The Owl House

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Just a little weird magic.

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

—Eda

The Owl House is an animated fantasy/horror comedy series produced by Disney Television Animation and created by Dana Terrace, known as the director of DuckTales (2017) and storyboard revisionist for Gravity Falls. It is often regarded as a Spiritual Successor to the latter show. The show premiered on January 10, 2020.

14-year-old Luz Noceda (Sarah Nicole Robles), lives in an average house in an average town and goes to an average school, where she’s doing badly. Not that she’s disobedient or doesn’t want to learn, oh no - she loves to read, especially her favorite series of books, The Good Witch Azura. Problem is, Luz is a little too “creative” in her approach to learning: she auditions as the lead role in the school's production of Romeo and Juliet, using fake intestines for Juliet's death scene, and her art project includes live spiders. Finally, after using live snakes as a visual aid for a book report, the principal decides her overactive imagination has become too disruptive, and Luz is sentenced to a summer at the Reality Check "reform camp".

But no sooner does her mother drop her off at the bus stop than a strange owl steal one of her books, causing Luz to chase it through a mystic portal and into a fantasy world where all of Luz's dreams are given life.

Or so it seems… The Boiling Isles may not be quite what she expected of a fantasy world.

She quickly meets the rebellious outlaw witch Eda (Wendie Malick), and her tiny and adorable demon roommate King (Alex Hirsch). Despite lacking any talent in actual magic whatsoever, Luz eagerly assumes the role of a witch’s apprentice, exploring the secrets - and braving the dire hazards - of this new world, making friends and trying, with difficulty, to find out where she belongs!

You can watch the first episode here. The show was renewed for a second season ahead of the series premiere, which debuted on July 11th, 2020. The second season debuted on June 12th, 2022 (the new intro seen here) with news that there will also be a third season, made up of three 45-minute specials.

Episodes in season 3 were released separately, starting in October 2022 with a gap of around three months between episodes. All 3 episodes of season 3 ("Thanks to Them", "For the Future", "Watching and Dreaming") can be viewed on Disney's YouTube channel.

Due to creator Dana Terrace's obsession with anime, The Owl House contains references to many anime works, such as Little Witch Academia. Fun fact: Terrace is a fan of the Witch Hat Atelier, whose creator Kamome Shirahama is a fan of The Owl House! If you're looking for something after finishing The Owl House, Witch Hat Atelier is a good place to start.

The Owl House is also considered a sister series to Amphibia due to airing around the same time and being part of the Portal Fantasy genre. There are also even Shout-Outs from the show here and there. Fun fact: Matt Braly helped change the ending of the series while giving a special credit to Watching and Dreaming.

The Owl House is a Spoilered Rotten series, so be warned: WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Tropes used in The Owl House include:

A-E

  • Action Girl: Pretty much every female character - Eda, Luz, Lilith, Willow, Amity, Camila, Boscha, Viney, Bria, the list goes on. Even Kikimora gets some Dark Action Girl moments when she's put in a real leadership position.
  • Action Mom: Eda is a surrogate one (which she inherited from her own mom, Gwendolyn), but Luz's mother is a biologically related one in season three.
  • Adorable Evil Minion: Kikimora, Emperor Belos' messenger and herald. Don't you just want to give her a big hug? Then you should probably do that before season two when she starts flying off the handle.
  • Adorkable:
    • Luz is cute as a button and an eccentric little goofball with a fascination for all things creepy and weird. Unfortunately for her, her teachers weren't amused by her antics and she was nearly forced to attend a reform camp until she stumbled upon the door to the Boiling Isles. It turns out that her mom didn't mind Luz's shenanigans at all and happily embraced that part of her when everyone else looked down on it, giving Luz the strength to keep being who she was no matter what she came up against in the Demon Realm. It even helped break down Eda's cynical shell by the end of season one.
    • Willow, Gus, and occasionally Amity, which gets less occasional with each season.
    • Hunter after he defects from Belos becomes this around the other Hexside witches. He has a hard time keeping his sentences straight, especially around Willow, and he constantly struggles with the fact that he has to only seem nice in public. Granted, as he tells Luz, he also has the weight of knowing he's a clone of a dead person he never met and that his only surviving family member considers him disposable..
    • Lilith turns out to be a giant raging nerd once she's out of the Emperor's Coven. She's practically a Boiling Isles historian with a special interest in classical architecture, ancient puzzles, and other topics most people would consider dry, she quickly befriends Hooty and gives him the nickname "Hootcifer", and she throws a pity party with King over their personal parental issues.
    • Vee is this, mostly when in human form.
  • Adult Fear:
    • The reason why Dr. Noceda prepared to send Luz to Reality Check Camp; Principal Hal kept calling her about her daughter's latest pranks, some of which are expulsion-worthy like using fireworks for her book report. An adult viewer can see that Camilla is at the end of her rope trying to keep her daughter from being suspended or ostracized. "Thanks to Them" goes into this further: Principal Hal expressed worry that Luz was lashing out from grief about losing her father, and perhaps reacting to bullies that don't like her weirdness. He suggested Reality Check Camp as a means to help Luz find a healthier outlet and grounding in the real world. Dr. Noceda defended that Luz was always a free-spirited child before Manny Noceda died, but she couldn't ignore the reality that Luz didn't seem happy, and she had no friends.
    • In season one, Luz was able to keep correspondence with her mother and maintain a facade of still being at summer school. However, as of the end of season one, that is no longer possible; in the season two opener Luz is even seen recording messages for her mother to ensure her she is safe, possibly hoping she can find some way to send them. For now, one can only imagine what her mother is going through.
    • The 4th episode of Season 2 reveals that Ms. Noceda is, in fact, none the wiser, because a basilisk named V took Luz's place on Earth. Eventually, however, the Trope is played straight when Luz manages to tell her exactly what has happened. Dr. Noceda starts crying when Luz admits she chose to become a witch and stay in the Boiling Isles because Luz doesn't have time to explain that Emperor Belos complicated matters.
    • Luz gets a reminder on her phone about an important anniversary, causing her to freak out with guilt. She tells Eda and King that she needs a distraction, and her refusal to be alone with her thoughts gets her and Amity in trouble for an episode. When Amity finally corners her for answers, Luz reveals her father died a long time ago, and every year on the anniversary of his death, she and her mother would pick flowers to give to each other. But she's separated from her mom, and feeling guiltier about being away from home and missing the anniversary. While Amity helps her find an alternate ritual by sending flowers in the sky with an Abomination balloon, we cut to Camila leaving out an orchid for Luz by the window, before turning away sadly. It's clear how much mother and daughter miss each other.
    • In "Edge of the World", when they're alone, Eda breaks down in front of Lilith. She says that she wants to keep Luz and King safe, but they've all gotten in over their heads with the Emperor now gunning for them all. Belos was tolerating Eda because she was harmless, but with Luz having learned what the Day of Unity is and what it entails, the Emperor will waste no time in trying to wipe out the human before she can warn the other witches, and may go after King in the meantime. "They're just kids," Eda sobs.
  • Adults Are Useless: Ultimately defied.
    • When Luz's mother Dr. Noceda is finally told what is going on after a museum curator and conspiracy theorist captures Vee, she is skeptical at first, thinking that Luz is playing a game, but catches on fast. She quickly rescues Vee from Jacob, making great use of "la chancla". Season three follows up on showing that Dr. Noceda Took A Level In Badass, helping the kids fight a Hunter-possessed Belos in the graveyard, rescuing Hunter from drowning via Heroic Suicide, and insisting that she's coming with them to save the Boiling Isles through the portal.
    • Alador Blight ends up becoming a significant player in the season 2 finale. When King reveals to him that the Day of Unity is going to involve mass genocide and Odalia plans to profit from it, Alador confronts her, frees the children, and serves as their pilot when they go to rescue Luz. Despite being visibly terrified of the Draining Spell and the fact that it will kill him as well, he powers through it to fend off Abomitons at Belos's castle so that Amity and the others can save Luz, kissing Amity so she won't worry.
  • An Aesop: Many:
    • Be yourself, reject conformity.
    • Nobody is truly The Chosen One and everyone's destiny is their own to fulfill.
    • Hiding your true feelings for someone out of fear of rejection only makes rejection more likely, but if you admit the truth, you'll be a lot happier for it.
    • Accept your flaws instead of running away from them. They'll always be a part of you, so you might as well make peace with them.
    • Using a different method to get the same result isn't a bad thing and it doesn't make you weaker or less capable than everyone else.
    • Don't feel pressured to cure an ailment if managing the symptoms works just fine for your needs.
  • Affably Evil:
  • Affectionate Nickname: Hold tight, it's a long list:
    • Eda: Eda the Owl Lady (said in reverence) by Luz, "witchlet" by her mom.
    • Lilith: Lily by Eda, Libby and Aunt Lilith by Luz, Lulu by Hooty (she later returns the sentiment to Hooty by calling him Hootsifer), and "sweet flea" by her mom.
    • Amity: "batata"/"sweet potato" and "cotton candy haired goddess" by Luz, "Mittens" by her parents and siblings.
    • Luz: "mija" (a contraction of mi hija, meaning "my daughter") by her mom.
    • King: widdle guy, widdle baby boo, cutie-pie, beach peach, boo-boo buddy... you get the idea.
    • Flapjack: "Flap" and "Flaps" by Hunter.
    • Hooty: Hootisfer by Lilith, referencing Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: In King's Tide, Hunter has this reaction when the Collector smashes his Uncle Belos into a puddle of magic goop..
  • All Witches Have Cats: Downplayed significantly. A Palisman can be almost any sort of small animal. However, Amity's Palisman Ghost is indeed a cat.
  • Alpha Bitch: Amity; she starts out as a typical one, but eventually evolves into Lovable Alpha Bitch.
    • However, Boscha remains both this Trope and a female version of a Jerk Jock; Skara and the rest of Amity's Girl Posse eventually softens, but Boscha seems firmly cemented as such. Despite being part of the Posse, Amity isn't all-too fond of them.
    • Bria, who first appears in the season 2 episode "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" a Glandus High student who may be even worse than Boscha, being a Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon type and Poisonous Friend to the other Glandus students who appear in the episode. It is implied in the episode that Glandus is far more competitive than Hexside, even among their own students. The fact that she sees nothing wrong with Grave Robbing to enhance her own powers puts nudges her to the dark side of the morality scale for Alpha Bitches.
  • All Abusers Are Male: Subverted in season 2 between Alador and Odalia Blight. Alador eventually admits he's complicit in Odalia's mistreatment when he gets a Heel Realization, though he already tried to mitigate it by refusing to "employ" any of them in Blight Industries. Despite that, Odalia regularly uses their kids as Abomiton target fodder during demonstrations, emotionally blackmails them whenever she sees fit, and only allows them to spend time with pre-approved friends/partners (Odalia is totally fine with handing over her daughter's girlfriend to Belos for the crime of being the Boiling Isles' Most Wanted Human and ignores Amity's distress when she promises to find her a new, "acceptable" girlfriend). Then once Alador finds out Odalia was fully complicit in helping arrange the Day of Unity just because the Emperor claimed he'll protect her family and reward them with riches, Odalia just dismisses his anger by saying that his reaction was why she didn't bother telling him..
  • All Myths Are True: Supposedly, all stories about mythical and fantastic creatures told by humans originated as a result of beings in the Demon Realm bleeding into Earth, including tales of vampires, gryphons, and giraffes.
  • Alternate Realm Boon:
    • Averted initially when Luz finds the portal to the Demon Realm. Magic is abundant in this realm, but humans lack the sac of magic that Witches are born with to use this mystical art. Later on, when Luz uses her phone to reveal a glyph in a Spell Circle, she discovers that by copying these glyphs she can create a Spell Circle, thus letting her use magic through this method.
    • Inverted with her allies, however. As the season 3 previews show, Amity, Gus, Willow, Hunter, and Vee can use their magic in the human world just fine, and it does seem to benefit them.
  • Ambiguous Gender:
    • It has not been revealed in-story whether Eberwolf - the Beast Keeper Coven Head - is male or female, as the character has yet to speak and no pronouns have been used as reference. Using appearance alone doesn't reveal much either.
      • Word of God has used male pronouns to refer to him in podcasts, so once can work from there.
    • Assuming the Collector even has a gender, it is also ambiguous. Again, their appearance and eerie voice doesn't offer much to work with. It's revealed the Collector uses he/they pronouns as per this tweet which means they may be non-binary.
  • Ambiguous Situation:
    • In addition to her curse, Eda seems to be "ambiguously alive", sort of. Being decapitated or dismembered is, at most, an annoyance and she recovered from both of those things easily, suggesting she's at least partially undead.
      • Season 2 confirms that this is a side effect of the curse itself, and now it's also happening to Lilith. Eda assures her she'll "get used to it".
    • Whether the Emperor's Coven was behind sending the Greater Basilisk to attack Hexside or whether the Basilisk was a "lone wolf". The Coven denies it, but that doesn't stop Bump from "writing a very stern letter".
  • Ambiguously Evil: Several characters:
    • King talks about being a demon king who once led armies of such beasts, but currently he hasn't been seen doing anything truly evil; annoying, possibly. Whether he's even telling the truth about his past is debatable.
      • King's claim is debunked in Season 2, where it is revealed that no, he is not a king of demons. In O Titan, Where Are Thou it's revealed that King is not a demon but a Titan.
    • Principal Bump straddles the line between a Dean Bitterman who happens to be a wizard to an Evil Teacher. In his first appearance, he tried to dissect Luz to see if she was human; on the other hand, he was willing to admit Luz to the school later (after confirming Luz was human) so long as Eda undid all the damage she caused when she was a student.
    • Amity's siblings Edric and Emira are definitely on the darker side of the morality scale, but as to just how much is debatable. Their fondness towards Luz may be genuine, or they may just be using her as a tool in their schemes. Season 2 adds this since they were willing to go against their parents by giving Amity, Willow, and Gus some disguises to help Luz, but can't resist pasting "Hex Me" signs to their backs in the process.
    • Emperor Belos, at least for most of season one. While he seems to be an oppressive dictator, almost nothing is known about his motives or goals. Of course, given the small amount of info we do have on him, he doesn't look like someone you'd want to cross. The Season Two finale seems to remove this ambiguity, but his own voice actor seems to consider him] a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
      • The episode "Hollow Mind" subverts this Trope completely; Belos is well on his way to becoming one of the most evil villains in Disney history given the scope of his crimes. He is clearly A Nazi By Any Other Name.
  • Amusement Park of Doom: The setting of "Really Small Problems". Their attractions include but are not limited to: Bumper Carcasses, the Molar Coaster, a Scariss Wheel (sort of like a Ferris Wheel that gives you serious nightmares), sentient games that'll try to scam players, vendors selling rotten candy (cotton candy), and a circus act ran by Tibbles who trains tiny mythical creatures to do tricks.
  • And Then What?: Amity spells this out to Boscha in "For the Future": her plan to win back Amity was to knock her and her friends out, and threaten Amity into submission in the former detention caverns. To top it all off, she left Luz and the others at the mercy of a disguised Kikimora. Did Boscha think any of that would win back her former friend?? After Amity soundly defeats her, Boscha tries to beg for Amity to become her friend again, but Amity rebuffs her, motivating Boscha to turn against Kikimora.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Apparently giraffes. In season 1, Eda tells Luz that giraffes are natives of the Boiling Isles in a manner indicating that she thinks they're so silly, they must have originated elsewhere. Contrast that with season 3, where Amity, Gus, Willow, and Vee - all of them natives of the Boiling Isles themselves visit a zoo in the human world and take a photo of a giraffe, causing it to show them its true face and leaving them terrified.
  • Animal Motifs: Owls for Eda, ravens/crows for Lilith, hawks for Mrs. Clawthorne, and deer for Belos.
  • Animation Bump: During fight scenes, such as the one in S1E18 "Agony of a Witch" between Eda and Lilith, and ending sequences in S3E1 "Thanks to Them", the animation becomes a lot smoother with more frames a second, and more fluid movement, and all the Off-Model elements commonly present disappear.
  • Appeal to Novelty: Boiling Isles citizens are easily fascinated by trinkets from the human realm, which Eda gladly exploits by shilling random junk to them as "human collectibles".
  • Arch Enemy: It seems the Titan and the Collector were this, the battle between them centuries ago being a double knock-out, the Titan's last act being to seal the Collector within the In Between Realm before perishing, his body forming the Boiling Isles.
  • Ascended Extra: Ahem, Steve. Yeah, a guy who had naught but an average name to discern himself from the Emperor's other mooks evolved into a complex and interesting character. Initially he appeared as a one-off joke crony for Lilith, came back as a background character, acted as Mr. Exposition for Hunter in "Any Sport in a Storm", and finally in "O Titan, Where Art Thou", he finally removes his mask to show a perfectly normal face after helping King work through his inner existential turmoil.
  • Ascended Fridge Horror: Dr. Noceda suffers this in "Thanks to Them." Sure, the kids told her what happened in the previous episode, that a creepy witch hunter who used to be human tried to kill all of them, their friends and family, and tried turning Luz to stone for calling him a hypocrite. That does not prepare her for the reality when she comes across Luz fighting a possessed Hunter, and Belos uses the boy she's been housing for months as a vessel. Belos is forced to vacate Hunter's body after stealing the boy's life force and regains his One-Winged Angel form before returning to the Boiling Isles. After a very tense Beat as she holds Hunter, Camilla says with horror, "That's the Belos you've been fighting?!" It sinks in for her that Luz was not chasing a "witch fantasy' as she originally assumed, but was dealing with something far worse.
  • The Atoner: In the series finale, quite a few characters become this:
    • Steve convinces the surviving Emperor's Coven guards to stand down and rebuild a better Boiling Isles. They need little persuasion to take off their masks, looking like a load has been lifted off them.
    • The Collector is overcome with grief and remorse when he finally understands what death is after Luz disintegrates saving him from Belos. He tries to apologize to the Boiling Isles residents for his playtime, but they are still scared of him. So he decides to return to the stars to understand life better, though it's shown that he visits regularly. He also helped rebuild the portal to the Boiling Isles so that Luz could visit regularly.
  • Author Avatar:
    • Tinella Nosa (aka "Tiny Nose"), the Conspiracy Theorist imp-like creature with the big nose is based on a caricature of showrunner Dana Terrace, who's also her VA.
    • Also, Luz herself. While she was named after Luz Batista (the show's animator and storyboard artist, and Terrace's close friend) Terrace claims that much of Luz's background based on her own (including losing her father at a young age and being bi) and that Luz's adventures are at least partially a telling of her own story, done against a fantasy backdrop.
    • On a related note, Terrace seems to be channeling through Amity in "For the Future" while telling Luz how she was inspired upon gaining her her cat-Palisman, Ghost; Terrance also owns a white cat named Ghost, used as the model for Amity's.
  • Bad Boss: Odalia. She twists her youngest daughter's arm to act as a guinea pig for product demonstration, not only making her fight the creature but forcing her to lose on purpose in order to make it convincing to investors, and when the demonstration starts to tank she has Luz, Willow, and Gus expelled simply to punish Amity for growing a spine. She has her husband work round the clock without ever rolling up her own sleeves to pitch in (in “Clouds on the Horizon”, Alador tells King that Odalia laid off half of his staff and made him and the staff he had left work overtime to meet Belos’ quota, adding that hasn’t had a weekend off in five years), only sees her family as potential staff for Blight Industries, and uses Alador's sympathy towards their kids to cow him into compliance so they won't be brought on as employees under her control.
  • Bat Out of Hell: The Bat Queen is nasty and scary enough, but looking after her nestlings quickly turns Eda into a Badly-Battered Babysitter.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • In "Clouds on the Tides", Hunter requests to extract the Blight children from Blight Manor rather than go with the other CATs to stop the Day of Unity. It's because Belos tried killing him and Luz in "Hollow Mind", and Hunter doesn't want to be anywhere near his uncle, because Belos wants him dead. He reasons that going on this sidequest will help Luz and his new friends, giving him time to process the whole "being a Grimwalker" thing, and keep him well away from the Coven guards or the Emperor. Much to his horror, Kikimora busts them before they can bluff their way past Odalia because she recognizes his "annoying voice", and she guns for Hunter when Alador rescues the children. Then he sees himself getting captured, much to his confusion, after helping Willow dodge Kikimora's Abomaton. Luz convinced Gus to cast an illusion so she would appear as Hunter and vice-versa, so she would get caught instead and could help Eda since Kikimora gloated that the Emperor knew about the CATs plan to stop the Day of Unity. Hunter couldn't cast his magic without breaking the illusion, and didn't have any response but to play along. When Alador breaks the illusion, Hunter has a horrified expression on his face, insisting that he didn't realize what Luz had done until Kikimora caught her. He knows that Belos wants one other person dead: Luz, for promising to tell everyone on the Boiling Isles about his true form.
    • The teaser clip of "Thanks to Them" shows that Belos is back on Earth...and he is basically a sentient blob for all intents and purposes, who can only hop around Luz's neighborhood. Not a very noble return for a Witchhunter General that thought he would receive a hero's welcome. He later upgrades to possessing animals, and then Hunter, before using Hunter's life force to get his One-Winged Angel form back to return to the Boiling Isles.
    • In "For the Future", Boscha has achieved the goal of every Alpha Bitch who has ever lived, gaining so much praise and adoration from the students, to the point where they have made her their queen. Unfortunately, she has found such a duty overwhelmingly difficult, the Teenage Wasteland she now rules having become a practical anarchy. Her attempt to give a We Can Rule Together routine to Amity comes off more as pathetic groveling than anything else.
  • Beach Episode: Parodied and Discussed. The show never has an actual beach episode, instead opting for a Leaning on the Fourth Wall discussion in season 2, episode 19 "O Titan, Where Art Thou".

