#his broken bitchboy swag and religious trauma have captivated me.

[iveneverbeenmorestressedinmylife]

please elaborate on where you would have taken hunter's arc!! i am so frustrated that they gave him no time to grieve and didn't even let him confront belos in the end

Godd, you and i both anon, you and i both. Where do i even start.

Aaahh first of all obligatory disclaimer: this is all hypothetical talk and I don't hold anything against the toh crew they did their best with what little wiggle room disney gave them. Well ok theres actually like one or two things i hold against them but we will get to that.

So. Hunter. Its honestly so frustrating how little he does and how little he learns about himself after like. Labyrinth runners? Like we and king see the golden guard graveyard. He doesn't. We see the Caleb statue. He doesn't. We never learn anything more about Darius' mentor and besides like a nudge and a wink the fact that Gus knows that he is a grimwalker simply doesn't get brought up. Most of these are obviously things that the crew would looove to elaborate on but they weren't allowed to which. Tragic. Disney robbed us blind.

But what DOES Hunter know?? Well he knows a few things and they are all horrifying! Caleb, Phillip, Evelyn, witch hunters yada yada yada. Is he ever given any screen time to grieve or scream or cry? Nope!

Aaauughh in my humble and 100 percent biased opinion...the hunter episodes that i Truly Unabashedly Loved with all my heart and soul and i have rewatched like a bazillion times since then are 1. Kings tide, 2. Hunting palismen, 3. Eclipse lake and 4. Hollow mind. What do these episodes have in common? Well Hunter acts like a little bitch in them. He is determined to win, he is capable, he is unhinged. Honestly i was very casual about toh before hunting palismen aired. Like i genuinely didn't care all that much before Hunter showed up 😭😭 but the MOMENT the show dangled a little shiny fucked up bitchboy before my eyes i was a goner. Well past the point of no return and with no desire to return to the way things were.

At the end of the day my stance on Hunter's characterisation throughout the show is that i wanted him to be more fucked up... I wanted him to cling desperately to the ideas Belos beat into his head, i wanted his desperation to be palpable and intoxicating.!!! That happened in the eclipse lake episode and ive simply never gotten over it!! Suuuuuch a good episode. Also i know that getting more friends is definitely better for him in the long run but i wanted him to be like a little feral cat,,, i wanted him to have more weird rivalry-fueled misadventures with luz before getting acquainted with the hex squad and when he did meet the rest of the kids i wanted him to be more mistrustful... God i wanted luz to keep making him fail on his missions resulting in punishment and abuse by Belos. I wanted him to misdirect all the blame onto her since he obviously can't blame his beloved uncle now can he. I wanted him to be mad!!! I wanted him to start biting!!

But whatever thats again a lack of screentime. We barely got to see hunter in his gg era which was a crime, i loved his gg era. At the end of the day maybe im simply asking for too much. Hollow mind happens (amazing episode 10/10). He calls invading belos memories "sacrilege" which has simply never left my mind. The moment the memories he sees don't allign with the propaganda belos has forced into him, his first instinct is to angrily call himself an idiot because obviously being wrong about mindscapes would make more sense than his emperor and uncle lying to him, right???

The first moment he dares to so much as imply that he might be doubting Belos integrity his worst fear becomes reality.

Now at this point i would be SO happy if he begged a little for forgiveness. But whatever its an ok point for him to leave. It makes sense, his only family threatened his life. He runs away into the woods while having a panic attack. Poetic cinema, ten out of ten no notes.

Honestly when hollow mind aired i was SO sure that flapjack would lead him to the bat queen. It makes sense doesn't it? Damaged palismen, damaged grimwalker. Made of the same materials, breathing artificial life into their magical bodies. I was so so so sure. Buuut he went to hexside intead. Works for me i suppose. Labyrinth runners is one of those hunter episodes that just didn't really click for me as much as i wish they would. But it was great nonetheless! He got to kick some ass which was lovely and also graye got to psychologically torture him which was excellent. And then the season finale happens and what was his role again? Oh literally nothing?? Ok. Whatever. Then thanks to them, he gets retraumatised again and then in for the future he is allowed to be grumpy and grieve for a whole five (5) minutes before everyone takes it personally which. Lmao. And then in the finale he just. doesn't do anything.

