Why Hunter Had to Die | The Owl House

long story short this is my grave the owl house is a story that begins with death loose noceda's journey of self-discovery and her quest to be understood stems from the things she shared with her father their similarities and closeness and is empowered by the love he left behind in the form of the Azura books the world she travels to and becomes embroiled in Saving is literally built on the bones of King's father and Emperor bellas's hatred is predicated by his inability to process the loss of the brother he murdered death and grief are what many people have described as a Core theme of this story and while I believe this is true the other side of grief recovery and healing from grief should not get lost in that statement death and the grief that comes from it can transform the life of a person experiencing it down to the last cell it changes how you interact with your routines your hobbies your relationships even yourself it leaves permanent marks the person that emerges from a grief situation is not the same person who experienced it in real time death transforms and this goes well beyond an emotional theme that forms the spine upon which the nerves of this story leap off of the visual motifs are not subtle either we have bones all over the place detached body parts and the blood of the Titan is the foundational element that forms the substance of magic in this world it's really intense it's fun it's gross and sometimes it's brutally violent witches even have an organ attached to their heart that enables them to practice many forms of magic but of all the characters in this story the one that ends up performing the most extreme version of narrative and literal blood magic that I've ever seen in a kid's show is the person who can't normally cast at all Hunter Hunter embodies the motif of death as transformation in a way that allows him to transcend the story of grief he was made for in the text but also in the meta-narrative today I'm going to talk about why his death here is so powerful but also necessary for that theme to carry we're gonna talk about that possession scene but first we need to face the inevitable death itself the twin motifs of sacrifice and death are older than writing sacrifice has sacred connotations and refers to the act of offering a greater power something precious following from that it means the destruction or Surrender of one valued thing for the sake of another I want you to hold on to that idea of preciousness preciousness value richness these are all descriptors that give a death offered up in sacrifice weight and context and this Motif death as sacrifice is extremely prevalent in human narratives the world over the key word here is the execution of the death Motif the highest forms of sacrifice in history and fiction are often measured in blood as blood is sustaining and limited that has an inherent value in the arithmetic of a dramatic story but when it comes to the kinds of sacrificial deaths that transform a character the question is why is this life so precious and dear not just to them or their friends but to us the audience their Journey what they have worked hard to obtain and what they desire is bound up in this shed blood from Odin sacrificing himself on the branches of the world tree for the secrets of Arcana to the modern forms of the hero's journey literal and metaphorical death is part of the formula that creates a hero it represents through some kind of cataclysmic event that the hero has come back changed but returned with knowledge or wisdom or resolve to share with and or save the community they have faced their fears and sacrificed everything at a critical moment only to gain something else in the end in order to obtain Victory a hero usually has to let go of everything they wanted first this death is usually symbolic especially in animation the best use of a symbolic death gives us the benefit of a hero giving everything up in a sacrificial moment the tension of the audience genuinely waiting with baited breath to see if they're actually dead while performing narrative work opening the door to the victory the hero was striving for even though they may have come out of it forever changed this is often shown through things like permanent marks the loss of a limb hair or eye color changes scars right let's do this out of all the Grim Walkers you look the most like him hunter from the moment we meet him is a dead man walking he is the latest in a grotesquely long line of dead men or should I say boys since based on how many skeletons and masks we've seen it's impossible for all of them to actually have lived to Natural maturity who were created to wear the face of Caleb the brother Bellows murdered himself this just begins to put the Grim and Grim Walker as Phillips truly insane exercise in creating an endless parade of homunculi of Caleb shows us a [ __ ] up version of a toxic generational cycle of horror and strife something that each Grim Walker born into it is unable to escape alive the story of my brother left me for the boiling aisles and I will make him and all these witches pay and every Grim Walker's death just propels Bellows Madness ever on literally farming the experience of calo's betrayal by spilling his blood at infinitum these boys are disallowed any autonomy