", Amity is revealed to also be a huge fan of the series, despite being from another dimension. "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" confirms via an archived newspaper article that the books originated on Earth, but a box of the books washed up on the shore of the Boiling Isles due to a Titan's Blood induced Reality Bleed, "Any Sport in a Storm" later revealing that Tibbles has been trying to get people to buy them by making it seem like the author is a witch.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift:
  • After everyone is trapped in the Human Realm, Luz starts wearing Eda's grudgby jacket with sweatpants and a beanie, gaining a significantly duller color scheme as well. This reflects her depression over being indirectly responsible for everyone's suffering and her drive to find a way back to the Demon Realm where some of her loved ones are.
  • As the Golden Guard, Hunter typically only wore his uniform and any other outfits were usually just for disguise. After defecting, he mostly wears drab, normal clothes that don't stand out much and later a wolf shirt and cosplay he made. This demonstrates his new independence and split from his old, militaristic life.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Glyphs are generally seen as forms of magic practice for children by the magic community, since it pulls magic from the world rather than a witch or wizard's internal magic. However, Luz manages to weaponize this tech in ways the Boiling Isles has forgot, proving to be much more dangerous than expects through creativity rather than brute magical force. Learning that its possible to combine glyphs also gives Luz a massive advantage in pulling surprise techniques that other magical people wouldn't know.
• Slobs vs. Snobs:
  • In "Covention", we get two cases of it at once: Luz Noceda (slob) vs. Amity Blight (snob), and Eda (slob) vs. her sister Lilith (snob).
  • Following Amity's Character Development to Jerk with a Heart of Gold, "Wing It Like Witches" pits Luz, Willow and Amity (slob) vs. Boscha and her Girl Posse (snob).
• The Social Darwinist: Everyone on the Boiling Isles that we have met so far has shades of this. The entire world seems to operate on the principle of might makes right; power is the one deciding factor in who rules, and altruism or even fairness seem virtually non-existent. Eda doesn't even have a word for "hugging", Boscha and her Girl Posse are surprised when Luz decides to take the fall for one of her friends, and much of Amity's crush on Luz seems to derive from the fact that she's consistently nice even when she doesn't need to be. To further show how much strength is prized the Boiling Isles, there's a creature called Grom who emerges once a year and will make everyone live out their worst nightmare, and thus only the strongest of witches is selected to take on the foe.
• Socially Unacceptable Collection: Invoked and Subverted. While on a heist to retrieve everything that the Emperor's Coven took from Eda's home during their raid, Eda tells Luz to grab a box with her collection of her longest toenail clippings, grossing out her ward. Upon opening the box, it's revealed to actually contain Palistrom wood and Eda had intentionally mislabeled it.
• The Sociopath:
  • Boscha is essentially Amity Blight without her redeeming qualities and Character Development. A more low-functioning example of one, Boscha loves bullying other students out of the belief that they were weaker and is the one largely responsible for Amity becoming a bully in the first place. In "Wing It Like Witches," Boscha harasses Willow due to her becoming popular at Hexside and wants to use her as target practice if she won a grudgby game against her. When Luz forfeits the game on her behalf, Boscha happily tries to use her as target practice uncaring that she could seriously hurt or kill Luz.
  • Amity's parents are extremely controlling of their children and make it apparent they care more about their social status. They were the reason Amity ended her friendship with Willow; they blackmailed their own daughter with the threat of making Willow's chances to attend Hexside miserable. They also forced Amity to become friends with the aforementioned Boscha, feeling she would be more impressionable. This is actually turned on its head in season 2: Odalia is actually the more manipulative and sociopathic one whereas Alador is more laidback and somewhat detached.
