RJ Writing Ink

A Deep Character Dive into Luz Noceda from The Owl House

Well, here we are, at the end of this week-long, deep character dive into my favorite characters from The Owl House. I decided to save the best for last, the character that I think has changed the most on the show, and is responsible for changing almost everyone else I’ve mentioned. I’m, of course, talking about Luz Noceda.

When we first met Luz, she was a self-assured, confident, and optimistic girl who couldn’t fit in on Earth. So when she found her way to the Boiling Isles by complete accident, she saw this as the chance to live the life she always wanted. To become a great and powerful Witch like her hero, Good Witch Azura! The Boiling Isles proved to be equal parts amazing and difficult. Luz learned how to use magic, she made many friends, and even found love.

However, time and again, she found herself facing great loss, hardship, and evil that threatened to tear her apart. By the time she returned to Earth, she was an empty shell of what she once was. However, the people she met along her journey stood by her like she stood by them, and while she still has a ways to go, she managed to regain the idealism that the world tried to take from her. More than that, though, she found something she didn’t even know she was looking for: people who understood her.

As someone who is himself neurodivergent and can be seen as different like Luz, her story has resonated with me in a way that few characters in fiction ever do. While she goes through hell during her journey in The Owl House and begins to think of herself as a failure, the lives she’s changed for the better tell otherwise. I’m RJ Writing Ink, and as we get ready to watch the series finale tonight, we finish our deep character dive into The Owl House. This is the story of the girl who’s the light that could save the Boiling Isles.

My First Impression of Luz Noceda

When we first meet Luz Noceda in the series premiere, our initial impression of her can be summed up in two words: she’s different. She’s energetic, likes to express herself in ways that others think are weird, and can’t seem to fit in with her peers. This, of course, tends to get her in frequent trouble with her teachers at school, who all just want her to act like everyone else. 

Like I said before, I’m neurodivergent myself, and was no stranger to being treated differently in school while growing up. My behavior was seen as disruptive (which it could be), and I frequently got in trouble with adults trying to keep me in check. I lost count of how many times I got sent to the Principal’s office at one point, and based on what we know, it looks like Luz dealt with similar problems. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have people in my life who knew how to channel my energy toward something positive best. Luz, though, never seemed to have that sort of thing. 

Why Luz Ran Away From Home

Time and time again, people would get frustrated with Luz’s free-thinking nature, trying to make her conform rather than helping her. As we see in the series pilot, it got to the point where her Mom’s convinced the best thing to do is to send her to a summer camp to teach her how to be normal. The universe, though, seemed to have other ideas, as she winds up in the Boiling Isles, a terrifying and wonderful world that seems like a dream come true. 

After spending the pilot helping Eda and King break into prison, leading a prison break, and beating the Warden, Luz realizes that she fits in far more on the Boiling Isles than she does on Earth. So Luz basically says “screw summer camp. I’m going to stay here and learn how to be a Witch.” And thus, Luz begins her new life on the Boiling Isles, something that will be more wonderful and terrifying than she could’ve thought possible.

Learning a Few Lessons

As Luz learns on her second day living in the Boiling Isles, things aren’t going to go like they would in the fantasy books she’s always reading. For starters, she finds out that Eda doesn’t really know how to be a teacher and keeps dragging her heels on her lessons. Secondly, she learns that being a Witch as the Boiling Isles sees it is impossible since they’ve got an extra organ that generates magic for them. Something she very much lacks. Lastly, her wide-eyed and idealistic nature makes her a magnet for trouble, like how she got conned by one of Eda’s rivals. Or almost got dissected at Hexside.

Despite her shortcomings and having to continually re-learn that there’s no shortcuts to becoming a Witch, Luz does start to make a positive impact on those around her. She quickly endears herself to both Eda and King, neither of whom are used to having someone so nice around the house, with Eda coming to view her as the daughter she never had.

Making Friends, and Discovering Magic

Her sneaking into Hexside gives Willow the chance to show her true talents with plant magic and get into the track she’s good at, and provides the Human-loving Gus a chance to meet an actual Human. And while she and Amity start off on the wrong foot at first due to the latter seeing her honest attempts to be nice as malice, the events of “Lost in Language” finally see her start to get through Amity’s barriers. It also helps that both of them share a love for The Good Witch Azura books. 

More than that, though, Luz manages to prove everyone who said a Human couldn’t do magic wrong when she discovers Glyph magic. As the first season progresses, she continues to discover more Glyphs, allowing her to use more and more magic, and she proves to be a natural at it!