bodily or otherwise and if that wasn't bad enough Hunter has a Sigil which in hindsight tells us he was already marked for the slaughter this kid is Thrice doomed at the starting line our proper introduction to him is loose saving his life from an assassin who absolutely would have succeeded if not for Our Hero's intervention and finally Flapjack adopts him now why is that significant well Cardinals are best known for their symbolism in terms of representing romantic love and loyalty however what made me lose my upon seeing the little guy for the first time was the fact that the Cardinal's other meaning is that they represent The Whispers of your beloved dead or ancestors and offer courage and guidance Hunter's very body is the result of the murder of a brother the slaughter of a gentle intelligent creature the harvesting of a sleeping animal an artifacts so precious that one might very well have to kill in order to obtain it and the profanation of the ritual to make a palisman even the way he's trained to Bow is morbid unlike Lilith for example Hunter's been trained to fully expose the back of his neck which unlike a bow of respect or genuflection is the gesture made by a vassal who is made a fatal mistake presenting for execution or to highlight their Master's Mercy when they don't chop off their head his name is less of a name and more like a factory tag even without Dana's confirmation we know it's a sick play on the phrase witch hunter reinforcing the lack of real personhood to his abuser as well as a reminder of his purpose to that abuser to help him kill witches and if Lilith and kikimura don't know his name it's safe to assume no one else does either and this is validated in later episodes when people are either calling him the golden guard or coming up with dumb epithes like darius's shockingly inappropriate Little Prince it further reveals that he has really no human connection to anyone except Bellows and that's a fiction he's also asked to inhabit the role of the faceless golden guard so completely that no one in the castle seems to know him Beyond it and his main priorities within that role seem to have a lot less to do with the administration of The Emperor's coven and more about acting as an extension of bellows will he is fully enmeshed in Bellows and at this point if you were to ask him it would be really hard for Hunter to know where Bellows ended and where he began even the magic that Hunter uses while under Bellows his influence is bloody and gross not dead flesh being contorted into various shapes and uses AO3 user princess of denial pointed something out to me that I think really drives this point home Hunter gleefully unaware and using the kind of magic that's probably responsible for his own creation and the fact that bellos's magic is so organic and bodily could suggest that he considers Grim Walker's tools exactly like these Sabers and other items conjured up with this kind of magic if a literal tool is made out of Flesh then why would someone made out of Flesh be different from a tool in Bella's eyes both bellus's magic and Grim Walkers are stuck between being alive and dead in many ways the person that is Hunter is almost as much of a ghost as Caleb is the only thing he really has is a semi private Rebellion with respect to an interest in Wild magic and an unarticulated dream of freedom in a way he's what we might say narratively speaking barely alive until he has a life-changing adventure with loose the human I can't wake up wake me hunting Talisman was the proper establishment of Hunter's character and frankly I think it's probably one of the best character revealed episodes of anything ever the first thing they do though is establish that blood tie he has with Bellows and while it's not the one he thinks it is it's still a blood tie and we'll get to why this is important later they pull him out of the bulk of his armor and show us his face in the manifestations of his Rebellion he establishes a truce with loose and is amusingly shown to be utterly unable to hang on to any lasting ire after that instead letting her connect with him through mutual interest in Wild magic she's treating him as a peer this is something he has never experienced something he's never known he's never been known and it's in this offhand moment that he ends up revealing the murmured wish of his heart Freedom that inspires Flapjack to choose him like we touched on earlier the name Hunter has been a secret leash between Hunter and Bellows and when presented with the crossroads of fulfilling a mission in conflict with Hunter's gentleness and empathy he gives loose his name in a desperate very transgressive attempt to be known before launching into a full-blown self-sabotage of his own mission and Damned the consequences he Wards off kikimura and makes a point to protect loose during this scuffle and most importantly lets her fly away he has a staff now and the opening of the episode tells us he can zap huge distances he could have caught her and the choice to let her go here was incredibly deliberate it is important to know that at the end of hunting palacement Hunter still on the face of it is motivated by his loyalty to his uncle he's chained to him through blood and that supposed familial connection but there's also the implication that as far as Hunter knows his