Unfortunately, a lot of characters in The Owl House found that their actions amount to nothing.
Characters
- Lilith Clawthorne ends up with a couple instances of her plans being rendered moot.
- After Luz challenges Amity to a witch's duel, Lilith secretly cheats in Amity's favor by placing a power-enhancing seal on Amity's neck. But Amity didn't need such a seal; she was clearly magically superior to the Muggle Luz, and would have won easily without Lilith's help. Once the cheating is discovered, it turns what should have been a Curb-Stomp Battle for Amity into a mutual loss for everyone. Not only that, but Amity instantly turns sour on Lilith, as Amity's personal Berserk Button is cheating, even if the cheating is in her favor.
- As shown in a flashback with Lilith, she cursed her more magically-talented sister Eda the night before a witch's duel for a spot in the Emperor's Coven. Lilith used the curse to take away some of Eda's power, thinking it would last for one day. When the time came for the duel, Eda stepped down before the duel started and let Lilith have the spot, knowing how much she wanted it. To make things worse, when the curse kicked in, Lilith realized that not only did it cause Eda to transform into an owl beast, but that the curse was permanent. Eda ends up as a social outcast and a pariah, kicked out of the Boiling Isles by everyone who saw her transform. Lilith's desperation to have Eda join the Emperor's Coven and get the curse removed in the story proper is spurned on by Lilith's guilt that she basically cursed her own sister and ruined her life for no reason.
- Towards the end of the first season, Lilith finally succeeds in bringing Eda to the Emperor's Coven, since Big Bad Emperor Belos promised to remove the curse in exchange for Lilith's loyalty and assistance with his plan. But Belos reveals that he never had any intention of removing the curse, and fully intends to turn Eda to stone as an example of what happens when people don't do what he says. Since petrification is the one spell on the Boiling Isles that is irreversible and unblockable, this prompts a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal from Lilith after yet another instance of her plans amounting to nothing.
- The series starts with Luz Noceda escaping to another world to avoid being sent to a summer camp that is meant to teach her how to fit in, out of fear it's going to beat all creativity and passion out of her. While her presence on Boiling Isles was beneficial to both her and many other characters, the episode "Yesterday's Lie" reveals that particular fear was completely unjustified - the only thing the camp accomplished was making weird kids meet and befriend each other, bonding over a shared crappy experience. This is also Played With, as her presence in the Boiling Isles has dramatically improved the lives of many of the people she has met, especially Eda, Willow, King, Lilith, and Amity. Ultimately Subverted, because of Luz's actions and learning from her mistakes, she ends up in a better place than she would've had if she had gone to summer camp. While Luz did suffer from guilt and considered not going back to the demon realm when Belos is defeated, after talking with her mother and friends, Luz overcame her guilt and, by the end of the series, made a life for herself in the human and demon realm.
- Emperor Belos is the poster child of this trope, with his entire life story being a cautionary tale of how one's desire to be the hero can lead to a bad end with nothing accomplished for all the efforts:
- In "King's Tide", his 350 years of machination and 50 years ruling the Boiling Isles are all ruined at the climax by King freeing the Collector, who then proceeds to skip the eclipse and stop the Draining Spell after obliterating Belos, leaving him a small Blob Monster made of rotten flesh. Even if he managed to return to the Boiling Isles, after the Day of Unity nearly killed them, his former subjects would never fall for his lies again. On the other hand, the Collector's initial efforts to escape their prison are stopped by Belos refusing to free them when the time comes. It's King that frees them.
- Hell, Belos' goal from the very beginning, to achieve prestige and praise for the annihilation of demon/witch kind was doomed to fail. Whilst he came from a time that was very anti-witch and would certainly have been commended back then, in all the centuries he's been away he's completely unaware those times aren't just looked back upon with scorn and shame, but witches are now a commercialized and outright idolized form of medium as demonstrated by this very show. In other words, Belos is pretty much the only human left believing his period's ways. Again, it's been hundreds of years and thus, a period where everyone is much more rational and above all skeptical, so if Philip, a man dressed like he'd just stepped out of the past, began to tell them about witches and demons, he'd be branded as mad. In Layman's Terms, Belos committed himself to a pointless campaign based on his bigoted views for hundreds of years, and will have nothing to show for it save the blood on his hands.
- Even if he succeeded in killing everyone on the Boiling Isles, "Edge of the World" reveals that there is at least one other society of magic users in the world living on a second Titan. Belos would just have to go through everything he did on the Boiling Isles all over again, and by the look of it, he doesn't have that much time left.
- Worst still, if he managed to commit his witch genocide, and go back to the Human World, 'his people' would look at his now-monstrous and extremely volatile form, immediately label him as a “witch, demon, monster or whatever”, and attempt to kill him in self-defense. Even if he managed to travel back in time to those that wanted the witches dead, he would fit the definition of 'evil wizard' perfectly and be hunted down by his former friends and family.
