Recap / The Owl House S1E6 "Hooty's Moving Hassle"

Original air date: 2/21/2020 (produced in 2019)

Production code: 106

When Luz, Willow, and Gus hold a slumber party at the Owl House, they accidentally bring the house to life, causing it to run amok all over Bonesborough.

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Tropes:

• Acting Unnatural: When Luz decides to have a sleepover against Eda's wishes, Eda notices she's acting suspicious, such as hiding inside her hoodie.
  Luz: (with the hoodie drawn over her mouth) Meow I'm not!
• Animate Inanimate Object: The conjuring spell gives life to a lifeless object. For Luz, Willow, and Gus, this happens to be the somewhat-animated Owl House, giving Hooty the ability to grow legs and walk around.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: Eda calls out Luz and her friends for lying to her and animating the Owl House, and orders them to clean the place as punishment. Then she admits she's impressed with their conjuring and offers to join them next year.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Luz's reaction when she learns that Willow and Amity were once friends.
  • This is Amity and Boscha's reaction to seeing Luz and her friends' late-night antics are all over Penstagram.
• Bilingual Bonus: When Hooty refuses (or is unable) to help fend off the demon hunters, Luz frustratedly shouts "Oye, no me hables así!", which translates to "Hey, don't talk to me that way!" In Spanish.
• Black Market: The night market is a variation on this, as it's in the same place as the day market except the vendors are far more unscrupulous.
• Boomerang Bigot: Needless to say the monster hunters are themselves monsters, as are nearly half the population of the Boiling Isles. Also one has wanted to shove kids off a cliff since he was a kid.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: As Gus is rummaging through Eda's chest of human junk.
  Gus: (throws magic 8-ball aside) And look at all these human treasures! (picks up human skull) And actual humans!
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Luz tries to put the Owl House back before Eda notices it's been moved, but she happens to walk the house right by Eda in the night market.
• Comically Missing the Point: Morton can't draw a connection between not feeling well and having tested poisons last night.
• Compressed Vice: Eda's addiction to Hexes Hold 'Em. While gambling addiction is completely in-character for Eda, it was never brought up before this episode and never mentioned ever again (save for "Yesterday's Lie" showing that she disposed of all of her decks) and exists solely to make B-plot more prolonged.
• Continuity Nod: Gus yells at Eda "If you're going to eat me, just do it now!" just like Luz did in the first episode when she first met Eda. The annoyed look on Eda's face is like she is thinking "Why does everyone keep saying that?"
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: Just when it seems that Tibbles has Eda captured and King as his servant, Luz and her friends lead the Owl House through the night market and accidentally step on Tibble's shop. With Tibbles distracted, King gives the elixir to Eda and they're able to escape before the Emperor Coven arrives to take her.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Amity gets her Girl Posse to stop picking on Willow by telling them "Leave her alone, it's not her fault she was born without talent". While a harsh thing to say and likely fueled by animosity due to past events, it does have the intended effect of making the girls stop their taunting and move on.
• Darkest Hour: Two separate cases:
  • The demon hunters tie up Luz, Willow, and Gus, and throw them off a cliff while planning to tear apart the Owl House. Luckily, they get caught on a branch and, with Willow's plant magic, they manage to get the house back to where it belongs before the moon sets.
  • Eda loses at Hexes Hold'em to Tibbles and loses King to him, and due to Power Incontinence, is unable to free herself from Tibbles' chains (as he knows she's a wanted criminal and plans to give her to the Emperor's Coven). And then the Owl House crushes Tibbles' stand, giving King the window of opportunity to toss Eda the elixir bottle so she can free herself.
• Debut Queue: Bosha makes her first appearance in this episode.
• Demon Hunting: A band of nomads hunt demons for money, and try to take Hooty to sell as meat. Keep in mind that they're demons too.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Tibbles charging Eda an exorbitant amount for a life-saving potion that she needs to take frequently to suppress her curse sounds like a critique of the pharmaceutical industry charging extortionate amounts of money for life-saving medicine in Real Life. Tibbles' remark about Capitalism makes it especially on the nose.