life is forfeit without Bellows worthless without the emperor's context justifying it it's how he survives he has no life right now outside the emperor but through flapjack's adoption a window or portal if you will has opened for him even if the blood tied to Bellows and his fictional story is still strangling him so for Hunter to live to really live he needs Community friendship if you will I will Journey back to Eclipse Lake Eclipse Lake as an episode manages to be one of the most amusing and also depressing episodes in the whole show as Tumblr user Lolly T once articulated if you look at it from flapjack's perspective it's hilarious because it's the adventure of this inexhaustively patient bird desperately trying to get his witch who hasn't yet accepted that he is in fact flapjack's witch to make friends trying to help him through the door and onto the threshold of people who can actually help him however we're not here for the funny and we need to talk a lot more about blood and magic and boy howdy does eclipse Lake open Strong by reinforcing the blood type between Bellows and Hunter by Pretty much telling the audience flat out that Hunter is a clone but the most iconic scene of eclipse lake is undoubtedly this long story short this is my grave want me to make you one too this is really bumming me out that's just life red everyone has a use and if you don't bye-bye now before I get into how important the scene is with respect to death and Hunter's Arc the fact that Xeno Robinson gleefully shared a that this was in Hunter's audition sides and as far as I can tell basically unchanged in terms of the actual dialogue implies that this was a really really important moment for the story from the very beginning especially because the broad Strokes of a character as typically presented in an audition represent what they're like overall and we never see anything quite this unhinged from Hunter ever again and it's on a re-watch of this scene about a hundred times over for a totally different analysis that something clicked into place to me for why this scene is explicit foreshadowing and a direct parallel to Hunter's possession and death in gravesfield this scene takes place in a body of water dry or not with a central struggle over Titan's blood where the emotional hinge is a second where Hunter however briefly and symbolically accepts death the key thing here is that at this moment Hunter feels like he has nothing to live for if he can't fulfill bellas's expectations let's put this in perspective for a moment the emperor's coven is a cult it's built around the person of Bellas himself the Jerusalem speaker for the Titan and his product is a Salvation only achievable through his idea of righteousness the main tool he uses is fear of punishment but also Exile the way that Cults enforce this kind of control is isolation and kneecapping a victim's ability to make outside connections even if Hunter doesn't think bones will kill him directly for his failure here disfellowship from a cult situation especially for a powerless witch with no friends is basically the same thing Tumblr user polyhexion summarizes this situation very well entering the emperor's coven literally means abandoning your friends and family and home wearing a mask and no longer even using a [ __ ] name ninety percent of the time you become a faceless part of a mob all meant to think and behave identically in service to a greater master hunter has been pulled into the deepest levels of all of them and the threat of disfellowship is the worst to him he has been intentionally encouraged to be a smug little douchebag because it makes people hate him it keeps him isolated it means no one is going to help him and he knows it even if he ever reaches a point where he wants help he can't have it he knows that if he ever tried to leave there would be no one who would take him he can't escape the boiling Isles fears or resents him everyone else in his inner circle despises him on a personal level and the cherry on top of all of this with the reveal that he's a clone the repeated allusions to his replaceability and audience hindsight we know full well that the thing he is chasing is a complete and utter fiction no matter what Hunter does no matter how perfectly compliant or useful he could ever hope to be the proof of that is stamped on his wrist in this moment he's ready to die nothing for nothing and such a death is tragic and empty it's through a moment of offered friendship something outside the life he currently has facilitated by Flapjack that he gets back up and even though Eclipse Lake doesn't go the way way that Flapjack probably hoped Hunter does have a real friend now there is a true powerful connection between him and his Talisman and it was very earned Hunter isn't someone who goes down easy and boy in the context of the kind of abuse heaped upon him the kind of Bravery to make that connection is remarkable he experiences suicidal ideation at a critically important moment of hopeless Terror but it's really important to stress here that Hunter is someone who wants and yearns desperately and really doesn't want to die even when he doesn't have anything to live for but the fantasy of his uncle's approval he spends most of this narrative scared out of his mind of failure disapproval and rejection and yes