Have you ever watched any of the smurfs movies? The smurfs and the lost village perhaps but honestly most of them could work for the point im trying to make. Have you seen Smurfettes arc? Isn't it GOOD? Doesn't it feel EXHILARATING when she gets the chance to stand up against the man who created her for a Specific Purpose, proving him wrong and showing off how much control she has over her own life in the process? Well Hunter never got any of that sadly. One day he learnt that he is literally a Clone instead of a Real Witch and he just never really reacts to that horrifying revelation kskskska. And he doesn't play a role at all on the fall of his uncle, the man who has literally killed and rebirthed him for CENTURIES again and again and again. He doesn't even get to vengefully step on his gooey corpse after luz is done with him kskskssm. Im so fucking mad. :D

Now im kinda getting into unpopular opinion territory again but i was so scared this would happen when the blushing between him and willow first started rearing its uninteresting head...i immediately went oh no. They are gonna give me a silly romance plot instead of some actual emotional impact / reaction on the fact that his life literally fell apart overnight. The thing is i really really don't like the way they handled huntllow. Sorry not sorry but i was so desperate for any crumbs of earned character development that the stupid ''will they won't they'' thin they gave me felt like mockery. Hunter got zero time to adjust to his new reality but he got a romance that i really really didnt want him to get. And the thing is ive read fics and seen fanart about them and its cute! Ive actually enjoyed fancontent about them!! But in the actual show? The timing feels so wrong skskks. Giving hunter a love interest feels like such a weird priority considering the fact that he just learnt that he is a reanimated corpse created by the man he called family to be used as a weapon. Im not trying to rain on anyone's parade but i really really wish things could have played out differently.

God another thing that has been driving me insane!! They play up this "half witches" thing with hunter and willow as a point of camaraderie and it makes sense...i was actually looking forward to any possible interactions between them before asias first aired because of that parallel. But well. Theres like a huge difference between them. Willow grew up thinking she was weak only to find out that oh she was super strong and a prodigy all along actually! Which good for her! But Hunter grew up feeling weak and useless, getting abused by the man who made him and then he just found out that surprise! Actually you are not even half of a witch. Like. I can't be the only one who thinks thats tragic, right???? Right???? If i was hunter and willow tried to play the ''i understand how you feel' card on me i would get so mad, no offense. But of course this is toh and as much a s i love it (which is a whole lot i assure you) the characters aren't allowed to be maladjusted, not even a little bit nooo. Everyone has to act like they have dozens of hours of therapy under their belt which i don't mind on characters like luz or willow or gus who have lead relatively normal lives but really fucking annoys me when applied on Hunter who's spent his entire life getting physically and emotionally abused out of his mind, working himself to death and interacting only with his genocidal maniac of an uncle who is somehow both neglectful and obsessed with him at the same time. Like thats the one (1) thing i blame the toh crew for. They kinda give me the impression that even if they had more screen time they wouldn't allow hunter to explode the way he deserved.

My other complaint and i swear I'm almost done is the fact that the moment they took his gg status away from him they went really out of their way to make him out to be some sort of loser?? Like people making fun of him left and right or him just acting really silly all the time and stuff like that...and sure some of it comes off as endearing I won't deny that but. Idk. I never do handle it well when people don't seem to respect my favourite characters. It makes me sad for reasons i can barely explain but hunter was raised as a soldier and as a powerless boy who was constantly fighting off assassination attempts and enemies a lot older than him. God knows he had to fight hard for any semblance of respect or safety but the moment he leaves the emperors coven they immediately rob him of that. Idk it doesn't seat well with me. Like its so upsetting??? He already has so little left,,,giving him space to become his own person shouldnt come at the cost of the little power he was ever allowed to have. Idk. But yeah i dont like the way they turned him into some sort of loserboy towards the end in an attempt to make him more endearing withouth having to actually put him through the painful process of building a new identity for himself. Its just rubbing me the wrong way.

Ok and to actually answer your question: what would i actually want hunters role in the finale to be? Well. In a perfect world he would be allowed to kill Belos himself. But thats kinda unrealistic i suppose considering the fact that at the end of the day luz is the protagonist of the show and in shows like these the protagonists tend to get the final fight. Like im not going to lie, i liked the finale well enough. Out of all the scenarios they could have gone with, a king-eda-luz team up was honestly one of the best things they could do. This show started with them and it ended with them and that was beautifull! Makes sense! But skskksks throwing hunter on the sidelines with camilla, amity, willow and gus feels so funny to me. Like i mean no disrespect to any of the other characters but the stakes for hunter are so ridiculously personal????? Didnt he deserve to have one (1) moment. One scene where he gets anything resembling a proper ending for his character arc??? But noooooo what hunter gets is a schoolyard crush and zero closure. Im so mad on his behalf, he deserved so much better.