2x09 Eclipse Lake

[8.0/10] I wouldn’t have thought to pair up Hunter (the Golden Guard) and Amity, but I ended up loving them as a game of compare and contrast. Because, in ways I hadn't considered, the two have a lot in common. Both are taking their first steps outside of a suffocating family who’s tried to instill bad values in them. For Amity, it’s that every situation is an opportunity. For Hunter, it’s that you’re only as good as the role you play and the value you bring, such that you can easily be replaced if your performance suffers. But the principles of a mercenary, self-disposable view of the world are the same. The desire to live up to a familial legacy, to pressure to make their parental figures proud, ties them together.

But I like how the comparison isn’t between Hunter’s uncle, Belos, and Amity’s mom, Odalia, in terms of the fear that they’re replaceable if they don’t do a good enough job. It’s between Belos and Luz. Hunter is worried about being a good protege. Amity is worried about being a good girlfriend. The two are very different relationships, but the insecurities at the heart of them mirror one another surprisingly well.

Because it allows Hunter to project his anxieties about his standing with the Emperor onto Amity. He interprets Luz's emoji filled texts as a message that AMity better succeed on ehr mission or they’re through. He was raised in an environment where you were only as good, or as loved, as your last accomplishment, something that Amity’s already struggling with given her own parental relationships. So it’s easy for both of them to worry that they have to succeed in their quest to retrieve Titan’s blood from the titular Eclipse Lake, lest they be jettisoned in favor of a new flavor of the week.

Only, of course, that’s not the relationship Amity and Luz have. I love the twist, and King's insight that if Amity literally looks at Luz’s messages from another perspective, they’re actually a message of love and concern for Amity, regardless of what happens on the mission. WhenAmity returns safe and sound, Amity doesn’t care about Titan’s blood, only about Amity’s safety. And when they embrace, she says the words Hunter told Amity she would never hear -- that Amity is a great girlfriend. It’s a good example of the difference between a transactional relationship, like the one Hunter has with Belos, and a relationship founded on genuine trust and love like the one Amity and Luz share.

But I also like how what distinguishes AMity from Hunter isn’t simply her relationship with Luz; it’s that she's further along in the process of deprogramming, to describe it in grandiose terms. She's been where Hunter is. She's seen a way out that HUnter can barely conceive of given the world he’s immersed in, and she's even walked through that door and seen what’s on the other side. Her advice to him that it’s easy to succumb to that pressure, but there are people who won’t make him feel worthless if he’ll open himself up to them, is a profound and heartening one for anyone who’s grown up in difficult environments.

It’s one of my favorite moments on the show to date. And I love the choice of Hunter being able to understand his Palisman as a sign that, whether he wants it to or not, Amity’s influence is sinking in.

The rest of the episode is solid, if not to that same level. While mostly a B-plot, I like the notion that Eda and King are on top of the world having discovered their new power in the Hooty episode, but it makes them a little reckless in the immediate aftermath. Eda having to talk to her owl beast, rather than simply channel some animal instinct, to transform into Harpee Eda is a nice character beat for her, and I’m intrigued by the deal she made with it. (It involves eating voles, so I assume it means letting the owl beast control her body at least partly? Who knows.

Lore wise, we get more background on how Titan’s Blood works from the echo mouse. We see Emperor Belos without his mask, which is startling in both his normalcy and his magical grotesquery. We see him having reconstructed the door to the human world, but realize that he needs a titan blood-filled key to make it work. We see cleverness from Amity in handing over the key but hanging onto some of the titan’s blood through her abomination powers. And if that weren’t enough, we get more hints that Belos could be the very author of the diary Luz uncovered, with Belos telling his nephew that he’s been to the human world.

Humor wise, I got a big kick out of Luz having the “common mold”. Luz has a Homer SImpson-like quality to her, in that she's great enough that you want to make her the protagonist for most episodes, but you forget how hilarious she can be when she's mostly a side character. Just her “snakes for hands” bit tickled my ribs. And Willow, Gus, and Hooty jamming out to absurd remixes was a good chuckle too.

In terms of visuals, even though the art style here tends to be fairly basic, albeit in a way that serves the needs of the show, I loved the magical duel between Amity and HUnter. IT allowed the animators to get more creative with the direction and cinematography and create some real tension and excitement.

Overall, a strongly-written episode that finds an unexpectedly meaningful pairing between two disparate characters and has something worthwhile to say when measuring against them one another.