1x15 Understanding Willow

[7.9/10] I’ll confess, I’m hesitant about The Owl House’s reluctance to let its characters commit genuine sins rather than simple accidents/misunderstandings. King can’t actually “temporarily disappear” Willow and Gus when he’s jealous, just sprays them by accident. Luz doesn’t really think she’s better than the kids in “detention track”, they just have a miscommunication. Amity didn’t really reject Willow as her friend because Willow was bad a t magic, she was just forced to by someone else.

This is a show for kids, granted, but also an ambitious one, with big reveals and good character arcs that mean it’s fair to hold it to a higher standard than giving its main players moral outs like that. People mess up. That’s real life. This is a good enough series to tackle that head on rather than treating the idea with kid gloves.

And yet, I like the twist here. The show has already hinted at their being former friends with some cryptic, unspoken break-up. That bill is paid now, and it’s a doozy. Despite the pair being playmates as youngins, Amity threw Willow out of her birthday party, ostensibly for being a
“weakling” at magic, and started hanging out with Dasha and others who pick on WIllow constantly.

But the truth is that Amity never wanted to end the friendship, but was told to do so by her parents. I’ll confess, I don’t love that it’s a “cruel to be kind” situation, where Amity’s parents threatened to hurt or otherwise stymie Willow and her family if Amity kept hanging out with her. It lets Amity off too easily.

But I do like that, similarly to Pacifica Northwest in The Owl House’s spiritual predecessor, Gravity Falls, we’re learning that Amity isn’t bad. She is, instead, the product of a home life that’s designed to mold her into something bad. And if anything, she’s tried to find respites away from it, to be a different person than the one she’s expected to be. Throw in the classism and sense of prejudice to the whole thing, and you have a potent story of someone dragged into the muck of arrogance and bigotry, who’s trying, through good, eye-opening friendships, to climb her way out of it. That hits home in a way the nerfing of Amity’s actions doesn’t for me.

I also like the concept here. While it's a little nuts that, even in a magical school, they would have the students “print out” photo memories that could seriously damage the minds of the witchlings they come from if damaged, and then just leave them sitting out. But regardless, it’s fun to have an Inception-like scenario of Luz and Amity running around in Willow’s head, trying to right what went wrong after Amity accidentally burned several of Willow’s memories. (Again, accidentally being the key word here.)

For one thing, Luz is a great side character. I enjoy her as the protagonist, but it’s a reminder that she has a Homemr-esque ability to just being a wacky and hilarious secondary figure for an episode and still excel in that role. Her excitement over Willow’s history, and the fun she has loping around in her mind is neat.

I also like the conceit of the fire monster destroying memories turning out to be “Inner Willow.” Certain other Disney productions prepared me for the twist, but I still like her as a representation of Willow’s anger at Willow. It’s a good way to dramatize the idea that personal betrayals like that can turn joys and fond remembrances and other positive emotions from past memories into nothing but frustration and resentment. The tragedy of not only halting a friendship for the future, but wrecking the fond recollections of the past, is a canny choice.

The B-story is a nice bit of comic relief. Gus trying to find the most interesting person to interview for his school paper project, with Eda and King competing for the spot, is good fodder for hijinks. THere’s not much to it, but the gags are solid. (I like King describing his greatest attribute as his decisiveness, only to then yell, “Wait I changed my mind!”) Plus, the fact that Gus ultimately chooses Hooty is a superb swerve.

But I also like that the ending isn’t just about absolving Amity for the actions in the past; it’s about fixing her actions in the future. Regardless of whether Amity had a comprehensible reason for ending her friendship with Willow, she didn’t have to sit idly by while the mean girls picked on her. Her resolution in the present to stop that teasing, and her impulse to distance herself from the mean girls shows Amity learning and making amends. It’s the kind of thing I do appreciate on this show, that even if they go light on main characters screwing up, they go big on them not just apologizing, but taking steps to make it up.

That’s what makes Amity’s growth here so engrossing. It’s not the excuse for the past. It’s the sense that, as we can see from her brown hair in old photos, she doesn’t quite fit in with the Blythe family. She’s been crammed into a mold that she doesn’t fit into. And now that she’s fund a more supportive, healthy group of people to fuel her, she’s beginning to make good on her mistakes in the past, and chart a better way forward for her life on the Boiling Isles.