Family in 'The Owl House'

The Owl House does a lot of things well. One of those things is the diversity present in its various family dynamics. So let’s talk about that. [intro] I don’t think I’m saying anything too wild when I say that family is pretty central to The Owl House’s story. It a constant running theme, and the beauty of how they handle it is in the vast array of family dynamics on display, both good and bad. If we look even just at the original Hexside trio of Luz, Gus, and Willow we find a blend of diffe

rent family structures. Luz is from a single-parent household where the parent is a mom and the dad has passed away. She is also currently not living with her mom but rather a… Calling Eda a foster mother seems a little generous all things considered? But that’s the closest analogy I can come to. Luz has found herself separated from her mom due to unforeseen circumstances and is therefore living with someone else. So, fostering seems like a close enough analogy. Still in a single-parent househ

old, though. Luz also ends up with an adopted sister by the end of the show, Vee, who was adopted later in life. Something which is unfortunately uncommon. Gus is also from a single-parent household but unlike with Luz, his parent is a dad. Which is notable because, of course, the stereotype when it comes to black single-parent households is that of absentee fathers. Gus’ other parent, whoever they might have been, is never even mentioned so we don’t know if something happened or if Perry just

wanted to have a kid on his own. Whatever the situation is, they’ve made it work for them. And Willow, of course, has two dads. It’s unknown how they had her, be that adoption, a surrogate, magic, or maybe one of them is trans. At the end of the day that doesn’t really matter. Willow has two dads and we love them. If you were paying attention you’ve probably noticed that none of the main trio come from a traditional nuclear family. And, yeah. Get used to that, because the majority of families

in this show aren’t the traditional nuclear family. It’s a small detail, but it’s one I appreciate because it reflects reality a lot better than if every single one of our characters had a mom, a dad, and a white picket fence. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and showing that, especially on a kid’s TV show, is something I deeply appreciate. But what I appreciate possibly even more is that the Owl House shows examples of parents and parental figures unmistakably fucking up, and even when

the adults don’t acknowledge it, the show does. Even within the quote-unquote ‘good’ families on the show, things aren’t perfect and even adults make mistakes. And there’s levels to it. It’s very much a case of no parent or guardian is perfect, but there’s a definite point of no return where things are no longer okay. So I figured we might take a walk down the Owl House’s parental missteps road, starting with honest mistakes and descending into ‘these are no longer mistakes, this is just abuse’

territory. Obviously we’ll be looking at how the show handles these situations as we go, because I maintain it does so marvellously. For this conversation I’m specifically pulling in what I consider the central four families of the show. Those being the Clawthornes, the Wittebanes, the Nocedas, and the Blights. Top of this list is Camila Noceda. Camila is a genuinely good person and a good mother, but she still makes mistakes. Hell, her biggest mistake as a parent is quite literally the incitin

g incident. Camila is a mom, yes, but she’s also human. She’s a single mother of a young teenager and a widow. She has her own traumas from being bullied as a child and while she loves Luz’s passion and her imagination, she sees her own daughter struggling with the same things she did when she was young and she panics. So, when Luz’s headmaster suggests Camila send her to a reality check camp over summer, she accepts even though she doesn’t want to. Which leads to Luz running away to the Demon

Realm and sets everything in motion. Of course Camila doesn’t even realise her daughter is missing for a long time because of Vee, a runaway Basilisk from the Demon Realm. Basilisks being shape shifters, Vee spotted Luz and took her form to blend in in the Human Realm, only to run into Camila and get kind of half-accidentally dragged into the charade of being Luz. And this, I think, is where Camila’s true character as a parent shines the clearest. Because when she finds out about Vee, about th

is literal Demon from another world who’s been living in her house pretending to be her daughter? She’s freaked out, of course, but she also recognises the fact that Vee is a child, around the same age as Luz. That she’s an abuse victim hiding from her abusers in the best way she could think to do so. She accepts Vee as her own, to the point of actually giving her a home as herself rather than hiding in Luz’s image. In the episode where this is revealed, though, she does make another mistake. Wh

