History Recap / TheOwlHouseS3E3WatchingAndDreaming

* DemotedToExtra:

* VaderBreath: Exaggerated. When Belos possesses the Titan, the deep rumbling sound of it beginning to breath shakes the entire Isles and can be heard as far away as the Knee.

* VaderBreath: Exaggerated. When Belos possesses the Titan, the deep rumbling sound of it beginning to breath shakes the entire Isles.

** Similarly, the epilogue credits sequences has several moments of increased quality - particularly the scenes of Hunter and Willow sliding down a hill together, Lilith transforming into Harpy mode, Darius shaking Alador, Owlbert flying towards Gus, and Eda's final staff spin, to name a few.

* BlindWithoutEm: PlayedForDrama; without their glasses, a trapped Raine cannot recognize Harpy Eda from far away, and they immediately begin panicking and yelling at her to stay away until she puts their glasses on their face for them.

'''Luz, King, and Eda''': [in unison] From the heart!

-->'''Belos:''' Finally! I CAN ''CLEANSE THIS PERDITION...'' '''''MYSELF!'''''

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: King's nightmare is the only nightmare to not involve one of the characters getting blamed by their loved ones. Instead, it's about King about to be killed by Bill.

* AmbiguousSituation: The boiling rain that melts Belos into his sludge form appears to be magically or supernaturally induced, implied to be summoned by either the Titan, Luz, or both, though it's not clear.

* DarkAndTroubledPast:
** It's revealed that the Collector was originally just a lonely child who, unlike his siblings the Archivists, had no interest in "collecting" species from different worlds and just wanted to play and make friends. He was sent to the Demon Realm by his siblings to keep him out of their way under the guise of "playing a game". The Titans originally welcomed the Collector with open arms, but once the Archivists discovered that Titan magic can cancel out theirs, they hunted down the Titans to extinction which the Collector saw as his playmates "disappearing" one by one. And the Collector was trapped in the In-Between by the last Titan, who mistook the Collector for one of his siblings.
** Arguably {{Defied}} by the Titan themselves regarding Belos. Whilst his past exploits ''have'' made the history of the Boiling Isles a darker place for everybody, and his journey started from his genuine intentions of 'rescuing' his brother, only to end in tragic failure due to his own flaws, the Titan points out that any sympathetic qualities he might have possessed have [[MotiveDecay long since been eroded away]], and all that's left is a hollow shell of a man who's trying to commit genocide because he doesn't know, and won't accept, any other way to live. To that end, he declines to tell Luz about the Wittebane brothers or the truth about Caleb, simply advising her to deal with Belos as [[BeyondRedemption the monster he is]] ''now'' rather than trying to see the human he started out as.

* SympathyForTheDevil: The Titan himself gently but firmly defies this towards Belos, reassuring Luz that even if she wanted to see him smashed to pieces under the Collector's hands again, and chooses to end his threat towards her loved ones permanently, [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre she'll never be as bad as he is]]. He furthermore deconstructs Belos' fixation on him and Luz being '[[NotSoDifferentRemark fellow humans]]', pointing out that Luz genuinely cares about others, whilst Belos only cares about maintaining his delusions of being the hero no matter whom he has to hurt. He even declines to elaborate on the full truth of the Wittebane brothers' past to her, more or less saying that [[MotiveDecay it no longer has any bearing on Belos' actions]], and he's continuing his quest for total witch genocide because that's all he knows how to do anymore. His only implied regret about this is that it means the heroes don't find out the truth about Caleb and how he was ultimately not the same kind of witch-hunting lunatic as his brother.

* HeelFaceTurn: After thoroughly losing the Collector's games, and being taught the true meaning of friendship, the Collector then joins the heroes against Belos.

** Upon his death at the hands of Eda, King and Raine, the skies [[EmpathicEnvironment clear up]] and return to the brighter pastel hues they had in the Deadwardian era, seen in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen", showing how the world is starting to revert back to the way it was before he started influencing it.

** The hospital where Alador has engineered his coven debranding machine is built from the shell of a police precinct, showing that a place of healing can grow from the ruins of an authoritarian regime.

* SympathyForTheDevil: The Titan himself gently but firmly defies this towards Belos, reassuring Luz that even if she wanted to see him smashed to pieces under the Collector's hands again, and chooses to end his threat towards her loved ones permanently, [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre she'll never be as bad as him]]. He furthermore deconstructs Belos' fixation on him and Luz being '[[NotSoDifferentRemark fellow humans]]', pointing out that Luz genuinely cares about others, whilst Belos only cares about maintaining his delusions of being the hero no matter who he has to hurt. He even declines to elaborate on the full truth of the Wittebane brothers' past to her, more or less saying that [[MotiveDecay it no longer has any bearing on Belos' actions]], and he's continuing his quest for total witch genocide because that's all he knows how to do anymore. His only implied regret about this is that it means the heroes don't find out the truth about Caleb and how he was ultimately not the same kind of witch-hunting lunatic as his brother.

* AllDeathsAreFinal: While the Collector is near-omnipotent, he finds out the hard way not even his own power can bring the dead back to life. Overall, though, this is averted as Luz does make it back from the Space In-Between thanks to the Titan giving her their power.

* DullEyesOfUnhappiness: During Luz's LotusEaterMachine sequence, all of the "Hexsquad's" eyes lack shine, showing that they're miserable and angry at Luz for everything that's happened to them.

