Reaching Out - (The Owl House Season 2 Episode 14) - 'Toon Reviews 48

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Reaching Out

A huge sign of a truly great work of animation is the ability to get the audience emotionally invested in what’s essentially a sequence of drawings.  Capturing such a wide range of tones and emotions is a sure way to make what is fiction and literally drawn out feel believable and by some extension relatable.  The show has been very good with handling tone and engaging the audience, but this episode takes these elements to a whole new level.

It’s practically clear right away that the material will get into some heavy subjects when Luz gets a reminder of some big event scheduled for the day.  She’s visibly distressed by this and makes it obvious that it’s bothering her through desperate attempts to stay positive and focus herself on other things going on.  She does reveal to Eda and King that the event has to do with a ritual she does with her mom every year, but doesn’t go into further detail beyond that, let alone her feelings on it.  As her emotional boundaries are respected, Luz proceeds to try and come up with a healthy distraction from the day.  She soon gets it when Amity appears with a big problem of her own, and one that says a lot about her background, especially her parental relationships.  While on the surface, one could believe she has equal resentment for both of them, technically speaking, her biggest resentment is towards her mother who has all the control.  She actually has enough heart to try and reconnect with her dad, Alador, the absent-minded inventor of abomination-based weaponry which brings her family’s income.  However, she still resents him to a significant extent due to his clear emotional neglect.

There’s a big brawl where powerful witches are competing tonight, and Amity is eager to join, win a big belt as Alador did when he was younger, and ultimately connect with him.  Alador rejects her offer to take her to the brawl acting in accordance with his wife’s insistence of Amity attending tryouts for the Emperor’s Coven instead.  He even has an abomination robot set up to grab her and carry her there.  Not only does this present the severity of Alador’s absent-mindedness and distance from his children, but it’s also inconsiderate of Amity’s true feelings on the Emperor’s Coven.  Even if it seemed like it was what she wanted for herself at first, almost everything afterwards brought the impression that she was actually going along with someone else’s goals.  Here, it is made perfectly clear that Amity never really wanted this, and now she’s dismissed the idea of joining a coven altogether.  This is very rewarding as it shows Amity become more open with her true self more and more, significant growth from how she was introduced.  To support Amity’s feelings and give herself distance from her own matter, Luz steps in to help by encouraging Amity to ditch tryouts and go to the brawl anyway.  This way, Amity will get what she wants and potentially connect with her dad by winning the belt and showing her strength.  It’s reckless, and even Luz knows it, but Amity still agrees to it because that’s something she loves about her girlfriend, and the episode builds in the feels from here.

The brawl itself really lives up to the big event it’s presented as with a lot of interesting details and notable character moments.  Of course, the variety of designs of contenders and magic moves are creative, and Luz and Amity constantly showing each other affection as a couple is very endearing. However, even more intrigue comes from beyond the actual brawl.  For one thing, in addition to getting assistance in her goal from Luz, Eda, and King, Amity also gets it from her older twin siblings, Edric and Emira.  The twins really shine with their supportive side, clearly the best Amity has in her own family.  In addition to praising her for standing up for herself more, they help disguise her attempts at ducking Alador’s authority by giving her special stones of theirs.  These stones apparently conceal their true appearances by making them more stylish than they really are.  Without them, the twins actually look more like average teenagers with glasses, stubble, messy hair, and acne, making for interesting looks at their true selves.  That said, it should be noted how glamorous Amity looks when given their stones complete with a lovely dress and hairstyle to fight in. 

Anyway, Edric and Emira show even more intrigue in bigger ways they help Amity through the brawl.  They’re revealed to have knowledge of magic outside of their assigned illusion magic that proves beneficial, showing some basis in them standing as wild witches.  Emira has some knowledge of healing magic, and as a nurturing sibling, uses it to help Amity remain in good fighting condition.  Edric stands out more when his knowledge of beastkeeping magic is put to use in a subplot where he feels underappreciated and self-conscious.  Counteracting these feelings, with this magic, he helps Eda make a potion to use on Warden Wrath, one of the contestants, and get information on Emperor Belos’ plans.  These surprising yet notable moments for the episode go well with the main action with little ways of developing characters, the world, and even more underlying plot points.

