Short Way Around
is an AU of The Owl House in which Luz and Lilith decide to take the Collector's tablet from Philip in the past and bring it with them back to the present, and end up inadvertently contacting the Collector with it once they return to the Owl House. As you can imagine, this results in some significant changes to the rest of the canonical season 2, though in some other respects not much really changes.
- Childish Older Sibling: It could be argued that the Collector serves as this for King.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: The Collector has been sealed away for so long that he's completely unaware of the current situation in the Demon Realm, or even that the Titan is dead.
- For Want Of A Nail: The main divergence from canon in this story is Luz and Lilith taking the Collector's disc from Philip while they're in the past, reasoning that if he was willing to leave them for dead, he shouldn't have it, and bringing it back to the present with them.
- Thanks to the Collector, the Owl House residents find out that King is a Titan significantly earlier than in canon.
- Instead of a Draining Spell, Belos's plan to wipe out the Isles uses a Quietus Spell, which causes a Superpower Meltdown, which he apparently figured out by reverse-engineering the power keeping the Collector sealed.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Despite Luz and Lilith taking the Collector away from him, Philip still changes his name to Belos and becomes Emperor in the present.
- He also still comes up for a plan involving the coven sigils and the Day of Unity, just with a different substitute to the Draining Spell using glyph magic.
- Stop Worshipping Me: The Collector is rather horrified to see what the Titan Trappers are doing in their name, and promises that if they ever use said name to hurt people again, they'll be the ones whose blood is on the ground before leaving with Luz, King, and Hooty.
- Superpower Meltdown: The Quietus Spell works by basically supercharging the magic of those who have been given Coven sigils, giving them more power than they can handle to the point that they effectively combust (with the witches he tested the incomplete version on in the memory Luz and Hunter see vomiting up black sludge). The trick was that Belos arranged it so that it would only fully activate under the Day of Unity's eclipse.
- You Didn't Ask: After the visit to the Titan Trappers, when the Collector is confronted on not telling the Owl House crew about their people's conflict with the Titans, this is their justification.