- Another terrible consequence is, it is stated that if he did manage to succeed, any surviving witches would want to get revenge on humanity and create a genocide war, thus continuing the cycle of hate and violence, this time on both worlds.
- "Thanks to Them": It is revealed that Philip Wittebane's initial goal was to rescue his older brother Caleb Wittebane from the so-called evil witch Evelyn. He risked life and limb through the unknown wilderness of the Boiling Isles for years, only to discover that Caleb was happier in the Boiling Isles and chose to stay with Evelyn, who's implied to become his wife. Philip, enraged by this apparent betrayal, attacked the two and ended up killing his brother, defeating the whole purpose of his journey. It's implied that his witch genocide goal grew out of a desire not to make his trip worthless.
- "Watching and Dreaming": Belos ultimately ends up dying in the very place he hated for 400 years, melting under the boiling rain and seeing his human form decay into a monstrous mud corpse. The very last thing he sees is Luz, the only other human he's seen for centuries and saw a kindred spirit in, looking down on him like Caleb's ghost... before being stomped upon by Eda, King, and Raine. His desire to be the hero of humanity ends with him dying as a tragic, pathetic thing, forgotten by the Human Realm and hated by everyone in the Demon Realm. Even his century-long plans for genocide left no true impact beyond the collapse of the 50-year Coven System, as the Boiling Isles completely recover within the next couple of years.
Episodes
Season 1
- "Agony of a Witch": Luz's attempt to save Eda ultimately fails. The Healing Hat is destroyed and Lilith informs her it's just a piece of junk so it wouldn't help anyway. Even worse, her failed attempt at stealing the hat gives Lilith the opportunity to capture Eda who, in her efforts to save Luz, uses up her magic and succumbs to her owl-beast form. Even if Luz didn't try to steal the Healing Hat, there's nothing stopping Lilith from simply grabbing Luz on the way back to Hexside.
- "Young Blood, Old Souls"
- Lilith cursing her sister was for nothing. The moment their witch's duel was supposed to start, Eda stepped down and let Lilith join the Emperor's Coven without a fight. All the curse ended up doing was shaming Eda for something that was never her fault to begin with.
- In the season 1 finale, Luz destroys the portal, her only way home, to prevent emperor Belos from using it. Not only does the end of the episode reveal that Belos can rebuild the portal, but season 2 reveals that he can't actually use it anyway because it requires Titan's Blood that, as far as anyone knows, is only found in the portal key that Luz still has.
Season 2
- "Keeping Up A-fear-ances": Gwendolyn has been trying to cure Eda's curse for thirty years. But since she keeps falling for scams that promise 100% cures rather than treatments like the potion, she's wasted tons of time and resources, alienated Eda, and neglected Lilith.
- "Through the Looking Glass Ruins": Luz and Amity finally find Philip Wittebane's diary, only to discover that a mouse has eaten the pages. Subverted when it turns out to be an echo mouse, which is able to play back the contents of what it eats, giving Luz her own version of the diary.
- "Eclipse Lake": By the time they reach Eclipse Lake, it's long-since been depleted of any Titan's Blood. Even worse, though Amity retains at least half of the Blood in the key, she's forced to hand the rest, and the key itself, over to the Golden Guard.
- "Follies at the Coven Day Parade" : Three times but with different characters.
- For Kikimora, she gives up her only chance to see her family to get a "promotion", and when she got that, her reward is to stay alive longer, not a promotion and minions as she hoped;
- For Luz, she tries to help Kikimora by trying to send her home so she could give her mother a reason to stay in the Boiling Isles, only for the latter betraying her for a promotion;
- For Eda, she wants to save Raine from the Emperor's Coven's clutches, only for the latter to attack her because they were brainwashed by Terra.
- "Elsewhere and Elsewhen": Other than learning Philip's true nature, the trip back in time accomplished absolutely nothing and costs Luz a quarter of her remaining Titan's Blood. Due to a Stable Time Loop, nothing occurred in the past has any effect on the present that it didn't already have. Philip took the Collector for purposes other than perfecting the portal, so they can't find the Collector in the present and it wouldn't help Luz make a portal even if they did. Furthermore, he refuses to share his knowledge of the portal with Luz unless she agrees to more dangerous tasks, so Lilith just punches him in the face. Ultimately, the trip just explores a bit of Belos' backstory, and Luz and Lilith don't learn the connection.
- Subverted for Philip since Luz and Lilith did help him to get the mirror he was looking for.
- "Any Sport in a Storm": When Amity and Luz notice the differences between the author portraits on their Azura books, they try and track the author down at a book signing, hoping to find some answers, and maybe a portal to Earth. When they finally chase the supposed author down, it turns out to be a disguised Tiny Nose, and the whole thing with the pictures was because Tibbles was trying a scam. On the side of Tibbles, since Amity is literally the only one buying the books in the Isles, it's all been a net loss for him.