  • Emperor Belos, the absolute ruler of the Boiling Isles, arrived fifty years ago claiming to be able to speak to the Titan serving as the main setting. He claimed that the witches were performing magic incorrectly and established the coven system as a means of controlling the populace. Those wild witches who refused to conform were sentenced to petrification, an irreversible fate. He later has Lilith Clawthorne work for him under the promise that he would heal the curse that she put on Eda, but reveals later on that not only was he not going to cure Eda, but he was going to have her publicly petrified to serve as an example of what happens to those who go against him. Then it turns out that he's a Witch Hunter who orchestrated his rise to power for the sole purpose of wiping out everyone in the Boiling Isles.
• Spiritual Successor: The strict separation of different forms of magic, and the heroes rebelling for their right to do as many as they want, is quite reminiscent of Divergent, with the bonus of the nature of the separation making a lot more sense.
• Spoiler Opening: Averted. Until Willow switches to the Plant Magic track at the end of Episode 3, both the opening and closing sequences show the character in their original outfit instead.
  • Similarly, it's not until "Hunting Palismen" that the intro shows Eda's season 2 outfit, King having both horns, and Amity's new haircut.
• Stalker Shot:
  • In Season 1 "Hooty's Moving Hassle", after Luz, Willow, and Gus accidentally brings the Owl House to life during the Moonlight Conjuring, they decide to take the house out on a joyride. As they control the Owl House, they walk past a demon hunter who appears in the foreground and decides to pursue it with his group.
  • In Season 1 "Lost in Language", after Amity gets the librarian to kick Luz, Edric, and Emira out of the library for causing a ruckus, Edric and Emira invite Luz to come back to the library with them at midnight because they "forgot to check-out" a certain book and to see the effects of the Wailing Star on the library. After Edric and Emira leave, Luz is the last to leave and as she runs off, Amity is revealed to be hiding in the back and gets angry when she hears what they're going to do.
• Stumbled Into the Plot: This is explicitly the case with Luz. She's not the Chosen One and everything that's happened to her is due either to dumb luck or her own hard work.
• Summon Magic: Abomination Magic at its most basic tier is the ability to summon a giant Blob Monster to fight for you, the draw back though is they are pretty slow and stupid, but are more or less indestructible. Later in the series though we see through the abilities of higher tier witches that Abomination Magic is actually quite versatile, with witches like Darius the Coven Leader and Amity Blight both using the goo like substance the abominations are made from to do incredible things.
• Super Cell Reception: Subverted. While Luz is able to send and receive messages from her mother while in the Boiling Isles, it's only because Eda's portal door opens up earthside within walking distance of her house to give her constant access to cell signal and wi-fi. She ends up having to destroy the portal in the season one finale, and the following season's premier show that all her attempts to send messages to her mother fail to get through.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Eda has them, fitting for a witch. Amity, Edric and Emira also possess these having inherited them from their father, Alador.
• Supernatural Phone: Witches are able to summon scrolls which act as magic smartphones, using them to connect to social networks like Penstagram. They're also capable of making actual phone calls through crow phones that can physically fly to the receiver.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: The second half of the series sets up two big threats in Emperor Belos and The Collector. Belos is an Omnicidal Maniac who only cares about being "the hero of his own delusion." While The Collector caused a lot of damage, both alongside and separate from Belos, they're ultimately a child yet to gain a full grasp on death and morality, making a Heel–Face Turn given the opportunity.
• Sympathy for the Devil:
  • In "Wing It Like Witches", Eda wins her grudgby bet with Lilith, then when the latter responds to her victory with terror at the thought of the consequences of returning to the Emperor empty-handed yet again, Eda feels bad enough to give Lilith her ring. Willow also shows signs of this when Boscha's team ask Willow if she wants to join them due to her skill, and Willow glances and notices Boscha's expression of terror before politely turning down the offer.
  • In "Eclipse Lake", Eda briefly expresses pity when observing Kikimora's Sanity Slippage of paranoia. Amity empathizes with Hunter when she realizes how similar their situations with Abusive Parents are, and even King feels bad for Hunter when watching him dig his own grave in manic despair.

T-Y

• Take a Third Option:
  • Luz does this by studying all the tracks at Hexside, rather than selecting one or even two like the other students.
