Review: The Owl House “Covention”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Luz and Eda have a slow day selling human stuff, mostly because there’s a convention happening in town. Specifically COVENtion, the annual gathering for all existing witch covens, which Willow and Gus invite Luz to with Eda reluctantly tagging along even though she has to disguise herself. Turns out the main reason she’s on wanted posters is because she refused to join a coven, which forces one to solely commit to one form of magic only. Eda never joined one and so can control EVERY magic style. Luz is naturally super excited to explore each coven, even if she doesn’t pick one, and so wanders off to see a show highlighting The Emperor’s Coven, the best of the best because they can access all forms of magic, who are led by Eda’s estranged sister who cursed her, Lilith.

Amity is also there, understandably still pissed about what happened last time. But when she insults King, Luz challenges her to a duel with the stakes being that Luz can never learn magic if she loses. Eda and Lilith get in on this too with their sibling rivalry, so Eda decides to help Luz cheat to stand a chance. Luz refuses cheating, though Eda still throws it in without her knowledge. Unfortunately, the duel is still very one-sided, but this is revealed to be because Lilith also made Amity cheat (and ALSO without Amity’s knowledge) just because she knew Eda would cheat too. While Eda mocks Lilith for sinking to her level (leading to a rather exciting actual duel), Luz goes to Amity to apologize and the two become more friendly as a result.

Later, Lilith reports to a mysterious being about Eda.

OUR TAKE

This week’s episode gives us a bit more of a look at the world of The Owl House, particularly how magic users congregate and the implications of joining one coven over another or even at all. There are many types to choose from, some that are more specified in interest, but joining some means giving up the chance to learn most forms of magic unless you join the Emperor’s Coven, which seems to report directly to an emperor we haven’t heard of before this point, OR you go rogue like Eda and get put on the emperor’s shit list. This might just be my take on things, but the way this system is structured, there’s an implication that the restriction on most covens to only know one type of magic limits the above board means of learning more to being in the Emperor’s Coven, meaning that only those who are entirely loyal to said emperor get to have more power while those with unclear loyalties have their potential kneecapped. Essentially, the emperor only ones great power for himself and those who wouldn’t turn on him, which is why Eda is such a menace to them.

I have my issues with how that concept is executed that I can probably wait to get into because the other things I want to talk about here are Lilith and Amity. Lilith looks to be a foil to Eda in that she happily works within the system and is more prim and proper compared to her sister, though the two clearly get under the other’s skin for plenty of reasons. Right now I’m not super interested in their rivalry, but their witch’s duel near the end certainly made fine use of this show’s very fluid and talented animation team. As for Amity, I’ve been pretty much on her side over Luz’s since she showed up, so I’m glad the two are finally finding some common ground over the fact that they both want to tackle learning magic through honest means, even when their mentors try to make them cheat against their will for bragging rights. I don’t know if this still very common, but I’ve come to feel pretty iffy about situations or character conflicts that draw hard lines between good and evil instead of making both sides two people with clear but differing motivations, which makes it fortunate that this seems to be happening between Luz and Amity. It took a little while but I might be starting to see the spark in this series that I’ve heard others say it has, but it still has a ways to go. Perhaps when the show returns on the 21st, it will show us that.