The Intruder
You
might have your own ideas on what makes a truly great animated work. To me, animation of such great quality are
stories that provide a variety of feels , highlighted by a fitting
atmosphere starring a diverse cast of likable characters. Consider this a basic reason why this episode
is so great.
The story really gets to the heart of the main trio, Luz, King, and Eda. Now, King really wants to teach Luz about his specialty creature, demons, all while she’s still most fixated on learning about witches. When a storm of literal boiling rain forces everyone to stay inside, Luz sees this as an opportunity to get Eda to teach her a magic spell. Though Eda is clearly reluctant, she does provide some insightful developments to this world’s nature of magic. There’s talk of the basis of spells from light circles, powers originating from a bile sac in the heart, which Luz lacks, and how staffs are earned through independent discovery. In addition, everyone ponders a good question of exactly why Eda’s referred to as ‘the owl lady’ which comes into play later.
Anyway, Luz’s excitement of learning magic while Eda’s too tired to get into it knocks Eda out. While she’s down, King sees he’s in the clear to finally teach Luz about demons. From there, the seeds of heartfelt developments are planted as Luz tells King why she’s so obsessed with becoming a witch. The information on not fitting in back home is well-known to the audience. However, Luz directly sharing this with someone does put a good spin on things. In fact, King relates to Luz’s background for not being taken seriously himself, even by her. He bargains to help Luz learn the light circle spell if he can continue teaching her about demons. They take an elixir that Eda keeps, with Luz put under the impression that if she takes it, she can do magic.
Just before she can find out, the tone smoothly becomes darker. The lights go out with Hooty, the smart-talking power source of the Owl House, knocked unconscious, and a monstrous creature appears at the door. The following moments further enhance the moody atmosphere. Luz and King are separated, King fears the worst when he only finds her shoe, and he can’t figure out who this monster is.
When King eventually finds Luz, the situation thickens. From the monster’s face and hairstyle, they see that it’s Eda transformed. Plus, research shows that the elixir of Eda’s is meant to keep her from turning into that monster.
As things remain dark, Luz and King have more of a heart-to-heart while hiding. King realizes his brashness in wanting to teach Luz while also confiding how his behavior comes from wanting to be understood, which Luz endearingly relates to. This leads to both of them solving the problem in their own way. King studies monster Eda’s characteristics and concludes they’re drawn to light.
However, Luz is the one to really shines, literally actually. When studying a video of Eda doing the light circle, her distorted phone glitches and reveals a pattern. She draws the pattern, and that creates a ball of light, i.e. Luz’s first magic spell, no doubt a grand moment for her goals. She settles this conflict by drawing a big pattern to shine a huge light at monster Eda. Sure enough, Eda returns to normal because of this.
After all the darkness, there’s a refreshing
tone from one more talk between all our main players. King laments taking Eda’s elixir, Luz is met with
good praise for doing the light spell all by herself, and Eda comes clean of
why she’s called the owl lady. Someone
put a curse on her when she was young, only she doesn’t know exactly who did
it. Even as one of the episode’s last
scenes has her encounter the being who cursed her in a vision in her head, the
appearance is blurred so she can’t tell the identity. That leaves the show with its first true
mystery to really get people to keep watching.
This
is just one telling sign of this show’s apparent talents with animated
storytelling. The creative lore is fascinating,
the atmosphere successfully brings a variety of feels, and the main characters
all come to earned places in their development.
For that, this episode is a true high point of the first season.
A+
The Ranking
1. The Intruder
2. I Was a Teenage Abomination
3. Witches Before Wizards
4. A Lying Witch and a Warden
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