  • In "Understanding Willow," Gus is trying to decide whether to interview Eda or King. After they do their best to impress him, he chooses Hooty (though he quickly regrets it).
• Taken for Granite: It's said that the one magic that can't be blocked, reversed, or undone in the Boiling Isles is petrification magic. This is what Emperor Belos intends to do with Eda to Make an Example of Them in the Season 1 finale. He almost succeeds, but triggering Lilith's Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal allows Eda to escape with some help from Luz and her friends.
• Take That!:
  • "Sense and Insensitivity" takes a number of meta shots at some of the more toxic aspects of artistic jobs; including fans who trash sequels that don't live up to their expectations and publishers who rely on "crunch time" to create content while ignoring or actively endangering the wellbeing of the artists.
  • "Wing It Like Witches" sees Luz partaking in a sport reminiscent of Quidditch. She and her friends work hard to defeat the school bully team and come out on top — only to lose anyway because the opponents caught the "Rusty Smidge," which is an automatic win.
    Luz: That just invalidates all our efforts! If catching that thing is so important, why do anything else?! There's no reason to watch any of the other players! THAT'S SUCH A STUPID RULE!
  • The "Choosy Hat", a parody of the Sorting Hat (also from Harry Potter), is depicted as a monster that pretended to sort the students but instead tried to feed off of them. This is likely meant as a critique against how the sorting system in Harry Potter is intensely flawed (namely, relying on assigning arbitrary traits — heroic for Gryffindor, smart for Ravenclaw and racist for Slytherin, while Hufflepuff acts as a "throwaway" house for the students who don't fit anywhere else — to eleven year old children) by presenting the very idea as ridiculous overall.
• Tears of Blood: At the end of the season, Eda's eyes welling up with darkness as she succumbs to her curse, saving Luz, look very well like a tearful goodbye.
• Teens Are Monsters: The teens featured in "Once Upon A Swap" are extremely cruel.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In "Wing It Like Witches", Luz does not think that Boscha might escalate her pranks on Willow.
    Luz: It's not like she can follow us around all day, right?
    (Gilligan Cut to Luz, Willow and Gus covered in graffiti and garbage)
    Luz: She followed us around all day. She literally followed us around all day.
  • Luz does it again in "Escaping Expulsion", when being tossed around by the Blight Industries Abomi-ton 2.0.
    Luz: At least it can't get me up here...
    (The Abomi-ton extends its legs to reach the rafters Luz is hiding in)
    Luz: Luz, you fool!
  • Hunter basically spends the first half of "Hollow Mind" claiming the emperor is a great man and trying to explain how all of his horrific deeds were actually for a good reason. The episode then goes on to show just how awful Belos is as a person, culminating in Hunter having a panic attack and running away.
• Thanking the Viewer:
  • For the first two seasons, the first letter of each episode formed a secret message. For season three, since it was shortened to three specials, the first word of each episode spells out "Thanks for Watching".
  • The final scene of "Watching and Dreaming" has the characters shouting "Bye" to the viewer. In-Universe they're saying it to the Collector, who's doing a show as he passes by for Luz's birthday party, but since they're facing the audience it's clear what the goal is.
• The Theocracy: Downplayed. Emperor Belos justifies his claim to the throne by claiming it to be the will of the Titan. He also claims that many of his more controversial politics, such as the execution of Eda and his ruthless enforcement of the Coven system, are commanded by the Titan. However, religion doesn't appear to be a major factor in Boiling Isles politics beyond Belos. Belos' claim of wielding the Titan's magic is technically true, but only because he stole it, and he can't actually speak to the Titan, who in truth hates Belos and aids the heroes in overthrowing him
• There Are No Therapists: It's canon that Luz has ADHD, implied that she suffers from a social anxiety disorder and struggles with her mental health in general, all of which greatly impact her life. There is also no indication that anyone in her life ever thought she would benefit from professional help. Not when her father dies. Not when she has well documented difficulties socializing. Not when her behavior becomes increasingly disruptive and dangerous to herself and those around her. Nothing. When it is decided that something needs to be done, the only solution anyone has is to send her away to camp hoping it will "fix" her rather than try to diagnose and treat her obvious mental health issues.
