The Owl House, created by Dana Terrace, is a show brimming with love. From the moment Luz Noceda (Sarah-Nicole Robles) finds herself transported to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, she finds herself spreading love wherever she goes. First to her adoptive witch mother Eda the Owl Lady (Wendie Malick) and the demon King (Alex Hirsch) as they form their own found family of misfits. Then from the friends she makes at the magic school, Hexside. Her compassion, wit, and bravery quickly allows her to form bonds with other social outcasts, Willow and Gus. And from there she only amasses more friends, and later a girlfriend, Amity (Mae Whitman), in this strange world. Love is a constant driving force for the characters in The Owl House, but it is not always so simple and nice as it seems to be in her new connections.
These new friends and family are one thing but the love between biological families in The Owl House is shown to be a bit more complicated. That love is not always a happy one and as these themes develop, we see how the show is taking the theme of love beyond its usual rose-colored preconceptions. Love for one's family, as The Owl House shows us, is incredibly strong, but it can sometimes work in opposition to one’s own desires. Familial love is not an absolute, immovable thing but rather something one must come to their own conclusions about. Love can hurt just as much as it can heal.
Luz is torn in two vastly different directions from the very beginning. She arrived at the Boiling Isles by mistake after her mom attempted to send her to a summer camp that would make her more “normal” and instead fell into a magical world full of weirdos just like her. In this new place Luz forms all kinds of bonds and gains a great deal of confidence in herself that she never had before, but despite her fun she misses her mother dearly and wants to return to her. After the portal back to the human world is destroyed Luz becomes even more desperate, trying to find a way to make sure she sees her mom again. She enjoys her new daily life, but there’s always an underlying melancholy and homesickness that creeps in when she’s alone. Her new life had come at the expense of her old one and that places great strain on Luz as she tries to see if she can somehow keep both her new life and her old one.
This sense of strain between what Luz wants is only exacerbated after she’s able to temporarily build a portal that allows her to speak to her mother. Her mother begs Luz to return and never leave her side again once she does but from the very first moment Luz stepped onto The Boiling Isles it felt more like home to her than the human world ever did. Luz loves her mother deeply and her mother loves her back just as much, but this demand still shows their love is not quite on the same wavelength. Luz has built a whole life for herself in this new place, and she struggles with the idea of throwing away the countless new relationships she’s built despite how much she loves her mother. She has to choose between her “real” family and her new one in a decision that shows how all the love Luz has expressed has now caused her to be torn in two. Her love for her mother is genuine, but it’s also been causing her guilt and pain throughout her adventures. It’s a comfort, but it’s also a pressure, a timer ticking down until Luz has to decide which love matters to her more.
King has the opposite problem from Luz. He was found as a baby demon by Eda who raised him as her own, but he always knew (or at least believed) that his real family was out there somewhere. King craves the love of his biological family and the answers to his origins. But King is unsuccessful. He attempts to contact his father in a variety of ways after traveling back to where Eda found him and finding little of note. He keeps hitting dead ends in his search that lead to him feeling more and more isolated from those around him. King traveled to the demon realm with Luz, thinking they’d finally found people like him. Only they soon found out these people were Titan hunters hoping to use King for his blood to aid in a ritual, thus leading King to finally find out who his family is: the long deceased Titan whose body makes up the Boiling Isles. King only wanted to find his biological family, hoping they would love him just as much as the one that had found him when he was alone. But instead he was left lonelier than ever after realizing he’s the last of a long dead race. His search for love from his family ultimately only ends up causing him pain and though he has Eda and Luz who love and support him unconditionally, he still wants to know more about the family he never met. He wants the kind of family Eda and Luz both have outside the one they’ve built for themselves. Love for King is an unfulfilled promise. He’s seen how much biological family can love each other despite insurmountable odds but when he has no living family at all that love is left unanswered.
Amity’s family is built on toxic love. She’s spent her whole life conceding her own wants and wellbeing for the sake of pleasing her parents. And Amity shows what happens when love hurts too much, when it can be damaged almost beyond repair. Amity bent herself into any shape imaginable trying to find the one that would unlock her parents' love but ultimately found there was no version of herself that her parents would ever find good enough. After meeting Luz, Amity starts making decisions for her own sake rather than for her parents. The friendship she’d had with Willow, the one she’d thrown away when her parents disapproved, was rebuilt on a stronger foundation. She began hanging out with Luz’s friend group, people she actually liked rather than just people her parents approved of. Amity began to question authority, to not blindly aim for the Emperor’s Coven just because it's what her family wants. She dyes her hair purple instead of the green her mother had always insisted upon. She smashes the amulet her mother uses to give her orders. She dates Luz despite her parents' disapproval. Amity makes her own decisions despite her parents withholding their love as a means of control.
Amity is stuck with a similar decision to Luz; choosing between the life she wants or the love of her family. But Amity makes it with a decisive yet sad air. We see her longing to be close to her parents when she enters a competition hoping to earn the same title her father had in his youth, only to have her father interfere and refuse her the right to participate. Amity doesn’t back down. Her father believes he is doing these actions out of love, but Amity pushes back knowing the kind of controlling love her parents have exerted over her entire life is not healthy. Love for Amity is an anchor. It can be grounding, but it’s also a controlling force. It’s a leash that keeps one in place. For Amity, love with her family is not something that can come about without immense work. Until her parents are willing to meet her halfway, she cannot concede to them because that would sacrifice everything she’s worked for in her life for her own sake.
The Owl House proudly showcases many different forms of love, from familial to platonic to romantic, yet there’s an understanding that, like any emotion, love is not always pleasant or even healthy. Sometimes love hurts, especially the kind we can get from family. There’s a sort of bond there that can never be broken, but that invincibility makes the pressure of that connection even stronger. When the love that is given isn’t reciprocated in equal measure it can cause immense pain, and we see that throughout The Owl House’s second season. The love one seeks from family is not always unconditional, and sometimes the price is a sense of self.
For Luz, King, and Amity, as well as other characters on the show, love from one’s family is not a simple thing. It bears weight and responsibility that one must grapple with. Whether that be legacy like Amity, duty like Luz, or blood like King, there are complicating factors that can make love hurt more than any physical wound. To love is not something simple and to be loved even more so. In order to love truly and authentically, one must have a strong sense of self and as Luz, King, and Amity become more sure in their own identities, only then will they be able to grapple with the complicated nature of their love for their families.