• Epic Fail: While Luz, Willow, and Gus animate a house by accident, Amity and her Girl Posse fail to animate a stuffed animal, even though Eda dismissed conjuring as magic for babies.
• Eyepatch of Power: The head demon hunter wears an eyepatch, though it's eventually revealed to just be for show.
• Fictional Social Network: We learn that social media exists in the Boiling Isles and their equivalent of Instagram is Penstagram. And instead of telephones, they use scrolls.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • We see Gus's bucket list, which includes things like losing his baby fangs, digging a tunnel under Hexside, and being the guy who jumps out of a giant hollow cake.
  • In Amity's room at the end of the episode, you can see the bottom half of a picture of a younger Amity, whose natural hair color is confirmed to be brown.
• Gasp!: This is Boscha's reaction to the Penstagram posts about the Owl House, which in turn leads to Amity taking notice and their shared Big "WHAT?!".
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Hooty gets glowing blue eyes when animated by the full moon.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Subverted. Willow laments that they didn't get an opportunity to show off their conjuration to Amity, but it turns out that people tend to notice a house walking around town and got pictures of the three controlling it, which Amity sees through Penstagram.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Tibbles uses the same strategy Eda used to beat her familiar to beat her.
• Hustling the Mark: Tibbles gets Eda to bet against him in Hexes Hold'em by pretending he'd never played and he was using the cards on his counter as coasters.
• I Resemble That Remark!: When Eda objects to King calling her obsessed with "Hexes Hold'em", King points out that she's currently playing it.
  Eda: Am I winning?
• Insistent Terminology: Gus keeps insisting that the action figure he finds is a figurine, not a doll.
• Irony: Amity, the most powerful witch in her class, was unable to animate a simple doll with her "friends". Meanwhile, "Half-a-witch" Willow, Gus, and Luz (a human) accidentally animate an entire house.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: Gus has this on his bucket list.
• Leonine Contract: Tibbles knows how much Eda needs her elixir and completely gouges her on the price.
  Eda: A thousand snails?! What kind of game are you playing?
  Tibbles: Capitalism. Where everyone wins—except you.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • When Willow's anger at Amity causes her to manifest thorny vines, Luz tells her to not get so thorny.
  • Gus's bucket list includes finding a human bucket, which Eda incidentally has among her collection of stolen junk.
  • Luz points out that in the Owl House, the living room is itself living—even breathing!
• Lonely Among People: Throughout the episode, Amity is shown to take no enjoyment from hanging out with her Girl Posse of devotees. At the end of the episode, she is vacantly staring out the window while the rest of them are on Penstagram. She may be the best witch of her age group, but she left behind true friendship with Willow in order to become so.
• Lunacy: Once a year, the moon moves into a position that allows witches to channel its power to animate objects. This is usually used for cheap party tricks like animating dolls and such, but Luz, Willow, and Gus unexpectedly animate the entire Owl House.
• Magic Misfire: Willow, Luz, and Gus attempt to animate an action figure, but the spell instead goes right past the doll and animates the entire house, causing it to grow legs and move as they command (as long as they're all holding hands).
• Magical Incantation: To summon the Moonlight Conjuring: "Moonlight, we call, we sing! Moonlight, take this chance! Moonlight, come tie the string! Moonlight, start the dance!" Luz doesn't know the words, but it doesn't seem to matter.
• Mama Bear: When Luz sees that Gus and Willow are upset, she immediately exclaims "Who hurt my babies?"
• Mirror Character: Willow and Amity. While Amity has developed a massive ego and Willow has developed negative self-esteem, both of these opposite reactions stem from a feeling of insecurity at living up to others' expectations of them in regards to their magical skills, and they both tend to get worked up in their desire to prove themselves.
• Moving Buildings: Hooty becomes a Baba Yaga-like chicken house under the effect of the conjuring spell.