• Token Human: Luz. While everyone seems to have heard of humans, most of the characters have never seen one and various benign urban legends exist about them.
• Trapped in Another World: Subverted. Luz helps Eda for a few hours in exchange for being sent home, but when the time comes, she decides to stay in the Boiling Isles instead of going to summer camp and asks to become Eda's apprentice.
  • Played straight in the season 1 finale when Luz is forced to destroy the portal to prevent Emperor Belos from using it, trapping Luz in the Boiling Isles indefinitely. Though she resolves to find another way home someday, Luz says "I'm sorry, Mom" before destroying the portal, confirming that Luz knows she's destroying her only way back for a long time.
  • The season 2 finale reverses this by having Willow, Gus, Amity, and Hunter getting trapped in the Human Realm alongside Luz after they escape from the Collector through the rebuilt portal, which was then destroyed again.
  • It's also Subverted with Philip Wittebane, the human who visited the Boiling Isles before Luz and who apparently invented the portal door. When Luz manages to meet him through through a Time Pool to travel to the 'Deadwardian Era' he explored the isles in, it's apparent that he somehow lost the portal door, which a young Eda would later literally trip over by complete accident centuries later, but he also isn't actively seeking to go back to Earth either, willingly staying in the Boiling Isles in order to seek out 'the Collector' for some mysterious goal separate from building another portal door. It is later revealed that Philip would eventually adopt the identity of 'Emperor Belos', having extended his lifespan through absorbing Palisman essence to live to the modern day in order to enact his plans of killing every witch and demon on the Boiling Isles during the Day of Unity. It's implied that Belos' attempts to have his coven capture the wild Witch Eda was from her utilisation of the portal door, so that Philip could secure his exit from the realm immediately once he'd activated the Draining Spell at the appointed time, but since the spell required a specific situation that was several months away, he wasn't pushing hard to reclaim the portal door until they got closer to the due day.
• Transformation Discretion Shot:
  • When Lilith succumbs to the curse and transforms into the Raven Beast for the first time, we see the beginnings of the transformation with Lilith's eyes turning black and her teeth sharpening, but then it cuts to King and Hooty looking on horrified as the Raven Beast's shadow is cast over them.
  • While trapped within a force field, Luz convinces Gus to switch her and Hunter's appearances so she'll be captured in Hunter's stead. However, the moment the illusion is actually cast, the camera cuts to the force field shattering, concealing the fact that Hunter and Luz have swapped places from the audience. Somehow, it also works in-universe and Hunter doesn't notice what's happened until Luz is gone.
  • Played for Laughs when Hooty 'transforms' into Porta-Hooty; we see Hooty darting offscreen, then we cut to the bewildered reactions of the onlookers, and then we cut to the finished transformation... and then we cut to the onlookers, who are shellshocked, crying, or just trying not to puke.
  • During Hunter's Transformation of the Possessed only his silhouette is seen as his eyes glow blue and antlers burst out of his skull. Luz then becomes distracted for a moment and when she turns around, Hunter's hair is grown out and Belos's rot has now grown over his face and neck, with his arms having turned into grotesque, slimy appendages.
• Transforming Conforming: The curse affects Eda physically even when she is in her original form. Her hair turned gray earlier, she gained a taste for brilliant objects and sleeps in a nest. Additionally the curse has the collateral effect of making parts of her body detachable, but Eda finds that very useful. When Lilith shares the curse with her sister, her hair gets a gray streak, and she is horrified when her hand gets loose.
• Trickster Twins: Edric and Emira Blight are on the playful, prankster-ish side of this trope. They're quick-thinking, talented teen illusionists with a passion for practical jokes. However, they do care for Amity, expressing remorse when a prank went too far and acting protectively of her at times.