Eda: I mean, wouldn't you rather, I don't know have a beach day?
Luz: Maybe if we had time for twenty more adventures, but we don't.

  • The Bet: Eda is such an avid gambler that this Trope directs the plots of three different episodes:
    • Episode Three:
      • The Terms: If King proves he can be a better teacher to a slug-like creature than Eda is to Luz, Eda has to wear a dunce cap and live in the tool shed. If he can't, his name is officially changed to Mr. Wiggles.
      • The Results: King initially wins, Eda begrudgingly accepting the punishment, but once he runs out of food to feed the now-giant slug, it turns on him. Seeing as Eda saves his life as a result, they agree to forget the whole thing.
    • Episode Five:
      • The Terms: This bet is made by Luz and her rival Amity after the former challenges the latter to a Wizard Duel. If Luz wins, Amity has to apologize to King for ruining his cupcake and admit - in public - that humans can become witches. Amity wins, Luz has to give up learning magic forever, and to make sure she complies, places a Magically-Binding Contract on both of them.
      • The results: Eda and Lilth both cheat to help their respective proteges win, so Luz and Amity are both disqualified. This leads to a real duel between Eda and Lilith, while Luz and Amity have a heart-to-heart talk for the first time.
    • Episode 8
      • The Terms: Eda does a three-person Freaky Friday Flip on herself, King, and Luz (Eda becomes King, King becomes Luz, Luz becomes Eda) and states that whoever has the easiest time living with the new body and identity doesn't have to help clean the house.
      • The Results: All three lose. Eda is nearly turned into a lobotomized living doll by some Evil Old Folks who think King's body is cute, King is nearly killed by a group of teenagers after trying to get revenge on them with Luz's body, and Luz uses Eda's magic far too blatantly, getting herself arrested and nearly conscripted into the Emperor's Coven by Lilith. It's only via a series of Contrived Coincidences that the trio manage to find each other and change back. And they all have to clean the house, which by now, is much messier than before.
    • "Wing it Like Witches" has two in one episode:
      • The Terms, Main Plot: Luz challenges Boscha to a game of Grudgby on Willow's behalf. If Luz and Willow win, Boscha has to stop picking on Willow. If Boscha's team wins, they get to use Willow for target practice.
      • The Terms, B-Plot: Eda challenges Lilith to cutthroat Grudgby, promising to turn herself in if she loses.
      • The Results, Main Plot: Borcha wins, but after losing her entire posse to Willow immediately afterwards, seems to forfeit the condition.
      • The Results, B-Plot: Eda wins, but gives Lilith her ring so she can prove to Belos she actually put up a fight.
  • Beware the Cute Ones: Willow is a sweet, adorable kid, but she can use her plant-magic to create some rather ferocious-looking flower-monsters...
  • Bi the Way:
    • Luz is confirmed bi in season one; she crushes on a handsome warrior revealed to be an illusion. At Grom Night, she dances with Amity.
    • Yes, Word of Gay (via Alex Hirsch on Twitter) confirms this is true for Amity, making her the first confirmed case for a Disney character. Luz too, most likely, as she starts to reciprocate Amity's affection in season 2.
    • Season two confirms that Eda is either bi or pan. She references having ex-boyfriends, might have married Grunkle Stan, and had a nonbinary ex named Raine.
  • Big Brother Bully: Both of Amity's older siblings are manipulative troublemakers who view Amity as a killjoy and take out their irritation by humiliating her in the nastiest ways. Even worse, they think being family gives them permission to do it.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: Luz meets a lot of magical beings who fit this Trope. To give one example, one of the girls at the slumber party in "Hooty's Moving Hassle" has a large vertical jaw on the top of her skull, a lolling tongue from this jaw giving an illusion of a hairstyle. For some reason, the animation actually makes this work, and it doesn't seem horrific in the least.
  • Brick Joke: In the first season, Eda's claim that giraffes were native to the Boiling Isles seemed like nothing but an Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking gag that would never be addressed again. Then came season 3...
  • Brought Down To Badass: Luz is still tough if she doesn't have access to glyphs. Season three has her fully participating in portal experiments and brainstorming alternatives to Titan's blood.
  • Brought Down to Normal: Luz can only perform glyph magic in the Demon Realm; on Earth, her glyphs are useless sheets of paper unless she is in close proximity to Titan Blood. That's because she draws magic directly from the Titan whose body makes up the Boiling Isles. Season three shows that with her on Earth with her stranded friends, she's now the Team Normal while Vee can still shapeshift and her friends still have her magic. Luz actually doesn't care, more worried about the fact that Eda and King are still trapped on the Boiling Isles.
  • Butt Monkey: Downplayed with Hooty. He does seem to bear the brunt of abuse and insults from Eda and King, but he does get even now and then; he's their house and they have to live inside him, after all.
  • Cain and Abel:
    • Describes Eda and Lilith's relationship pretty well in season 1, although which is Cain and which is Abel depends on who you ask. Lilith has at least shown a desire for reconciliation with her sister, so long as it's on her terms and Eda joins her side. The do reconcile in season 2, but they're still rivals.
    • One truly unique example, Belos and his brother. Back when he still called himself Philip, the initial confrontation between them certainly qualified, ending with Philip murdering his brother. But, upon becoming Emperor and calling himself Belos, he created a Grimwalker (sort of a clone) of his brother to act as his right hand man, becoming the first Golden Guard. That Grimwalker turned him, and was killed, as did the next, and all subsequent Grimwalkers (there have been at least 17, given the scene in "Hollow Mind") created this way. Hunter is the latest in a long line of these clones, and assuming he too follows the trend, it seems the enmity between the brothers is still ongoing and unresolved, at least in spirit.
  • Came Back Wrong: While technically Belos was Only Mostly Dead to begin with at the end of season 2, the creature he has turned into at the beginning of season 3 is very "wrong". While he seems to think he Came Back Strong (and physically, that may be true), he is not even remotely human now, and on top of it, the change has clearly rendered him hopelessly insane and more obsessed than ever before.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Amity's crush on Luz could started out this way in season 1, where it could not have been more obvious, and by the time of the season one finale, hadn't managed to tell her. Whether it's fear of rejection by Luz, fear of disapproval by her parents, or both, is hard to say.
    • Season two started to imply that Luz reciprocates the affection, but she was just as bad as spitting it out as Amity was.
    • Ultimate subverted in Season Two (in "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door") where both of them do manage to spit it out. As of the beginning of the third season, they are an Official Couple.
  • Captive Date: Hooty means well, but kidnapping Amity and forcing her and Luz to go through his homemade tunnel of love may not have been the best way to play matchmaker...
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: In the episode where Amity and Willow are introduced, Luz tries to help Willow pass her test by disguising herself (Luz) as an abomination. Unfortunately, her ruse is uncovered when Amity sees her eat a sandwich (actual abominations do not eat) and Luz is nearly dissected as a result, Willow ending up with detention. Downplayed slightly, as this does convince Willow's parents to let her switch classes, which was the intent.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The Boiling Isles's acid rain. Eda tosses Luz into the house when it starts pouring during "The Intruder", saying that she saved her from grievous injury. "Watching and Dreaming" shows us why Eda was so scared: While Titan-Luz is protected from the rain, Philip Wittenbane aka Belos isn't when he's separated from the Titan's heart. He's reduced to a walking skeleton in seconds as he begs Luz for mercy. Eda, Raine and King then deliver the killing blow.
  • Child Prodigy: The Golden Guardian has a reputation for this, although Lilith claims he's actually a Spoiled Brat. Given what is seen of him so far, there is valid arguments for both views.
  • Chosen Family: Luz Noceda becomes part of the Owl House by apprenticing to Eda Clawthorne as witch and living with the little king of Demons, King. Thanks to Luz's influence, Eda and King soften to her and even gain a familial bond. Lilith, Eda's sister, even considers herself to be the aunt of their family. Even King is inspired to legally change his name to King Clawthorne.
    • Vee, a shapeshifting basilisk, took on Luz's identity when she came to the Boiling Isles and was adopted by Camilla Noceda after her identity was revealed. In the season 3 premiere, when Gus, Willow, Hunter, and Amity become stranded in the Human Realm, the witches and Grimwalker become a family over the months. It even made Hunter cry when Luz declared it to him.
  • The Chosen One: This trope gets explored a lot in the first and second season, with Luz naming it directly in "Witches Before Wizards".
    • Azura the Good Witch is a chosen one in her book series. Luz admires how Azura has a preordained destiny but always befriends her enemies, or makes them "eat" her magical attacks.
    • "King's Tide": It's ultimately revealed that King and not Luz is this, and not in the usual sense of the word. Most chosen ones are ordinary heroes that have to save the world after receiving the right magical tools, and friends. King is a baby Titan, the Lost Son. Titans are basically gods that nurture life in the Demon Realm, with immense power that can either protect the innocent, or rule with an iron fist. King is a god whose body will one day become an island if he so chooses; his father chose to seal away the Collector to protect the Demon Realm before becoming the skeleton for the Boiling Isles and hiding King when the latter was an egg. When King realizes that he has to free the Collector to save the witches from the Draining Spell, he also stays to "play" with the Collector as promised. It means he embraces his destiny as protector.
  • The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: Played for Drama in season two. King has always maintained he was King of the Demons, an overlord destined for greatness, though "Echoes of the Past" has him realize he may have been playing things up as a baby, to cope with excessive loneliness before Eda adopted him. We find out he's not the king of demons, but a Titan, aka a giant demon that creates life on islands, equivalent to a god. King actually finds this revelation more saddening than vindicating, because the Titan Trappers informed him that they wiped out the other Titans in the Demon Realm, leaving King as the last one in existence.
  • Co-Dragons: Starting in Season Two, Hunter and Kikimora are this to Emperor Belos, and they do not like each other at all, being bitter rivals competing for the role of sole Dragon.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each coven and class at Hexside can be identified by the color of their clothing or uniforms: Bard practitioners wear red, Plant magic members, green, Illusion, light blue, Oracles purple, Beast Keepers orange, Construction brown, Healing blue, Abominations lavender, Potions yellow, and Emperor's are gold. Oddly, Luz seems to be wearing several different colored versions of the Hexisde uniform in the preview to season 2, possibly showing her creative nature.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: The Boiling Isles are named because they are islands in a boiling ocean - if real-world physics were to be applied, this would cover the Isles with superheated steam, making it not even remotely inhabitable.
  • Cool Old Lady: Eda, definitely.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Amity's parents, mostly her mother, combine dark sorcery with the worst capitalism has to offer. Their company markets both abominations and a variety of magical security and weapons-based systems and devices that utilize abomination-slime. Their products and properties likely wouldn't pass FDA or OSHA requirements, and they barely care if a demonstration turns lethal for a test volunteer, so long as it pleases their investors. Assuming Amity isn't the volunteer, but even she gets a few cuts and bruises during these test runs.
  • Crossover: Kinda-sorta had one with Amphibia; the audial-only story was presented online during San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, 2021, with the VAs by both series; it is regarded as non-canon. Hasn't stopped some fans from adding fanmade illustrations, however.
  • Curb Stomp Cushion:
    • Basically, Luz ends up like this every time she fights Belos. She has upgraded her fighting skills and spellwork, but he has more experience and toys with her. Even in "Thanks to Them," while possessing Hunter, he reverts to this behavior.
    • Vee is established as a non-aggressive basilisk. She absolutely hates having to drain living beings, even for her own survival. When Belos possesses Hunter, however, and threatens her friends, she starts draining him to save Hunter. She does stop him in his tracks momentarily, but it's not enough magic.
  • Cursed With Awesome: Members of the Detention Tract are troublemakers who are not allowed to learn magic; however, at least three of them know that the classroom has a secret door to a room that allows access everywhere in the school, letting them learn whatever courses they desire when the Apathetic Teacher who watches them falls asleep. It is later revealed that Eda used to do so after magically building the room. Bump likely gets rid of it later, but after Luz and those students save the day, they're allowed to study multiple courses, possibly even starting a new policy at Hexside.
    • In season 2, Eda manages to alter her curse so that her Cursed Form is a Cute Monster Girl "Owl Harpy" (as she calls it) far more a benefit than a hindrance.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Eda (more so with the Harpy Form), Lilith, Amity, Kikimora, Borsha... Pretty much named every female Boiling Isles resident except the Bat Queen. And of course, Luz in Luz in Titan form, in the finale.]]
  • Cute Witch: Every female student at Hexside; even Amity has moments once her kinder side surfaces.
  • Dance Battler: In "Enchanting Grom Fight", Amity and Luz defeat the eponymous monster with a duet version.
  • Dark Fic: In-Universe example; in "Senses and Insensitivity', King rewrites Luz's part of the story into one of these. Of course, let's be honest here, if The Good Witch Azura was a real series, there'd be hundreds of fanfics of it like this.
  • Darker and Edgier: Compared to the typical Disney cartoon, definitely, especially starting in Season Two.
  • Death World: The Boiling Isles are not a nice place. Luz finds it hard to tell friendly or helpful occupants from ones that want to eat her (and the groups aren't mutually exclusive). The weather is hostile to pretty much everyone, the wildlife is dangerous... Not a place you'd want to live. Worse, it's A World Half Full where the folks in charge impose draconian laws that encourage conformity.
  • Deal with the Devil: According to Lilith, Belos can grant any favor or privilege desired to a member of the Emperor's Coven, and could easily cure Eda's curse if she consented to it. However, this also makes the beneficiary eternally indebted to Belos, the biggest reason Eda won't consider it.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Lilith starts to become friendly and more emotional in season 2, starting to show a sense of humor.
  • Deus Exit Machina: In the season one finale, Agony of a Witch, Amity — perhaps the most powerful witch among Luz's friends — is Put on a Bus with a broken leg and lies in her bed. She is unable to participate in the dramatic fights and moments in this episode. She returns by season two.
  • Disappeared Dad:
    • Luz's mother is a single mom, and Luz's father has never been mentioned. Luz later reveals to Amity that her father died years ago.
    • King's father is actually the Titan that makes up the Boiling Isles who died while sealing the Collector. It turns out he is Only Mostly Dead, his spirit trapped in an in-between place, always watching over King; in the finale, he transfers his runic power to Luz in order to defeat Belos, giving Luz one more message to deliver to King.
  • Distant Finale: The final scene of the series occurs three years later. Luz and Amity are still a couple, as are Hunter and Willow, they Gus and Vee are young adults, preparing for college. Lilith - who now has a Harpy form of her own - is headmistress of Hexside, supervising the rebuilding and renovating of the school, Bump seemingly retired. The Coven system has been abolished, with Alador heading a project underway to find a safe way using Magitek to remove the coven marks (test on volunteers show success). A new academy has been opened where Belos' now-demolished palace once stood to teach Wild Magic, with Eda as the headmistress.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • Amity rejecting her mother's orders and calling her out in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" seems very similar to Pacifica Northwest's actions in the Gravity Falls episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery"; Pacifica being another character who started as an Alpha Bitch with rotten parents.
    • Eda's mother in "Keeping Up A-fear-ances" has been chasing scam cures for her daughter for years, rather than stick with the standard treatments and pushing Eda away as a result. Seriously, Gwendolyn is every mother with a terminally ill child, bar none, something that makes her efforts so heartbreaking.
  • Do Not Call Me Sir: In "King's Tide," King is unusually nervous when preparing to beg for the Collector to save everyone on the Boiling Isles in exchange for their freedom. The Collector says they don't want to be called "Mr. Collector," it's so boring. King realizes that the Collector is a kid, like him, and gets him to agree to a deal in the form of a "game".
  • Dragon-in-Chief:
    • For a while, Lilith. Until Emperor Belos become directly involved in the plot, Lilith was the main antagonist by default.
    • Later, when Belos does get involved in the plot, he claimed to be working on the Titan's behalf, making him this by his own admission. Assuming he's telling the truth and not simply a madman who is Hearing Voices, which might be the case.
      • This is later revealed to be a lie, but it seems Belos is indeed the Dragon-in-Chief to the Collector, although Belos doesn't know that until the Collector is freed and - possibly - kills him.
    • The Golden Guardian seems to be shaping up to be this in season 2. He stops being this in "Hollow Mind" when learning that Luz was right that Belos never truly loved him, and that he was a clone that came from a long line that is killed when they go against Belos.
  • Due to the Dead: In "Thanks to Them", Hunter's palisman Flapjack dies protecting Hunter from Belos. Two episodes later - in the finale - Hunter and Willow are shown paying respects at a tombstone erected to honor poor Flapjack, while they, Luz, Gus, and Amity all have cardinal-shaped tattoos on their forearms as further homage.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Hooty is great at defending Owl House residents, but not-so-much at problem solving and paying attention. Heck, he spent a whole day talking to a fly when the Owl House family left without him to go to a carnival. In "Edge of the World," when they learn the Titan Trappers has mistaken King as one of their own tribe and Elder Bill was lying to the Trappers that he was going to share the power of sacrificing the last Titan, Hooty aptly asks if Titans are even evil given Bill casually lied about everything and nearly sacrificed King. Luz follows this line of thinking as well, showing how serious it is that Hooty was actually right about something.
  • Early Teen Hero: The fourteen-year-old Luz.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: How the show ends. Luz ends up not having to choose between the Boiling Isles and Earth, thanks to the Owl House residents and the Collector making a permanent portal. She opts to go to college in the Boiling Isles, where the witches surprise her for her 18th birthday as thanks for saving them from Belos and rebuilding their world. Hunter has become an official Clawthorne, carving Palismen with Eda's dad, while he and Willow are a couple. Gus is a TA at the college on human studies. Amity is helping her dad and Darius with removing Coven marks from witches, while still dating Luz. King's powers are also growing, activating a new set of glyphs for Luz to learn.
  • Eaten Alive:
    • The way Eda disposes of a depowered Adagast is to simply pop him into her mouth and swallow him whole.
    • Her sister has no problem with this either. In one first season episode, Kiki calls Lilith to tell her that Belos wants a word with her, and a blue bird-like creature on her head mocks her with a "OOH, you're in trouble!" Cut to the next scene where Lilith arrives at the castle and spits out some blue feathers.
  • Eccentric Mentor: Eda, definitely. in fact, some would say she's a lousy teacher, as she seems unable to truly teach Luz magic, although she does (maybe inadvertently) point Luz in the direction she needs to make her own discoveries.
  • Elephant Graveyard: Downplayed. The inhabited areas of the Boiling Isles are built on one skeleton, but it's a huge one. Who or what this giant was, how it died, or even if it's truly dead, is a mystery.
  • Enemy Mine: The Golden Guard knows that Luz is on the side of lawlessness, and he's threatened to drop her in the Boiling Sea a few times for defying him. She's met him blow-for-blow, once knocking him off an airship and scoffing that he would be fine. Sometimes, however, she can convince him to team up if they have a common enemy going after both of their heads. It becomes Played for Drama in "A Hollow Mind" where Luz and Hunter try to survive an accidental trip into the Belos's mind together, as Luz attempts to convince Hunter that the Emperor doesn't love him or treat him like family. Despite the fact that Hunter was literally made to serve Belos and his plans, Luz sacrifices her Grudgby jacket, pockets full of paper glyphs, to stop Belos from destroying Hunter, and Hunter returns the favor by using the glyphs to keep Belos from killing Luz.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Luz likes a good prank, as shown in season one. Some have even proven a moral hazard if she adds spiders or snakes. There is one line, however, that she won't cross: violating someone else's privacy. She refuses to help Amity's twin siblings Edric and Emira when they plan to copy her diary and post it all over the school to "teach" Amity a lesson about being a tattletale.
    • The Golden Guard is contracted to serve the Emperor because the man is his uncle, and Belos claims he is acting for the greater good, to stop wild witches from running rampant. Hunter, however, is horrified when he learns that his uncle is actually a human witch hunter posing as a witch and has spent several hundred years on a campaign to both free the Collector, implied to be trapped in the Boiling Isles, and wipe out every magical person on the Boiling Isles. On top of that, he cloned Hunter from a line of Golden Guards and wiped them out every time they questioned his authority. He asks if anything that Belos said about wild witches and magic was true. Belos's response is that every version of the Golden Guard somehow comes to this conclusion and proceeds to try to kill Hunter.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
    • Lilith does not understand why Eda refuses to either surrender to the Emperor's guards or join the Coven, saying she doesn't want to owe the Emperor anything. Season 2 has her lampshade this post her Heel Face Turn, that Lilith believed in Belos blindly.
    • In "Hollow Mind," Belos does not understand why Luz is horrified and crying when he reveals he was Philip Wittenbane, recognized her as "Luzura" in the past, and actually says there is no need for them to use their monikers. To seal the deal, he calls her by her actual name for the first time rather than "human". He thinks their shared experience of humans in the Boiling Isles is enough for Luz to overlook that he tried casually murdering her mentor and his own nephew in front of her, not to mention his serial killer habits. It's implied he might have spared her if she hadn't called him evil for his plans of mass genocide. Unable to comprehend why an unarmed and cornered Luz is refusing to accept his beliefs, he says you can't reason with crazy and attempts to incinerate her. "Clouds on the Horizon" emphasizes this when Luz selflessly pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to keep Kikimora from capturing Hunter for the Emperor, asking Gus to cast an illusion so she'd appear as Hunter to the witch and get captured instead. Belos raised Hunter as his nephew and planned to dispose of him. Luz only knew Hunter for a few months but still handed herself on a platter to save his life.
  • Evil Counterpart: It eventually comes out that Belos is this to Luz in "A Hollow Mind". Both were humans that entered the human realm by pure chance and decided to explore it. The difference, however, is that Luz took in the wonder of a fantasy world, seeing beneath the gross and hostile experience to make new friends and expand her potential as an apprentice witch. Philip Wittenbane is revealed to be a witch hunter that sought to learn as much about the Boiling Isles so that he could eradicate all of the magic-using residents that lived there, using the help of the Collector. When he claims that he and Luz have a lot in common after he callously attempts to murder Hunter, who was raised as his nephew, Luz outright calls him evil.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Or in this case, Bird. In "Thanks to Them", Flapjack knows Belos is alive, and is close. Sadly, however, he can't talk, so Hunter doesn't know exactly how close until it's too late.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy:
    • Much like the protagonists of Gravity Falls, Luz gets into a lot of trouble mishandling magic in season one when she wants to learn powerful spells. Season two has Luz grow out of it.
    • Lilith found out the hard way that A) casting a curse from the night market on her sleeping little sister would end up breaking her family and ruining Eda's life, B) actually trusting Belos to keep his word and heal Eda if Lilith brought her in when Eda is the most-wanted fugitive, and C) forcing Eda to give up her magic and revert to full Owlbeast by nearly killing Luz would all be accumulating disasters. Their father lost his eye and use of his arm when he startled the Owlbeast, their mother become frantic with chasing down scam cures for her younger daughter, and Lilith was left to celebrate her hollow victory of celebrating the Emperor's Coven alone. Belos lied, and it's unclear if he can actually remove the Owlbeast given it was the Collector that sealed it.
    • Belos himself of all people initiated this. When still mostly human as Philip Wittenbane, he tricked a time-traveling Lilith and Luz into serving as "sacrifices" so he could secure a mysterious oval-- it's revealed to be the Collector's prison. Belos and the Collector made a deal that if Belos received a spell that would wipe out every witch in the Boiling Isles, he would free the Collector. Turns out he had no intention of fulfilling that deal and drops the oval into an abyss. Fortunately for the heroes, Kikimora knew the area and lead King to where the Collector fell. Belos also reveals at the wrong time that he didn't think to include an override or failsafe when Luz brands him with a sigil. Cue him dissolving into goo, while still trying to kill Luz for tricking him. King ends up freeing the Collector to stop Belos, and the Collector claims to not be mad, he'll call it even if he and Belos play tag. Said game leads to Belos splattering against an arch, and dripping to the floor.
  • Evil Teacher: While Principal Bump downplays this (being incredibly strict but professional in his methods), the guy he replaced, Principal Faust, was Obviously Evil - and not very competent either. He gives detention to students for not being early enough, and expels them for trivial reasons. Expelling the head of the Grudgby team for wearing squeaky shoes and the school's valedictorian for chewing too loudly both have detrimental effects on the school for obvious reasons. The reason he keeps Eda around (despite her long record of being a discipline problem) is because he sincerely believes Hobbes Was Right and uses her as part of his project to study evil and depravity in children and prove his point. He even goes so far as to have Bump (his assistant at the time) take Eda to the IFWOT training seminar, hoping Eda's failure will give him an excuse to fire Bump, and by "fire", that might mean literally.
  • Evil Versus Evil: The Golden Guard and Kikimora do not like each other, and many episodes in season 2 involve them competing for Belos' favor.
  • Explain, Explain, Oh Crap: "Clouds on the Horizon" ends with this; as the kids and Alador prepare to follow Kikimora and rescue "Hunter," they find out that Gus at Luz's request cast an illusion so she would appear as Hunter and get captured. It was the only way to help Eda. The real Hunter had no time to respond and didn't even know what Luz had done until Kikimora took her away. Willow and Amity say, "Then that means...she's going to Belos.".
  • Expy:
    • Amity Blight shares a lot of similarities with Diana Cavendish from the Little Witch Academia series.
      • Amity starts the series with green hair like Diana.
      • They are both witches from a rich prestigious family. The family is less than friendly towards the main character. The two start standing up for the main character, against the family authority figure.
      • Both shares a niche interest. Amity and Luz shares an interest in The Good Witch Azura franchise, while Diana and Akko shares an interest in Shiny Chariot and her collectable cards.
      • They start out in a group with two other sidekicks, but eventually grows and separates from them.
      • They both excel in their class.
      • The two characters start out cold to the main character, but slowly warm up and become Defrosting Ice Queens. Eventually, they become protective of the main character.
      • They both have relationship issues with a motherly figure in their family.
      • They are often shipped with the main character in their respective fandoms.
    • As stated below, Amity has quite a bit in common with Pacifica Northwest from Gravity Falls (appropriate, given how this show is a Spiritual Successor), given her domineering parents, though in this case the roles of her parents are switched (the mother being the abuser rather than the father) and Amity is portrayed as far more assertive.
    • Luz shares some traits with Little Witch Academia‍'‍s main character Akko. They are both dedicated fans--overtly fanboying over The Good Witch Azura and Shiny Chariot contrasting Amity and Diana's more covert nature, traveled far to enrol in a Wizarding School, lacks magical talent and must work hard, constantly causes and gets into trouble, and has a mentor with a mysterious past and lots of Hidden Depths.

