“Choosing Yourself” — What Season 1, Episode 2 Of ‘The Owl House’ (2020-2024) Says About Self-Worth

The Owl House (2020-2024) was a well-loved animated series that ran for four years on the Disney Channel and Disney+ before being prematurely cancelled.

It is a show about a teenage girl named Luz Noceda, who finds herself in a brand-new world filled with monsters, witches, and demons, and follows her adventures with a witch named Eda and a demon named King, which culminates in a battle against a tyrannical ruler who seeks to wipe out all life in the Boiling Isles. Episode 2¹ of the Owl House², “Witches Before Wizards,” while not the best episode in the series as a whole, is one that is still valuable and central to the story moving forward.

Being the follow-up to Episode 1³ (which we have already reviewed), Episode 2 does the bulk of the character building for the series — their motivations, desires, attitudes, and struggles are all fleshed out in this episode. In my article, I will go over key scenes and moments, analyze them thoroughly, and try to figure out why it’s the case that this episode is put on the same level as the body-swap filler episode.

Self-Worth & Choice In Early Owl House

Season 1, Episode 2 of the Owl House, “Witches Before Wizards,” addresses the concept of “destiny” in a way that directly goes against the typical Disney formula and definition. Movies like Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959), and Moana (John Musker and Ron Clements, 2016) all also have to do with the idea of destiny as something that is fixed and can’t be avoided; something that every person is meant to have.

The Owl House does things differently. See, throughout the entire episode, Luz becomes obsessed with becoming a “real witch” like her favorite fantasy book character. At first, she dons an old black robe and a black hat that actually turns out to be a really dirty traffic cone.

Once Eda starts continuously shooting down her requests for magical lessons, Luz becomes fixated on the idea that she must have some grand destiny, and that must be why she was able to come to the Isles. Eda ignores her insistence, and promises to begin teaching Luz, as long as she helps Eda out by delivering potions to prospective customers. This setup is what leads to Luz meeting a wizard and kickstarting the conflict of the episode.

The wizard manages to feed into Luz’s belief that she is extra special or a “Chosen One.” He sends her on a clearly fake quest to find a special staff — something that Luz has been shown to want desperately ever since seeing that Eda has one. Luz happily takes the bait, too focused on the prospect of adventure to recognize the danger in the wizard’s odd behavior.

In the end, Luz ends up putting herself in danger and has to be bailed out by Eda and King after realizing that they were right about the wizard luring her into a trap. At first she feels betrayed and worthless, recognizing that she truly is a regular person and not someone that is automatically destined for anything, and leaves with Eda and King.

To cheer Luz up, Eda and King take her flying and show her a beautiful view of the Isles. When Luz asks how Eda knew about the scam, Eda responds that “destiny” isn’t real, and that we as people must choose ourselves and make our lives meaningful on our own.

These beginning scenes (and the episode as a whole) also begin introducing the idea of dismantling everything you think you know (or at least every pre-conceived notion that you may have). They suggest that only once you do that are you able to truly choose yourself.

Establishing Luz’s Identity & Motivation

Luz is already an interesting character from the moment she is introduced. She has very odd behaviors and interests and is explicitly shown to not fit in with a lot of the other kids at her school in a way that is different from other main characters. She’s not “different” because she doesn’t like “girly” things. She isn’t shown to be being bullied, and she doesn’t act with hostility toward any of her classmates. This combination makes her likable and relatable to a wide audience, and Episode 2 takes that relatability a step further.

Luz is meant to be an “everyman” in the sense that, while she is very much her own unique character, she is going through the same things that a lot of teenagers start going through. People are often pressured at extremely young ages to already know what they want to be, where they want to go, and what kinds of people they want to surround themselves with.

Because Luz does not know exactly what she wants to do, she is often shown to latch onto the first things that she hears about or that catch her eye — which is why she decided she wanted to be an author after reading the Azura books, only to immediately switch gears and decide to become a witch the minute she meets Eda and visits the titular Owl House, resulting in her leaving her own world behind completely with no real plan going forward.

It’s also why she immediately latches onto the idea of having a “destiny.” She doesn’t know what she wants, so the idea of having a pre-determined path is extra appealing to her.

It is also worth noting how the wizard goes about tricking Luz. He uses these cliches and stereotypes in an attempt to comfort Luz and further lull her into a false sense of security. Luz often struggles with subtlety. Consequently, straightforward and predictable characters appeal to her, even if she misses the underlying danger.

Something else that the episode does differently is that it immediately subverts a lot of stereotypes about the fake characters that Luz meets on her “journey” (while also leaning into stereotypes in other ways).

One example of this is how the male “love interest” is portrayed. Every single one of his lines is designed to hype Luz up, not only acting as a way to feed her delusion so as to keep her trapped in this illusion, but also to showcase that he has no real character of his own. He is also shirtless through the whole adventure, and Luz occasionally makes comments about how buff and good-looking he is. In this scenario, he is acting as the stereotypical female love interest, while she is the hero.

All of this leads to the main conflict of the episode, as well as the real danger: because Luz spends most of the episode ignoring Eda and King’s (admittedly abrasively conveyed) advice and choosing, instead, to trust in the comfort that the wizard provides, they are all left particularly vulnerable when he inevitably betrays and attempts to eat her real friends.