dying he is someone who for the first part of this story is barely alive just surviving the wish for freedom and autonomy that brought him Flapjack was an articulation of his desire to live and now for the first time he has something to lose besides his life remember what I said earlier about sacrifice I'll be home soon Flapjack stay safe I love you over and out I touched on bravery a little bit earlier but I want to go into more detail for this section bravery is a trait that can be attributed to a lot of heroic characters just by the nature of a hero's position and a story bravery is acting despite being afraid it might seem a little strange at first to describe a character who spends most of his time on screen cowering flinching and reacting as brave but that's just it he's consistently able to act no matter how terrified he is especially in defense of other people bravery is a word that often goes hand in hand with the idea of sacrifice but I really want to stress that the reason bravery is associated with sacrifice is less because it's inherently Noble to sacrifice and more because sacrifice means braving the experience of loss hold on to this thought as we proceed after Eclipse Lake and forming a true connection with Flapjack Hunter starts building what's called emotional Equity Tumblr user imperfection you will find a certified therapist describes emotional Equity as positively investing in relationships as if depositing money into an emotional bank account and keeping that account balanced by building up qualities such as trust openness and tenderness he's able to make and keep friends which are what enable him to survive bellas's First Direct attempt on his life in Hollow mind and it gives him the courage to reach out and eventually join the hex Squad against him but even at the end of King's tide he's not quite free yet Bello still commands enough control over Hunter through that blood-soaked Bond of abuse lies in manipulation that re-inspires Hunters learned Terror of the man he is able to summon up an incredible amount of courage to do this though I've only wanted to help you you're you're lying he's not in a place where he can fully assert himself and sever those binding threads Hunters barely sure who Hunter is right now especially given that he's still reeling from the whole you're a clone of a dead man who helped Bellows but hunter does know this he cares about these people and He will defend them even with everything he has at this point that includes standing his ground and holding bellas's gaze anyone with an experience of abuse or who knows somebody who has experienced abuse can testify to how difficult even holding that gaze was familial toxic abuse Cycles are exacerbated by proximity this is especially bad when the abuse in question tips over to the enmeshment we were talking about earlier wherein the abuser is unable to see the victim as anything other than a hollow extension of themselves an enmeshed victim doesn't act like themselves when Under the abuser's Influence once again Tumblr user imperfection you will find has a much more detailed breakdown on this specific aspect which I will link in the description but the bottom line for us today is this Hunter a cult Survivor and abuse victim can't begin to figure out who he is and what his life is about without some distance time and space to develop secure attachments so even though we see bellasco Splat here and watch Hunter symbolically cross a threshold towards recovery we the audience know that Hunter still has a way to go here towards figuring out who he is and obtaining real Freedom so remember back at Eclipse Lake when Hunter is symbolically ready to die and has nothing but emptiness to survive for thanks to them fills that life up real quick everything's okay Bella's is gone let's recap a bit from a narrative perspective Hunter needs time and distance to build up that sense of personal identity in order to transcend The Narrative of a victimized puppet into a person with real full autonomy over his life and future in a story steeped in the theme of control the context of the familial cycle of abuse between Bellows and Hunter means that when it comes to choosing a Battleground for this pivotal climactic conversation there is really only one stage that can do justice to a war of autonomy and bloodline baggage the body itself the owl house isn't particularly subtle about this theme either almost all the kids struggle for their autonomy over the course of the story and express their growth and rejection of external control by making changes to their outwards appearance things like clothes and especially hair are used to Mark major shifts in a character's Arc Hunter on the other hand has spent the entire show changing into clothes that fit whatever his Bellows framed Mission happens to be and honestly given how much of a freak Bellows is and how obsessed he is with the look of the grimlockers I bet you anything that Hunter was not allowed to chop off that silly hair noodle because it was so heavily reminiscent of Caleb after he leaves the emperor's coven he's shown wearing a jumble of Lost and Found rags and later a completely nondescript Bland outfit that alternately reflects confusion desperation and a total blank state so now in the noseda household for the first time Hunter has the