With all this said, while Luz is using everything as a distraction from what’s on her mind, her issue clearly remains the most prominent one of the episode.  It even gets to the point where there are inner monologues emphasizing her alone with her thoughts, prompting her need to distance herself from them.  By doing so, she ends up doing things that are very peculiar and compromising of what’s trying to be accomplished for Amity.  Luz’s actions are innocent enough at first by entering the brawl herself, yet Amity, learning from Eda that it’s a big day for Luz, wonders if everything’s ok.  Heck, even Edric and Emira are skeptical of this, but Luz brushes off the event as unimportant, avoiding the issue.  The magnitude of this grows though as Luz suddenly comes across the abomination robot Alador assigned to chaperone Amity.  It appears at a bad time just as Amity is about to win the brawl, so Luz tries to get rid of it on her own, but through doing so she sets off an alarm.  When Amity notices it and asks Luz if she touched it, which by the way is precisely how the alarm is enacted, Luz lies by saying she didn’t.  This may not seem too huge, but this white lie grows in magnitude when Alador suddenly appears and declares to the brawl that Amity forfeits.  

It’s at this point when Luz distracting herself from her issue turns out to be more severe than one would think, since her actions and lies led to Amity getting in trouble.  This now makes Amity desperate to know what’s going on with Luz to understand her weird behavior. It’s easy to feel how painful it is for her when Luz still brushes off what’s on her mind.  As a result, while the following moment of Amity standing up for herself by refusing to go with Alador is satisfying, it’s also distressing to see her so upset with Luz that she runs off from her too.  After how much their relationship has grown, seeing them in a rough patch like this can be very hard to handle.  Luckily, the heart of their relationship is still as strong as ever with Luz not hesitating to make things right. She tracks Amity down to finally confess what’s on her mind in what is absolutely the emotional highlight of the episode.

Unfolding in a very personal spot for their relationship, beneath the tree they created to defeat Grom, the scene is expertly crafted in delivering the emotions.  So to make the tone really stand out, there’s almost total silence save for Luz and Amity talking things over.  Despite just running off from her, Amity allows Luz to sit with her at the tree to civilly discuss her feelings on what just happened.  First, she reiterates how important the brawl and possibly understanding her dad were to her, and how Luz’s strange behavior interfered with that.  However, it’s soon made clear that what she values most is Luz’s well-being as she guesses what’s been going on with her all day, correctly stating it’s related to the human realm.  Instead of continuing to deny it and pushing Amity away, Luz finally explains the details behind what today means to her, revealing a lot about her background in the process. 

In a heavy turn of events, this day is the anniversary of when her dad passed away, something incredibly hard to deal with, especially for someone at her age.  Now, it isn’t just the death alone that’s affecting her, considering that it happened a long time ago.  It's the aforementioned ritual that honors his memory that really gets to Luz.  Since her dad always brought flowers for her and her mom on their birthdays, they’d pick flowers for each other before visiting his grave and spending the day together every year.  The problem is that Luz isn’t with her mom this year, and therefore can’t perform the ritual.  It’s very saddening by the sounds of it because even if the passing of her dad isn’t that big an issue anymore, this was still an important coping method for Luz.  Since she can’t do the ritual now, the pain of the death gets to her stronger than ever.  There’s also the fact that it was a strong bonding experience with her mom, in turn adding weight to her relationship with her.  It says a lot about why she was so distraught over hearing that Luz chose to stay in a whole new realm as well as why Luz agreed to the promise of staying with her when she came back.  Furthermore, dealing with all this adds strong sympathy to using helping Amity with her dad as a distraction and maybe forming a strong father-daughter moment she can never have again.  

It’s plain to see that the entire matter of her dad’s death has a lot for Luz to deal with, all of which make her more endearing as a character.  Still, there’s a very sorry air to the situation as she’s always insisted on keeping the emotional weight to this background to herself and not lay it on others.  This is made clearer by how hard it is for her to tell Amity all about it, and it’s easy to see how much Amity absorbs the tragedy of what Luz explains.  However, it’s precisely all that Amity needs to hear to help Luz through this turmoil, the very thing she wanted to do for Luz all along.  She’s even about to do so before another matter calls them to action.  Before they go do what they can to help, Amity doesn’t hesitate to consider Luz’s feelings by offering to pick flowers with her and make their own ritual.  After dealing with pent up emotions all day, including explaining all of it just now, Luz’s reaction to Amity listening to everything and showing she cares is simply great reassurance.  Altogether, it sells this entire part of the episode as a masterful example of using animation to play with emotions to enhance a story.