en she begs Luz to stay with her in the human realm once she finds a way back. It was an emotionally fraught time and she was scared out of her mind, so it’s understandable and I don’t fault her for it, but it still hurt Luz. What’s truly important in relation to this, though, is that once Luz does come back and Camila meets some of the friends she made in the Demon Realm as well as Luz’s girlfriend she changes her mind. And when it looks like Luz might be preparing to make a choice that would m

ake her miserable in the long run Camila steps up and supports her in continuing her studies in magic and spending time on the Boiling Isles. And of course we can’t talk about Camila Noceda without mentioning when Luz and her friends get catapulted out of the Demon Realm and stuck in the Human Realm. Luz, of course, immediately goes home. She goes home with a troupe of three Witches and a Grimwalker. Kids around her age, who have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Who are in an entirely new wo

rld with unfamiliar rules and customs. And Camila? Who, I remind you, is a single mother? She takes them all in. She essentially becomes a single mother of six over night. She finds space for all of them in her home, with the girls bunking in Luz’s room and the boys taking the basement. She scrapes together her finances to support them, she tries to accommodate their needs even when she doesn’t understand them. - Do you think this food is okay? Ah, I wish I knew how to make Demon food for your f

riends. Would they, um, prefer to drink blood? - Mom! - Camila Noceda is a wonderful mother, but that doesn’t stop her from being human. She makes mistakes, but she cares, and she owns up to them, and that makes all the difference. Next on the list is the Clawthornes, and here we actually have a couple generations to go through. I’m gonna start with Eda, though, because who doesn’t love Mama Eda, right? Edalyn Clawthorne did not start the series as a good mother. I’d argue she wasn’t even reall

y a mom when the show started. Sure, she’d raised King since he was a baby, but when we first met them she really didn’t treat him like her child. I’m not saying she didn’t love him, obviously she did, but she wasn’t his mom. She called him her roommate when introducing him to Luz, she antagonised and teased him in a way that’s much more reminiscent of friends than parent and child, and oh yeah he technically worked for her. But at the same time she’s also not completely not his mom. Even in the

early days King knows to go to her for help when he’s in over his head. She takes him to the playground and, again, she does care for him. But it’s only when Luz comes into their lives and makes her re-think things that she actually, truly becomes a mom. Which is perfectly illustrated in how it’s only once Eda really becomes his mom that King takes her surname. And we can’t talk about Eda and King without mentioning Eda’s biggest mistake. And I’m not talking about not telling him about her curs

e. I covered that in my last video. No, I’m talking about how Eda let King believe he was the King of Demons his entire life. She told him tales about what a king does as a child after seeing him stack things into little figurines and King grabbed onto the idea that he’d once been a fierce tyrant who was then drained of his power. And Eda went along with it, because it made him happy. But it went on for too long to the point where King actually believed it and formed a big part of his identity a

round being the King of Demons. So of course when he learns the truth his entire reality shatters and he has a massive existential crisis at eight years old. Of course, Eda didn’t tell him about being a king out of any sense of malice. She did the wrong thing for the right reasons. She found something that made her kid happy, and she didn’t want to take away that happiness. In the episode where King discovers where he came from she apologises and owns up to her mistakes, which at the end of the

day is, again, the most important thing you can do as a parent when you’ve messed up. Really it’s important in general, but especially parents need to learn that apologising to your children is not just a good thing to do it is absolutely vital. Respecting your children as human beings shouldn’t be some kind of radical new idea, it should be common sense. Eda also shows genuine worry for both Luz and King as we approach the Day of Unity, which is… essentially the end of the world. It’s one of th