In the end, Luz asks Eda how she knew the wizard had been lying, and she responded, “everybody wants to believe they’re chosen. But if we all waited for a prophesy to make us special, we’d die waiting. That’s why you need to choose yourself.”

It is established in both the first episode and the second that Luz sees the world differently than most people. This attitude and way of being is shown, not only in her actions, but also in the soundscape and art style of the series as a whole.

Animation & Music As Emotional Framing

Music and animation are both incredibly important parts of setting an emotional tone of a scene and an episode.

Even minor movements and background character expressions can tell the audience a lot about a character without words needing to be said at all, and music is a subtle way to add tension or comfort to a scene without requiring the use of more “overt” sounds, such as speaking or movement.

Animation

The animation gets a little smoother but otherwise doesn’t really change between the first and second episodes. It is worth noting that the animation and style choices can often lean more anime-esque rather than what we see in traditional Western animation.

This could be, in part, due to the fact that we see this world through the eyes of Luz; someone who is heavily into anime and manga. Something interesting that the animators do in this episode is that they portray the exact same settings in completely different ways. Luz sees everything as overly saturated and colorful, resulting in the audience seeing the setting that way.

However, when we switch to Eda and King’s perspectives of the same places, everything is dead and decaying. The colors are dull. All of the animals break apart and fall away like dust.

This difference means that animators had to take the time to draw and animate the same place back-to-back, making sure everything looks the same in order to keep with the continuity, while also making sure that one scene is more decayed and dilapidated than the other.

The colors of both of the different versions of the setting also convey how each character feels about the world they’re in. Luz sees everything as bright, happy, and colorful – which makes sense given how little time she’s spent in the Boiling Isles. She hasn’t had the time to become jaded to it all the way Eda and King have.

Eda and King, however, see the setting in a very similar way to how Luz sees the Human Realm in the first episode – dull, gray, and lifeless.

Music

The same OSTs were used in this episode as in Episode 1⁵, with the addition of a new OST during Eda’s ending monologue that’s soft, melodic, and intentionally quiet to make room for what Eda is saying and also to signal Luz’s inner calm now that she’s back with Eda and King.

Something that is worth noting about how the music is used in this episode, however, is how it uses the plucky, light sounds of the music in the previous episode in a different way.

In Episode 1⁶, the upbeat music in the Isles was meant to signal how different the Isles was to the Human Realm, as well as how excited and awed Luz was to be there. In this episode, however, that upbeat music is used to signal hidden danger.

Luz isn’t consciously aware of danger, which is why the music sounds the same. A few different instruments and keys are used this time, making it sound folk-y and upbeat, but also a little too perfect and out of place in a soundscape that has, so far, felt more orchestral or melodical.

Why Season 1, Episode 2 Of The Owl House Is Often Overlooked

With this being the second episode in the series, there were a lot of expectations to continue the momentum of the first episode. The expectation was that Luz would begin learning magic right after the first episode, given that Eda had seemingly agreed to teach her (in exchange for keeping King out of the snacks, of course).

This was not the case, however. Furthermore, the characters that make their first appearance in this episode are never mentioned again, nor do they show up in any meaningful way. The biggest callback we get to this episode is when King’s dad asks Luz if she’s willing to finally “choose herself” in the final episode of the series.⁷

It also may come down to the animation and music. Not much changed in either of these avenues between Episodes 1 and 2. The animation changes just slightly, but the music is generally the same OSTs used in the pilot.

The main thing that the episode does that is important is the establishment of the theme of choosing your own destiny, as well as fleshing out the relationships of the main characters. Eda is no longer just a kooky old lady who happily swindles idiots on the street. She’s surprisingly intelligent. She’s wise in a way that suggests there’s even more to her character and that she’s even more similar to Luz than it would appear.

King is the only reason Luz was saved at all. He was immediately and openly skeptical of the wizard. He made his discomfort clear in the way that a little kid would, but he also behaved protectively of Luz, showing that he is more than the little gremlin he was in Episode 1⁸.

Without this episode, none of these traits would have been established as smoothly as they were, making “Witches Before Wizards” required viewing for anyone interested in The Owl House.

Footnotes

1. “Witches Before Wizards” The Owl House, Season 1, Episode 2, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎
2. Dana Terrace, creators. The Owl House. Disney Channel, 2020-2023. ↩︎
3. “A Lying Witch and A Warden” The Owl House, Season 1, Episode 1, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎
4. Why the Chosen One Prophecy Now Refers to ALL Skywalkers for Episode 9 – Star Wars Explained. YouTube, uploaded by Star Wars Theory. Jun 3. 2019. ↩︎
5. “A Lying Witch and A Warden” The Owl House, Season 1, Episode 1, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎
6. “A Lying Witch and A Warden” The Owl House, Season 1, Episode 1, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎
7. “Watching And Dreaming” The Owl House, Season 3, Episode 3, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎
8. “A Lying Witch and A Warden” The Owl House, Season 1, Episode 1, Disney Channel, 10 Jan. 2020. Disney+. ↩︎