security to start building that emotional Equity we discussed earlier secure attachments and a sense of who exactly this Hunter kid is he has a chance to put distance between himself and Caleb's ghost changing his hair dressing himself for the first time accumulating patches and ideas about the things he's excited to identify himself with it's childlike it's heartwarming and a little heartbreaking because of that tender sincerity so who exactly is Hunter well he's an empathetic and gentle boy who is nervous about a lot of things he likes his hair short he has a big fat embarrassing crush on a girl he worships he loves to talk he can't roll his ass he's bisexual likes Pizza is an aspiring weeb a Star Trek nerd he loves to craft artworks with his hands to express his creative passions and loves his friends his friends mean the world to him in a subtle shift he even gains an association with wolves like this is played for Laughs of course the creative nerd boy loves wolves but there's also a really potent symbol here because unlike a much more classically masculine association with wolves that leaves heavily into boring like the hunger or an over-the-top sexuality or that Lone Wolf nonsense the point of it here is to emphasize a few things about Hunter and his recovery and frankly the Reclamation of a very cruel name wolves are pack animals living in Connected family groups they are also the quintessential animal of the Untamed wild wildness wolves are said to be untameable they have wild magic if you will it could even be said to embody it the father wolf also is a masculine archetype that has a protective Warrior but also gentle quality that I think definitely merits a mention especially in contrast to the very ugly masculine arrogance represented by the likes of Bellas the genocidal conqueror and hater of wild things who chooses to represent himself with the imagery of a deer and caged birds unfortunately for Hunter though the brief reprieve ends when Bellows comes back to finish the job he started way back in Hollow mind and the question of Hunter and Hunted is back up in the air I don't care what you want goodbye Evelyn so here we are back at a dark blue Lake fighting over a reliquary of Titan's blood once again the news Titans around Hunter's throat but now as Bellows has taken violent possession of his body through his blood itself making that metaphorical control and external enmeshment fully literal using that bloodline story Bellows is once again trying to bind Hunter to The Narrative of Caleb's death but frankly the bastard's main interest isn't hurting loose Hunter as ever and always is just a body to him and an extension of his own will but this time the water has risen the gravestones are everywhere in a way that remind me a lot of the mass grave in The Titan's skull all being presided over by the outstretched wings of the bird in the cage this is a dark [ __ ] scene the first thing Bellows does here is go oh this won't do and savagely asserts himself by undoing the outward signs of Hunter's character development he removes as much of Hunter's cosplay the clothes Hunter made with his own hands as he can forces his hair to grow out again shaping him into Caleb's image once more deforms his skull by growing horns rot his bones and puppets his voice into an approximation of bellows's own to taunt loose trying right now what afraid you'll hurt him this is especially ugly because that mocking tone confirms what we already suspect given what we've seen happen to Bellows his other victims he's killing his nephew even as he's using his voice to utter those words later he uses Hunter's own right hand to slay Flapjack and in a jaw-droppingly cruel twist that actually made me Flinch from my screen he tries to make Hunter eat his own palisman's Essence Flapjack Hunter's first true friend and the one who opened the door to love this is the moment that inspires such Rebellion from Hunter that he's able to fight back Hunter loves his friends he will defend them with everything he has before that meant protection against Bellows and now well as far as Hunter sees it he has one option left so now we get this and I want you guys to listen to the way way this is worded you know what I'd like Bellas I'd like to leave the emperor's Covenant and never step foot in that throne room again I'd like to study wild magic and learn how to carve Talisman I'd like to attend hexide as a regular student and play fire derby with my friends but most of all I'd like to make sure you never hurt anyone again even watching this for the first time I was astonished and a little confused at the word choice here they picked the words I'd like instead of I want now in a basic creative writing class most teachers would correct I'd like to the stronger more active I want but this is a team full of incredibly skilled writers so the choice here is clearly deliberate I want refers to something desired in the now and in the future it is active I would like is a polite request at best and in this context it is an angry grieving resignation Hunter the Grim Walker made of a murdered Man's Bones animate of Caleb's silent Ghost Hunter who gained a life and filled it with love and friends and dreams and burning desires and creativity from a narrative perspective is now capable of a sacrifice that can affect a