"Out of sight, out of mind."
"You wanted to know everything, right? Then come take a trip down memory lane."
—Inner Willow
Original air date: 8/1/2020
Production code: 114
After Amity accidentally destroys Willow's memories, she and Luz take a trip down Memory Lane to revive them.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Amity’s parents forced her to break off her friendship with Willow and choose new friends of their own selection. They also straight up threaten Willow’s future to get Amity to do it all while acting completely uncaring to Amity’s feelings, only caring about her associating with who they think is worthy to be friends with a Blight.
- Adults Are Useless: When Boscha throws Skara's invitation on the ground and demands a new one, two toddlers see the invitation on the ground and fight to get it. When a teacher sees them fighting, he loudly announce "Kid fight!" to the other teachers, and they watch them fight.
- Ambiguous Syntax: When Luz asks Eda and King what happened to Gus while she and Amity were inside Willow's mind:Eda: The kid's fine. He's just dead to us.
Luz: Those are very mixed messages. - Amnesia Episode: The plot of the episode gets set in motion when Amity ends up setting all of Willow's memory photos on fire, giving her amnesia.
- Arranged Friendship: Here it's revealed that Amity broke off her friendship with Willow and started hanging out with Boscha and Skara because her parents made her, both because their parents are allied with the Blights and Willow was a late bloomer. If she refused, her parents would have saw to it that Willow wouldn't have a future.
- At Arm's Length: Luz does this when Amity tries to reach for Eda's bell to avoid fixing the last memory.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Amity ended her friendship with Willow on the former's birthday after her parents threatened to prevent Willow from attending the same school as her if she didn't comply.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Eda tells Luz with a thoughtful expression that entering into people's mind to fix their memories is extremely dangerous and partially illegal, and then she excitedly tells her that she came to the right place.
- Bittersweet Ending: Willow and Amity's friendship may not be restored, but they at least seem to have made peace with each other and have a taken a step towards becoming friends again.
- Blackmail: Amity's parents threaten to prevent Willow from attending Hexside if Amity doesn’t break off her friendship with Willow (or even mentions this).
- Break Her Heart to Save Her: After Amity's parents tell her they'll prevent Willow from being admitted to Hexside if she continues to be her friend, Amity tells Willow they can't be friends anymore because she's a weakling who can't do magic right and tells her to leave.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Invoked. Luz wants to know what happened between Amity and Willow and asks the latter to tell her so she can cook up a scheme to make them friends again. Willow rejects her offer as she says: "No schemes, no plots, no ruses". Luz does so anyway because Willow never did mention anything about "shenanigans".
- Brick Joke: When Willow turns down Luz's offer for a Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario and specifies "No schemes, no plots, no ruses", Luz puts her plan in motion anyway because she never specified anything about "shenanigans". Jump to the end of the episode when Willow asks how Amity managed to see the photo that caused the whole mess and Luz simply responds "you said nothing about shenanigans".
- Burning with Anger: The Inner Willow, already full of repressed anger over Amity breaking off their friendship, is engulfed in flame by Amity's fire spell on the memory prints. She continues (re)burning any memory with Amity in it, attempting to literally burn Amity out of Willow's memories (no matter the damage to Willow's psyche) because of all Willow's repressed anger towards Amity boiling over.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Seagulls on the Boiling Isles look more like skulls with snail shells, wings, and webbed feet than actual seagulls.
- Cassandra Truth: Luz dismisses Amity's initial sighting of Inner Willow (who is already absent by the time Luz turns around) as a Look Behind You ruse to avoid talking about what happened between her and Willow.
- Cerebus Callback: Or, "Call Forward", as it were. When her posse question if she used to be friends with Willow, Amity turns it down by stating how "Blights are only friends with the select few". Later, when it's revealed her parents actually threatened Amity to break her friendship with Willow, they tell her she's not allowed to be her friend because "Blights only associate with the strongest of witchlings." This paints a picture how just how much they controlled their reluctant daughter to break off her friendship.
- Continuity Nod: Gus's interview board has Tiny Nose (dressed in a coat and glasses; labeled unavailable), the Bat Queen, the Beefy Bob figurine from "Hooty's Moving Hassle", the scam wizard from "Witches Before Wizards", and Warden Wrath.
- Crush Blush: Amity ends up blushing when hugged by Luz.
- Dark Horse Victory: Gus chooses Hooty over King and Eda for his interview. They do not take this well.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Eda plays the show's opening theme while putting on a bell show for Gus.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: After Amity accidentally sets Willow's memories on fire, the latter talks and acts as if she was drunk or high.