F-J

  • Fictional Document:
    • The Good Witch Azura, Luz's favorite book series, the title character being a sort of Magical Girl heroine. The series has at least five titles. Somehow, whoever publishes it is able to market it in the Boiling Isles. (Or maybe it is published in the Boiling Isles and can be marketed on Earth.) Whatever the case, Eda hates the series, claiming its "flowery prose" is an insult to witches. Amity is also a fan, and may have even cosplayed as the heroine when she was younger; in the episode "Adventures In The Elements", she also draws fan-art of herself with a handsome male character from the book. Luz seems to compare Amity to Hecate (Azura's rival in the series), emphasized at the end of "Lost in Language", she gives Amity the fifth book in the series, where Amity and Hecate are shown to have a friendlier rivalry.
    • Cosmic Frontier, a franchise of science fiction novels popular during the 80s, seemingly a parody of Star Trek and a Guilty Pleasure for Luz's mother.
  • Fictional Sport: Grudgby, a popular sport at Hexside, formerly played by Bump, Eda, and Lilith, currently played by most of the younger main cast. It's very similar to rugby, but on a field with numerous magical hazards, and more of a contact sport. Spell-casting may or may not be allowed depending on consent of the players. Team Grudgby requires three players per team, but as Eda and Lilith demonstrate, it can be played one-on-one.
  • Fight Clubbing: The Bonesborough Brawl in "Reaching Out". The only rules of this annual event is that participants must be at least 14 years old and fights are one-on-one. Amity claims her dad was a Former Teen Rebel and that winning the Brawl was "the last cool thing he did", which inspires her to compete in the present day.
  • Fire-Forged Friends:
    • Lilith and Hooty become this in Season 2, almost literally. It seems understandable that they got off on the wrong foot - Hooty is a living security system for a house that Lilith tries to attack numerous times - with Hooty often doing his best to humiliate her in the process. While Hooty seems to have an odd affection towards her from the start, despite Lilith finding him an annoying "house demon" and "weird bird worm" who gets on her nerves, it only gets worse in Season 2 when he seems a little too eager to help her find ingredients for alchemy. However, she warms up to him after he saves her from a swarm of angry fire-bees. Ironically, the first alchemical formula she has to brew afterwards is a salve to treat his burns.
    • Thanks to Belos in season 2, Luz and Hunter become friends after he pulls a Heel Face Turn. They rescue each other when escaping the emperor's mindscape in "Hollow Mind", with Luz doing all she can to protect Hunter from his uncle. When they next talk in "Clouds on the Horizon," they have a talk about the shared trauma, with Hunter pointing out that she's the only one who knows how he feels. "King's Tide" shows that Hunter is frantic and guilty that Luz impersonated him to save him from Kikimora, facing down a mutated Belos as the Draining Spell weakens him to rescue her.
  • Eye of Newt: Happens a few times, given the genre:
    • For example, in the season two opener, Lilith attempts to brew a scrying potion whose recipe calls for Fire Bee Honey, Portuspine Quills, Snaggleback Snaggleteeth, and Fairy Tears, although the viewers only see her gathering the first one and having to be rescued from the ferocious bees by Hooty.
    • Also, creating a Grimwalker requires (according to what the viewer can read in Belos' notes) a Galdorstone, Palistrom wood, Stonesleeper lungs, Selkidomus scales, the bone of an ortet, and a sample of the tissue of the person used as the model.
  • Fluffy Tamer: At Hexside, students sent to detention are thrown to a huge plant-like beast that traps the disobedient students in pod-like pseudopods and then uses brainwashing gas to "convince" them to behave. However, when Luz and Guz make it angry, Bump simply snaps his fingers to convince the creature to heel.
  • Food Fight: One of many hints that Eda and Lilith used to be closer than they are now, Principal Bump's files show Eda started one of these in the cafeteria after another student stole Lilith's lunch money, the ensuing melee causing several abominations to turn rogue.
  • Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
    • Eda is usually depicted as the foolish one opposed to Lilith being the responsible one, although Eda does have her responsible moments and Lilith her foolish ones. The season finale reveals it's the other way around: as Lilith is forced to admit, Eda actually was the more mature sister when they were kids. The Emperor's Coven wanted them to duel for one spot, and Lilith knew Eda would trounce her. Rather than talk to Eda about the duel, she curses her sister when the latter is sleeping, only to find out the next day that Eda was planning to forfeit all along. Eda said she knew how important the Coven is to Lilith, and would step aside. Yes she's immature, a thief and a scammer; Eda also doesn't betray her loved ones for ambition.
    • What we know about Philip (the man Belos once was) shows that he and his brother were once partners, his brother being the responsible one, maintaining positivity and trying to a more benevolent side to the magical beings of the Boiling Isles; unfortunately, Philip was too blinded by raw hatred and anger to see it, leading to the conflict where he murdered his brother.
  • Forced to Watch: In "King's Tide," Hooty agrees to protect the auxiliary team of CATs that accompanied Eda and Raine for their risky plan. Unfortunately, an Abomiton ambushes them, escorts Raine away, and puts Hooty in an Abomiton prison orb. Since Hooty doesn't have a sigil, he likely saw a tied-up Lilith, his best friend, nearly die in front of him.
  • Forgiveness:
    • In season two, this is how the Owl House residents, except Hooty, eventually treat their newest guest, Lilith. It's a rocky start; Eda constantly guilt-trips her with a trollface about cursing Eda as a child while King snickers that Lilith is deemed a traitor now for her attempts to rescue Eda from petrification. Even Luz doesn't want to befriend the new person. It's understandable considering Lilith did curse Eda in her sleep and kidnapped Luz, nearly killing her, in an attempt to arrest Eda. With that said, thanks to Lilith's sincere apologies, the relationships progress to the point where Eda trusts Lilith enough to let her go on a quest with Luz, albeit with a strict warning to not let anything happen to her apprentice.
    • "Thanks to Them" in the preview clips finally has Camilla hear the full story about why Luz chose to stay in the Boiling Isles, namely that Belos blackmailed Luz into surrendering the portal door and was trying to wipe every witch out. As Luz tearfully apologizes while looking at a photo of her father, Camilla hugs her and forgives her, promising they will have lots of time to talk now and clear the air. The important thing now is that Luz and her friends are safe. Luz responds yes they're safe, but her friends are not home. Indeed, when Camilla sees Belos possessing Hunter and attacking all the kids under her roof, she is horrified on realizing this was the Big Bad that her underage daughter was fighting for months and understood better why Luz chose to stay. When Belos leaves behind a working portal that the teens can use to follow and stop him as well as the Collector, she releases Luz from the promise to stay on Earth, but insists that she is coming to help save the Boiling Isles.
  • Friendly Enemy: In season 1, Lilith honestly believes her quest to arrest and conscript her sister is For Her Own Good and would much rather Eda join the Emperor's Coven by choice rather than have to force her too. Eda, for her point, still cares deeply for Lilith, although exploiting Lilith's reluctance is not beneath her. In season 2, the "enemy" part is more like a sibling rivalry.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Raine leads a small group of rebels called the Bards Against the Throne, or B.A.T.s; appropriately, they wear bat-like masks. Later when the group is expanded to include Darius and Eberwolf (both Coven Heads) it is changed to C.A.T.s, Covens Against the Throne; Darius does not like that name.
  • Functional Magic: Magic on the Boiling Isles combines Inherent Gift and Wild Magic. Witches and biped demons can cast spells using the magic bile sacs attached to their hearts. They do this by drawing spell circles, which determine the strength of the spell depending on the size. There is also Device Magic, where magic can be cast through Palismen because the creatures have their own source of magic that witches and demons can use if they are bonded to them.
    • The four basic glyphs are Light, Ice, Plant, and Fire. Glyph magic is implied to be ancient before the use of spell circles. Glyphs come from the environment of the Boiling Isles or from a spell. The glyphs are used as words to communicate with the island's magic to cast a specific spell. The basic glyphs can be used for simple spells, but more complex spells need a combination of the basics. It turns out that it's Titan Magic, where Glyphs are a part of their magic as it's their language. They can even make them appear on their bodies and project them like Spell Circles to cast their spells.
  • The Gambler: Eda seems unwilling to turn down any wager, no matter how trivial or how dangerous, and has a notebook full of the times she's made them with King and won.
  • Gambling Game: While dealing with the stress from her curse, Eda becomes addicted to Hexas Hold 'Em, a witch version of poker. When she gives up the addiction, Luz helps Vee the Basilisk track down the cards on Earth so she doesn't lose her magic and reveal her true form to anyone.
  • Genius Loci: The eponymous Owl House is a living creature named Hooty, who can talk through an owl-shaped bust on the front door. Eda and King tend to get annoyed with him a lot.
  • Gilligan Cut: In "Wing it Like Witches", Luz assures Willow that Boscha will eventually go away, saying she can't follow them all day. Cut to a scene with them sitting outside, covered with garbage and graffiti:

Luz: She followed us all day!

  • Godzilla Threshold: In season two, anyone who knows the slightest bit about the Collector knows they are bad news. The Collector sealed away the Owlbeast and gave Philip Wittenbane the Draining Spell, in exchange for freedom. Thus, when it seems the Day of Unity will go on as planned in "King's Tide," it's a big deal when King decides to release the Collector, after Kikimora reveals the Collector is the only one who can undo the Draining Spell.
  • Goo-Goo Godlike: The Collector is a Reality Warper of godlike power (enough to move the freakin' moon with a gesture) who has the personality and maturity of a small child; when it is truly the Darkest Hour with Belos' ritual in progress, King and Luz, are able to convince him to halt it simply by promising to play a game with him and claiming it can only be played if they have more players - which they won't have if the ritual is completed.
  • Good All Along: The episode "Hollow Mind" confirms that coven heads (and frequent partners) Darius and Eberwolf - formerly depicted as loyal henchmen of Emperor Belos - are conspiring to bring him down. The next episode shows they are working with Raine, who Belos wrongly believes has been brainwashed.
  • Good Costume Switch: In season 2, Lilith switches her tone grey wizard robes for a modest skirt (a hand-me-down from Eda) and a t-shirt (presumably stolen from the human world with the other stuff Eda peddles) of a "low computer battery". Possibly done as Gallows Humor, symbolizing the loss of her powers and her desire to "recharge".
  • Great Gazoo: The Collector is this. With the personality of a small child, it seems his goal isn't much other than to have fun. But with near limitless Reality Warping powers and a selfish attitude, his idea of fun could amount to a Fate Worse Than Death for his "playmates", which as of the end of Season 2 include every member of the cast except Luz, Amity, Hunter, Gus, and Willow. That is, unless King is up to the task of reigning in the Collector.
  • Guile Hero: Luz, Amity, Gus, Willow, and eventually Hunter all have Action Hero traits, but most villains in the series are far more powerful than they are, requiring them to shift to this Trope to outsmart them.
  • Hate Sink:
    • Deconstructed with Amity. Her first appearance seems to be setting her up for this role, but she quickly gets Character Development with Hidden Depths as early as her second appearance, edging her into Lovable Alpha Bitch territory.
    • Played straight with Boscha, however, who quickly becomes much nastier than Amity ever was.
    • Amity's parents were getting this before they even appeared in person, with many fan theories assuming they'll have the same role as Pacifica Northwest's parents on Gravity Falls, possibly having a negative opinion of Luz (or even approve of her, seeing Luz as a tool they could use to get on Belos' good side and/or trying to force Amnity, Edric and Emira into joining the Emperor's Coven). When asked, Word of God stated, "Amity's parents appear one way... But there's a little more to them than you guys think, and that could either be good or bad for our protagonists. I especially have fun writing Mr. Blight. He's interesting."
      • Season 2, when they actually appeared in person, only made this worse, the parallels between them and the Northwests only becoming more pronounced. Odalia tries to outright murder Luz for the crime of being Amity's friend and a human to boot.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: In "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", Gus starts to think he picked the wrong school of magic, thinking Illusion isn't very useful. Later in the episode though, he proves otherwise, covering an entire cemetery with very convincing phantasms. In that instance, he was able to convince Bria that the cemetery's statuesque headstones had turned into demonic angels weeping bleeding tears, that her hands had turned to dust, and that a statue resembling her own corpse was clawing at her. Additionally, he could mask the constructs of her magic and make her spell circles appear to crumble when she drew them to make it appear as if her magic wasn't working. The end result of all of this was Bria and her gang fleeing while screaming in terror. Clearly, Illusion is very potent when used to fullest potential.
  • Heel Realization: While Alador Blight tries to reign in his wife Odalia's worst tendencies when they involve murdering Amity's friends, his ditziness and utter trust in his wife blinds him to her lack of empathy. Then in "Clouds on the Horizon", a disguised King tells Alador what the Day of Unity involves. Alador confronts Odalia about this and is horrified to find out she is okay with mass genocide, as well as handing Amity's girlfriend to the Emperor, because Belos promised to treat the Blights like royalty. He frees Amity and her friends from Odalia's Abomination forcefield, helps fight his wife and Kikimora, and destroys the Abomitron factory while quitting on the spot. As an apology, he comes with Amity and the others to drive an airship to confront Kikimora and rescue Luz because they need a pilot.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Two in succession in "Thanks to them": when Belos forces Hunter to crush Flapjack, it gives Hunter the Heroic Willpower to resist Belos and toss the Titan's blood in the nearby lake, knowing that Belos would rather drown trying to get it than save either of them. Sure enough, turns out neither Belos nor Hunter can swim in his Earth clothes; when Camilla rescues Hunter, his body expels Belos. Then when Hunter is not breathing as Belos shuffles into the recreated portal, a dying Flapjack rests on Hunter and willingly shares Palisman magic with him.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Luz and King's dad discuss this in "Watching and Dreaming". When he gives her the option to return to life and give her the power to stop Belos, Luz asks if wanting to kill Belos makes her as bad as him. King's dad responds that Luz may have made mistakes, but her intentions were always to help others and from a place of goodness. Belos can say that he wanted to be a hero, but his motives are not pure, given that he spent centuries planning genocide after murdering his brother. He wanted the glory and not the actual goodness that a true hero requires.
  • Hidden Agenda Villain: Many.
    • It was not known at first why Belos is so intent on apprehending Eda. While having powerful servants is a benefit to any ruler, there has yet to be any clue as to what his actual goals are. At the end of Season 1, he claims to be working for the Titan and that his goals involve opening a door to the human world, although he tells Lutz it's not for something as "trivial" as an invasion; this unfortunately raises a lot more questions than it answers. It comes out that he wants to use the portal and the Day of Unity to release the Collector from its prison beneath the Boiling Isles, drain all the witches of their magic, and wipe them out en masse.
    • Originally, it was not known for what reason the shadowy figure cursed Eda, and the scene at the end of "The Intruder" suggests he isn't done tormenting her. "Agony of a Witch" answered this; Lilith was the figure, and it was - mostly - an accident.
    • Also, if the Emperor's Coven is indeed behind the Greater Basilisk's attack on Hexside (as Bump suspects they are) their motives for the attack are as yet unknown.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: Eda, most notable in "Lost in Language" where she is babysitting for the Bat Queen:

Luz: Aw, Eda, you look so motherly!
Eda: Say that again and I steal your tongue.