Continuing to Make Moves and Shake Things Up

Eventually, Eda makes the decision that she can only teach Luz so much at her home. So, despite loathing the educational system for failing her, Eda gets Luz enrolled into Hexside, trusting that her student will be smart enough to not buy into the “one-track magic” system and be able to change things for the better. Once we learn that Eda had tried, and failed, to do exactly when she was Luz’s age, this vote of confidence takes on new meaning.

As it turns out, Eda’s faith in Luz is well-founded. Despite Hexside trying to force her into a single track, and then put her in detention when she rebels, Luz meets other like-minded students who combine magic as she does. And when they save the school from a Greater Basilisk, they convince Bump to let students study as many tracks as they want. Only in school for one day, and Luz is already changing things for the better!

Luz’s kindness and enthusiasm only continues to change the people around her for the better once she’s in Hexside. Thanks to her shenanigans, she indirectly manages to get Amity and Willow to confront the long-standing issues that caused their past friendship to fall apart, helping Willow get rid of years of repressed anger. She helps Willow stand up to the likes of alpha girl Boscha and win the respect of her teammates. Most significant of all, though, her kindness makes Amity Blight go from hating her to having a massive crush on her!

“Grom Fright” is One of those Moments on TV I’ll Never Forget

Now, because we have to talk about this, it’s time to discuss “Enchanting Grom Fright.” That episode wasn’t just a major episode for the show, but it was a major milestone for Disney as a whole. Fans blew up the Internet when they saw Luz and Amity’s dance, and that only increased when it was revealed that the person Amity wanted to ask to the dance was none other than Luz. Dana Terrace eventually followed this up by not only revealing that Amity was lesbian but that Luz herself is bisexual, a first in Disney’s century-long history. When you consider how Disney, straight-laced Disney, agreed to let this happen, then you know that Luz has to be special. 

Milestones aside, this episode also revealed how deep-rooted Luz’s issues with her Mom are. Not only has she been lying to her about being in the Boiling Isles, but her biggest fear is her Mother finding out the truth. She honestly thinks Camila’s ashamed of who she is, and is terrified at the prospect of telling her the truth. As it turns out, she’s right.

A Deep Dive into Eda From The Owl House

What is there about Eda the Owl Lady that still needs to be said? She’s magical, sassy, powerful, confident, rebellious, and, as Luz puts it, “Surprisingly foxy for her age.” Luz is right, too. Eda has many people who think she’s hot, both in-universe and out. When we first meet her, she’s an outlaw and the most powerful Witch on the Boiling Isles. While it looks like she’s living her best life, as the show progresses, we start to understand how lonely she is. And while she may have lost most of her power, she gained something just as valuable: the chance to open up to others again. 

I’m RJ Writing Ink, and as part of my attempts to get hyped for the series finale of The Owl House, I’m deep diving into some of my favorite characters, exploring who they are and how they’ve grown over the show’s run as we head into the series finale. First, we have everyone’s favorite Witch, Eda The Owl Lady.

Man, she is awesome.

Eda, the Bad Girl, Meets Luz, the Human

Introduced in the opening minutes of the premiere, when her familiar, Owlbert, accidentally steals Luz’s prized Good Witch Azura book, Luz and Eda’s first meeting is chaotic. After realizing that she’s no longer on Earth but in another world entirely, Luz manages to impress Eda with her know-how by attracting customers to buy her Human-related junk. However, their meeting gets cut short when the cops come, and Eda has to bounce, dragging Luz along as an accessory to her crimes. After taking her back to her hideout, the titular Owl House, and introducing her to Hooty and King, Eda makes a deal with the young Human. Help them break into the Conformatorium and reclaim King’s “Crown of Power,” and she’ll send Luz back home. It’s not like Luz has a say in the matter, anyway.

While they’re on their caper, though, something unexpected happens: Luz starts to bond with the pair. Having spent her life on Earth is an outcast herself, Luz sympathizes with them after Eda admits that King’s Crown doesn’t give him any power, but since it was important to him, it was to her. As Eda put it, “us weirdoes have to stick together.” Luz takes those words to heart when she returns to save Eda and King from getting captured by the Warden and freeing several other prisoners in the process.

True to her word, Eda offers to send Luz back home, but given how that means sending her to a summer camp meant to make her act normal, she takes a different option. She offers to stay with Eda and King and serve as Eda’s apprentice, despite Eda saying that humans can’t do magic. Impressed by her resolve, though, Eda agrees. She doesn’t know it yet, but Luz coming into her life ends up becoming the best thing Eda could’ve ever hoped for.