- Dramatic Drop: Subverted; early on during school, you'll notice that
Amity almost drops her book at the mention of Willow. - Early-Installment Weirdness: In Amity's flashback with her parents, we see that Alador willingly acting just as harsh and controlling as Odalia. In season 2, Alador will be more aloof and his flaw as a parent was being an Accomplice by Inaction to Odalia's abuse.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Willow and Luz both have particularly dorky photo memories of them having messy hair as younger kids.
- Exact Words: Willow tells Luz not to perform any schemes, plots, or ruses to get her and Amity to rekindle their friendship. Luz begins planning something anyway, because Willow never said anything about shenanigans.
- Femme Fatalons: In the most literal sense. Boscha magics her fingernails into talons (after cycling through tentacles and fire) because she thinks it's fashionable.
- Foil: Between Willow and Amity's parents. From what we can see of her memories of them, Willow's fathers are kind and understanding people. Judging by how Willow turned out, they raised her well. Meanwhile, Amity's mother and father were cruel and manipulative people who emotionally abused and blackmailed their own daughter to cut ties with her best friend. Because of this, it lead to her being the distant and competition-driven bully the audience initially saw her as.
- Forbidden Friendship: Amity's parents don't want her hanging out with Willow, and it's implied to be a social class thing.
- Forced Sleep: Eda puts a sleep spell on Willow to keep her from getting into trouble.
- Foreshadowing:
- The teacher places a lot of emphasis on the prints being damaged being bad, and the focus on the picture of Amity hugging Willow both hint at what happens when Amity sees it after Luz turns it back around.
- Before she burns the memory-picture of her and Willow as friends in order to save face, Amity seems remorseful as she says to the picture, "Willow, I'm sorry, but I have to do this". It's only later that we learn that this sums up her motive behind ending their friendship: she had to do it.
- Eda mentions that the Inner Willow should be able to help them restore Willow's memories, but she's nowhere to be seen when they enter her mind, only glimpses of a fiery monster. Said monster also only burns memories with Amity in it before Luz douses the flames enough to reveal that it's the Inner Willow Burning with Anger due to the spell and desiring to get rid of Amity, both Willow's memories of her and the real one.
- Amity is noticeably avoiding the memory that her attempting to destroy caused the whole mess. It turns out that it's the memory of when her parents forced her to call her friendship with Willow off.
- Former Friends Photo: The plot of the episode is set in motion because one of the memory photos is of Willow and Amity back when they were friends.
- Frictionless Ice: Luz jumps into the beach memory and then conjures a short ice pillar from the sand. When the fire monster jumps in after them, it lands on the pillar and slides into the water, exposing Inner Willow beneath the flame.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: Since she wouldn’t be able to see what it looks like, Boscha notably uses gender-neutral pronouns when asking if Amity has seen a cute ghost. Amity continues the trend just to humor Boscha.Boscha: Why do you look like you've seen a ghost? Is there a ghost in photo class? Are they cute?
Amity: Yep, just a super cute ghost, but they're all mine!
Boscha: Ask if they have any friends! - Hate Sink: Amity's parents have established themselves as utterly loathsome by calling Willow weak, telling Amity to break off her friendship with her, and threatening to end Willow's future. Ultimately, they caused the end of Willow's and Amity's friendship.
- Hypocrite: Amity calls Luz out on prying into her friends' lives, and yet she was the one who went out of her way to try and preserve her pride by burning her ex-friend's memory. Admittedly, this is clearly less a moral position than a desperate attempt to keep Luz away from the memory of Amity and Willow's friendship ending.
- I Can't Hear You: When Amity rings the bell in desperation, Eda is completely clueless because she's putting on a bell show of her own to Gus.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Eda says that whoever messed up Willow's memories showed unbelievable disregard for her safety, and that it was downright despicable. She then realizes that the culprit (Amity) is right there and heard everything with a face full of guilt, not that the former would care.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: When Gus asks Eda and King what they consider to be their best qualities, King answers "my decisiveness!" but then frantically says he changed his mind.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Luz tries to reassure Willow that Boscha could be mocking anyone about dating ferns, until Skara compliments her Willow impression.
- Instant Runes: When setting up a trap for the fire monster in Willow's mind, Luz draws a large circle on the ground. When she claps her hands to it to activate it, the ice glyph independently appears in the center, creating the spell's pillar of ice that flings the monster into the sea.
- Ironic Echo: Willow's "out of sight, out of mind" mantra takes a very dark turn when Inner Willow says it right before trying to erase Amity.
- Irony: As far as Luz knows, Amity broke off her friendship with Willow because she didn't think Willow's magic was strong enough. Luz can't help but remark that contrary to what Amity thought at the time, now Willow is pretty adept at plant magic.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Luz and Amity enter Willow's brain to help restore her memories.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: If a picture of one's memory is damaged, it erases the actual memory. Amity setting a large number of Willow's memories on fire causes her to forget almost everything.