  • Hunter is this, post Heel Face Turn. In "Labyrinth Runners", he tries to convince Gus he's still Belos' merciless head enforcer, insisting the only reason he's helping Gus is because Gus gave him his sandwich. Gus doesn't buy it.
  • Hidden Villain: For now, Emperor Belos seems the biggest candidate for the show's Big Bad, and he wasn't seen for most of Season 1, although the Season Finale brought him to the forefront in a big way. There's also the villain who cursed Eda in the first place, who has only been seen as a sinister shadow. Assuming the two aren't the same person, although most fans of Terrace's work would find it odd if she made the plot that predictable.
    • In "Agony of a Witch", this is debunked - Lilith is the one who cursed her.
  • Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Luz writes stories with a protagonist named "Luzura"; obviously this is supposed to be Luz herself assuming the role of Good Witch Azura.
  • Hoist By His Own Petard: Belos is finally done in when, during the Day of Unity ritual, Luz fools him into shaking her hand, letting her put a coven brand on his arm. Of course, this nearly does Luz in too - the idea was to force him to stop the ritual to save himself, but Belos cannot (he never thought to create an Override Command), and had the Collector not intervened, Belos would likely have killed Luz in his dying rage.
  • Homage: Episode six of season one, titled Hooty's Moving Hassle, pays homage to Howl's Moving Castle, both the novel and anime. The plot involves Hooty gaining the ability to move the titular Owl House and the house standing up. The house walks on legs, just like the film, unlike the book where the castle floats across the sky. A more subtle version involves Lilith's nickname for Hooty in season two, Hootisfer, recreating the fire demon Calcifer's name.
    • Episode 1 of season 3 features a Luna Nova uniform, from Little Witch Academia as a whole, in the background of The Magic Circle shop. The uniform has a red accent, like the uniform of the main trio in Little Witch Academia. The shot occurs just under halfway through the episode, after Gus knocks over a bucket of gems. The two shows have quite a bit in common: teenage girl attending magical school, an initially cold academic figure who slowly opens up to the protagonist, a witch idol for both the main character and the academic figure to gush over. It's a fitting Homage.
  • Hope Spot: "Thanks to Them" features the kids actually making a rudimentary portal back to the Boiling Isles and testing it out. It sets the old shack on fire, and Vee has to put it out with a fire extinguisher.
  • Hostile Weather: The Boiling Isles has plagues instead of weather, and it's hazardous to both humans and the natives. In the fourth episode, Luz witnesses a boiling rainstorm, prompting Eda and King to tell her that they have even worse conditions; like gore-nadoes, shale-hale, and painbows, which is sort of like a rainbow, but turns you inside out.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: Both Eda and Lilith go through this at the beginning of Season 2, having lost their powers and the respect civilians used to show them. Even worse, they have to take odd jobs and work as bounty hunters simply to get by, as Eda can no longer use the portal to steal things from Earth to sell as novelties. And Luz is now the one teaching both of them runic magic; no complaints from them, but having to learn from your apprentice isn't very dignified.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Belos was born human, but barely qualifies now, due to absorbing Palisman to elongate his life, he suffers from causing his body to degenerate into something that matches his dark soul. While he still appears human - even under the mask - his true form is, a hideous demon with gangly, overly-long limbs and dozens of inhuman eyes all over his torso.
  • Hypocrite: Odalia Blight. A small trace of this is shown in the beginning of "Escaping Expulsion" when she tells Amity, “You should be in class right now, what are you thinking?" even though she is the one who pulled Amity out of class and made her come to the office. Far more seriously, her - stated - reasons for having Luz, Gus, and Willow expelled from Hexside is because of the dangerous incidents caused by the students. While she might have a small point there, she literally tries to kill Luz later in an incredibly dangerous demonstration of an equally unsafe abomination-powered robot, something even her husband Alador seems to object to.
    • Luz flat-out calls Belos this in the episode "King's Tide".
  • If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Belos invokes this towards Luz when she lets him wither away to flesh and bones in the Titan rain, after she rips him out of the Titan's heart. She watches coolly as the rain eviscerates him, and he grovels at her feet, saying that she will be as bad as the "witches" if she doesn't save him. Luz walks away, knowing it's not her kill. She lets Eda, Raine and King deliver the final blow.
  • I Gave My Word: The Collector will honor any deal he makes if he "pinky swears" to it, though he gets really angry at anyone who breaks the deal.
  • Ignored Epiphany:
    • "Thanks to Them" shows Belos in blob form firsthand learning that his quest to wipe out all the witches and "save" humans like Caleb and Luz by killing them was All for Nothing. Gravesfield has long moved on from its witch hunting days, with kids celebrating Halloween and showing more interest in their phones and pop culture than in banal questions about evil. "Witch Hunter General" doesn't even exist as a job anymore. He could have just walked back through the portal as soon as he arrived all those years ago after seeing Caleb had settled with the witch Evelyn, and brought back an army from his time to "rescue" his brother. But no, Belos cannot accept this reality or delusions crumbling in his face. He decides to return to the Boiling Isles by any means possible, to finish his work wiping out the surviving witches because abandoning this crusade would mean his life was a waste, and killing the kids on Earth if he gets the chance. This tidbit completely ignores that the Collector is free and smooshed him last time they met, and it's highly possible he'll be returning to a wasteland if not utter chaos with King and the Collector playing "Owl house".
    • Likewise, "For the Future" shows that despite the fact that King saved her from near-death and Luz was trying to stop the Draining Spell, Kikimora has taken it upon herself to take advantage of the power vacuum that the Collector's chaos has created so that she is no onger an underling. When Luz and the others show up with a plan to stop the Collector and save the Boiling Isles, Kikimora through Boscha opts to knock them out, toss Luz and her mother into a pit, and kill them personally. It's so downright stupid and Luz calls her out for not having any original ideas.
  • Important Haircut:
    • In this case, Important Dye Job. Amity's natural hair color is brown, and initially, it is dyed green to match her mother's, who claimed she wanted her children to be "color-coordinated". In "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", she dyes it purple and wears it without the ponytail, her way of rejecting such conformity and showing individuality. Amity later says she chose purple because that is the color associated with Abomination Magic.
    • In "Thanks to Them", Hunter freaks when he sees his "uncle's" face in the mirror, realizing that he has let his hair grow to the point where he starts to look like Belos. He cuts his hair - or rather tries to. Willow shows up and helps give him a neater trim.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Ahem, Grayne, the Illusion Coven Head. His attempts to deceive the Hexside staff and students is foiled by Gus (an apprentice of the same coven; to give a comparison, most battles between child and adult wizards in this series are curb-stomps in favor of the latter) he proves unable to dispell or withstand the illusions Gus is creating by accident, and his attempt to view Gus' memories (in order to find the location of the Looking Glass Ruins) turns him into a terrified, babbling wreck. In fact, at the end of the episode where he is the antagonist, his second-in-command quits on him and Bump is able to blackmail him into staying away from Hexside by threatening to tell everyone he was bested by a group of students. Not exactly the most dignified way for a villain to lose.
  • Inspector Javert: Lilith. She's determined to bring Eda in, and is willing to forcibly conscript her into the Emperor's coven. Season two has her drop this, as after realizing that Belos was going to execute Eda and not cure her, she defected in an attempt to rescue her sister and got fired.
    • Amity too, towards Luz, at least at first, being something of the "Concerned Clair" type of The Stool Pigeon.
  • Instant Plastic Surgery: One can use illusion bracelets to obtain this effect. Remove the bracelet and the illusion vanishes. It's revealed that the Blight parents make Edric and Emira wear them, and Darius designs a potion for Eda to disguise herself as Raine for his plan to stop the Day of Unity.
  • Irony:
    • Luz uses magic drawn from the Boiling Isles themselves, meaning her magic comes from the Titan, an entity whom Belos - the Big Bad claims to be a servant of.
    • Lilith starts to lose her cold and amoral attitude in season 2, "warming" up and showing more emotion and empathy; despite this, the first runic magic she masters after losing her powers is ice magic.
    • Right at his first appearance on the show, Gus was fascinated by the human world and longed to explore it firsthand. In the season 2 finale, he gets his wish in the worst possible way, having to flee the Boiling Isles with Luz, Amity, Willow, and Hunter, as the Collector starts to do heavens-knows-what to it. Popping bubblewrap is helping him cope with it.
    • Part of the reason why the Owl House residents can't recreate the portal is that they don't have a reliable source for Titan's blood. Turns out the Emperor needs it as well for his plans with the original broken portal, and "Eclipse Lake" shows Eda, Amity and King clashing with Hunter and Kikimora in an attempt to fetch some. King was a Titan all along, and his blood could have been used to power a new portal. Not that Eda would have allowed it, but still!
    • Ironic qualities seem to be a recurring theme among Coven Heads:
      • Terra Snapdragon is the Plant Coven Head, and as such, uses magic to literally create life; despite being a sadist who uses said magic to destroy life.
      • Darius is the Abomination Coven Head, and as such, uses magic that creates and manipulates slime - and he's a serious Neat Freak.
      • Eberwolf is the Beast Coven Head, using magic that focuses on taming wild beasts, yet appearance-wise, Eberwolf seems to be one.
      • Raine is Head of the Bard Coven, able to channel magic through music; he has terrible stage fright.
      • Grayne is Head of the Illusion Coven, but while he is fittingly a Mad Artist he is also a Terrible Artist, and simply trying to look into Gus' mind to view Gus' nightmares turns him into a trembling, terrified wreck.
  • The Jailer: Warden Wrath is one, who arrests and locks up anyone he deems "weird". Of course, exactly what you have to do to be considered "weird" in the Boiling Isles is hard to say, given that the whole place is a Dimension of Weirdos. Long story short, he starts off the whole, "conformity is good, individuality is bad" attitude the villains as a whole have.
  • Jerk With a Heart of Gold: Darius; a man who comes off as egotistical, arrogant, and rude, this doesn't change much after he is revealed to be a mole working for La Resistance.
  • Jerk With the Heart of A Jerk: Amity's mother Odalia is clearly a horrible woman, but one would assume she is, like most of Belos' henchmen and admirers, an Unwitting Pawn who would never approve of his genocidal goals. Sadly, this is a false assumption. She does indeed know the true intent of the Day of Unity, and is a willing accomplice, Belos having promised her and her family a life deserving of royalty in exchange for her assistance. This revelation leads to Alador turning against her, a battle of spells, and their entire factory - and as a result, their business - being destroyed.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: In I Was a Teenage Abomination, Amity isn't wrong to be upset about being cheated out of being Top Student, because Willow was cheating by having Luz pretend to be her Abomination.