A Rocky Start as a Teacher

Despite agreeing to teach Luz, problems arise almost right away. Despite Luz being more than eager to learn magic, Eda doesn’t share her enthusiasm. At all. 

It soon becomes clear that despite her promise, Eda has yet to learn how to teach Luz to use magic. She doesn’t even know how such a thing might be possible in the first place. Thus, for the first week or so, she treats Luz less like a student and more like an errand girl to do jobs for her. This comes close to blowing up in her face when Luz grows impatient to begin her training and ends up sneaking into Hexside to learn magic there, something that Eda hates due to having to drop out when she was young. When Luz ends up getting herself banned, though, Eda can’t help but be proud of her for it.

Despite this, the magic training makes little progress until the events of “The Intruder.” When King and Luz swipe Eda’s elixir, they learn Eda’s big secret: she’s been cursed to transform into this Owl Beast, with those elixirs the only thing keeping her from permanently changing into it. It’s the reason why she’s an outcast. The show frames it like someone with a medical issue that someone has to take medication to control, which is pretty mature. 

Ultimately, the incident serves as a means for Luz to figure out a way to perform magic via her glyphs, proving that humans can do magic, something that Eda can’t help but be proud of. The deadly incident ultimately brings the three closer together and gives Eda people she can trust to help her when she needs it.

Reuniting With her Sister, Moonlight Conjuring, and Enrolling Luz in Hexside

As time passes, the trio of Luz, King, and Eda go on even more adventures and grow closer together in the process. Eda reunites with her estranged sister, now head of the Emperor’s Coven, and humiliates her in the episode “Covention,” with Luz learning Eda’s past is more complicated than it seems. When the trio swap bodies for the day to see who has the worst life, they all learn that they each have their own problems that are hard to deal with. Most importantly, though, while in Eda’s body, Luz learns from an unknowing Lilith that Eda had trouble controlling her magic when they were younger, thus motivating her to reject the Coven system as a whole. And who can forget the events of the moonlight conjuring where Luz and her friends animated the Owl House and saved Eda and King?

Eventually, though, things progress to the point where Eda realizes that there’s only so much she can teach her student. Wanting the best for her but not wanting to put her in a school that destroys free-thinkers, Eda finds herself in a dilemma. Ultimately, her growing concern for Luz leads her to swallow her pride and enroll Luz at Hexside. Even if that means she has to make up for everything she did as a student.

Good times. Joking aside, Eda pulls Luz aside and lets her know she has enough faith in her not to fall for the whole Coven system nonsense. As Luz learns on her first day at Hexside, Eda had tried and failed to fight against the one-track system at Hexside. Where Eda failed, Luz succeeded, convincing the school to allow students to study more than one type of magic.

Sacrificing Herself for Luz’s Sake and Losing Her Powers

Despite how much happier her life has gotten since meeting Luz, Eda’s still facing many problems. Throughout the first season, the audience learns that Eda’s elixirs are less effectively than they used to. As a result, she’s becoming more at risk of permanently changing into the Owl Beast. Despite this, and despite learning that she shouldn’t keep her condition a secret, Eda opts to do just that, not wanting to worry Luz. In addition, the Emperor’s Coven doubles its efforts to capture her, with Lilith unable to keep letting her go. Even with everything going on in her life, though, Eda feels happier than she’s felt in a long time, thanks to Luz. Before meeting her, Eda was a loner wasting her life, living on the edge of society and surviving by selling scraps. Meeting Luz and seeing her enthusiasm and passion for magic helps to break down the barriers she’s put in place ever since she got cursed. Luz becomes the daughter that Eda never had, and she’s all the better for it.

Which only makes what happens next harder to watch.

When Lilith captures Luz to lure her to the Emperor’s Castle, Eda loses it. She fights her sister with everything she has, showing how she is the strongest Witch on the Boiling Isles. However, trying to protect Luz, and the revelation that Lilith cursed her, prove to be too much for her to handle. While she manages to save Luz, she succumbs to the Owl Beast and is captured, leaving the residents of the Owl House devastated.

Ultimately, Lilith’s efforts to help her sister are for naught, with Emperor Belos reneging on his deal in favor of executing her. All he wanted was her portal to Earth; he couldn’t care less about Eda herself. This revelation makes Lilith turn on Belos and join forces to free her while Luz destroys the portal in front of Emperor Belos, with everyone escaping. Afterward, Lilith and Eda reconcile, with the former using her magic to split the curse between them, allowing Eda to return to Witch form. However, doing so costs both their magic, potentially for good. But at least they have each other now.