e few times I’ve seen a mentor in this kind of media voice how the main characters are just kids who shouldn’t have to deal with this. She even tries to send them away, which obviously doesn’t work because Luz is stubborn like that, but I appreciate the thought. And then, when it becomes obvious that Luz isn’t leaving, Eda hands her a mission as far away from the actual event as possible. Breaking Amity out of being grounded. Of course that doesn’t end up working, either, but she tried, is my

point. That’s all we can really ask of our parents at the end of the day. Before we segue into the Blights, I will briefly talk about Eda’s parents. Well, I’m gonna talk about Dell, since I have two whole other videos were I talk about Gwen and her mistakes and how she owns up to and fixes them. But Dell I’ve only talked about from a disability perspective, so let’s talk about him as a father. We don’t see a lot of him, but from the glimpses we get, we can tell he’s a gentle, understanding man

who loves his daughters dearly. But I do think he made a mistake in how he handled his relationship with Eda after the Owl Beast injured him. He tried to give her space and let her come to him in her own time. On its face this really isn’t a bad thing. It can absolutely be the right thing to do. With Eda, though? That’s not what she needed. She needed to know he didn’t blame her and that even though he doesn’t think there’s anything to forgive, he’ll still forgive her if that’s what she needs f

rom him. In his effort to give her the space he thought she needed, their relationship didn’t get repaired for… what, thirty years? It’s only when he and Gwen work together to practically force Eda to sit down and have a conversation with him that she can get the closure she needs. Granted, it’s not entirely his fault it took this long. Gwen certainly wasn’t helping things when it came to Eda distancing herself from her parents. But still, despite the good intentions, this was a misstep and whil

e they didn’t directly address it, it was great to see Eda finally receive that closure and the permission to forgive herself. Okay now we can talk about the Blights. Starting with Alador because he’s objectively the superior parent. Which is not saying he didn’t mess up, because he did, majorly, but when compared to Odalia? Night and day, honestly. When we’re first introduced to Alador, it’s in Willow’s memory where his shadow is standing shoulder to shoulder with Odalia, telling Amity she can

no longer be friends with Willow because Willow’s magic is too weak for the standards of a Blight. Suffice it to say no one liked the Blight parents for the entirety of season one, and for good reason. But then we reach season two and we actually meet Alador in person and he’s not the super posh, stuck-up man we were expecting. He’s an abomination-stained, tired-looking man wandering through life seemingly on auto-pilot. He looks dead inside and throughout the episode we see time and again m

oments where he’s off in his own world, Odalia prompts him, and he falls back into the same pattern we saw from him in Willow’s memory. This tiny clip alone, I think, went a long way towards re-contextualising how the fandom viewed the Blights, especially Alador’s relationship with his wife. - Your human language is hard to understand, but I think I see your point. [squelch of crushed butterfly] - If you’re interested in talking things through… - And then, of course, at the end of the episode, A

lador finally snaps out of the familiar pattern when Odalia is about to break her word to Amity. That, apparently, is a bridge too far for him. It makes me think that Alador is most likely the Blight by birth, while Odalia married into the family, because that reaction seemed personal. Also makes me wonder if perhaps the beginning of their relationship was something similar to what he did to Amity when she was young. His parents pressuring him to be with someone who would be good for the family,

instead of someone he actually liked. But that’s getting into the realm of headcanon. Focusing back on canon itself, Alador is far, far from perfect, but he takes steps towards okay in the episode Reaching Out. Though at first he messes up by forbidding Amity from participating in the Bonesborough Brawl- Something she wanted to do specifically because he’d done it when he was her age and she hoped if she won it too they’d have something to bond over- And setting an abomaton to follow her aroun

d to make sure she doesn’t sneak out anyway. By the end of the episode he’s taken steps towards repairing his relationship with her. He’s listened to her, learned who she’s dating, that her plans for the future have changed, and even clocks why she’s recently changed her hair colour to purple. They’re still not okay and he has a lot to make up for both with Amity and the twins, but it’s a start. And, as we learn in Clouds on the Horizon, his plan was always to spend more time with his kids after

the Day of Unity. Of course, that wasn’t gonna happen, because the Day of Unity is the end of the world, but he didn’t know that. In this episode we also learn that Odalia has a much tighter hold on Alador than we previously thought. She essentially threatens him with the well being of their children and treats him more like an employee than her supposed life partner. It’s in this episode that we learn that everything Alador has done has been his own misguided attempt at keeping his kids safe.