K-O

  • Karma Houdini:
    • Piniet, the villain in the episode "Sense and Insensitivity" is a publisher who punishes clients who fail to meet their deadline by turning them into small cubes (and even steps on one of them when he's angry). He's also willing to use extortion to get a client to comply, kidnapping Luz to "persuade" her and King to write a sequel to King's first book. He not only gets no comeuppance at the end of the episode, he gets a client who he believes writes better than King.
    • Possibly Odalia. In the Grand Finale, she is the only character unaccounted for, so her fate remains unknown, and it is unclear whether she ever faced any punishment for her crimes.
  • Karmic Transformation:
    • As Luz points out to Belos, he sacrificed his humanity in his quest to rid the Boiling Isles of Witches. She strips the last bits of it from him when branding him with his sigil. For most of season three he has a feral form that has to move on all fours.
    • A benevolent one in the series finale; Luz willingly takes on the Titan's power from the Void Between Worlds so as to stop Belos. She becomes the witch that she always wanted to be, but uses it to save her friends and the Collector from the former Emperor. 
  • LARP: Basically what the Collector's "game" is in Season three, although it is clearly only fun by his own twisted definition.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: The series finale shows what happened to Kikimora: she's sentenced to helping rebuild the Boiling Isles both for being a Belos stooge and trying to take advantage of the Collector's chaos.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Lilith's mentor, Flora D'splora. Her name, short hair with bangs, dark complexion, monkey-like Palisman, and archeology expertise makes is obvious who she is supposed to be. Luz even lampshades it by suspiciously saying, "I have questions about that name," when she shows up in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen".
    • The fact that voice actress Eileen Galindo was also the voice of Dora's mother in that cartoon seems to confirm it.
  • Lethal Chef:
    • Amity. In "Escaping Expulsion" she offers Lutz "fairy potpie". Not only is this made with fairies, said fairies aren't dead yet. Possibly justified in that Amity is a sheltered daughter of rich parents who likely doesn't have to cook for herself.
    • Gus, Willow, and Hunter are little better; in "Thanks to Them" they help Amity prepares... something for Luz and her mother that looks even less appetizing. Seeing as Vee (a Boiling Isles native like them) has to nonverbally warns them not to eat it, it's doubtful the culture barrier is the reason. A later scene has Gus brag about how his mustard ravioli brought tears to their eyes - Vee again has to use Brutal Honesty here.
  • Living Toys: By the time Luz and his entourage return to the Boiling Isles, most of the population has been turned into these. They witness the Collector doing so to Terra, a punishment (he claims) for not acting "nice".
  • Magical Academy: Hexside School of Magic and Demonics. Known classes include lessons on Potions, Plant magic, and Abominations. Somewhat Harmful to Minors given how they handle detention, but at least the principal lets Luz attend.
  • Malevolent Masked Man:
    • Belos, for starters. Whether there is even a human face behind his mask is debatable, as all that has been seen is one evil, glowing eye. He is seen without the mask in "Eclipse Lake", revealing to be an elderly human-looking man with a jagged black slash across his face and ears that, while pointed, are not as much so as most witches on the Boiling Isles. Interestingly, his eyes seem normal without the mask.
    • Members of the Emperor's Coven wear masks with raven-like faces.
    • The Golden Guard, Lilith's replacement in the Emperor's Coven, as of season 2. He covers his face with a golden full-face, beakless version of the mask the rest of the Coven wears; even Lilith does not know his identity. She knows who he is, though, and really doesn't like him. It doesn't take long, however, before we see him unmasked and he starts to show Character Development.
  • Meaningful Name: Luz's last name - Noceda - literally means "she doesn't back down" in Spanish, which is fitting for her.
  • Magitech: There are different pieces of magical technology such as Crow Phones, Scrolls, and Crystal Balls. Crow Phones are crows that can make and receive calls while also being strong enough to lift a person. Scrolls look like paper scrolls that can be summoned by magic that can browse the internet, take pictures, and text. Crystal Balls are used to make video calls, watch TV, can be used to surf the internet, and as clocks. There are also Abomatons built by Blight Industries combine Abomination magic with technology. Odalia later gives Kikimora a special Mini-Mecha version loaded with high-tech weaponry.
  • Mama Bear: Eda is a surrogate one to Luz; Luz's own mother is a real one, and not just to Luz. Eda's own mother too; she spends years trying to cure her daughter, making bargains with Wartlop in exchange for remedies; when she finds out they're quack remedies, it does not end well for Wartlop.
    • The Bat Queen is this too, not only towards her own young, but to all the orphaned Palismans she has adopted.
  • Mecha-Mooks: Abomatons are Magitech-Mooks!
  • The Mindless Almighty: Season two hints that the Collector is this. The Collector is an unknown being that once captured the Owlbeast which now inhabits Eda and Lilith's body, who later became trapped under the Boiling Isles. They are all-knowing enough to offer a Draining Spell to Emperor Belos as part of a deal to free them while giggling about how many Grimwalkers he's killed and the games that the Collector wants to play once free. In King's visions in "Clouds on the Tides" however, the Collector sounds like a petulant child, the way King used to be when he thought. He was the King of Demons.
  • The Mole: Darius, Everwolf, and Raine are plotting against Belos while feigning loyalty to him.
  • Morality Chain:
    • Eda claims to be this for King, keeping him in line as a roommate for "The King of Demons." Granted, it's Eda, who is a thief and a con artist so her word is questionable. Turns out she was more right than initially intended; hers and Luz's influence, positive and chaotic, made King realize that he didn't want to be evil after he finds out he is a Titan and a baby god, as Lilith puts it.
    • Showing how much King takes after Eda, he agrees to become this for the Collector after freeing him, promising to be his "playmate" and committing to protecting the witches of the Boiling Isles. King realizes it has to be him and not Luz because of his Titan heritage, and the responsibility that comes with it.
  • More Expendable Than You: This comes up quite a bit:
    • Eda regularly will send Luz and King out of danger if they're cornered. Luz eventually calls out Eda for this in "O Titan, Where Art Thou," saying that she may be a kid, but she's not going to let Eda martyr herself.
    • "I Was A Teenage Abomination": Willow boots Luz out of Hexside after Bump busts their Abomination cheating plan; she says Luz will get dissected, but Willow will just get detention for defying the principal.
    • "Clouds on the Horizon":
      • King brings up that if he's a Titan, maybe he can activate latent powers to stop the Day of Unity since Titans are the most powerful beings in the Demon Realm. He's also been entering the Collector's Realm in his dreams. Eda vetoes it; even if he did have powers, he's her son and can't risk his life, one that is supposed to last for eons.
      • When Lilith hears about Darius's plan to let the Owlbeast curse corrupt the Draining Spell, she asks why she can't take Eda's place. After all, she now shares the curse. Eda vetoes this because she's had the curse for longer and can control it. She doesn't mention that using the curse to corrupt magic, as she did with Darius and Eberwolf, is a Suicide Mission; there is a high chance that Lilith could die if she took Eda's place.
      • Belos wants both Hunter and Luz dead. He tried killing them both in cold blood after they uncovered his true nature in "Hollow Mind". Between the two, however, Luz is more likely to just get killed; it's implied Belos needs Hunter's body to make a new Grimwalker, something that disturbs them both greatly. In the climax, when Kikimora attempts to capture Hunter and the kids are cornered, Luz convinces Gus to use his illusion powers to disguise her as Hunter and vice-versa, so Luz gets captured instead. It helps that Kikimora let slip that the Emperor knows about the CATs' plan to activate Eda's curse so as to stop the Day of Unity, so Luz can provide some backup support for Eda.
  • Mugging the Monster: Taken Up To Eleven in "Senses and Insensitivity" where a scam artist tries to mug Eda and Lilith at the same time. The two sisters are amused by the audacity while saying his outfit doesn't work for the scam. They quickly mop the floor with him.
  • Mundane Utility: Seems a common practice in the Boiling Isles. Emira and Edric use Concealment Stones to cover their acne, Eda brings vegetables to life so they'll cook themselves (it doesn't work), Lilith uses her newly-mastered ice magic skills to make popsicles and ice sculptures, and there is practically nothing Amity cannot craft out of Abomination slime.
  • A Nazi By Any Other Name: Belos is a lot like Judge Frollo with magical powers and plans that are more far-reaching. Combining this with Fantastic Racism, his plans for the Boiling Isles are no less than Final Solution.
  • Never Live It Down: There are a few in-universe examples courtesy of season two:
    • "Separate Tides" has the Owl House residents roasting Lilith for her season one actions, understandably. She admits that she deserves this and spends the episode trying to prove she can be trusted by collecting scrying potion ingredients. Hooty is the exception, who follows Lilith and tries to befriend her. When she finally accepts his help, they have a talk at the end of the episode where she admits she feels she can never make up for her mistakes. Hooty has to tell her that redemption doesn't have to be solitary.
    • Then in "Reaching Out," Alador Blight and Edalyn Clawthorne recognize each other after helping stop a mutated Warden. He genuinely asks about her controllable Owlbeast form. Eda changes back and tells him off because Luz told her about Odalia using Luz as lethal target practice. "I'm watching you, Blight."
  • Never Mess With Granny: Eda may be a fun old gal, but she's a powerful witch that you don't want to trifle with. Just ask any of the monsters that meet their end at her hands.
    • Her mother is this too, plus Mama Bear on top of it.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • Belos in "A Hollow Mind" casually reveals to Luz and Hunter his real plans for the Day of Unity, because he doesn't plan for either of them to live to tell the tale. He lets Luz try to save Hunter from being buried alive, as the kids are having a mutual breakdown. Luz uses her jacket full of glyphs to try and save Hunter, since she sees he's a victim and a pawn of the Emperor, and maybe a friend. Hunter returns the favor by using the glyphs to save her from Belos, and they make it to Eda's escape route just in time. While they're both shaken and Hunter runs out of the Owl House having a panic attack, Luz now has the knowledge about the Day of Unity being a draining spell that will wipe out all the witches in the Boiling Isles, and she can warn Eda and her friends.
    • The same episode implies that Belos's habit of disposing of Golden Guards when they question his authority caused Darius to defect and start the CATS, even if the name wasn't his idea. The Golden Guard of that time was Darius's mentor and best friend, and his mysterious death made Darius suspicious enough when Belos announced the Day of Unity, the Coven head started to investigate and convinced Eberwolf that he smelled a rat.
    • Hands down, however, his worst mistake was double-crossing the Collector. When you analyze the story as a whole it is easy to see that had he not done that, he would have won.
    • "Thanks to Them": The kids are nowhere near finding a portal back to the Boiling Isles until Flapjack uncovers the parchment that reveals there is Titan's Blood in the graveyard. Belos possesses Hunter and influences his behavior with gaslighting and mind-rape to convince Luz they need to find the Titan's blood alone on Halloween. Despite Flapjack warning Luz that Hunter is Not Himself, she's too late to stop Belos from grabbing the vial using Hunter's body. At this point, Belos could use the vial since he knows where the inactive portal is, and return to the Boiling Isles while leaving Luz and the others stranded. Instead, he fights her and prepares to murder the other witches because he cannot resist some Evil Gloating. This decision, plus crushing Flapjack out of spite, gives Hunter the Heroic Willpower to resist him and throw away the vial, nearly leading to both of them dying. When Belos retreats into the portal, he leaves it open long enough for the crew sans Vee to follow, with Dr. Noceda determined to kick his ass and protect her daughter, as well as the Boiling Isles.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Eda is the only being in existence with a portal between the Demon Realm and human realm. Belos wanted to keep her alive long enough to ferret the portal's location and activation key. Season two shows Luz and the Owl House residents trying to recreate the portal, with limited success, because the main ingredient Titan's blood is super rare. Season three features Luz and her friends trying this again, and their attempts are fiery. We do learn, however, that the graveyard has an inactive portal which Titan's blood can activate, and the kids use that to return to the Boiling Isles when Belos uses the vial to activate it.
  • Noble Fugitive: While not truly evil, Eda is a wanted criminal, both for peddling snake-oil and refusing to join any coven. She boldly operates her business in a town where her Wanted Posters are hanging in plain sight.
  • Non-Malicious Monster:
    • The Bat Queen; scary as she is, she's a decent sort who takes care of orphaned Palismans. Her paranoia is also justified, considering Emperor Belos eats Palismen.
    • The Selkidomus in "Separate Tides". While sailors think its dangerous due to its attacks on ships, it is, in fact, defending its young.
    • In "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door", it is revealed that Eda's cure is the result of the Owl Beast (as it is called) a demon bound to her soul; the Owl Beast is just as burdened by the curse as she is and like Eda, only desires freedom. After confronting it, they decide to work together towards that goal, Eda is able to assume the "owl harpy" form afterward.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • It's bad enough that a Humanoid Abomination like Warden Wrath has a crush on Eda, but King claims her last boyfriend was even worse. "Not my boyfriend!" insists Eda in reply.
    • The Stinger of "Something Ventured, Someone Framed" shows that Eda's school records have lots of things like this.
    • The pixie infestation that causes Hexside to be closed during "Really Small Problems". Willow starts to explain what happened to Eda, but King's antics drown her out to the viewers.
    • Lots of them in "Understanding Willow" regarding Willow and Amity when they were younger. The one with the egg pit stands out, Amity telling Luz that, "that one is kind of hard to explain".
    • Sometime between episodes 1 and 2 of season 3, Eda loses her right hand. She later tells Luz it's a "short story" but she doesn't elaborate.
  • Not Me This Time: While the Collector has a few atrocities under his belt -- giving Belos the Draining Spell, turning all of the Boiling Isle into living dolls, and mind-raping the OwlHouse trio -- he confirms in the series finale that he didn't wipe out the Titans, the crime for which he ended up imprisoned for ten thousand yeras. Not even by accident; his siblings, the other Archivists, were responsible for the genocide and left the Collector to take the fall. King's dad in the Space Between Worlds regrets that he locked up a child for millennia out of rage, only to go after the wrong person.
  • Not That Kind of Doctor: Luz's mother, Dr. Noceda - she is a veterinarian.
  • The Nose Knows: The hall monitors at Hexside (possibly meant to be parodies of the Dementors) can smell "trouble", using this ability to find misbehaving students.
  • The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: In "Something Ventured, Something Framed", Luz first assumes being sent to detention won't be all that bad. Unfortunately, in Hexside, detention means being thrown to a giant, tentacled beast who traps the students in pods, and then applies brainwashing gas to "convince" them to behave.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Palismans; all of them start out as adorable baby animals.
  • Obliviously Evil: The Collector; there doesn't seem to be any malice or evil behind what he does, but as a naive child, he fails to understand the consequences of his actions (the finale reveals he doesn't even fully understand the concept of death), which could ironically cause far more suffering among the populace of the Boiling Isles than Belos ever did.
  • Obviously Evil:
    • Warden Wrath, especially when he takes the mask off.
    • Piniet from "Sense and Insensitivity". Most viewers likely realized he was bad news long before King did.
    • The map-seller, also from "Sense and Insensitivity" was easy to identify as a con artist from the start; even Eda was onto him, only using the map he sold him on the off chance he was being truthful.
    • The Greater Basilisk in "The First Day" is even creepy when in disguised form.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", Amity helps Luz search through the library's restricted archives, only to be caught by Malfus, who scolds Amity for breaking the rules and fires her. At the end of the episode, Luz - who justifiably feels responsible - shows up at Amity's house, ragged and disheveled, having convinced Malfus to change his mind, having to go through "trials" involving man-eating books and a paper dragon to do so. Unfortunately, this may be The Greatest Story Never Told for Luz.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Eda's attitude towards Lilith; she rescues Lilith from a Giant Spider in "Senses and Insensitivity", claiming that if anyone is going to whack Lilith, Eda is going to be the one who does it.
  • Only Sane Woman: Know how bad things are in the season three premiere? Vee, the basilisk who was tortured by the Emperor's Coven and had to leave behind her brethren, is the only kid in the Noceda household who isn't dealing with Day of Unity trauma and knows enough about the human realm to acclimate them. Even Luz is uncharacteristically off her game out of guilt that she caused Belos to rise to power, Eda and King are trapped in the Boiling Isles with the Collector and her friends are stranded.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: Bizarrely played for laughs when Luz meets one with no head, his face on his chest.
  • Our Demons Are Different: King claims to be a deposed demon lord who has lost his powers; whether he is or not is for now, subject to debate. Whatever the case, he's willing to give Luz a few pointers on how to fight them, like telling her that their two weaknesses are purified water and passive-aggressive comments. "Even demons can have inner demons," he claims.
    • According to Word of God, natives of the Boiling Isles is divided into Witches (like Eda, Lilith, and the Blights) and Demons, which are everyone else. Demons are further divided into Bugs (like Adegast and Hooty), Beasts (Vee and the Inspector), Biped (such as Kikimora and Warden Wrath), and Miscellaneous (the Bat Queen).
  • Our Elves Are Different: Eda, Lilith, and most students at Hexide are called witchlings, and seem to have most traits of fantasy elves, including pointy ears and magical ability.
  • Our Homunculi Are Different:
    • Abominations are jars of magical slime that can assume vaguely humanoid forms to act as magical servants. Presumably a profitable and lucrative profession for wizards, as Willow's parents insisted she take the class, even though she had no talent in it. Amity also specializes in this school.
    • In season 2, Amity's parents are shown combining these creatures with Magitech technology to create half-machine-half-abomination soldiers. Amity herself starts showing creative ways to use the conjured-up slime, using it to create bindings, cages, a shield, and a sword,
    • From what we know about Grimwalkers like Hunter, they seem to fit the description of traditional homunculi, being artificial humans created through alchemy like magical clones, from a tissue sample of a human and various arcane ingredients. They start out as infants, but seem to mature quickly.
  • Our Titans Are Different: Titans were a species that lived on the Boiling Isles but were decimated by the Collectors. This happened today due to their magic negating the Collectors' magic. The Boiling Isles is made from the corpse of one, and life evolved into Witches and Demons from them. The Titans have a vast magical power that even their corpse gives off, which is why Witches and Demons developed their own magic. Their blood can be used to make portals between worlds. A Titan's magic comes in Glyphs and is implied to have unique sets for each individual. The extent of this magic seems nigh-omnipotent due to the many combinations that can be made from their Glyphs.
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: Eda is called the Owl Lady because she suffers from a curse that causes her to change into a demonic, owl-like beast at night. This was inflicted upon her by a wizard whose identity she doesn't remember, and also doesn't remember why. Eda takes a potion to avoid the transformations, but starting with episode 10, its effect is starting to fail...
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Dottie and Roselle, two sweet-looking old ladies who run the Kitty Cafe are in fact vampires who kidnap cute creatures and brainwash them with constant babying. Unlike typical vampires, they aren't bothered by sunlight; it's not known what other traditional traits of vampires do or do not apply to them.[context?]
  • Override Command: Possibly Belos' biggest flaw was failing to devise any way to halt the Day of Unity ritual should anything go wrong, which comes back to bite him in the end.
  • The Owl-Knowing One: Eda claims this is why she's called "The Owl Lady", although King claims its because she coughs up rat bones and Hooty claims its because she's attracted to shiny objects. While all that is true - and as a wizard, she is likely rather wise, if eccentric - the actual reason is she suffers from a curse that causes her to turn into a demonic, owl-like beast if she doesn't take elixir, making her far more like the other sort of owl.