- Literal Metaphor: When Amity is stunned by seeing Willow's memory of their friendship out in the open, Boscha says she looks like she's seen a ghost then goes on to express interest and asks if it's cute.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Amity admits that the memory of her and Willow in an egg pit is hard to explain.
- Mind-Control Eyes: Willow's pupils dilate to the point of obscuring her eye color when the damage to her memories kicks in.
- Morton's Fork: In a flashback, Amity's parents threatened Amity with an ultimatum: either she end her friendship with Willow, or they would make sure Willow would never get into Hexside. No matter what Amity chose, something bad would happen to Willow, and their friendship would never be the same again.
- Mundane Utility: Gus considers raising the dead to find someone to interview. The book on doing so hisses at him, dissuading him from attempting it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Invoked. Willow turns the memory of her and Amity around, but Luz flips it back again, hoping that some "shenanigans" will make Willow and Amity friends again. In her defense, it kinda works, just not in the way she expected.
- Amity impulsively burns herself out of one of Willow's memories, only for her spell to go rogue and spread to all the others, damaging Willow's mind.
- Noodle Incident: A few are alluded to in Willow's memories, namely her and Amity somehow ending up in an egg pit.Luz: It's eggs. It's full of eggs. Why is this memory full of eggs?!
Amity: Yeah... that one's kinda hard to explain. - Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Subverted. While telling Luz and Amity how they may be able to enter Willow's mind to fix her memories, Eda begins talking about how whoever messed up Willow's memories did a downright despicable thing and should feel bad for it while Amity quietly stands there looking awkward. Then Eda points at Amity and says "Oh right, it was you."
- Portal Picture: Willow's memories are represented in her head as paintings hanging on the trunks of trees, which visitors can go through to enter the corresponding memories.
- Sadistic Choice: Amity's parents made her break off her friendship with Willow by telling her that if she didn't, they would, by making sure that Willow never got into Hexside.
- Something We Forgot: Eda gets so caught up in trying to impress Gus, she momentarily forgot she put Luz and Amity inside Willow's head.
- Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: Boscha tosses away Skara's living butterfly invitation because it's moulting. A butterfly is the very final stage of its life cycle (known as the "imago"), so it shouldn't be able to moult. Then again, it's definitely a magical butterfly...
- Stupidity-Inducing Attack: Willow's loss of memories also result in her being kind of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander who doesn't know how to sit properly.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Played for Drama. Rather than admit the truth, Amity let Willow believe that her poor skill with magic was why Amity didn't want to be friends with her anymore, when it was really Amity's parents threatening to ruin Willow's chances of getting into Hexside if she didn't break things off.
- Tempting Fate: When Amity holds up a few of the undamaged photos claiming that she saved as many as she could, a stray flame flies onto those photos and destroys them too.Amity: Ugh! Why would they make memories so flammable?!
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Gus decides to give an interview to Hooty because of his status as the Owl House. It doesn't last long, but it’s good to see Hooty being taken into consideration.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Thanks in part to promos for the season already spoiling it, it's not much of a reveal that this episode confirms the theory that Amity dyes her hair green.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Apparently, ghosts aren’t considered anything unusual in Hexside, though it’s implied only a handful of people can see them.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Luz flips the memory of Willow and Amity forward after Willow flips it back, in preparation for potential "shenanigans". This leads to Amity spotting it from the hall and trying to burn herself out of it.
- Upper-Class Twit: With the implication that Amity's social circle is decided by social status, Skara and Boscha's shallow and spoiled behavior becomes signs of this.
- Visual Pun: When Amity reveals to Inner Willow why she stopped being friends with Willow, a door opens to reveal she had Abusive Parents. This all happens behind closed doors...
- Vomit Discretion Shot: In the memory where Willow and Amity are riding a Roller Ghoster:Child Willow: Aaaaah! I don't feel so good!
Luz: (flipping the picture over) We... don't need to see how this one ends...
Amity: Yeah, Willow threw up a lot that day. That's when you knew she was having fun.
Luz: Ew... I mean, aw! - Wham Shot: When Luz seemingly defeats the fire monster by sending into a lake in one of Willow's memories, Amity calls attention that it's not exactly gone. In fact, when the steam clears, we see its true form: Inner Willow.
- Would Hurt a Child: Not physically (as far as we know), but Amity’s parents threatening to destroy Willow’s future is hurtful in itself. Then again, who’s to say preventing Willow from attending Hexside wasn’t going to involve physical pain as well?
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After she reveals why she broke off their friendship all those years, Amity gives this line to counteract what she previously said to Willow on that fateful day:Amity: Willow, you were never too weak to be my friend. I was too weak to be yours.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Amity's reaction to the entire rest of Willow's photo rack catching fire is an emphatic "Oh, come on!"
"I remember what you did too. What you did in there. I can't say we're friends, but it's... a start."