Following this sequence is the climax to bring solid conclusions to the episode’s elements.  Regarding the aforementioned matter, it’s a result of Edric’s attempt at helping Eda with her truth potion backfiring and turning Warden Wrath into a beast.  All the main players rush in to quell him and turn him back to normal with something to offer.  As Alador tries to use force to stop Warden Wrath, he at first dismisses Amity’s attempts at helping him, which is not greeted fondly whatsoever.  

Soon after, Amity rushes in to help anyway while cutting off Alador pushing her away again, claiming she’s making her own choices from now on, the very point of her character arc.  Edric also redeems himself somewhat by coming up with a way to reverse the potion that did this to Warden Wrath, although Luz is the one to execute the move.  After an endearing instance of gratitude towards her girlfriend for listening to her unpack her turmoil earlier, Luz stops the ensuing madness with a strategical display of glyph magic.  

After that, even more developments are gained for several characters.  Eda doesn’t get all the information she was after, but Warden Wrath does reveal there are mixed reactions, even around the Emperor’s Coven, about what Belos is planning.  Edric, despite messing up, is invited to learn more of Eda’s teachings as he still showed great potential in a variety of magic, with Emira following suit.  It’s as if Eda’s self-proclaimed “Bad Girl Coven” is getting legit relevance now.  With Amity’s father issues, she finally lets him know that she’s renounced any desire to join a coven while also calling him out for being emotionally distant.  Surprisingly, Alador shows signs of actually connecting with her by complimenting her new hair, something his wife is said to have dismissed, apparently wanting to dye it green again.  While he says he’ll talk to her about that matter as a way of respecting his daughter’s wishes, it’s a wise move that Amity doesn’t fully accept his affection.  She does agree to shake his hand and says that his attempts can be considered a start.

To close the episode, there’s one more endearing scene to bring the emotional center to a strong place of comfort and healing.  Amity honors her word to help Luz pick flowers as a way of making up for Luz missing her yearly ritual.  It’s hard to find good ones, but Luz is able to create nice ones with her glyph magic which she could have done the whole time but didn’t due to not being in a good place.  Then Amity shows good initiative of what to do once they have the flowers.  She makes a balloon out of an abomination, ties the flowers to them, and has the balloon fly them into the sky.  This might not lead to anything, but the sight of her and Luz holding hands, watching the flowers fly, and imagining them reaching the human realm is a moment of pure emotion.  

Making their ray of hope even stronger is one final scene of the human realm where Luz’s mother Camila performs her own take on the ritual.  She puts a flower in a vase on her own windowsill, possibly for Luz as well as her husband.  As she looks up at the sky and gazes at the stars twinkling, she finds some courage to smile a little. While the reason for it isn't clear, it does bring an impression that maybe her loved ones aren’t as far as they seem, leaving the audience to wonder where things will go for her from here.  One thing’s for sure though, as hard as many of the featured characters have had things, the fact that they have reasonable causes for comfort is worth the strife.

It takes a lot of care and passion to tell a powerful emotionally gripping story and put it to animation, and this episode is one of the absolute best instances of this.  Everything the characters involved go through does not hold back with heaviness as well as how rough things can get for them and others in the process.  In the end though, hope shines through to bring their struggles full circle by reminding them that healthy connections and good communication make a world of difference.  There’s a lot to take away from this episode, and it’s all the more honorable to how powerful something like a work of animation can be.

A+

 Fan Art

Series Ranking

1.      Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Hooty’s Door

2.      Reaching Out

3.      Enchanting Grom Fright

4.      Eda’s Requiem

5.      Follies at the Coven Day Parade

6.      Yesterday’s Lie

7.      Agony of a Witch

8.      Elsewhere and Elsewhen

9.      Hunting Palismen

10.  Echoes of the Past

11.  Escaping Expulsion

12.  Understanding Willow

13.  Lost in Language

14.  Adventures in the Elements

15.  The Intruder

16.  Covention

17.  Keeping Up A-Fear-Ances

18.  Eclipse Lake

19.  Through the Looking Glass Ruins

20.  Young Blood Old Souls

21.  Any Sport in a Storm

22.  Separate Tides

23.  Escape of the Palisman

24.  Wing it Like Witches

25.  The First Day

26.  I Was a Teenage Abomination

27.  Witches Before Wizards

28.  Something Ventured, Someone Framed

29.  A Lying Witch and a Warden

30.  Sense and Insensitivity

31.  Hooty’s Moving Hassle

32.  Really Small Problems

33.  Once Upon a Swap

The next Owl House review puts Eda and Raine's relationship at the forefront with a charming flashback story of how they first met.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we journey to "The First Temple" in Amphibia.

If you would like to check out other Owl House reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.