P-T

  • Papa Wolf: Principal Bump may be stern and a little outdated when it comes to maintaining tradition, but threaten his students and he is quick to react. When a Basilisk revealed herself and tried draining Amity, Bump put himself between the creature and the best Abominations student and fought her to the best of his ability. He outright rebels against the Emperor on learning that the Coven was storming the school to forcibly sigil the underage witches under the cover of "protecting them".
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In "For the Future", Boscha has an assistant named Miki, a student who has never been seen at Hexside before. You aren't fooling anyone, Kikimora.
  • Pet The Dog:
    • Subverted when Belos offers to send Luz home in "King's Tide" after soundly defeating her in round two of their fight, using the last bit of Titan's Blood. If he wanted to send her back to Earth, he could have done it at any time. He says he doesn't want another human "destroyed" by this realm, but tried killing her before. When Luz points out he's no longer human, Belos starts petrifying her, calling it a Mercy Kill but with the intent of making her beg for her life.
    • Played straight when the Collector stops Belos from killing Luz and her friends, when it's shown they could have squashed everyone in the room. It seems they have some idea of what is sporting or not, since from their eyes, Belos is not fun and a liar; there is no fun when your opponent is cornered. What's more, the Collector lets the kids escape to Earth; they only demand that King stay to honor their deal.
  • Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Borsha and Hunter aside, Luz and her classmates have to confront adult wizards, the conflicts usually ending either by said villain having a reason to halt the confrontation on their own (usually of the You Got Spunk type) or Eda's intervention. Belos is a particularly disturbing case, as he keeps flip-flopping between psychologically torturing Luz, trying to recruit her to his mindset, or attempting to kill her.
  • Poisonous Friend: King seems to be turning into this quickly, his hubris and pride nearly leading him and Luz to their doom more than once. The last few episodes of season two make him realize he doesn't want to be that kind of friend, and can't be when finding out he is a baby God.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain:
    • Many fans believe Amity's parents qualify, that the reason they forbade Amity from being friends with Willow had something to do with Willow having gay parents. If so, this might be a big reason why Amity is afraid to admit her feelings for Luz, as she assumes her parents wouldn't approve. This is, however, eventually Jossed. Alador is surprised to learn Amity is dating Luz, but does not object to it, while Odalia is just fine with her daughter being lesbian - so long as she approves of Amity's girlfriend. That's... Not exactly much better considering she prepares to hand over Luz to the Emperor's Coven, which as far as everyone knows is a death sentence.
    • It's revealed that Belos is this. He's not actually a witch at all! Instead, he's a human that has subsisted on Palismen to extend his life force and may have docked his ears to look like a witch. He's also a witch hunter whose career as The Hunter led to him becoming a Serial Killer targeting witches and demons in Van Helsing Hate Crimes. He even went so far as to murder his own brother for falling in love with a witch. Now he wants to wipe out everyone in the Boiling Isles, regardless of if they're good or not. Luz understandably calls him evil.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: In universe example. In Thanks to Them, the opening montage is created by "Lumity Studios", and their logo is visible for a brief second — a reference to the Official Couple of Luz and Amity.
  • Power Limiter: One of the biggest plot points in the series involves the covens, which are sort of like guilds. Each specialize in a specific school of magic, the most powerful ones being : Bard, Plants, Illusion, Oracle, Beast Keeping, Construction, Healing, Abominations, Potions, and Emperor's. When a wizard joins a coven - which is required by law - they receive a magical branding that prevents them from using any magic other than the coven's specialty. Eda refuses to join a coven, meaning she is not limited to one school of magic and is potentially one of the most powerful of sorcerers. Unfortunately, members of the Emperor's coven - like her sister - are also allowed to use all schools. They do have their own brand, however, one that presumably ensures obedience.
  • Professional Butt-Kisser: Lilith's greatest flaw, unfortunately. Known to be a Teacher's Pet when young, she follows Belos blindly until his true nature is revealed, and then becomes a suck-up to Luz when she tries to teach her and Eda magic. She even goes so far as to offer to worship King when it is revealed he is an infant Titan, something King clearly does not want.
  • Properly Paranoid: In "Clouds on the Horizon", Eda orders everyone in the Owl House to not tell the CATTs that King is a Titan. She says there's no time for King to experiment with his powers, with 24 hours to the Day of Unity and given that the Titan Trappers tried to sacrifice him, there's no telling who or what would want to use his blood, or body. King is dejected by this as he wants to help, but Kikimora gloats to a captive Luz that the Emperor knows about the plan to use the Owl Lady due to having "eyes" everywhere. Eda made the right call because either the CATs have a mole, or the Emperor has been spying on them from a distance.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Luz is a Nice Girl on the surface and means well, but many times, she pursues her goals by cheating, lying, stealing, and other types of dishonesty. While Amity might call her out on it a few times, she's Easily Forgiven by most characters and never truly held responsible. This, of course, tended to be a problem for the protagonists of Gravity Falls as well.
  • Pyrrhic Villainy: In "Wing it Like Witches", Boscha's team wins the Grudgby match, but Boscha's entire posse rejects her and joins Willow and Luz. Clearly, this is not the outcome Boscha had wanted.
  • Reality Ensues:
    • Luz tries to compare her initial adventures in the Boiling Isles to those in her Azura books, that she's a chosen one who will find her destiny. Eda scoffs at the notion that the fiction would reflect the reality; in addition to the Azura pose being too flowery for her taste, Eda explains that witch magic and society don't work to serve one person's character development or powers. The Boiling Isles comprise the gross remains of a former giant, and the society mainly has witches competing against each other to earn a living or enter the best coven possible for job security. Heck, Eda doesn't even know what "summer camp" is.
    • Luz's initial attempts to get into Hexside get her banned. For Luz's sake, Eda goes to talk with Principal Bump and asks him to take Luz as a student on probation. After a whole episode, Bump agrees, on the provision that Eda cleans up her old pranks and magic waste...and fills out the paperwork. Eda finds the idea of paperwork worse than the cleaning, but Bump is right that they need a record of Luz on file at an academic institution.
    • Lilith has hunted down Eda as a fugitive, taken Luz hostage, and cursed her sister when Eda was a child, even though she never intended it to last beyond a day. Though she is sorry about this in the season 2 premiere and has to live with Eda and the others, no one in the Owl House has forgiven her except Hooty. Even chipper Luz bluntly says in a video for her mother that she doesn't know if Lilith can ever be trusted. Lilith herself admits she screwed up, and decides to start earning everyone's trust.
    • "A Hollow Mind": Hunter learns that Belos lied to him about everything, including who and what Hunter is, and then callously attempts to murder his nephew. Sure, Hunter recovers to save Luz and get them both to an exit portal from Belos's mind, but when he revives in the real world and has time to let the realization register? Hunter is panicking and rambling, running away when Eda asks him if he's okay. Finding out that the person you consider family wants you dead and never loved you is not fun. "Labryinth Runners" goes further when Hunter admits to Gus that he holed in the condemned Panoramatorium rather than warn anyone about the Day of Unity or stay at the Owl House at Luz's invitation because despite seeing firsthand that his uncle didn't love him and treat him like family, he wasn't ready to face the truth because it meant he spent his whole life following a lie and trusting the wrong person. Seeing Graye nearly brand Gus with an Abomination sigil snapped Hunter out of it because he realized he couldn't let his uncle directly or indirectly hurt anyone anymore.
    • "Clouds on the Horizon":
      • It was safe for viewers to assume that the Blight parents were a united front of emotional abuse and manipulation to secure a rigid future for their children in the Emperor's Coven. Alador at best was oblivious to how they were making Amity, Edric and Emira miserable, while making an effort to listen to Amity. Turns out that Odalia was gaslighting and emotionally abusing her husband as well; they are technically business partners but she makes the executive decisions at Blight Industries like firing his team and forcing Alador to work while sick. As he tells a disguised King in private, he knows Odalia is manipulating him but it's either him working at the factory or the children, and he refuses to subject his own kids to the same unfair work conditions. Then he finds out that Odalia knew they were enabling mass genocide with the Draining Spell, turns against her by blowing up their factory, and rescues the kids sent to extract the younger Blights. When Odalia walks off in a huff, he drops his anger and says that it was actually scary to stand up to Odalia. Even if you stand up to your abusers, the emotional scars stay with you.
      • While on a mission to extract Amity, Edric, and Emira from the Blight Manor, Hunter asks Luz to not tell Willow and Gus that he's a Grimwalker. She asks why; from what she sees, he bonded with the two and they wouldn't judge him for being a Belos creation. Luz is right, as Willow goes on a rampage to rescue who she thinks is Hunter from Kikimora. Hunter says it's not solely the judgment that he fears; he hasn't had time to process who or what he is. He says he could be a witch or a human clone, but he's a copy of someone that his uncle killed and copied multiple times. Belos is the only one who knows the answer, and Belos wants to kill Hunter and replace him. Luz tries reassuring him, but Hunter retorts that she doesn't want to tell Willow and Gus about her inadvertently helping Philip become Belos. She acknowledges that, and agrees to keep it a secret for now. They both need time to process, and neither of them has time with the Day of Unity.
    • "King's Tide":
      • In the Final Battle, Luz tells Belos that should his plan succeed, his true goal of becoming Witch Hunter General would likely never succeed on his own; in the time he has been gone, society has changed to the point that most Earth residents do not believe witch's exist, and he'd be viewed as an insane crackpot. His fashion sense is also outdated. Belos sees the logic there, and seems to accept Luz's offer to be his guide in exchange for his friends' lives (lying, naturally) but Luz is only doing so to fool him into shaking her hand so she can put a coven brand on him, causing him to fall victim to his own ritual.
      • While Face Your Fears happens, Hunter does not get over the trauma of his uncle attempting to murder him by sucker-punching him a few times. In fact, by the end of the episode, he's more traumatized thanks to the Collector splattering Belos all over an archway; all he can do is squeak afterward.
      • Usually Luz and her friends shake off whatever the Boiling Isles tosses at them. Gus and Hunter also expressed a desire to see Earth for real in different episodes. Not this time: after the events of the episode, and realizing they are stranded on Earth, while King chose to honor his word and protect the Boiling Isles from the worst of the Collector's indulgences while playing with them, and not knowing if their loved ones survived the Draining Spell, they're all too shaken. Gus, the youngest, curls in a ball and starts crying in the rain. He needs a few minutes before Luz rallies them to go to her mother's house. Luz herself has a pained smile when introducing her friends to Dr. Noceda.
    • "Thanks to Them"
      • The preview clips of the season three premiere show that all of the kids are still suffering PTSD from the Day of Unity as Camilla hears the whole story and starts administering first aid, since Luz has a bad cut over her eye and the kids have scratches from the fight with Belos. Luz is jumpy and loud as she fills in her mother on the details, wracked with guilt that she allowed Belos to meet the Collector in the past and stranded her friends on Earth. Hunter's voice squeaks when he thinks about the fact that he's a clone of a potential witchhunter who Belos killed and has a breakdown when seeing Caleb and Belos's reflections in the mirror, rapidly cutting off his hair. Gus busies himself popping bubblewrap and marveling over the "amazing human stuff" in the basement but becomes the most proactive about rebuilding the shack in the woods. While Willow and Amity make themselves useful by making tea for Camilla, they freak out when mistaking Vee's alarm clock for a monster and immediately KO it; later, Luz spots them crying in private. It says something that Vee, who was treated as a guinea pig by Belos, is the sanest out of all them.
      • Indeed, the truth about Luz and Hunter's secrets come out at the worst possible time, as Belos reveals this secret during the fight in the graveyard and Luz blurts out that ambulances may not know how to treat Grimwalkers as Camilla tends to a prone Hunter.. Despite what both of the teens fear, their friends don't hate them once the dust is settled. Sure, there is some initial shock, but they know a few facts: Luz would never intentionally hurt anyone and she has a track record of making these mistakes with her good intentions, Hunter chose to turn on Belos once he got the truth of the situation about the Day of Unity as well as his origins, and three, Belos is a manipulative liar. He charmed the whole Boiling Isles, so it's entirely natural he would have convinced Luz in the past. There's also the fact that the witches are more concerned that Belos nearly killed Hunter by possessing him, and they mourn when Flapjack sacrifices his life to restore Hunter.
      • One that works against Belos; he is very much a Fish Out of Temporal Water when back in the human realm. That includes one important skill: swimming. Many people in the 1600s didn't know how to swim, and knowing how to might lead to an accused witch of being dunked and drowned. When Hunter wrests control from Belos to toss the Titan's blood in a nearby lake, Belos uses Hunter;s body to dive after it...and falls unconscious almost immediately. Dr. Noceda has to dive in and rescue them both, though Belos gets his hand on the vial.
      • Most shows that have a character not breathing would lead to Clean Pretty Reliable often done incorrectly. Not here: Dr. Noceda a trained vet, knows that performing CPR on Hunter is a bad idea and orders Vee to call an ambulance instead. It ends up being unnecessary, as Flapjack sacrifices his life to revive Hunter.
    • "Watching and Dreaming"
      • Even after seeing firsthand that Belos lied to them and used them, some witches still want to return to the status quo based on a great deception. The Emperor's Coven guards at least are more reasonable than the mutinous Coven leaders, realizing that they have no loyalty to the cause that tried to kill them.
  • Really 700 Years Old:
    • It's not known how old Principal Bump is but he's obviously many centuries old, because in "The First Day", he's mumbling, "only 300 years to retirement". If he is indeed a Witchling, this Trope might apply to Eda and Lilith.
    • Belos is at least four hundred years old, and kept himself alive by devouring witches' Palismen. Luz at first is in denial that he was the original Philip Wittenbane until Belos mocks her for it in "A Hollow Mind".
    • The Collector is confirmed to be way older than any of the residents of the Boiling Isles. They were around and sealed long before Philip found their prison, long enough for King's father to seal him away.
    • From what the Collector says, King was around in egg form when the Collector fought his father. King doesn't have time to realize that he could be centuries old because of the circumstances.
  • Redemption Rejection: In "Follies at the Coven Day Parade" the heroes’ goal is to rescue their ally, Raine, who has been captured and brainwashed by Emperor Belos. While in the process of their plans, they overhear Kikimora (Belos’ assistant) arguing with her parents - they clearly do not approve of her working for Belos, and threaten to disown her if she misses their family reunion as a result of his schemes. Luz feels sorry for Kiki and (against Eda’s advice) attempts to broker a deal - if Kiki helps them grab Raine, they will “kidnap” her so she can attend her family reunion without Belos assuming she had disobeyed him. At first Kiki is appreciative for the help and goes along with the idea. However, Terra (another of Belos’ henchmen) is onto them, and in order to test Kiki’s loyalty, says out loud (when she knows Kiki is within earshot) what a shame it would be for her to fall out of favor with the Emperor’s Coven, as she was first in line for a promotion. Despite Amity pointing out that Terra is likely lying, it is too much of a temptation for Kikki, and she chooses to turn on them and side with Belos. Which turns out to be a terrible mistake, as Terra was indeed lying.
  • Rei Ayanami Expy: Hunter is a male version of Rei, minus the blue hair. He checks the "teenager with pale skin" box, the "unusually stoic demeanor" box—especially when he's the golden guard, the "Not Quite Human" box, and has scars all over his face. Bonus points for mimicking a huge part of Rei's background, too.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Two very disturbing examples courtesy of Belos:
    • It's revealed that Hunter is this for Belos's brother Caleb, and a clone of him to boot, one of hundreds that he made over centuries. "Thanks to Them" dives further into this: Caleb was Philip's brother and protector, who went to the Boiling Isles with a witch named Evelyn, implied to be Eda and Lilith's ancestor. Fearing his brother had been kidnapped by a witch, Philip went into the nearest portal he could find with a knife, prepared to mount a rescue. He couldn't accept the truth that Caleb stayed to raise a family with Evelyn, stabbing him in the back. After Caleb died, Philip used his body to make a Grimwalker clone, hoping to make a Caleb that would obey him. It failed every time because each clone would question his authority, and Philip murdered them if they even wanted answers about their origins.