* FingerTwitchingRevival: After Luz escapes from her LotusEaterMachine, the action cuts to Amity, Gus, Willow, and Hunter, all lying on the ground as the Collector's puppets... and then Amity's finger twitches. More justified than most examples, as drawing a light glyph with her finger (which she then proceeds to do) is the only way she can free herself fully.

* HeelFaceTurn: After thoroughly losing the Collector's games, and being taught the true meaning of friendship, the Collector then joins the heroes against Belos.
* HeelFaceReturn: The last time we saw Kikimora, she was as murderously psychotic as ever. In the TimeSkip she is briefly seen helping build a library/museum, although it might be part of community service.

* LotusEaterMachine: At the prodding of the Belos-possessed Raine, the Collector traps Luz, King, and Eda in illusions. The Collector's goal is to try to get them to admit their supposed mistakes, but Belos makes sure that they're terrible experiences as payback for getting in his way.

** While under the influence of the Collector's LotusEaterMachine NightmareSequence, Eda and King both have glowing red and yellow eyes just like the star child himself.

* XanatosSpeedChess: Belos continues doing this in this episode. At first, he tries to have the Collector trap the Owl trio in a LotusEaterMachine, and when that fails he gets the Collector to play his dangerous games with them while he goes after the Titan's heart to possess ''it'', and when he's forced out by Luz he desperately tries to trick her into thinking that all his heinous actions were a curse, which fails even before the Boiling Rain hits him and causes his form to decay and melt away his guise of his pre-corruption self.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: There are a few hints that what's going on is a dream before Amity's misquote occurs. The Boscha statue suddenly has her old hairstyle again, Bump is one of the statues despite obviously being a puppet already, none of Luz's friends have eye-shines, and Hunter's eyes are back to being magenta, when Flapjack's sacrifice had turned them brown two episodes earlier.

* ExposedToTheElements: Luz, Eda, and King and the Collector don't take the time to change outfits before heading to the Knee, even though all previous episodes taking place there made a point to have characters change into cold weather cloting. While this could be justified if the Collector casted some sort of spell to keep them all warm, no mention of it is made.

* AllForNothing: Belos' last gambit to finish his witch genocide was ultimately thwarted, and Belos succumbed to the boiling rain shortly afterwards. Upon his death, all he had accomplished were raising the Titan's left arm into the sky and killing the Titan's lingering spirit, rendering the glyphs useless. Those were ultimately rectified with the inhabitants adapting to new landscape and King developing his own set of glyphs for Luz to use. Meanwhile, Belos' influence gradually waned away with the Coven System completely abolished and a new university dedicated to Wild Magic built upon the ruins of his castle, ensuring a new generation of witches will thrive and prosper while his witch hunting ways were relegated to ghost stories and cautionary tales.

** When King creates a shield to protect the Collector from Belos' attack, it uses a glyph array that doesn't match any of the four glyphs Luz has been using throughout the series. In the epilogue, it is shown to be King's version of the light glyph.

* HowlOfSorrow: PlayedForDrama. After witnessing Luz's death, King unleashes his SuperScream on Belos with the normally silly "Weh" sound that would accompany it replaced with a grief fueled snarl.

** When King creates a shield to protect the Collector and Eda from Belos' attack, the glyphs on it are completely different from the ones that Luz has been using throughout the series. One of these new glyphs later appears in the epilogue as King's version of the light glyph.
*** King creates a shield adorned with his glyphs when he protected the Collector out of grief, something that hasn't been demonstrated before by him. We would later learn from King's father that this is a power (older) Titans have, showing a more stable version of it when he is giving his power to Luz.

* GlassesOfAging: In the DistantFinale, Gus and Lilith have both taken to wearing glasses. In Lilith's case, its implied that she was wearing contact-lenses throughout the rest of the show's run-time, as she was seen wearing glasses back when she was a student at Hexside. Since Gus has become a teacher and Lilith is now running a History Museum, they both qualify as NerdGlasses.

* HardTruthAesop: Not everyone will respond to kindness and understanding; some people truly are BeyondRedemption and your only option is to put them down.

* ALessonLearnedTooWell: Luz tries to teach the value of "kindness and understanding" to the Collector, which causes him to nearly die extending the same sentiment to Belos. The Collector asks if he did something wrong, and a fading-away Luz tells him things are "more complicated", but assures him he did nothing wrong.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The Collector never saw his games as a danger to anyone because he thought that if someone got hurt, or even ''died'', then he could simply fix them with his powers as easily as fixing a broken toy, not understanding what death ''means'' for mortals or why it should be taken seriously. When he watches Luz die against Belos due to protecting him from Belos' attack, he panics upon realizing that he can't bring her back from the dead, after trying and failing to do so. This makes him realize just what his "games" have been doing to others and why they have all been afraid of him, apologizing for what he did and not wanting anyone else to get hurt.

* ReligiousHorror: Subtly. When Belos attaches to the Titan's heart, he looks like he just ''[[CrucifiedHeroShot crucified himself]]'' to it in what can only be described as a warped and horrific parody of Christ's sacrifice, highlighting his SmallNameBigEgo, blasphemy, failure, and hypocrisy; he wants to be like Jesus, but is ultimately a FalseProphet, sinner, and overall monster running from guilt. Fittingly, he's defeated by Luz, who died and was returned to life by a god-like figure, but most importantly, it's her humility and all-loving personality that make her closer to Jesus than Phillip/Belos ''ever'' will be.