Feeling like you don’t fit in is part of growing up. There will be times when you want to run away from family, or struggle to make friends because your hobbies and interests don’t align with what the majority view as acceptable. This is especially true if you’re queer, and struggling to accept your own identity while simultaneously trying to establish one that isn’t viewed as weird or obtuse by the masses.
You might have thought about running away, but the real world seldom allows for such a dramatic approach. Only in the most extreme circumstances would such a thing come to fruition. If you did, the people who care about you would notice. Friends and family might mock you, or fail to understand how your brain works, but chances are they’d still love you. The Owl House explored this idea to great effect in its mid-season finale last week, with ‘Yesterday’s Lie’ following Luz Noceda as she finally returns to the human world and reunites with her mother.
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Well – almost. This latest episode sees Luz step through a makeshift portal back to the human world, planning to reunite with her mum and tell her all about the Boiling Isles. She’s been living in the demon realm for several months, but hasn’t taken into account the life she left behind. Sure, she was being sent off to summer camp and had an excuse to escape anyway, but once that was over, people would ultimately start asking questions. However, a few mysterious things have been going down that complicate things, for better and for worse.
Recent episodes have been teasing an ‘evil Luz’ in the human world, a doppelganger of sorts who has been taking Luz’s place and acting as a surrogate daughter. Camp is over, and so this sus imposter stepped into the young girl’s shoes and resumed a state of normality. We’ve spent weeks convinced she was going to be a villain, someone who would make life difficult for our heroine as she seeks to return home. It turns out the exact opposite is true, and this new character is a shy basilisk seeking shelter from her captors who have taken her friends and family away. Now she has found somewhere else to belong, and can’t comprehend why Luz would try to take it away, or why she’d even want to leave it behind in the first place.
Known as Vee, this basilisk is capable of transforming into anyone with the power of magic, and given the absence of Luz and the necessity to stop her mother from panicking, she steps into a life that was ignorantly abandoned. Luz hasn’t fully returned to the human world just yet, her DIY portal only taking her halfway there, meaning she has to glimpse familiar surroundings from the perspective of mirrors, screens and reflections. People notice her, but she can’t touch, feel, or interact with anything. This distance is integral to the episode’s wider message, especially once we learn more about Vee and how she’s changed Luz’s life for the better.
No longer is she a nerd who is bullied and mocked, Vee has managed to morph her into a cute, confident young woman with a solid group of friends. It doesn’t take long for Luz to notice this shift, regret bubbling to the surface as she realises that telling her mother about the Boiling Isles will only complicate things, yet she has to come clean, both for herself and for Vee. Luz explains everything to her mother, but she simply believes it to be little more than another figment of her daughter’s imagination, playing along so as not to embarrass her or label Luz as the outcast she’s always paranoid of being. But this illusion can’t last forever, and it soon comes crashing down as the second half of the episode follows all three characters as they work together to outsmart an obsessive demon enthusiast who has captured Vee and plans to harvest her magic.
This is a kid’s show, so nobody is ever in any real danger, but The Owl House does a stunning job of emphasising the consequences behind Luz’s actions, showcasing how the lives of those she left behind have been changed in her absence. She’s a figment of this world right now, unable to interact with it. All she can do is stare, an embrace with her mother feeling miles away despite the woman standing right in front of her. With Vee now safe, they all return home, the clouds opening up to welcome a downpour of rain to fit the emergent sombre atmosphere. Luz’s portal is collapsing, so she has only a few precious moments to share with her mother before being torn away once again.
The car’s headlights shine a bright light forward into the darkness, combining with the rain and providing Luz with a place to project herself onto. For the first time in months, she’s able to stand there in front of her mother. Luz tries to play the whole day off as a joke, but she’s met with a relative in tears, a guardian utterly overwhelmed by everything that’s transpired. “How are you going to get back home, is this the only way I can touch you?” she asks, reaching out to the transparent spectre standing before her. It’s an emotional reunion until Luz’s slip of the tongue makes it clear that staying in the Boiling Isles was the best decision she ever made, a stark admittance that she wanted to leave her mother behind, hating the idea of returning to a world where she’s viewed as a dorky outsider.
It’s a hard scene to watch, largely because of how real it feels. Camilla Noceda is a single parent, working hard to raise a daughter and understand what makes her tick, all while bringing in the money and ensuring she’s able to support her. It’s expected that she’d struggle, but this divide between them is one that has grown to unprecedented proportions, and right now, it’s unclear how it’s going to be fixed. But like I said, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s a kid’s show that understands that young viewers are smart enough to relate to the familial dynamic being explored here. When Luz returns to the comfort of the demon realm she’s greeted by her found family, both of them a mess of enthusiasm and smiles. Luz tries to feign excitement, but as the camera zooms into her expression in the episode’s final moments, there’s an inescapable doubt emanating from her.
I think there’s a reason why the mid-season finale decided to end on such a revelatory note. It’s a solid indication of Luz’s maturity as a character. She’s learned magic, found love, and a family who welcomes her for who she is. But much like Spirited Away and other tales that follow young heroes stepping into a magical world, they eventually need to face the people they left behind. Actions have consequences, and failing to understand how your own impact those around you is an immature outlook that many stories fail to address. I’m glad The Owl House is, subverting expectations and taking the second season in a direction with so much potential. This is a show that keeps surprising me, and I’m so glad to be along for the ride.
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