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battlekidx2 · 2 years

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Hollow Mind Thoughts

This has been my favorite episode of season 2B so far, hands down. It was so masterfully done from Hunter and Luz’s journey through Belos’ mind to Hunter’s breakdown at all that happened to Luz’s reaction to discovering Belos is Philip to the background details that tell a sweeping story of two brothers that ended in tragedy to the confirmation of more than one theory. This episode was amazing.

First off everything about Belos’ backstory was amazing. Seeing how he manipulated the witches in the boiling isles and planted a deep rooted fear of wild magic within them was chilling. He started out with physical threats with dangerous “wild mage attacks” and eventually grew more and more personal until he was spreading fear about how wild magic destroys the soul of the user. The escalation and manipulation was done much better than I could have hoped.

It has very obvious parallels to organized religion and it’s interesting how many cartoons have decided to deconstruct it so thoroughly in recent years. It takes the tactics such as playing to people’s fears and other things that occur in organized religion that have negatively impacted people and shines a light on them, showing how these are actively harmful and can prevent people from accepting who they are. It also shows the isolation that rejecting these types of things can bring with characters like Eda. It shows how indoctrination and forcing a life path on someone like this can effect them with Amity and Hunter. It does a good job of exploring these themes and using the characters and arcs to enhance them.

This episode does the best job of any in the entire series at selling Belos’ hold over the Boiling Isles. I could feel and fully believe that he had so much control over them whereas at many points earlier in the series I was bothered at how inconsistent his control seemed. It varied based solely on what was most convenient for the story in season 1 which was one of my biggest complaints of the first season but season 2 has really doubled down on showing Belos’ influence and I couldn’t be happier. It really feels like there are stakes. You really feel like Belos is a threat and you can see just how dangerous he is.

Another one of my complaints with the first season was how easily Luz seemed to chip Belos’ mask in the finale, which shattered his illusion of strength, but this season has once again fixed that problem because it has shown how dangerous Belos is with his words and how callus he is. Not just with the people of the boiling isles who he holds contempt for because they are witches but also towards Hunter. It’s chilling how easily Belos dismisses Hunter. He claims to care about him and states that he was the clone that looked the most like the original but the second he saw cracks he made to get rid of him like all the rest. I’m impressed with how much this season has done to improve on the first and capitalize on the potential I felt it missed.

The atmosphere of Belos’ mind was fantastic. The layers of it where there’s the surface level which is shiny and polished, too squeaky clean, and what’s underneath, the real Belos, is creepy and distorted with crossed out faces, gnarled trees, and devoid of living plants. It’s a perfect visualization of the duality of Belos.

The owl house is a study in how twists being expected isn’t a bad thing. A twist that is built into the story in the background and little dropped hints is a well thought out twist. Too often shows get wrapped up in subverting expectations and throwing their audience for a loop and manage to disappoint because they aren’t built towards. The owl house is the perfect example of a show where the twists are expected because they are built into the plot but they are still incredibly impactful when they are revealed. I wasn’t shocked when Hunter was revealed to be a grimwalker in this episode and I wasn’t shocked when Belos was revealed to be Philip in “Elsewhere and Elsewhen” but I still loved when and how they were confirmed in the show.

The Hunter grimwalker theory confirmation wasn’t surprising but the way it was used in this episode was one of the best parts. The reality that Hunter is just the latest in a long line of clones that are regularly disposed of by Belos because they all betray him at some point says so much about all the characters involved. It explains why Darius has such a soft spot for Hunter, he can see the very blatant similarities between the two and doesn’t want Hunter to fall down the same tragic path of his predecessor. It sheds light on Hunter because it shows that all the golden guards were manipulated but ultimately goodhearted kids that were all victims of Belos. It makes him even more tragic than he was before this point and adds another layer to the manipulation that Belos spins for his followers.

It also shows how certain Belos is of his mission that he was willing to kill his brother initially (shown through the background memories) and that he continually makes more and more clones of him hoping that this will be the time that his brother follows the same path as him and doesn’t fall in love with magic and the boiling isles but each and every time it fails. There are so many layers that this creates and I can’t wait to see what happens moving forward.

I like that instead of instantly turning to Luz and Eda’s side at the end of the episode Hunter has a breakdown over all that he’s discovered and runs away. Finally fully understanding the abuse and manipulation that he’s endured. The breathing, the panic, his desperate action of tearing his cloak off. All of it was so well done and captured the suffocating feeling of that kind of breakdown so well. Owl House excels at portraying these types of difficult emotions. This isn’t the type of thing you just move forward from and I like that it is taking the time to address that. Hunter has been one of the most consistently fantastic parts of the season and he’s given an interesting dynamic with everyone he’s paired with.

The true introduction of the collector was very interesting and leaves more questions than it does answers but that was clearly the point. There's an air of mystery surrounding this being and what their goals are. There’s so much that this being has a hand in and there’s a lot of implications about how intertwined Eda and the Clawthorne family is in this whole thing. We know that the collector was the one who captured the owl beast and turned it into a curse in the first place and there are a lot of hints that the Clawthorne family has more connections to Belos and his family than we currently know of. This episode knows what questions to answer and what to leave hanging.

My only real question was why Belos lead Hunter and Luz through his memories in the first place. How much of that was he aware of? How much of his reveals were on purpose? We know that he wanted Luz to know he is really Philip Wittebane but what about the rest? These feel a bit nitpicky and could be answered in the future so I’m not hung up on any of it.

This episode left me with so many thoughts and questions but also left me very satisfied. With just 5 episodes left I’m going to release my thoughts on the first half of season 2A but I decided to put my thoughts on Hollow mind out first because there were just so many that it needed its own separate post. I hope others are getting just as much enjoyment out of this season as I am.

#the owl house #toh #hollow mind #Luz nocenda #hunter #Eda clawthorne #the collector #this episodes was amazing #so many thoughts #season 2 #spoilers

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