transformation and a return he has so much now that will grieve him to lose and he Grieves each line here is a direct reference to a transforming part of him the explicit verbal acknowledgment of his abuse by Bellows a desire to study wild magic and representing his bond with Flapjack a cry for normalcy and friendship but his desire to protect the people he loves supersedes all of these other ones he will do anything to prevent Bellows from hurting them anymore and this sacrifice has incredible weight because of everything it took to earn it so he throws the Titan's blood in the water and Dives in this Pond rather than Eclipse lake is his grave I know there's some ambiguity here as to whether or not Hunter actually dies in this scene and sure art is interpretive but based on that speech his intentions are pretty dang clear and you cannot convince me that a kid with this much military training doesn't know how to swim trial by water at the time Philip and Caleb were doing their witch hunting was a common prescription for witches if you float you're a witch if you sink you're Innocent but at least you get to heaven sucks to be you so Hunter clone of the witch hunter Caleb widebane and his fully enmeshed brother Philip experience an ironic execution as witches completing bellows's version of how this story should go I do have a bit of a conspiracy theory here that there may have been a cut shot or two that showed Hunter swallowing water or otherwise preventing Bellows from swimming back up because he sinks like a stone I strongly suspect the sensors were shown an even more intense version of what we got and screamed you can't show a child drowning himself either way I don't think Bellows would have left Hunter's body unless he was positive that he finished the job he's already failed to kill this boy twice so Bellows [ __ ] off back to the demon realm to complete his revenge and Hunter dies in Willow's arms from a narrative perspective and true to the motifs of blood and magic in this story Hunter has performed a blood sacrifice relinquishing everything he wanted to beat Bellows story that he failed to take Bellows down is inconsequential what he did do is by dying he has transcended The Narrative of the Thrice doomed Grim Walker of Caleb widebane he is free of that chain of blood now and Flapjack Hunter's first true friend The Whispers of his beloved dead and guiding Spirit the one who opened the door in Hunter's heart to let love and found family in is able to give the life that Hunter built up for himself back Flapjack like Hunter was always a dead bird hopping he was always going to have to leave an order for Hunter to grow in stature as a character like Nanny McPhee but a hell of a lot more tragic but what this means is that when Hunter opens his eyes even though he's been changed and scarred by his incredible grief and loss we see that Flapjack hasn't left him and Hunter still has a future to look forward to there's death grief and the promise of recovery in those eyes this is really bumming me out so that was a lot and it does take a lot to surprise or disturb me in terms of cartoons I've been around and know what's up and possession scenes are nothing new if anything I find that they're a bit overused these days and sometimes lack a dramatic punch because a lot of these possession scenes are in the form of a remote and distant villain taking control over a main character in order to raise the stakes and pit the character's Powers against their friends it's a means to an end for this villain and doesn't usually have a personal aspect attached however this possession sequence is so different from all of those that we just showed as examples and so shockingly violent that even in the middle of watching it I didn't make the comparison until I saw a few takes out there that complained that this scene was gratuitous I want to talk about that word for a second gratuitous means uncalled for lacking a good reason and otherwise unwarranted I strongly disagree with this assertion Hunter's story has so far been that of a dead boy a cult Survivor chained to an abusive family member toxic inability to let go and an inability to assume responsibility for his own monstrous actions this abuse has left Hunter with physical and mental scars and the show makes a point to realistically depict symptoms of cptsd like panic attacks habitual flinching and proof that he's been trained to take a punitive beating from anyone this story tips on the fulcrum of defining who he is and separating himself from that toxic bloodline story or succumbing to it and his villain who has spent the narrative seeing Hunter as nothing more than an extension of his own will really only has one tool left to try to Take Back Control in this relationship by the time thanks to them rolls around it's not the possession part that people find so disturbing it's the fact that this is a horrifyingly realistic if Fantastical expression of how this sort of severe physical and emotional violation plays out it's about taking back power it's cruel it is extremely violent and it's very personal and intimate and like the other aspects of grief in this story loose's realistic processing of how she Grieves for her father ita's grief over her life her resolutions with the owl Beast it would honestly do this story a disservice