It doesn’t excuse his past actions, but it goes a good way towards explaining them. Frankly he should have divorced Odalia ages ago, but abusive relationship aren’t things that you can just… walk away from, necessarily. Especially when your abusive partner is the CEO of the company you work for. It’s when Odalia admits she knew Belos was going to pull something ruinous on the Day of Unity that Alador finally gets the shock his system needs to bring everything crashing down. Their business and th

eir relationship in one fell swoop. The start of their divorce frankly sounds more like a firing than anything else, and it goes a long way towards illustrating how messed up their relationship really was behind the scenes. I think we all knew it wasn’t good before this, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be this bad? - And you won’t be getting your severance package! - Oh Titan, that was terrifying. - So let’s move on to the significantly worse half of this wannabe power couple. Well,

she wanted them to be. I don’t think Alador ever really cared about that. Odalia Blight, and I’m gonna have to call her Blight because we don’t know her maiden name, is a terrible person. Not just for how she treated her husband, but also how she treated her children. Especially Amity. We see hints of the twins being scared of her here and there, but because Amity is a much more central character we know more about her relationship with her parents. Starting with how Odalia made her dye her ha

ir green. Because Odalia herself has naturally green hair, as do the twins, while Amity inherited Alador’s brown. In fact, Amity looks quite a lot like her father in her colouring, though she inherited more of her mother’s facial features. So Odalia made her dye her hair green. She also made Amity wear a pendant that allowed her to beam her thoughts directly into her daughter’s brain. Allowing her to verbally abuse her child at any time without anyone being the wiser. It is messed up, to say t

he least. Odalia is the kind of mother who expects perfection from her children, exemplified also in Edric and Emira’s constant use of illusion charms to keep their appearances refined. She seeks to control who Amity socialises with, what she does, and where her future is going. She’s mapped out her idea for the perfect child who would reflect well on her, and does everything in her power, up to and including nearly killing Luz that one time, to make sure it happens. The last time we see her on

the show, she’s glowering at Alador and Amity as they joyfully reunite after the end of the world has been successfully averted. She’s not forgiven, nor reached out to. Her children and her ex cut contact with her and we don’t see her in the epilogue. I’m going to chose to believe that without Alador’s talents she disappeared into obscurity. It’s what she deserves. As for Alador in the epilogue… We get a hint of Aladarius which implies Hunter and Amity could become actual step-siblings, which is

a concept that just delights me to no end. But that’s getting just a little ahead of myself. It’s time to talk about the Wittebanes. Well, it’s time to talk about Emperor Belos, aka Philip Wittebane, and Hunter Deamonne. Yes I’m going to stick with that surname for him and no I’m not taking criticism at this time. When we’re first introduces to Hunter, he’s presented to us as the teen prodigy of the Emperor’s Coven. Later, when we’ve actually gotten to know him a bit, we see him claim Belos a

s his uncle but he also tells Luz that Belos ‘found him’. I don’t think anyone was expecting Belos to be a caring or nurturing guardian, and the more we saw of Hunter’s home life, the more that was confirmed for us. He’s severely overworked, stressed, and Belos absolutely is not above both emotional and physical abuse. But that’s not the end of it. Because Hunter is a Grimwalker. What is a Grimwalker, you may ask? Something akin to a clone or a reborn version of a deceased person. It’s in the na

