Eda the Owl Lady: Learning to Open Up Again

Coming to Grips With No Power, Conquering Her Inner Fears, and Meeting Her Mom Again

With Eda and Lilith now powerless, any respect they had on the Boiling Isles is now gone. In a reversal of roles, Luz now finds herself as the teacher, showing the Clawthorne sisters everything she knows about glyph magic. While Lilith listens to Luz’s instructions and takes the slow and methodical approach, Eda grows impatient and starts recklessly combining glyphs without thinking about the consequences. This results in Lilith having to bail her out. Unlike Luz, this prompts her to start taking her training seriously the first time. 

She also tells everyone about how she found and adopted King, but more on him in his deep dive. 

It’s around this time that we also learn that another that Eda and Luz have in common is issues regarding their mother. Like Luz, Eda concluded a long time ago had her mother, Gwen, was ashamed of her. In Eda’s case, it was due to her curse, prompting her to run away to Earth using the portal she discovered on the family grounds. So when Gwen shows up claiming she’s found the means to cure her, she coldly refuses to listen. When Gwen presses forward and enlists Luz’s aid, the only thing that happens is Eda going full Owl Beast alongside Lilith. Or, Raven Beast, in Lilith’s case. 

While this incident wasn’t pleasant, it gave Eda a chance to confront the Owl Beast within her mind and put it in its place. As a result, she gains a measure of control over her curse that only becomes more relevant down the line.

Reuniting With Raine, Finding a New Purpose, and Unlocking Harpy Eda

While Eda tries not to let it get to her, losing her magic starts to weigh heavily on her. Coupled with the fact that Luz might have to return home and King might leave to find his father, she starts to fear that she’ll be left all alone again. There is Hooty, but that’s not much. 

That’s when she runs into her ex, Raine Whispers, now the newly appointed head of the Bard Coven and, secretly, leader of a rebellion against Emperor Belos. Seeing this as the chance to do something meaningful again, Eda wholeheartedly agrees to join their fight, only for it to end with the rebels imprisoned and Raine captured by the Coven Heads, buying time for Eda to escape to her family. As it turns out, King never planned to leave; he’s changing his last name to Clawthorne, formally making himself Eda’s adopted son. 

Despite this newfound joy, though, the stress of whatever Belos has planned starts getting to Eda, making her curse harder and harder to control. In the episode, “Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Hooty’s Door,” Hooty tries to force Eda to relax by feeding her cookies laced with sleeping nettles. The resulting psychedelic dream takes her on a trip through her memories to key traumatic moments in her life caused by her curse, like injuring her father and her breakup with Raine. Despite blaming the Owl Beast for everything, Eda realizes that she’s been using that as an excuse to justify her choices to push everyone around her away. In addition, she also realizes that the Owl Beast is less of a curse and more of a living creature that was transformed into a curse. Neither wants to be stuck together, but that’s how their lives have turned out. This leads the two to come to a mutual understanding and agree to make the most with what they have.

Besides giving Eda the ability to transform into a Harpy version of herself, I loved what this represents. Eda’s life didn’t go how she wanted it, leaving her a cynical loner with few friends. For all that she’s lost, though, Eda realizes that she still has things that make her life worth living, prompting a transformation in her. This is what Harpy Eda thematically represents: a new and unexpected path in life for her to take and one that she never would’ve gotten had she not chosen to open herself up to others again.

Reconciling With her Dad and Trying to Protect her Children

As more time passes and Eda continues to find herself opening up to more and more people in life, she faces her toughest challenge yet: reuniting with her father. 

Before the accident, Eda’s father, Dell Clawthorne, was the best Palismen carver on the Boiling Isles and someone Eda adores more than anything. While Dell never blamed Eda for what happened to him or how it ended his career as a carver, Eda has never forgiven herself for it. As a result, whenever he’s tried to reach out to her, she’s been too ashamed to say anything. The events of the episode “Elsewhere and Elsewhen,” finally force Eda to confront what she sees as an unforgivable sin. After an honest heart-to-heart, though, Eda’s finally able to forgive herself and move on with her life.

It’s at this moment when the Owl House gains a form of happiness once more, though, that it’s ripped out from under them in “Hollow Mind,” and the revelation of how insane Belos truly is. Learning that the Emperor plans to wipe out all life on the Boiling Isles, Eda only has one concern: getting her kids as far away as possible. So while Luz, King, and Hooty travel to what they think is King’s homeland, Eda and Lilith grab what they can and go into hiding as the Emperor’s Coven arrives to arrest them all. The Owl House is now gone, and all Luz and King have to show for their efforts is the knowledge that King’s a Titan.

The episode “O Titan, Where Art Thou” shows Eda at might be her most desperate. While Luz keeps insisting that they must find a way to stop Belos, Eda does everything she can to keep her busy, lying to her and saying that she has a plan. This quickly falls apart, though, when Eda’s forced to admit that she has no plan. All she cares about is making sure her family’s safe from Belos. 

The duel between master and student that follows is a very emotional one that neither wants to be fighting, with both of them enjoying what’s best but going about it in different ways. Before either side can do anything they might regret, they’re spirited away by the reformed rebellion, still led by Raine Whispers. And they have an actual plan.

Willing to Do What She’s Avoided All her Life

The plan the rebellion has to stop the Day of Unity and Belos’ draining spell is to sabotage it from within, which means using Eda’s curse to their advantage. Since discovering that her curse corrupts any magic Eda attempts, they plan to use it to corrode the draining spell by having Eda pose as Raine. However, to pull it off successfully, Eda must brand herself with a coven sigil. If she ever gets her magic back, she won’t be able to use all of it like before. She’s being asked to give up the freedom she’s cherished all her life to helping save everyone on the Boiling Isles, and she doesn’t hesitate to do so.

While the events of “King’s Tide” end with Raine tearing off Eda’s branded arm to save her from the draining spell might make this choice pointless, it isn’t. The fact that Eda was willing to give up the chance to use all magic forever if that meant that Luz and King could be safe shows how much she’s grown since the start of the series. She’s willing to sacrifice everything to make sure the people she cares about can live to see another day. It’s a far cry from the selfish, cynical loner that we first met at the start of the series and shows just how much Luz has come to mean to her.

What Does the Future Hold for Eda?

As I’ll keep saying throughout these deep dives, I am curious to know how Eda’s story might turn out in the finale. Will she be able to go back to the Owl House when this is all over, with her kids by her side? Will Eda be stuck with the Owl Beast for the rest of her life, or will the finale see her be freed from the curse? I don’t know, honestly.

I do know that I love Eda and the family she’s built for herself and that my only regret is that we don’t get to see more of them before the series ends. Wendie Malick played the role of Eda to perfection and gave us one of the most compelling mentor figures that Disney’s put out in recent years. Hopefully, Disney will be smart and keep using Eda and the Owl House residents for years to come.

What do you guys think about all this, though? Are you going to miss Eda, too? Let me know what you guys think in the comments, and come back tomorrow to see who I’m looking at next!

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