    • Belos is also implied to see a lot of Caleb in Luz, the most recent human to visit the Boiling Isles. Like his brother, Luz came to the Boiling Isles, found it filled with wonder, and chose to stay to rescue Eda, someone she loved. He puts out orders to keep her alive for season one and most of season two, and seems amused at how she refuses to bend to him. After she's served her purpose, Belos alternates between psychologically taunting her about their similarities, trying to force her to accept his "help," and attempting to murder her. Even he doesn't seem to know what he wants regarding her if "Thanks to Them"; after possessing Hunter and finding a vial of Titan's blood, he could have jumped back into the graveyard portal to return to the Boiling Isles as he does after losing the fight. Instead, he tries to offer to her that he'll take her back to the Boiling Isles if she'll help him wipe out the rest of the witches; when she refuses, he attacks her while noting that she's holding back to keep from hurting Hunter.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure:
    • Principal Bump may be strict and a bit dramatic in his first appearance when he asked Willow to dissect Luz disguised as an Abomination, to get proof that Willow was cheating, but he does care about his students. Part of the reason that he has to be strict is he has to balance the children's interests with the donation money that would rebuild the regular damage, and parents on the board like the Blights. When Eda petitions him to accept Luz as a magic student on probation, he agrees on the condition that Eda cleans up her old pranks. Later, despite Luz and the Detention Kids breaking the rules to save the school from a Basilisk, Bump concedes about the one-track system and gives the students permission to study as many courses as they like. What's more, he reveals that he figured out who created the Detention Kids' secret passages: a younger Eda, and shows Luz to reveal that she's got a lot of inspiration from her predecessors. We also see that he had this relationship with Eda in the past; when assigned to help her get a ribbon so she avoids expulsion and he keeps his job, Vice-Principal Bump tells Eda that she's not a bad kid, just one that needs a healthier outlet than pulling pranks and he's willing to work with her to find that purpose. Later, when she and Raine forfeit a chance to get a ribbon so that Terra won't make them fight to the death, Bump isn't angry; he's proud of her, but apologizes because he knows it's the end of the line. He regrets that he can't protect her. When Terra steps in and says she'll talk to Bump's boss because she can also see Eda's potential, he faints in relief.
    • While Darius hates the name for the Resistance because it's silly, he does more than give permission for Luz to rescue Amity, Edric, and Emira from Blight Manor after the three get grounded. He insists on sending her friends with her as "security detail" and allows Hunter to go, as Hunter doesn't want to be anywhere near Belos, understandably. It would have been within his logic to insist that they don't split up before the Day of Unity, but he also doesn't want innocent underage witches to be trapped at Blight Industries.
  • Redemption Demotion: This tends to happen to the antagonists that pull a Heel Face Turn:
    • Lilith starts as a formidable rival to Eda, hunting her down on a regular basis. In season two, owing to the fact that she and Eda share the Owlbeast curse, Lilith loses her magic and has to rely on glyphs. Her knowledge is still there, but she's not the same woman that.
    • Hunter starts as a guy that casually threatens to murder Luz and Eda, curbstomping them before they can put up much of a fight. By the time of "Clouds on the Tides," he has renounced Belos and that includes using the all-power staff that allows him to curbstomp witches; he prefers to rely on Flapjack's Palismen magic. It also means, however, that opponents who know him can take advantage of the element of surprise or higher firepower. Kikimora's delivery Abomiton is able to capture him without breaking a sweat...or would have, if Luz hadn't asked Gus to pull off one final illusion.
  • Remember the New Guy?: The Golden Guardian made his first appearance during the first episode of Season 2, although Lilith claims to have known him for a while, claiming (with a resentful tone) that he "always got special treatment because he was the "genius teen prodigy, he's really just a brat." Of course, we find out there's a reason for it: Hunter is one in a line of Grimwalkers that all have the Golden Guard moniker, and he happened to be the newest "model". Belos didn't let him replace Lilith because Lilith was useful while hunting down her sister.
  • Rescue Romance: Amity would never admit it, at least not in season one but she fell for Luz when the latter attempted to rescue her from the Wailing Star hijinks that Edric and Emira started by corrupting Otabin. Keyword "attempted" but it was a pretty good effort. Luz at least bought time for Amity to figure out how to restore Otabin to normal, and later lent her book five of Azura as an apology for reading Amity's diary by accident. It's notably the first episode where she laughs at Luz explaining she has no plan, just panic and making a funny face.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Belos's plan in "For the Future" is to manipulate the Collector into attacking Luz just as she, Dr. Noceda and her friends arrive in the Titan's skull. This is despite the fact that if the Collector recognizes him, he is dead. Again..
  • The Rival:
    • Amity to Luz initially, although it has progressed from a hostile rivalry to a friendly one.
    • Eda and her sister Lilith have a love-hate relationship that goes back and forth.
    • Lilith seems to be (or have been) this to the Golden Guard, but as yet, there has been no on-screen confrontation between them. Kikimora is definitely this to him.
    • Hexside has a rival school called Glandus High.
  • Sacred Hospitality:
    • Even though she keeps Luz from escaping to Earth for help with retrieving King's crown, Eda also makes it clear she's a guest in the Owl House, especially when Luz asks to stay for the summer. This means that Luz is under her protection, so woe be to any rival that tries using her apprentice as a hostage.
    • Eda is safe from the law at Hexside because Principal Bump is, in his own words, not a "snitch". Even if she did cause him a lot of trouble when she was a student, he respects that she was sincerely trying to use her talent in a more useful manner.
    • When Dr. Noceda sees that Luz arrived home, with her four friends in tow, she takes them in with little question. In fact, the first thing she does is administer first aid on seeing they're all injured. She agrees they can stay as long as they need, and they'll be safe under her roof with Vee.
  • Sadistic Choice:
    • "Young Blood, Old Souls" has two for Luz:
      • A captive Eda orders Luz to use the portal to return to Earth, destroy it, and hide! It's confirmed that Luz cannot use glyph magic on Earth. The reason is that the source of magic comes from the Titan, and Earth doesn't have an equivalent power source. Luz realizes before going back to the Boiling Isles that if she destroys the door, either she will be stranded on the Boiling Isles, or has to renounce her dream of being a witch. She goes back anyway, when a Heel Realization Lilith agrees to help rescue Eda before her execution.
      • Belos pins down Luz and makes her watch Eda, Lilith, and King being slowly petrified. He tells her either give up the door, and her way home, or witness her mentor die in front of her. Luz surrenders the door but covers the bottom with fire glyphs, in the hopes that Belos won't be able to use it for the Day of Unity. It was a good try, but Belos repairs the portal in a week so his plans were merely delayed. Luz also loses her ability to go home, or use Earth cell service to text her mom.
    • In "Clouds on the Horizon", Gus has this when Luz whispers a plan to him. He can either let Kikimora rampage and capture Hunter, whom she will deliver personally to the Emperor, or disguise Luz as Hunter so she gets captured instead and can help Eda with the Day of Unity. Gus chooses to help Luz, despite her plan being damn risky, because it's the only chance at stopping the Day of Unity and Hunter is traumatized at the mere thought of seeing Belos again. He's not happy about it when the illusion finally breaks and he's exhausted as the kids realize that Kikimora will deliver Luz straight to Belos.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: In "Labyrinth Runners," the normally-pragmatic Principal Bump does not stand by when Gus reveals that the Illusion Coven head Graye was tricking all of the students into receiving sigils unwillingly. He helps evacuate as many students as possible to a Healing Room and is willing to hear Hunter out about the Day of Unity when Gus and Willow vouch for the kid. When a Scout threatens to tell the Emperor about Bump's treachery, Bump snarkily remarks good luck explaining to Belos that the Emperor's finest witches lost to a bunch of children.
  • Sealed Evil in A Can: The Collector is a Cosmic Entity and an enemy of the Titan who sealed the Collector in a mirror prison in a vault underneath the Boiling Isles. Belos makes a deal to release him in exchange for forbidden knowledge, but ultimately breaks that promise. In the Season Two finale, King is forced to release him (something he can do, being a Titan himself) in order to halt the Day of Unity, but while the Collector does halt it, it it seems he plans to turn the entire Boiling Isles into his personal hellish playground now that he is free.
  • Seldom-Seen Species: The Greater Basilisk is believed to be extinct - the episode "The First Day" proves otherwise.
  • Secret Secret Keeper: Mutually done by Luz and Hunter in season 3. Luz keeps mum about Hunter being a Grimwalker (as he does not think Amity, Willow, and Gus would trust him if they knew) while Hunter keeps quiet about Luz helping Belos release the Collector, for the same reason.}}
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: Ultimately Subverted. After an entire season of being unable to tell Luz her feelings, she finally does, and after that, is more than willing to say she's her "girlfriend". It seems the truth really can set you free.
  • Shadow Dictator: Emperor Belos was this for most of Season 1, and to a small degree, still is, story-wise.
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: Amity Defies this Trope. After several false starts, once she is finally able to admit her feelings for Luz (coming to terms with the fact that she's gay in the process), she is happy to admit she's Luz's girlfriend. The Aesop, of course, is "admitting the truth will set you free".
  • Shoo the Dog:
    • A brainwashed Raine forces Eda to leave her for her safety when the latter wants to talk to them during the Coven Day Festival and ask what happened to them after Raine got captured by Kikimora, first by attempting to fight Eda and then warning her the Emperor Coven guards are closing in on Eda, forcibly putting Eda's invisibility glyph in the Owl Lady's hands. It especially becomes this case when a later episode reveals that Raine was faking it, thanks to her ability to use sound to modify Terra's memory-wiping teas, and doesn't want to endanger their ex again after Eda nearly pulled a Suicide Mission and would have orphaned King as well as Luz.
    • The season two finale "King's Tide" has King use his Sonic Scream to push Luz through the portal, away from the Collector's chaos, when she prepares to stay and help him find Eda and the others.
  • Silent Credits: Used in season two, episode twenty-one "King's Tide", where the only sound over the credits is sounds of thunder and rain. Also used in season one, episode eighteen "Agony of a Witch", and season two, episode twenty "Clouds on the Horizon". All uses reflect the Cliff Hanger that ends the episodes.
  • Silver Fox: While of Vague Age, Eda is clearly an old woman, but far from your typical old hag. Luz even says she's “surprisingly foxy for her age”.
  • Sixth Ranger: The season three preview implies that Vee will become this to the main cast, choosing a new human form to impersonate and helping them with their portal experiments. Turns out she's become handy with a fire extinguisher.
  • Snake Oil Salesman:
    • Eda is the Lovable Rogue type; one of the things she sells is literally called snake oil. "For oiling snakes", she claims. She also pilfers objects - mostly junk - from the human world and sells it as "Human Collectibles" for a high price.
    • Eda's poor mother means well, but in her efforts to cure her daughter's curse, she has fallen for quack-remedies sold by scam artists for the past three decades.
  • So Proud of You: Eda has a weird idea of when she should be proud of her apprentice; the first time she has this reaction to Luz is when Luz does something that results in her face appearing on Wanted Posters. Later, she seems equally proud when Luz coerces her into teaching her a new spell by appealing to her pride.
  • Spanner in the Works:
    • We find out in "Edge of the World" that Eda was this to the Titan Trappers. they had been tracking down the last Titan in existence, an egg they deemed The Lost Son. Turns out that their plans got disrupted when Eda hid on King's island, rescued what she thought was a helpless baby from an evil robot, and adopted the little guy. King ended up being the Lost Son. She saved his life not from the robot, who was programmed to protect King from anything that seemed to be a hostile threat, but from the Titan Trappers.
    • As Darius explains in "O Titan, Where Art Thou", he was planning to convince Raine anyway to join the resistance but was unable to get a window of opportunity, given how closely the Coven Leaders were watched. When she and Eda made their own rebel group to evacuate wild witches, he realized that if he and Eberwolf didn't "arrest" Raine or Eda, the Emperor would send Kikimora and Terra to brainwash Raine and petrify Eda. Raine forcing Eda to leave them behind hindered his plans to have the Owl Lady involved in undoing the Draining Spell, because Raine knew Eda would be reckless enough to not care about her own life and insisted they could find another way. Darius is more than relieved when circumstances bring Eda and the Owl House residents to the resistance hideout, saying his plan is back on track.
    • "King's Tide": Belos had every contingency covered. Turns out Terra figured out logically that Darius had helped save Raine from the brainwashing, he set up coven head backups, and buys Abomitons in bulk to make sure no suspicious witches escape the Day of Unity.. Despite Luz being better at glyph magic, he still has four hundred years of experience on her and curb-stomps her after humoring her for round two. Even the ace witches from Hexside, who aren't branded, don't stand a chance against Belos. Nor does Hunter. Who ends up undoing all this order? King and Kikimora, who form a temporary alliance after she shows him where Belos dropped the Collector's prison oval, to ensure that Belos gets his butt kicked after firing her. When King agrees to free the Collector and play with them, the Collector easily squashes Belos like a bug and quickly undoes the Draining Spell by moving the moon. Being cute does not mean you are harmless.
  • Starter Villain: The first villain in the show was Warden Wrath, a Jailer villain with an unhealthy crush on Eda.
  • Take That: The show has quite a few Affectionate Parody scenes derived from Harry Potter, but the scene in "Wing it Like Witches" where Boscha wins the Grudgby match by catching the Rusty Smidge (and Luz's angry reaction) is clearly meant as criticism towards such an unfair game mechanic, something even the most diehard of Harry Potter fans is hard-pressed to deny.
  • Teenage Wasteland: In "For the Future", Hexside turns into this, with Bosha at the top.
  • This Looks Like a Job For Aquaman: The Greater Basilisk is a malevolent beast that eats magic, and as a result, it is able to defeat the students and faculty with relative ease. However, it seems it cannot easily consume more than one type of magic at the same time, and finds trying to consume the mixed-magic assaults Luz and the members of the Detention Tract throw at it Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth.
  • Time Skip: A montage in "Thanks to Them" suggests several months pass, with Luz and her friends cleaning up and converting the old house into a secret base (trying and failing to open the portal), turning two rooms in her house into guest bedrooms, Hunter cutting his hair, Luz "coming out" to her mother as a lesbian (Ms. Noceda is super supportive, to the joy of fans), and so on. By the end of the montage when the story resumes, all of the kids seem to have had a few growth spurts with Amity's roots starting to grow out again.
  • Token Heroic Orc: Zigzagged. Season one had a Greater Basilisk try to wipe out Hexside, and from what the defeated students say, most basilisks are like this. When Luz meets the basilisk Vee, who is impersonating her, Vee actually isn't a bad person when Luz asks to hear her side of the story. She's a refugee, a runaway Emperor's Coven experiment that seized the first opportunity she could to get far from the Boiling Isles and her captors. Her impersonating Luz was a lucky/unlucky coincidence since Luz was the first human she saw, and she had no idea that the woman who approached her at the deserted house where Eda's portal opened was Luz's mother. With that said, Vee asserts that none of the basilisks in Belos's secret lab are evil; they were forced to drain rats, but that was about the extent of their wicked deeds. Vee would have broken them out if she had gotten the chance, but she barely got herself out and was too scared to try.
  • Tomato in the Mirror:
    • As of "A Hollow Mind," Hunter doesn't react well on learning that Belos is definitely not his uncle, or that the poor kid's not a witch or even human. He's a magical clone called a Grimwalker, one in a line of dozens that Belos made to replicate a human that also came with him to the Boiling Isles. According to Belos, this reaction is quite common. As of "King's Tide," Hunter hasn't had time or headspace to process any of this.
    • King has long believed that he is the King of Demons, depowered to a tiny form. "Echoes of the Past" reveals he's a baby demon, but what he remains inconclusive even with Hooty doing blood tests. Then we get to "Edge of the World"; he meets with a tribe called the Titan Trappers that may comprise his family, and asks to play catch with the one that resembles who he thinks his father would look like. The Titan Trappers proceed to reveal that they are witches, have identified King as a baby Titan, known as the Lost Son, and want to sacrifice him to the Huntsman, another moniker for the Collector. Titans start baby-sized with huge egos, but will eventually grow to the size of entire islands, like the one whose skeleton forms the Boiling Isles. Talk about Be Careful What You Wish For since the episode ends with King giving a sad, "Hi" to the Titan skeleton as they're departing, realizing that any of the skeletons could be his father or mother but he truly has no family with to meet his Owl House mother, sister, and whatever Hooty is.
  • Tom the Dark Lord:
    • The Golden Guard, The Dragon to Emperor Belos; under the mask, he's a normal-looking teenager named Hunter.
    • Also, Belos' actual name is Philip Wittebane; he even tells Luz - in "Hollow Mind" - to address him as such, claiming he only changed it because several towns have a price on his head. Interestingly, this is the first time he uses Luz's name, having previously referred to her as "Human".
  • Total Eclipse of the Plot: The "Day of Unity" is a ritual that requires a solar eclipse to cast, the reason Belos has put so much focus on the date he intends to cast it.
  • Traumatic Haircut: Fortunately subverted; Hunter has a freakout in "Thanks to Them" when seeing both Caleb and Belos's face in the mirror after realizing his hair has grown out, which makes him resemble his uncle even more. Then Willow spots him hacking at his hair while curled in a Troubled Fetal Position, and once she gets him settled down she trims it into a much neater cut.