me, Grimwalker. A death thing that walks. The deceased person in question is Caleb Wittebane, Philip’s older brother. The two of them were human orphans in the time of the witch trials in north America. They were, in fact, witch hunters. Until Caleb met a witch named Evelyn. Presumably Evelyn Clawthorne, though that’s never strictly speaking confirmed, just heavily hinted at. Caleb and Evelyn fell in love and Evelyn got pregnant and Philip flipped his shit, to put it lightly. It all culminate

d in Philip murdering his brother and in his messed up feelings of betrayal and guilt and grief he began making Grimwalkers. So… so many Grimwalkers. There is a graveyard of Golden Guards, as each followed their progenitor’s footsteps and ‘betrayed’ Belos in some way. Hunter is a replacement and an effort to forge a version of Caleb that won’t ‘betray’ Belos by siding with the Witches. Of course Hunter knows none of this. He was raised believing himself to be just a powerless Witch. Which is ano

ther layer to add to all this, because beyond the standard emotional, physical, and psychological abuse Belos put him through, he was also raised believing himself to be disabled. When he was actually just an entirely different species. All the hardship he faced for being a powerless Witch, the judgement for being ‘born lesser’, the internalised ableism, and none of it was even applicable to him in the first place. He’s not a disabled Witch, he’s a standard issue Grimwalker. If such a thing ca

n be said to exist, given how rare Grimwalkers are and how hard they are to make, but still. He’s been lied to about the fundamental aspects of his very being from the moment he was born. This is also why I don’t see him gaining some of Flapjack’s powers after Flapjack sacrificed himself as a disability cure, because Hunter isn’t a Witch. He’s also made in part out of the same stuff Palismen are. Palistrom wood was used to make his keratin. That’s responsible for a lot of the minutia of keeping

a body functioning. I know most of us know it for like… hair and nails, but keratin proteins are present in other places in our bodies, too. Our skin and corneas come to mind. But back to the subject at hand. We get to see some moments where Belos is almost gentle with Hunter, telling him fondly of the Human Realm or putting on a mask of concern and comfort after he’s lashed out. It’s a disturbingly realistic portrayal of an abuser even if the situation itself is fantastical to say the least. Th

is hot-cold cycle that repeats itself over and over, giving the victim just enough hope that their abuser will change when they never do. But, of course, Hunter, like all his predecessors, betrays Belos. Unlike all those who came before him, though, Hunter had a support system ready and waiting. He didn’t know it at the time, but he’d managed to make friends outside the Emperor’s Coven who were absolutely willing to go to bat for him, and even found an adult who actually cared for him. Darius De

amonne began his relationship with Hunter as one of misplaced resentment born from grief. Darius’ mentor, someone he was very close to, was the previous Golden Guard. We don’t know what exactly happened to him, but given the givens it’s a fair assumption he began to question things and Belos eliminated him, necessitating Hunter’s creation. So Darius resented this kid who’d stepped into his mentor’s colours, until Hunter did something unexpected. He made friends outside the Coven system. He stood

up for them, protected them even when he thought doing so would bring a severe punishment. And so Darius took Hunter under his wing, and in the end it’s implied very strongly this became a more permanent situation. So Belos got stomped into a pile of goop, and Hunter got an adopted dad who appreciates his passion for the magnificent creature known as a wolf. All is right with the world. The Owl House handles families in a wonderfully nuanced way. Things aren’t ever perfect. No relationship

is. But the difference between one where things are bad but salvageable and one where things are fubar is clear. It’s all about reciprocity. The reason Alador and Gwen could rebuild their relationships with their kids while Odalia and Belos never would? It’s in how Alador and Gwen could sit down and listen and internalise where they’d messed up and strive to be better, something neither Odalia or Belos would ever even dream of doing. And that feel like such a massively important thing to show

case, especially in children’s media. Long story short, the Owl House is a very good show, you should absolutely go watch it if you haven’t. Thanks for watching this video, if you liked it consider liking it and maybe subscribing. I will be back here Thursday after next. Bye. [rustic music]