The highly-anticipated season 3 premiere of The Owl House took place over the weekend and started the conclusion of creator Dana Terrace’s epic story, leaving us wanting more. As a heads up, this post will likely have a spoiler or two, so be sure to watch the episode, which Disney has posted to YouTube themselves and I have conveniently placed for you below.
Thanks to Them
We catch a glimpse of what we saw at the end of season 2, when King blasted Luz and her friends back through the collapsing portal and into the demon realm. It’s essentially a replay of that last 90 seconds when Luz, Amity, Gus, Willow, and Hunter show up at Luz’s human world doorstep. Complete with Amphibia easter egg again.
This time however, we see the scene play out at length, with Luz’s mom, Camila, greeting her daughter and welcoming her friends into their home as though they were her own. We also see the group of kids catch her and V up on their battles with Emperor Belos/Philip Wittebane before they settle in with Gus and Hunter taking up residence in the basement and Luz, Willow, V, and Amity together in Luz’s room. We also see how V has adapted to the human realm and is almost coaching the others through it, but it’s going to take some getting used to. Hunter and Luz also take a moment to discuss their situations, remember that now we know Hunter is a Grimwalker, essentially a clone of a witch hunter, and Luz has tremendous guilt since she basically caused everything with the Emperor to happen in the Boiling Isles since she introduced him (in the distant past thanks to time pools) to the Collector.
What follows is an expanded title card, clocking in at a few minutes in length that shows how much time has passed. Literal months. Hunter’s hair is growing out while he sees Belos in himself, V decides on a human form, Luz comes out as bi and tells her mother that Amity is her girlfriend, there’s multiple portal door building attempts that fail, they basically turned the abandoned house into their own, and Hunter is wearing a Rocko’s Modern Life-style shirt. Rumor has it that all of these were the individual episodes that were cut from this season, which has been reduced to three finale specials, this episode being the first of those three. This is truly unfortunate, should it be true. It would have developed this series into a richer and deeper story than it already is, plus I believe that the coming out episode would have also been a landmark in television history.
After the intro, the bulk of the action begins with the kids finding a hidden object in the abandoned house thanks to Flapjack, Hunter’s palisman. We get to see the strength of their bond throughout the special, especially when compared to the others. The gang uncovers a scroll with a puzzle. Considering Camila and Luz have done so much for them, the group decides to surprise Luz with this find during the town’s Halloween festivities. But first, they need to solve the riddle.
On the way home, Luz and Camila are redirected around a traffic accident where the child in the vehicle was convinced she saw a monster, that it wasn’t just a deer that ran across the road. As we’ve been reminded a few times at this point, the Belos goo that got out of the Boiling Isles aboard Hunter is now loose and trying to possess something in Gravesfield, and clearly is trying to get into a deer or something. Remember the Belos monster also has antlers, so it kind of works. Coincidentally, around the same time, Hunter believes he has an encounter with Belos while alone in the abandoned shack, or did he? When Luz gets home, he takes her inside so as not to spook the others, and tells her what he suspects. Together, they go into the shack to look for Belos, but to no avail. However, as they are leaving, we see Hunter’s silhouette, and it sports those trademark Belos antlers. While this isn’t outright said, this likely happened because Hunter now has an open wound on his finger, thanks to an earlier sewing incident when he was making himself a shirt sporting his new favorite animal, the wolf.
This is sad really, Hunter has really grown and come into his own while in the human realm. At a certain point, Gus also has pointed out that he’s much happier here than he seemed back home in the Boiling Isles. Later on, he checks on his wound to see that his blood now looks an awful lot like the Belos goo we’ve been seeing. Let’s go back a moment though. Aside from Hunter’s new love of a sci-fi franchise, thanks to Gus’s find in a closet of the basement, he also is researching more about himself as a grimwalker and is spending more quality time with Flapjack. Even Willow has a fondness for some of his outfit choices, despite Amity’s suggestion that they may not be discrete enough for their puzzle solving quest.
Back to that, using some clues provided by the scroll, the group figures out that there is some titan’s blood nearby. With the titan’s blood, they can rebuild the portal door and get back to the demon realm. Luz, weighed down by guilt that its her fault that this is happening to her friends and their world, has decided that she is going to stay in the human realm with her mother after they figure out how to get them back, and is going to tell them during the halloween festivities. You know, when Amity and the gang were going to tell her about the Titan’s Blood and all that.
While at the halloween festivities, the group encounters wannabe witch-hunter Jacob again, who is now without a job at the Gravesfield History Museum because he kept re-writing the displays. He tries to expose the kids, who are “out to steal everyone’s teeth” and their ears are proof they are from Mars. The gang gets out of the area, and takes a hayride where the new museum guide tell them the story of two brothers. The brothers Wittebane.