U-Z

  • The Unchosen One: Luz would have liked to be a Chosen One. In fact, episode 2 is about her facing the reality check that the Boiling Isles hasn't a PG-rated fantasy world with prophecies and trustworthy wizards. Eda, however, tells Luz that it means she can choose her own destiny, without any limitations. Luz realizes that she has to become this in season two, where Luz finds out what exactly the Day of Unity involves after a trip into Belos's mind and he reveals it to her and Hunter as "thanks" for helping him wipe out the Palismen souls plaguing him. Since Luz is human, she's naturally immune to the island-wide draining spell that Belos is planning. It means she stands the best chance of fighting it.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind:
    • Luz was pretty terrified of Warden Wrath in the pilot, and for good reason since he was pretty nasty. In the first Season Finale, however, he ended up being all talk, and Luz - now proficient in magic - takes him down with ease and exposes him as a Dirty Coward when faced with someone who could fight back.
    • Subverted with Belos. While Luz certainly improved at magic, Belos points out he's still got four hundred years of experience over her couple of months. .
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The show as a whole is pretty dark for a Disney cartoon, but Emperor Belos is pretty creepy even for "darker Disney". But then, this is the same creative team that created Bill Cipher, so...
    • One could argue that Belos is way nastier than Bill, given his origins as a human who went off the deep end and got wrapped up in the motivation of his crimes. On the other hand, Bill was a literal embodiment of Chaos - at least he technically had that as an excuse.
  • Villains Want Mercy: When finally beaten in the final episode, Belos (or rather, what's left of him) manages to briefly assume his human form and try to convince Luz to help him with the We Can Rule Together routine, still trying to convince her that she's superior to her trusted friends and allies. Luz doesn't want to hear it, and neither does King or Eda, who proceed to stomp him flat.
  • Wanted Poster: Eda's are everywhere on the Isles, and she even keeps a huge one framed in her house. Then when Luz gets her first wanted poster, Eda acts like a mom beaming with pride before putting it up right next to her own, which can be seen in the background from then on.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Demons have two weaknesses that King (a demon himself) relates to Luz, purified water and passive-aggressive comments. "Even demons have inner-demons," he claims.
  • What Measure Is A Non Human: Poor Hunter combines this with Sins of Our Fathers when he finds out that he is a Grimwalker, not only questioning whether or not he counts as a person, but whether he has the right to be counted as one. It gets worse in season 3.
  • Whole Plot Reference: "A Hollow Mind" is one for the Promised Day Arc in Fullmetal Alchemist. The heroes find out what exactly an upcoming event will be, that it involves using an entire land to cause mass genocide so the Big Bad can get power, and it's implied he's done it before on a smaller scale. They don't know how to stop it, but at least they know it's coming and can prepare.
  • Why Did It Have To Be Snakes:
    • Luz's fears include "jerks online who want to debate", "human souls trapped in cat bodies", and... milk ("I'm lactose intolerant!"). She also fears disapproval from both Eda and her mother.
    • Amity fears rejection, the biggest reason she Cannot Spit It Out to Luz.
    • Gus has coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
    • Willow is afraid of ladybugs, which is ironic since ladybugs protect plants from aphids. But considering how weird Boiling Isles ecology is, there's a chance their ladybugs aren't as harmless and helpful as ours.
    • Edric says his greatest fear is being alone, whereas Emera's is being stuck with her brother forever.
  • Wild Goose Chase: Or rather, a "wild Luz chase". In "Edge of the World," Lilith suggests that Luz and Hooty accompany King on his latest quest to find his identity, pragmatically pointing out that if Belos wants to kill Luz, he won't think of going that far past the Boiling Isles. Later, she tells Eda she knows the area is actually deserted, which means nothing can endanger the children and the adults can figure out how to start their counterattack for the Day of Unity. Unfortunately, Lilith ended up being wrong about those islands, which nearly costed King his life. .
  • Wild Magic: Eda practices this, claiming that using Wild Magic draws power from the natural magic of the Boiling Isles itself.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Mascha in "Thanks to Them" shows a bit of this when telling a scary story during the hayride, about two brothers that a witch separated. She says that while the story is that the witch spirited the older brother off, with the younger one chasing them down in desperation, more likely the older brother Caleb eloped with a girl, and Philip was unable to accept the reality that his brother had moved on without him. On a rewatch, the part of Belos possessing Hunter reacts viscerally to Mascha was saying he was jealous of Evelyn, suggesting this was closer to the truth than him hunting down Caleb to "rescue him" as Belos always believed.
  • The Worf Effect: Throughout much of the series, Belos seems like an Invincible Villain who cannot be outfought, outsmarted, or deceived. In the season 2 finale, though, once the Collector is freed - and angry at Belos for reneging on their deal - Belos actually seems unnerved for a few seconds, as he should be; one flick of the Collector's finger hurls Belos about 100 feet into a wall, where he splatters into a puddle of goo.
  • Would Hurt A Child: Seeing as Luz is a Kid Hero, every villain counts, but Belos is extra vile since he killed all of Hunter's ~18 predecessors, and in his own words, claimed he hoped Hunter would last longer than the others. Hunter is fourteen years old. Even worse, the paintings in "Hollow Mind" implies these deaths weren't quick and painless (immolation, petrification, getting buried alive, etc.)
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks: Eda has an odd perception of what is valuable among the stuff she steals from the human world. In the first scene she appears, she throws away a golden chalice, considering it "garbage", but perceives a pair of novelty goofy-glasses as priceless.
  • Wrong-Context Magic: The Collector is neither witch, demon, nor titan, but a unique entity from "beyond the stars", the reason he was able to teach Belos the unique magic needed to stay alive and prepare the Day of Unity ritual.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Luz destroyed the door to Earth before surrendering it to Belos when he revealed he needed it for the Day of Unity. Belos repaired it in a week and was only annoyed that Luz tricked him. Raine and Eda tried, but they were unable to stop the Day of Unity by taking out Darius and Eberwolf in a suicidal magic spell run. Good thing too since they were leading a more effective resistance. By the time of "Them's the Brakes, Kid," "Edge of the World", and "Labyrinth Runners", the independent resistance groups acknowledged they can't stop the Day of Unity, so they went for Plan B instead: reverse whatever would happen as much as possible.
  • Younger Than She Looks: While Eda has been stated to be the older of the two siblings, she seems a little too much older, and it had been all but openly stated that she's been aging rapidly as a result of her curse.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Most witchlings have green hair, but Amity's brown roots suggest she dyes hers. The memory scenes in "Understanding Willow" show that her hair used to be completely brown.
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