if they didn't take Hunter's story to the categorically appropriate place for him to overcome he's passed through the gates of the worst thing that could possibly happen to him he has experienced a metaphorical and literal death in that he has died to Bellows his narrative but he had to gain his own life his own self sacrifice it freely and return through the portal created by flapjack's love it's only once he comes out on the other side of that door that he's able to sever that last lingering tie of fear of bellows all lingering control is gone now and for the future we now see that he can even help others from their physical and mental prisons Hunter's blood sacker his death and love enabled his resurrection and transformation love transformed him Flapjack left him his eyes and his wings and Hunter the boy who wished for Freedom can never ever be truly Bound by anyone or anything ever again and isn't that a beautiful story I came to the Owl House fandom late in the game I rediscovered it after asking myself why the heck I wasn't watching The gorgeously Animated show about queer disabled witches processing grief and overthrowing a Puritan dictator on the bones of a decaying Titan and despite the heights of intensity that such a premise promised I was truly not prepared for how profoundly this story was going to affect me I binged the entire thing in two days and caught up with the show about 36 hours after thanks to them aired and after sitting on my carpet for about two hours in stunned silence it was only then that I took to the internet in search of community and someone to talk to because holy moly there's just so much to discuss but if a year ago you told me that that of all the characters in this wild cast that I'd end up obsessed with it was gonna be a white boy named Hunter I probably would have laughed this video airs a day or so before the finale of The Owl House and never before has a show astounded me to this degree and I'm not sure I'll be ready but death is transformation one ending is the beginning of something else however sadder and wiser we come out it can leave marks grief can change every cell of a person from the heart to big old scars as we live we go through metaphorical deaths all the time so much bigger than others no one is the same person they were five years ago death and Resurrection in fiction are incredibly important ways for us to experience these things to gain compassion for our inner child to see our traumas from angles that allow us to look at ourselves and by extension everyone else with the same compassion and hope that we would extend to a favored fictional character dark as hell oh yeah this world is full of Phillips but it's also filled with the light of understanding friendships and forgiveness us opportunities to let go of self-judgment and grow into our own people who will help us look inwards and examples of the worst hands life can deal you and not only the acceptance of them but powerfully making holistic peace with them Hunter's story is a very powerful expression of triumph over toxic family Cycles in a desperate fight for autonomy Dana Terrace choosing such a grim story that of a cult Survivor fleeing abuse discovering found family outside of a bloodline curse and dying not four but two the story written out for him was an incredibly bold and personal move because of how dark and painful that story can look they pulled very few punches and yet Hunter's story is among the most inspiring in the owl house for that a truly boggling number of audience members strongly identified with what he goes through and I can't say I'm not one of them After experiencing his story I was able to take a hard look at how grief and all of my little deaths affected my life but it also allowed me to have a lot more compassion and empathy for both myself and others I was able to extend it to him after all and that is one of the great powers of Representative fiction the owl house is a story that is saturated with the theme of death and motifs Like Blood and Bone the writing team had the courage to deliberately sketch out a Fantastical but deeply grounded Narrative of what it takes to transform out of the grip of an abuser's control with an incredible amount of nuance and sensitivity it's all the more welcome in that the message is delivered so well to such a broad audience and by using the theme of death it offers a demystification of the horror associated with that kind of cataclysmic change and offers a future beyond the cathartic experience death is an exciting incident not just an end grief is a process supported by love and Resurrection that's the transformation and I'm really grateful that this story and This Crew had the courage to tell it because always on the other side of death there is a door that leads to the Future thank you all so much for watching please let us know what you think in the comments what did you all think of Hunter's Arc and the handling of the theme of death if you like this video don't forget to like And subscribe and we'll all see you in the next one and oh my gosh I hope you all enjoy the Owl House finale [Music]

Channel: Idle Scree

Views: 184,915

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Id: 04sYWwpRigM

Length: 36min 34sec (2194 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023