The Owl House

 The Owl House is an exceptionally fun and enjoyable show on Disney.

This show follows Luz, an energetic fan of fantasy and magic genres, who is transported to another world. She finds herself, in the Boiling Isles, a dream come true despite the Isles’s horrors. She befriends the rebellious Witch Eda and her demon roommate King, and begins being trained as a witch by Eda. She meets some more people and goes to a magical school to further her learning. Hijinks occur.

The show was created by Dana Terrace. Alex Hirsch works on the show, creator of and voice-actor for the acclaimed Gravity Falls Disney cartoon. It has similarities to that show, included feeling designed a bit for an older audience. It’s fair to say that the Owl House is a spiritual successor to Gravity Falls: an offbeat environment, and wacky characters juxtaposed against occasionally h o r r i f y i n g material.

If one can get past the scary imagery in Gravity Falls and now the Owl House, they will be rewarded with an enjoyable experience. Here's some of that imagery.

  "Give me your skin!", says the fairy.

(Additionally, the villainous Emperor Belos has a throne room that showcases a giant beating heart.)

The show does a lot of things right.

• Both the premise and setting allow for a lot of creativity, which is taken advantage of. The house the main trio live in, the Owl House, is a living house. The detention of the school is a hellish pit. Prom in this world is instead about cheering on a lone champion to annually defeat a shapeshifter that turns into your worst fear.

• The setting of the show is very engaging. Dana Terrace has said that the show’s visual style was inspired by paintings by Remedios Varo, John Bauer, and Hieronymus Bosch. These inspirations create a very distinct and memorable environment.

• As a character, Luz is a good character for children. She’s full of personality, being energetic and impulsive. She can get carried away, but she fundamentally wants to do good at heart and her kindness rubs off on the people around her.

• Eda is a lovable rogue that is nonetheless a powerful witch and a good mentor.

• King, a small demon reminiscent of a plush toy, is voiced by Alex Hirsch himself. He’s hilarious.

• I really enjoyed this one character, Amity. She starts off as a bully. Then her insecurities are revealed. Then she warms up to Luz and eventually forms a crush on her. Amity’s growing relationship with Luz is really adorable.

I love them!

Luz and Amity have a dance sequence, which is not only impressive in how it is LGBT representation, but also in how it’s animated.

It’s like in Stranger Things, with Steve; these characters could have so easily became one-note antagonists, but they became a bit more than that. Not that I’m saying one-note antagonists are wrong, but that it’s refreshing to see characters given depth when the creators could have opted to put less effort into them.

There’s one episode (“Wing it like Witches”) where Amity’s crush is somewhat clichéd. It’s clichéd in that Amity’s nervousness around Luz is played up for comic effect. But it’s nonetheless entertaining.

One reason why Luz and Amity bond is that they are both fans of the same book series. This is a nice detail showing how fandoms can bring people together.

• The show engages in moral relativism. I don’t find this necessarily good or bad, but fascinating; something to study in what it says about societal shifts.  Eda, like Gravity Fall’s Stan Pines, is a criminal and sketchy character that is nonetheless on the side of good. She pickpockets and runs scams. This moral relativism can also be seen in the concept of the show itself; a Disney show showing demonic imagery would be seen as anathema in other times, yet it is permissible now.

• I was surprised and impressed by this series’ scary imagery. They did a great job at their goal, and the artwork, backgrounds, and settings feel atmospheric.

• The show is attuned to modern pop culture, referencing chemtrails, snake oil, and flat Earth. It’s neat to see those kinds of references, and they don’t feel shoehorned in. In the latest two seasons of Rick and Morty, Rick makes a bunch of brief references (like referencing Reddit), and those references, unlike these references, just felt random and inserted for relevance.

• The show also has hints of a greater narrative; serious lore. We hear about an ‘Emperor’ and the confining rules he instituted. We are introduced to Eda’s sister, Lilith (I love that she’s called that), who helps introduces us to an even bigger world. She’s a rule-enforcer, serving as a foil to Eda’s rule-breaking demeanour. Lore is always welcome. The show isn’t afraid to take itself seriously in this regard, which I appreciate. The fight scenes are also given this serious attention to detail.

• The show is unsubtle in how it values independence against a social system that enforces uniformity, but it’s forgivable because it’s an important concept.

• A downside to the series is that the conflicts of most episodes are generally the standard formulae. A character will make a well-intentioned white lie or there’s a misunderstanding; this then drives the conflict until the characters openly communicate with each other. There’s a cliched conflict resolution where the characters apologize to each other. It’s to be expected for a show ostensibly for children, but it is mildly annoying. It’s formulaic, but it doesn’t take away from the good stuff.

• The series feels passionate, just like Gravity Falls. Where Gravity Falls was a love letter to cryptozoology and conspiracies, the Owl House is similarly a love letter, but to the fantasy genre and to fandom itself.

• The show references the types of tropes it uses. Luz is a fan of magical stories and compares what she sees to the stories she’s read. She talks about when the situation is different from what she expected, comparing and contrasting it to her idea of fantasy. There’s a body swap episode, and Eda explicitly recognizes how body swapping is a trope. (“I love a good body swap. It's like demonic possession with the ones you love.”) When Eda is revealed to have a sister, Luz exclaims “more backstory lore”, which is presenting the character as a mirror to, and spokesperson for, the audience; her excitement exists alongside the audience’s excitement. The series is postmodern in how it incorporates commentary on fandom and self-referential dialogue.

Speaking of Disney media.
I enjoyed Star vs. The Forces of Evil, an energetic and offbeat show, if also occasionally overwhelming in its energy. The show did have Michael C. Hall (from the TV show Dexter) play a villain character, and his performance was very good; it’s just also funny because I associate his voice with the role of Dexter. The show tackled issues of prejudice and racism, which I greatly appreciate, despite their allegories not being perfect. However, the final season of the show, (which had also developed a serious arc (the final arc addressed nationalism, which again, I appreciate)) was lackluster and sadly poorly executed. It lacked the coherency of shows like Gravity Falls. Another thing of note is that both Star vs. and the Owl House were inspired by anime. While Star vs. was inspired by the Magical Girl genre (Sailor Moon, etc), the Owl House is more inspired by Studio Ghibli films like Howl’s Moving Castle.

Phineas and Ferb has now ended, but it was a really witty show. The musical numbers always showed passion and care. Although, the A-plot with Phineas and Ferb was never as good as the B-plot, which had Perry the Platypus and Dr. Doofenshmirtz, an affectionate parody of the spy genre and the mad scientist archetype. Perry the Platypus plays the silent straight man to Dr. Doofenshmirtz's wacky and absolutely hilarious schemes and monologues. The vocal performance for Doofenshmirtz, by Dan Povenmire, served the comedy very well.

The show Amphibia seemed interesting. Star Brenda Song (from The Sweet Life of Zack and Cody) returns to Disney to voice Anne Boonchuy, a teen transported to a world of frog people. She makes a best friend in the frog Sprig, and lives with his family. The show talks about bullying and toxic friends, again, admirable messages. Although the show honestly lost my interest, so I’ve only seen a bit of it. It felt generic, sadly.

Interestingly, both the Owl House and Amphibia revolve around people from our ordinary world transported to another world, a whimsical world where they grow as people. It would be fair to compare them to the fascinating Isekai genre in anime, which is where people are transported or reincarnated into another world. This genre is great for escapism, because you get to establish a whole new world different from our own. It’s also good at creating a metaphor for people entering another stage of their life, where they can grow and develop.
I am probably not the main demographic for these shows, but I see no shame in enjoying these things.