• Tuckerization: Luz was named after Dana Terrace's roommate.
• Twice Shy: By the second season, both Amity and Luz have feelings for each other but the two girls are too awkward to act out on it, until Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door where Luz finally asks Amity out.
• Unexpected Kindness: Amity is constantly confused by Luz's attempts to befriend her in "Lost in Language" since all of their previous interactions resulted in Amity either getting in trouble or being publicly humiliated (mostly due to her own antagonistic actions rather than any malice on Luz's part). This confusion is further reinforced when she comes across Luz apparently stealing her diary.
  Amity: First you embarrass me. Then you wanna be my friend? I don't get you. Pick a side.
• Unequal Rites:
  • Emperor Belos hates Wild Magic, and enforces the rigid coven system, because he needs every witch branded with a sigil before the Day of Unity so he can kill them in one felt swoop.
  • "Through The Looking Glass Ruins" reveals that some witches look down on Illusion magic as weak and useless because it has no physical effects.
• The Unsolved Mystery: Due to Executive Meddling, some arcs are either glossed over or just straight-up abandoned, leaving a few unanswered questions the series creates.
  • Who made Eda's portal door? Belos/Philip had no way of making one himself and he only ordered Eda's capture in the first season so that he could procure it, so he clearly wasn't the one who made it. On that note, how did it wind up where Eda found it in the first place? Is there a specific reason the door manifests at the abandoned house at Gravesfield?
  • Was the Collector the one who turned the Owl Beast into the curse, or was it one of his Archivist siblings? How did it wind up abandoned, later to be found by the Night Market merchant?
  • Who was the Bat Queen's original owner? What happened to them?
  • How was Jacob Hopkins able to obtain a training wand during his investigation into witches?
• Uptight Loves Wild: The academic and dedicated student Amity is falling in love with the rebellious and free-spirited Luz.
• Vancian Magic: Glyphs act as a variation of typical Vancian Magic. Each glyph has a specific effect or purpose, needs to be memorized and drawn in advance, and can stay "dormant" until activated.
• Varying Competency Alibi:
  • Inverted. In Season 1 "I Was a Teenage Abomination", Willow cheats on her Abominations 101 homework by having Luz pretend to be an Abomination in front of the teacher. However, Amity quickly realizes something isn't right when Willow is given her top student badge, as she knows the other witch is extremely unskilled in Abominations and couldn't possibly have made something that good only hours after Amity saw the pile of goo that was her real homework.
  • Implied. In Season 2 "Hollow Mind", Luz and Hunter view Belos' memories and witness the atrocities he's committed. In denial, Hunter tries to justify it, but his logic gets increasingly thin, with him trying to explain Belos' blatant attempt at murdering several witches as being merely him trying to perfect sigil magic. However, it's clear they both know that there is no way someone as smart as Belos would make such a mistake if murder wasn't the goal.
• Villainous Breakdown: Belos figuratively and literally comes undone in the last four episodes, starting when Luz, King, and the Collector derail the Evil Plan he spent centuries concocting and the Collector smashes him into necrotic ooze for breaking his promise(s). He goes on to possess various wildlife, then Hunter, then Raine, and finally the Titan itself in a last-ditch effort to finish what he started, while at the same time struggling to survive in his weakened state and being haunted by ghosts/visions of his brother Caleb and the previous Grimwalkers. It all culminates in his Undignified Death at the hands of Luz, Eda, King, and Raine.
• Villainous Rescue:
  • Terra saves Luz and Amity from Kikimora's hand dragon, but only because the emperor has some plans for Luz, which require her to be alive and well.
  • Upon being freed by King, the Collector saves the Hexsquad from a raging Belos, whom he splatters as payback for betraying him. However, this enables him to make the Boiling Isles into his personal playground and capture King, who is bound by his word be the Collector's playmate.
