Lilith returns and helps Luz travel in time only to all but officially confirm what many fans of The Owl House have suspected for quite some time.
Elsewhere and Elsewhen
Lilith is back at The Owl House with her sister, mother, and friends celebrating a new job at the Supernatural Museum of History. Also in attendance? Flora Desplora (yeah, we have questions about that name too), Lilith’s former mentor while she was in the Emperor’s Coven. Not to mention, bad girl historian and celebrity. Enraged by Flora’s comments, Lilith sets out to make the greatest exhibit the museum has ever seen.
With that setup, the episode jumps straight into the action and even skips the title sequence, opting just for a logo with the signature theme.
Luz is listening to the Echo Mouse as it repeats more of the Phllip Wittebane’s journal. We are then introduced to a character called “The Collector” through that but Luz wants answers and just wants to go back in time and talk to Philip herself. The notion prompts Luz’s curiosities to wonder if time magic is a thing, to which we learn that it kind of is.
When Eda and Lillith were younger, they would search for Time Pools which serve as windows into the past that one can jump in but they’re never in the same spot twice. Lilith shares that she had a tool and formula for finding them before but she needed much more power to get it to work. Fortunately, Luz still has some Titan’s blood laying around.
After a quick montage of calculations and a little bit of self doubt, Lilith and Luz discover the Time Pools, sticking their heads into the sand (not water) and getting a peek at different eras. They even see themselves at a certain point where we thought Lilith tripped over a rock, but in time (ha ha) we learn that she tripped over her own skull. We even get glimpses of a stonesleeper from the hectatious period. Eventually, they find the Deduardian Era, Phillip’s time, that they were looking for.
Back at The Owl House, Eda and Lilith’s mom is still around but so is their dad, whom Eda hasn’t seen since she hurt him in her Owl Beast form in her youth. Her dad just wants to see her and talk to her, but Eda, still ashamed, wants to run and hide.
According to Lilith, The Eduaradian era is a time known for savagery, as it was long before wild magic was banished by Emperor Belos. But you’d never guess it. Everyone on the streets was polite, minstrel music was playing, and magic was used to help each other and those in need.
Through the Echo Mouse and what we know of Phllip, it’s fair for Luz to think that everyone in town would know who he was, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. When we first meet him, he is being picked on by two of the townsfolk who are playing with his journal, and it turns out, because he owes them some kind of payment. Before they are about to burn his journal, Luz stops them, but is then told that before she continues to help him, she should ask about what happened to their brother and his palisman.
The spilled journal gives Luz an idea of where in his journey they are, and it seems to be right about where she heard the Echo Mouse earlier in the episode. She also discovers a drawing of Philip alongside another individual and wonders who that is.
Thanks to her knowledge, she offers to help him find the collector and together, Lilith and Luz accompany him on his next travels. They find themselves in a cave where Luz teaches him his last pictoglyph as Phillip explains that it took him years to find each one, almost as though the world were keeping them from him.
SIDEBAR: Remember earlier in the series, Eda explains to Luz that the glyphs will come to you when they’re ready and to just trust the process? Perhaps the world WAS keeping them from him. Food for thought. Back to today’s episode:
Lilith, meanwhile, is awfully suspicious this whole time. Philip apparently realizes this and begins to compliment her, saying that her niece is especially gifted and must take after her aunt. Philip carves out a number of glyphs and connects them saying he knows a few tricks as well, and creates a shortcut to meet the collector.
Eda has the perfect getaway and is ready to leave the Owl House without seeing her dad again, but as she makes it out of the door there he is waiting, saying goodbye to his daughter yet again as she makes her getaway.
This is where the editing of this episode gets fun. We cut back and forth and are skewed from seeing Eda and Lilith’s father for portions, gathering only glimpses that look oddly familiar to a drawing that we had seen earlier in the episode.
Luz and Eda are still with Philip and are now in the sacred ground that is the skull of the Titan, where the collector lies and is just behind a door with a puzzle that he can’t figure out. Luz and Lilith jump at the task, and Philip thanks Luz, suggesting that perhaps they were destined to meet…
Lilith then realizes the puzzle is mostly solved, and that Philip is eerily familiar, with his confidence, his compliments, and saying what people want to hear.
Luz goes to talk to Philip and sees him scribbling in his journal, something about defeating a beast single handedly and being unable to save his companions. Lilith gets the door open, and Luz asks why he brought them there… “I needed a sacrifice.”
Perfect place for a commercial break, right?
Luz and Lilith take on the beast, which is another Stonesleeper like the one they had seen earlier in the time pools, and Philip starts to dig while they have the beast occupied. He is looking for something, and finds a mirrored plate, then says witches are the worst liars before using the same pictoglyphs to get out of the room again. Using Lilith’s knowledge, Luz tames the beast by tickling behind his ears and when Philip is proudly admiring his prize, the pair ride out on the stonesleeper and demand how to know that will help him. Lilith inevitably punches him in the face when he angrily calls her names and she tells him to “stay mad” before they leave.
Back at the Owl House, Eda is talking with her dad, where we learn he was a master carver of palismen, a skill that he lost when she attacked him when she was young. As he is ready to leave, he is giving her a palistrom seed, and has been helping the bat queen replenish her forests so that someone new can learn the trade. We also learn that together, Eda and her father carved Owlbert, Eda’s Palisman.
Okay, let’s break this down. Eda’s dad is missing his left eye, and has a yellow bird palisman on his shoulder. His hair is long and tattered, and there is a totem in his beard that looks like a smaller version of the emperor’s mask, or maybe an owl skull, but most importantly, looks like the sketch in Phillip’s journal. Similar to another sketch we saw back in the episode, “Yesterday’s Lie.”
Remember that Hunter’s adopted palisman is also a bird, missing an eye, that was left in the hands of the Bat Queen that was brought to the adopt-a-palisman day at school. Could these all be connected?
Philip retreats to his cave, angry, calling all witches barbarians before he pulls up his sleeves and something is amuck with his arms, themselves covered in glyphs, as they pulsate and throb similar to the Hulk before he collapses and starts tearing through a pile of broken palismen, finding a whole one and snapping it in half to absorb its power and rejuvenate him. You know… LIKE EMPEROR BELOS DOES!! You see the cut across his nose from Lilith’s punch spread slowly, as though over time it will scar half of his face… you know…. LIKE EMPEROR BELOS. He takes out his new shiny prize and it projects a moon cycle, saying that he just needs to live long enough to “see this through,” and calls the projection “Collector.”
Final thoughts? Bluntly: Yeah this all but confirms Wittebane is the Emperor, but now it seems Eda and Lilith’s dad might have been his friend at one point? And this lunar cycle? Is this all part of the day of unity? Wittebane clearly had a distaste for witches and now it has only been enhanced. BUT! If you watch the episode knowing what happened and rewatch, you can see the journal at the beginning has scribbled out companions with him (Luz and Lilith) and other little bits that they wrote themselves through their time travel, so did Belos know who Lilith was the whole time in the modern day? And is that why he is always referring to being destined to meet Luz now as well?
This episode of The Owl House is now available on the Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW app. You can catch up with earlier episodes and seasons on Disney+.