- "Reaching Out": Warden Wrath has been demoted, so all the effort Eda and Edric went through to make a potion to interrogate him with was for naught. The only benefit is that the botched recipe is something that Eda can sell.
- "Hollow Mind": Hunter has worked his whole life for Belos, with his main goal at all times being to make his uncle proud and aid him in helping the people of the Boiling Isles. He then finds out that Belos has been lying to him the whole time, as his real goal is to kill everyone in the Demon Realm, he doesn't care about the boy and Hunter himself is just the latest Grimwalker in a long line of clones he keeps killing off. Hunter is devastated to realize he was helping a psychopath who would try and kill him the second he learned the truth, and everything he'd ever done is rendered all for naught.
- On top of this, he spent the entirety of "Any Sport in a Storm" trying to prove to Darius that he was worthy of wearing the cloak of the Golden Guard. Darius fixed it up for him at the end of the episode and told him that his predecessor would've been proud of him. After learning the Awful Truth however, Hunter tears the cloak off his shoulders in a panic and leaves it behind on the floor of the Owl House while he runs off into the woods. Showing that he no longer wants to be the Golden Guard now that he knows what Belos really feels about him.
- "Edge of the World": While they did discover that King was a Titan, the journey to find his family was otherwise a complete waste of time, as they turned out to be a group of Titan hunters who worship the Collector. On top of potentially tipping off the Collector to the existence of another Titan, Hooty going on the trip has left the Owl House completely vulnerable, which the Emperor's Coven take full advantage at the end of the episode.
- During "King's Tide", it's shown that the Titan Trappers' plan to ritually sacrifice King wouldn't have worked anyway - the tablet that they had was already broken, and the Collector wasn't trapped there at all. Had they successfully murdered King, then it's highly likely that the Collector would be permanently trapped, as his second tablet would be discarded into the abyss below Belos's castle forever without King to free the Collector and without anyone to uncover where the Collector is.
- "Labyrinth Runners": The Emperor's Coven and Graye utterly failed at getting anything done besides finding out the Golden Guard was at Hexside. They originally showed up to trick the multi-track students into being branded, but Gus stops them before the scout playing Graye can brand anybody. Then, Graye switches his goal to branding Gus, but due to Gus' powers he ends up Mind Raped for the rest of the episode once he has him in his clutches, and Gus steals his Amplifier Artifact to boot.
- "Clouds on the Horizon": Discussed. The Collector shows fear of this happening to them, as they wonder if Belos is really their friend and that after helping him for centuries the Emperor may just double-cross him and not free the entity. In that same scene, the Collector taunts Belos that the human world may have dramatically changed to the point that his "success" in the Boiling Isles may not amount to anything.
- "King's Tide":
- The plan to stop the Draining Spell doesn't come to fruition, as Terra has been keeping tabs on Raine for too long and is aware of their rebellion.
- Terra and all the Coven heads who supported Belos in exchange for becoming royalty in the new world are rewarded by having their magic drained like every other witch.
- All of the Boiling Isles loyal to Belos are hit by this, as the promises of the Day of Unity are revealed to be a ploy to kill them like fish in a barrel. And by extension, their ancestors are retroactively hit by this as well, as they gave up chances to learn any kind of magic they wanted, turned on their fellow witches when they refused to blindly turn to this new world order, and turned the Boiling Isles into a Crapsack World because they swore allegiance to a selfish man who wanted them all dead.
- Also, Kikimora has spent years trying to please Belos, attempting to kill the Golden Guard, betraying Luz after the human tries to help her attend her family reunion, and capturing the Golden Guard and turn him over to Belos so that the emperor will grant her his approval and make her his right hand. Belos however, makes clear that he never had any liking for her regardless of her loyalty or accomplishments, and simply tells her to go find a hole to wither away in as he proceeds to move the final phase of his plan for the Day of Unity into motion, as it sinks into Kikimora that she wasted her life serving the Emperor's Coven for a man who could never come to like her. The revelation ends up prompting her to help King to release the Collector for the sole purpose of getting revenge against the man who so callously discarded her.
Season 3
- "For the Future": Having spent the entirety of her time within the show emotionally abusing Amity into severing her friendship with Willow to spend time with a Girl Posse not of her choice on threat of having Willow removed from Hexside, eventually following up on the threat, attempting to murder Luz, forcing Alador and his workers to work overtime to the detriment of their health, even after terminating them, and betraying the rest of witch kind to be annihilated on the Day of Unity, all of Odalia's machinations to be at the top of the Boiling Isles' society's food chain has left her in a position where she is left as little more than a glorified house maid and servant forced to perform back-breaking menial labor for the Collector, with her backstabbing, manipulative, and abusive behavior having gotten her nowhere in the end.