• Void Between the Worlds: In "Yesterday's Lie, Luz's Flawed Prototype portal door drops her off in a rift between realms, where cubes float out of two pools, whichever one counts as the "ceiling" vs. the floor being determined by how close you are to said pool, which can be used to spy on either realm through mirrors.
• "Wanted!" Poster: Posters for Eda are everywhere. She even has one proudly displayed on her living room wall.
• Wants Versus Needs: A recurring theme among the main characters.
  • Luz aspires to be a stunning admirable witch like the hero of her favorite book The Good Witch Azura, but she finds that her apprenticeship under the eccentric witch Eda doesn't resemble the elegant fantasy life she seeks. Many times her expectations of how to learn magic are turned on their head, such as when she dismisses Eda's garbage-diving as humiliating but the "trash" she finds turns out to be a source of hidden magic. Eventually, it becomes evident that Eda and King needed her more than she needed them, teaching Eda how to perform glyph magic when her own magic fails and becoming a protective sister to King.
  • Amity Blight is introduced as an Alpha Bitch bully who wants to be the top of her class, graduate into the prestigious Emperor's Coven, and initially disliked Luz for inadvertently throwing wrenches into her plans. As time passes, she admits the amount of stress it puts on her and how miserable she is from emotionally isolating herself because of her self-destructive behavior. Though this becomes downplayed upon realizing that her Go-Getter Girl goals were what her mother wanted, not her and after being honest with herself Amity becomes more comfortable with not being the top student, realizes the Emperor's Coven isn't as great as it seemed, begins to make her own decisions, starts mending and establishing old and new friendships respectively and even develops a budding love for Luz.
  • Eda is proud of being the most powerful witch of the Boiling Isles, but she's hampered by a terrible curse that hinders her magic and threatens to turn her into a monster. She initially wants to be free of the curse especially after it strengthens to take all her magic permanently. Eventually she decides to call a truce with the wild owl beast who feels just as trapped in her body, and the two merge into a powerful new Harpy form. While she doesn't do a very good job at teaching Luz how to perform magic, she ends up developing a maternal side she didn't know she had, Luz's presence in her life giving her a reason to live outside of the aimless rebelliousness she had cultivated in her teen years.
  • King believes himself to be a "King of Demons" who deserves worship, and boasts of his goals to assemble a mighty army of demons and conquer the Boiling Isles. It later turns out that he is not a demon, but a Titan, an extinct species who are worshipped as gods on the Isles. However, King finds he actually doesn't like receiving praise without companionship, and admits he'd rather just have a family instead of being the lonely Last of His Kind.
  • Lilith, the head of the Emperor's Coven, is insistent on getting her sister Eda registered into the Coven and having her curse healed. Gradually it becomes clear that this is Lilith's way of trying to cover up her mistake without actually being making herself accountable for it, her mistake being cursing Eda in the first place. Once Lilith realizes the Coven will never help Eda, she owns up to her transgression and shares the curse with Eda, relieving her sister of the worst effects while robbing Lilith of her own magic.
  • Hunter is the Golden Guard and only wants to please the emperor, his manipulative and abusive uncle, resulting in him having a screwed up belief that he needs to be useful to be loved. In "Eclipse Lake", he tries to find Titan blood for Belos and attacks Amity for the portal key while rejecting her attempt at encouraging him to find someone who won't make him feel worthless. He starts doing better emotionally when he runs away from Belos and joins up with Willow and Gus, gaining the unconditional support he needs rather than the fake love he was taught to want from his creator.
• Weakened by the Light: Justified as the big black eyes are likely mostly pupils, causing light sensitivity. King claims that demons with large black eyes tend to be sensitive to bright light — this is useful for stunning or K.O.ing Eda's Owl Beast form when she transforms.
• Weird World, Weird Food: The Boiling Isles is an archipelago made on a dead titan's skeleton and populated mostly by magical creatures as a result. Beings native to the Boiling Isles eat such things as "fairy pies" (pies made of fairies), and consume "apple blood" as a recreational beverage. In an aversion of No Biochemical Barriers, Luz, being human, cannot digest most of the foods native to the Boiling Isles.
