#but finding out he was coerced into war crimes by his uncle probably would have hurt things

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

i rewatched hollow mind for the 928342398402394th time and a thought came to me: did luz still think hunter was one of “the bad guys” in the first half of the episode?

bc, like, the first time she ever met hunter, he threatened to drown king and tried to coerce her into killing a cute animal. the second time she meets him, he stole a bunch of palismen for belos to eat, tied her up, and chased her through latissa even after she saved him. sure, they have a heart to heart and ended up making a pretty good team. hunter even saves her from kikimora at the end. but from luz’s expression as she escapes, and her “bad but sad boy” description after the fact, she very much understands where hunter’s loyalties lie.

when she asks hunter why he “decided to join the emperor’s coven,” his answer implies he did so out of thanks for belos taking him in - aka, joining the coven was his own choice. we the audience know at that point that belos is hunter’s uncle and can therefore infer that this isn’t the case, but luz doesn’t know that. for all she knows, hunter had as much of a choice to join the coven as lilith did - knowing all the shady things that belos did and deciding to work for him anyway.

luz is way too forgiving of others to blame hunter for it, especially after he saved her from kikimora. and after she’s endeared herself to hunter, she also knows he’s not as big of a threat to her as before. so she texts hunter to ask him for dirt on belos. she tackles him in an alleyway to do the same. but judging by how she, and in extension eda and king, treat him, they still think he’s a villain. a less threatening, kind of funny, and redeemable villain, but a villain at the moment nonetheless. a villain who knows what he’s doing is wrong and can stop working for belos at any time, but keeps doing it regardless.

and honestly, hunter’s actions before hollow mind don’t do him any favors. he attacks amity, even when she was trying to help him. he threatens luz’s safety to steal the titan blood. he tried to kidnap willow and gus’s entire flyer derby team. luz probably heard about his heart to heart with amity, his mental breakdown at eclipse lake, and how he saved the flyer derby team at the end, but that’s in line with what she already knows. he’s capable of becoming friends with her and the gang, but he’s still too dangerous and too loyal to belos to trust and work with. and all of this is, in luz’s mind, still hunter’s choice.

and then at the start of hollow mind, hunter explains a little about his backstory. but crucially, he doesn’t tell luz, or any of her friends before this point, his relationship with belos. he says “wild magic destroyed our family,” but keeps it vague enough and still addresses belos by name. the audience knows that hunter means “him and belos’s family” when he says “our family,” but luz has no reason to think hunter and belos are related. to her, hunter could just mean “me and my other relatives who died.”

in belos’s memories, hunter and the other golden guards also never refer to belos as “uncle,” so luz still doesn’t find out about the familial relation. what she does find out about are belos’s crimes throughout the centures. and she found out that the past golden guards not only knew about belos’s cruelty, but actively helped him hurt people. hunter trying to justify belos’s actions further confirmed luz’s view that hunter was okay with belos’s cruelty and probably did horrible things similar to the other guards. then hunter revealed that he helped belos build a new portal, cementing the idea that he wasn’t on luz’s side. by the point they see the collector, luz automatically assumes hunter also knows about it - the golden guard knew about every awful thing that belos did, after all, and helped him regardless.

but hunter doesn’t know about the collector. and then luz gets to see how belos actually treats hunter behind the scenes. the collector says that belos “created” hunter, and while luz doesn’t know what that means, she understands that hunter is in danger. he wasn’t voluntarily helping belos with all his misdeeds. hunter is being abused and threatened into doing whatever belos wants. all of his past actions - how he repeatedly befriended and worked with luz and her friends but backstabbed them to complete a mission for belos - he didn’t do that just out of loyalty to belos. he did that because he was scared of what belos would do to him if he failed.

luz just saw the aftermath of eclipse lake. hunter basically won that confrontation. he got the portal key, but because amity broke the key, belos almost tried to hurt him anyway. if that’s how belos treated hunter in a semi successful mission, then how did he treat him when luz took the palismen? what happened when willow and gus left him with a - for all they know - angry, scythe-wielding coven head after hunter directly went against him? hunter told luz the first time they met that “the emperor is not a merciful man,” but she never thought that that would extend to hunter himself.

and then she sees the memories of the previous golden guards’ deaths. when hunter talks to belos, he refers to the other golden guards as “our family.” and it’s only then that luz realizes that belos and hunter are related. no wonder hunter worked for belos all this time despite everything - belos is hunter’s family. he’s supposed to protect him. and yet hunter is terrified out of his mind of his uncle. for good reason - because belos almost kills him right in front of luz. then he even nonchalantly talks about making another one, like hunter didn’t even matter.

it’s after luz sees hunter and belos’s dynamic that she asks hunter to stay in the owl house. and after they leave belos’s mind, luz becomes noticeably gentler to him. she “bullied” him before, which the fandom attributes to the cain instinct but also luz seems to feel justified in lightly ribbing a “bad guy” who works for belos. but after hollow mind, she completely shifts from teasing him to worrying about his well being every time she sees him.

she tries to go after hunter when he has a panic attack and bolts after getting out of belos’s mind. she tries to tell her friends what happened and tells them not to “scare [hunter] away.” when she sees hunter again in clouds on the horizon, the first thing she does is to ask if he’s okay. then when kikimora threatens him, she defends him and even takes his place as her prisoner, because now luz knows what belos does to disloyal golden guards. what he was about to do to hunter in his mind. in season 3, we can see this eventually made hunter trust luz enough to overshare ALL of his baggage with her, instead of just a little before lol.

idk what the point of writing all this was but i think it’s interesting how hollow mind changed luz’s view on both belos AND hunter. she doesn’t just feel more sorry for him now that she knows about his relationship with belos, she was actively wary of him before that. and before seeing belos’s memory of the collector, she was becoming more and more distrustful of hunter as they went through belos’s mind. but the last memory they saw not only showed luz that hunter needed her help, but that he wasn’t fully complicit in belos’s crimes out of choice, as she would have reasonably concluded previously. that, in addition to his other encounters with her and her friends, probably came a long way in improving their trust in each other post-hollow mind.