The Owl House's One Problem

The Owl House, created by Dana Terrace and released by Disney in January 2020, is a fantastic tv show. It stars Luz Nocedo, a quirky AfroLatine teenager, who stumbles through a door and into the magical, creepy world of the Boiling Isles, full of demon and witches. From there she befriends criminal outlaw Eda the Owl Lady and a tiny demon named King. She goes to school, makes friends for the first time in her life, and even falls for and begins a romantic relationship with another girl, rival bully turned friend and love interest, Amity Blight.

The animation is the perfect mix of cute and creepy, the tone overall humourous and heartfelt, and the series' has a surprising amount of very solid and interesting worldbuilding. Eda is a standout character, not only as a mentor figure but also with her own plotlines and character arcs, featuring the particularly apt metaphor of magic and mental illness that is thoughtfully explored every step of the way. Luz is a great protagonist, equal parts enthusiastic and kind, but not without her own interesting flaws.

The show builds a fascinating world and fantastic found family dynamic, with season two greatly amping up the intrigue and overall plot after a season one with more filler. Watching Luz, a bi children's TV show protagonist, have a multiple episode spanning romantic arc with Amity, culminating in them becoming girlfriends in a very sweet and realistically awkward way, filled my queer heart with love.

As is the joy that other shows, not just The Dragon Prince, are beginning to move away from the "will they won't they" plot lines with romantic subplots, and instead showing us how the couple behaves in an actual relationship. Which is all the more important in queer relationships as well.

I'm also not going to pretend that my One problem with The Owl House is much more than a nitpick.

Indeed, I have a couple of nitpicks, such as a few plotlines that felt repetitive in season one (lots of "lying so I come off better than I am but the truth eventually comes out" for multiple characters, or the classic body switching episode) but that's largely because I watch a lot of animated children's shows and I'm not the demographic. To children seeing those plot lines for the first time, or learning those lessons through media, I'm sure they're bright, interesting, and very important. There's also the setup of Amity as Lilith's apprentice in one of their main introductory episodes that causes Amity and Luz to be rivals, as Lilith is Eda's estranged sister. This aspect of Amity and Lilith's bond is never addressed again and likely never will be, as Lilith leaves the evil Emperor's coven that Amity desperately wanted to join by the end of season one, reconciling with her sister, while Amity becomes a good friend of Luz's.

A more nuanced nitpick, perhaps, is that I would love to see Luz's heritage expressed more on screen. Right now we see her speak Spanish to herself in times of trouble or celebration, remembering words her mother, Camilla, would say. I would love a few more mentions of things like Luz missing specific holidays or family traditions, or even her mother's cooking, all things that are very culturally important that she's been completely cut off from in the Boiling Isles. It could even be a nice allegorical plotline to how many kids feel when they go off to school for the first time as a young adult, suddenly removed from the culture and community that's looked after them their whole life.

But like I said, those are nitpicks.

My one problem is not, so here it is.

Gus and Willow are bad characters.

That's not to say they're bad — I love them, wholeheartedly. They're sweethearts, funny and charming with interesting magics and are great friends to Luz. Gus, an illusionist, is probably one of my favourite characters in the whole show.

However, what I mean by bad is that Gus and Willow are sorely underdeveloped. We're almost halfway through season two and Willow has barely appeared. Gus has had one plotline of his own and is otherwise also regulated to the background. In spite of Willow and Amity having a long standing history and Willow being the primary victim of Amity's prior bullying, we don't see much evidence that their relationship has healed. Amity says that Gus, Willow, and Luz are all her friends, but we never see her hang out with any of them when Luz isn't there.

So why isn't this a nitpick that Luz's best friends are side characters? Plenty of shows do it, after all. Well, it rings hollow for a few reasons. One of the biggest is that there is a heavy emphasis that Luz was lonely and friendless in the human realm. She never quite fit in. So the fact we barely see her, overall, interact and have varied plotlines with her first best friends ever feel strange, especially when she's such a caring and enthusiastic character.

Then, there's also the fact that Gus and Willow are the two primary characters of colour in the cast besides Luz. Raine Whispers made a brief appearance in season two, but they're not in season one at all. There are reoccurring background characters of colour at their school, Hexside, but none in the main cast. Additionally, one of the main characters of the cast is King, a demon who exists in an a-racial space; he's not coded as anything other than a non human, sentient being, which is honestly the way it should be.

But it does mean Luz is a character of colour surrounded by explicitly white or white coded characters, cut off from other characters of colour, her old community, and her Latina mother for most of the show. This lack of focus on Gus and Willow underpins the lack of acknowledgement for Luz having a cultural Diaspora experience in the Boiling Isles, even if it's by her own choice.

Again, a lot of that is due to wish fulfilment and the fantasy of being swept away to another, more fantastical and magical world. The Owl House is also a children's cartoon with a lighter tone, I'm not expecting it to take itself too seriously, and Luz is still a stand out character.

However, the way Gus and Willow fall to the wayside largely for Amity's development as a peer feels like step forward for queer rep and a step back for representation for people of colour. While I think the easiest solution at the start of the show would've been to merge Gus and Willow into one character, so that together they would've had more varied and consistent subplots, I hope that the show begins to highlight each of them more going forward as well as their connection to Luz. I would love nothing more than for this article to be proven as a moot point, if the second half of the series gives them the focus and screentime they deserve.

They're her best friends and lovely characters, and I would love for them to have more screentime and development in the future, whether with each other, Luz, or Amity, in order to for the show to earn what it tells us about their bond and their individual characters.

Hopefully by showing it to us, too, going forward.