• We Used to Be Friends: "Hooty's Moving Hassle" reveals that Willow and Amity were friends when they were younger, but when Amity started developing greater magical ability, they stopped hanging out. "Understanding Willow" expands on this in that it was Amity's parents blackmailing Amity to end her friendship with Willow under the pretext that they'll prevent Willow from entering Hexside. After the events of "Understanding Willow", they may be on their way to slowly rekindling their friendship thanks to Luz.
• Wham Line:
  • "THEN WHY WERE YOU SO EASY TO CURSE?!" Said by Lilith to Eda in the episode "Agony of a Witch" during a battle when the former accidentally confesses to cursing the latter when they were younger.
  • "Hollow Mind" has several:
    • "Please, do me a kindness and call me by my real name." Said by Belos to Luz while revealing he is actually Philip Wittebane.
    • "But no-one ever said being a witch hunter was easy." Philip/Belos reveals his plan to to kill all magicals on the Boiling Isles.
• Where the Magic Went: In the first episode, it's established by Eda that many of the Human World's stories of monsters and magic stemmed from inhabitants of the Boiling Isles making their way from one world to the other.
• Witch Classic: Downplayed. Eda looks to have the traditional outfit, personality, residence, pet, and even age associated with the trope. However, not only is her clothing is more modern in its style, with her foregoing a pointy hat, but her elderly appearance is the result of a curse, as her older sister looks like she's in her 30s.
• Wizarding School: The Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, where Luz makes a couple friends and one rival. She initially sneaks in by posing as her friend's magically created Abomination and ends up getting banned from the premises, but she is eventually allowed to enroll. There are two more schools that are rivals to Hexside — Glandis High and St. Epiderm.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Some residents of the Boiling Isles have brightly colored hair not naturally seen in humans. Amity stands out in this regard, as she clearly dyes her hair green to look like her older siblings (who both have naturally green hair) since her brown roots are visible and later dyes her hair purple to rebel against her controlling mother.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Eda, and by extension the rest of the Boiling Isles, doesn't have much concept of what humans do and don't find valuable. For example, she thinks a pair of glasses with fake eyes on the end of springs are worth more than a golden chalice, smartphone, and diamond ring.
• Wowing Cthulhu: The Grand Finale has Luz going to the Afterlife Antechamber and meeting the Titan, whose corpse makes up the Boiling Isles and spawned all life living on it, leading its inhabitants to worship him as a god. He specifically asks her to say hello to Eda, and that he's a big fan of hers. (Though that may be because she adopted and raised his son.)
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In "Separate Tides", when Luz tells Eda how she considers it her fault Eda lost her powers and is left struggling to make money, Eda proceeds to retort with all the good things Luz has done since she came to the Boiling Isles.
  Eda: You think throwing your life away is gonna help me?! Well, it won't! You helped me find King's crown when you barely knew me, you saved me from turning to stone, and... you even got me talking to my sister again. So, unfortunately for you... my life is pretty great because I'm friends with Luz the Human.
• You Have Failed Me: Kikimora did not take Raine's betrayal of Belos that well, and puts them into a Forced Sleep as punishment until the Day of Unity.
• Your Mom: When King made an attempt at communicating through dance (the main mode of communication of Bug-type demons on the Boiling Islands), he accidentally said something offensive about Hooty's mother and provoked an attack by the same.

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TWO WITCHES TORN APART, NOW ALONE;
TWO HEARTS OF STONE.
A CURSE OF FEATHERS AND MUD;
A BETRAYAL OF BLOOD.

SEETHING SEAS AND PUPPET STRINGS,
HE NO LONGER DREAMS OF KINGS;
AS ABOVE RUSH DARKENED SKIES,
AS BELOW HIS FATHER LIES.

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