Witches Before Wizards
While the last episode supported Luz’s passions for fantasy, this episode is the start of her learning necessary facts of life. The first of these lessons is probably among the most personal.
Remember that the main reason she chose to stay on the Boiling Isles and learn to become a witch is because she doesn’t fit in at home. Living here is a good chance to blend in with what she loves, but as Luz her expectations of fantasy worlds, things turn out to be complicated. She approaches her first lesson from Eda wearing a standard witch uniform, but she turns out to be wearing rags. She’s excited to learn spells, but Eda acts disinterested and gives her mundane delivery errands instead. She thinks she can fit in with the menagerie of demons, but they treat her like the outsider she really is. Basically, these experiences are a reality check Luz needs where even if she's getting what she wants, expectations are not always going to be met.
Still determined to fit in, Luz holds onto hope in things playing out like the fantasy world of her dreams and Azura novels. The biggest hope is being a chosen one for a bigger goal. In most cases, chosen one stories would be inherently flawed for pressuring an average person who’s never done anything. Given what Luz wants in life, those pressures are alleviated as the supposedly preceding events are expected to follow normal procedures.
She appears to get her wish from one of Eda’s potion customers, a wizard named Adegast. He seems warm and inviting as he gives Luz map to a celestial staff he apparently lost and that only she can retrieve. When showing it to Eda and King though, she’s only greeted with mockery, which comes off as mean and inconsiderate of her goals, even for them. This disdain, as well as a hidden message supporting her as a chosen one, motivates Luz set off anyhow.
Armed with a plastic sword and upbeat attitude, Luz’s quest has an ideal magical tone. She meets a variety of characters, is given several treasures, and appears to make it to the staff without trouble. At the same time, Eda shows fascinating layers as a mentor. Despite her disinterest in teaching and laughing at Luz’s goals, when she hears of who she got the quest from, she’s legitimately worried for her safety. She knows something dark about Adegast, and destruction in the place of his lavish house and where Luz met her quest comrades support this.
The truth turns out to be that the celestial staff was a ruse, Luz’s treasures were shackles, and she is now bait used to capture Eda. Also Adegast is really a monster with tentacles holding puppets of figures like the wizard and Luz’s fake partners, which to me is a creatively executed twist. Luckily, Eda is ready to face him, but then he gives Luz a chance to live in an entirely fantasy world. Creatively staged within a dark void surrounded by her companions, it nicely gets across the idea of Luz wanting to live away from reality. Of course, this is not a healthy course of action for anyone to take, even if some may really want to. Ultimately though, it isn't long before Luz shows that she knows living in reality is the right way to go. That’s a major first step to true character growth the first episode lacked as well as a rewarding way to lead to Adegast's defeat.
Afterwards, her disappointment is comforted as Eda shows her a beautiful view of the Boiling Isles, a fitting place for Luz’s first big lesson. It’s about how it’s better to go off and find one’s own destiny instead of waiting for someone else to come and offer it. That nicely dispels the faults in being a chosen one, shows the Boiling Isles as highly immersive, and effectively brings fantasy-obsessed Luz down to Earth, even if she's not on Earth.
In
the long run though, this second episode of the series may not be the most
interesting story and doesn’t have much elements that come back later. However, it’s a commendable entry in
deconstructing familiar tropes, and taking first steps in really balancing
what our main protagonist loves and what she needs to learn.
A-
The Ranking
1. Witches Before Wizards
2. A Lying Witch and a Warden
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