Now we have all the confirmation we need. Most of this has been put together by fans of the show already, but now we finally have the exposition and it is done beautifully through puppets as the kids progress on their journey. The short version that I can’t do nearly as well as the show did is that older brother Caleb Wittebane (who looks an awful lot like Hunter, wink wink) and younger brother Philip, who were orphans who tried to fit in in their new town by becoming Witch Hunters. They met a real witch from another world, named Evelyn, who entranced Caleb and led him back to her world. Because they had a way to go between worlds, Philip would follow him to this new world to bring the witch to justice, but neither brother was ever seen again. But, we know, Philip has been there the whole time and made numerous clones/grimwalkers of his older brother to see their duty through. I’m sure we’ll learn more by the series end, especially about Evelyn. More on that later.
At their house, Camila discovers a series of diary entries that Luz has been leaving in her computer. She has been battling her own guilt and demons since the return of her daughter, especially since she was the one that sent her away to a camp (the pilot episode) where she ended up in the demon realm in the first place, but we’re also getting to learn more about her and Manny, Luz’s dad (That was all his space and sci-fi stuff in the basement, by the way), who passed away from an unspecified illness, that really is only hinted at through context clues. It’s in these diary entries that Camila learns that Luz plans on staying in the Human Realm while her friends, that make her daughter so very happy, return to their world.
She and V run out the door to find Luz. Throughout the Halloween festival, something is calling to Hunter, and he goes to investigate. Finally, Hunter spills the beans to get Luz to help him. They have a way to find titan’s blood, and it’s going to be a surprise, but he needs to find it first. Luz, being the helpful friend, helps. BUT. Something is amuck. Hunter’s voice is changing, his eyes are turning different colors, and he’s just not himself. Alas, they go deep into the woods when Luz discovers that because the titan blood is nearby, her glyph magic is working again. They head deeper into the forest and find a sunken graveyard with an island in the middle of it.
At this point, Hunter is full Belos, and can’t find his palisman. Who he doesn’t name, unlike what Hunter usually does. Luz realizes something is amiss, especially when she finds Flapjack hiding behind a gravestone cowering in fear. This isn’t Hunter, this is Belos. A battle ensues, and thankfully V knows how to track a phone and Luz’s light glyphs leads the rest of the group right to them so they can see what’s happening. Belos, possessing Hunter’s body, says at least Hunter came into use in some way since now he can use his body. Grimwalker secret revealed to everyone. Boom. Then, Luz tries to get Hunter separated from him, but also refuses to cause any harm so as to not hurt Hunter’s body. Belos points out that’s why Luz is so easy to use and manipulate, she always wants to help. Just like she helped him meet the Collector. Secret’s out. Boom again.
Belos gets his hand on Flapjack and squeezes, rushing the palisman and saying “Goodbye Evelyn” and starts to inhale the magic as we’ve seen numerous times throughout the series but is stopped. Flapjack is critically wounded and must be protected. Hunter is now fighting himself and takes Belos with him into the water, trying to stop him from using the Titan’s blood they found. Camila jumps in to save him from drowning and pulls him ashore. There, Belos separates into his monster form, Titan’s blood in hand and says he’s going to save their souls, and that they’ll thank him later, before smashing the vial of blood into a stone archway on the tiny island. The blood drips down and forms a portal, just as we’ve seen before, and he goes into it.
Hunter isn’t breathing, but Flapjack, weakened, curls up to him and starts to fade away, transferring their life to Hunter’s and disappearing the process. It’s an emotional moment, and the first true loss we’ve seen in this season. Hunter awakens, asking if everyone is okay, and they are, save for Flapjack. Gus tries telling him this, but he is immediately stopped. Hunter knows.
Amity asks if everything Belos said was true, and Luz comes clean. She says that’s why she’s going to stay in the hum— no? Camila interrupts and says that’s why she’s taking Mom with her to the Demon Realm. One by one, they all start crossing through the portal, some even hinting that they’ll be back. I guess we’ll see. Amity tells Luz that she has stood by them even after “causing” everything to happen with Belos, and she wants Luz there all the time. Everyone jumps in, except V, who is staying behind and keeping up appearances. Finally, Luz and Camila jump through and the credits roll.
To be candid, The Owl House is too good for Disney Channel. That is its inherent problem. This story is so fleshed out and so rich, that blatant exposition that occurs throughout for that target 6-11 audience almost weakens it. Season 3 should have jumped to Disney+ and maintained at this special length of episode as three full length films and developed in full, because this episode left us wanting more. You guys do it with Marvel or Star Wars series, why not this? Now, we have to wait until 2023 (no specific date beyond that) to find out what happens now that everyone is back in the Demon Realm.
You can find the beginning of the end of The Owl House with this episode, “Thanks to Them,” now on Disney Channel, the DisneyNOW app, and Disney Channel YouTube. You can catch up with the rest of the series on Disney+.