• Mugging the Monster: The demon hunters realize too late that they shouldn't have threatened a group of witch children, especially when one specializes in plant magic.
• Never My Fault: The action figure Gus plays with proudly boasts that real men never take responsibility.
• Not So Similar: The key difference between Willow and Amity is that in spite of how much she struggles with her magic, Willow has real friends, Luz and Gus, who are there to support her and whom she enjoys hanging out with, while Amity's Girl Posse are only hanging out with her so that they can ride her coat-tails to success and Amity is shown to not even enjoy their company.
• Offscreen Teleportation: After they park the Owl House and the spell ends, Hooty opens the door to thank Luz, Willow, and Gus for including him. When he closes the door, Eda and King are standing there.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The episode's title is a reference to Howl's Moving Castle.
• Power Incontinence: Eda's curse prevents her from properly using magic, allowing Tibbles to conjure magical chains to restrain her that she can't break until King gets her the elixir to suppress the curse.
• The Power of Friendship: Name-dropped when Willow ponders how they're able to control Hooty, though she concedes it's probably the moon.
• Punny Name: Penstagram's name basically makes a Bland-Name Product of Instagram by mashing it up with "pentagram", a stereotypical occult/magical symbol.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Gus pulls this on Willow when they disagree over animating an action figure or a nice plant, causing her to fold.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Eda proves to be this. While she's furious that Luz invited Gus and Willow and did a conjuring behind her back, after she told her not to, she's also grateful that the house saved her and King from Tibbles. She assigns the kids to clean up the mess and promises to join them next year.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Gus tries to talk down one of the demon hunters from throwing him and his friends off a cliff.
  Gus: Is this really what you want to be doing with your life? Tossing kids from cliffs?
  Tom the Demon Hunter: Well, actually, yes! It's been my dream since I was a boy. (beat) I was a strange child.
• Ritual Magic: While the moon is in the right position, its power can be channeled to bring something to life by at least three people holding hands in a circle and chanting. Luz being human (and not even knowing the actual incantation) doesn't keep her from contributing—and apparently having a very big effect.
• Sequel Hook: Eda realizes there's no way Luz, Willow, and Gus could have animated the Owl House without a lot of power behind them, the implication being that Luz is far more powerful than she knows despite lacking the ability to naturally perform magic.
• Shock and Awe: The leader of the demon hunters seems to favor this kind of magic; first for stunning unruly captured prey and second for cutting through obstacles such as Willow's conjured vines.
• Shout-Out:
  • The episode title is a play on Howl's Moving Castle.
  • When animated by the conjuring spell, the Owl House grows a pair of bird's legs not unlike the hut of Baba Yaga.
  • When Eda finds herself tied up on the floor by Tibbles, she yells that that won't stop her and she can still "bite his ankles."
  • The leader of the demon hunters uses a spell that cloaks his hand in electricity to cut through one of Willow's vines, suggestive of the Chidori.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Eda is so addicted to playing Hexes Hold'em that she tries keep playing it even while her curse is taking over. Luz has Owlbert take her cards and fly ahead to keep her on task.
  • Willow proceeds to explain to Luz and Gus how she and Amity used to be friends...while they are dangling by a broken branch over rushing water. Gus promptly calls Willow out on this.
• Slumber Party: Luz invites Willow and Gus to spend the night at the Owl House after seeing their disappointment at not being invited to Amity's.
• Spanner in the Works: Tibbles had captured Eda and was going to turn her over to the Emperor's Coven, but the Owl House accidentally trampling his stand gave King the chance to feed Eda some elixir which allows her to break free.
• Stalker Shot: After Luz, Willow, and Gus accidentally brings the Owl House to life during the Moonlight Conjuring, they decide to take the house out on a joyride. As they control the Owl House, they walk past a demon hunter who appears in the foreground and decides to pursue it with his group.
• Supernatural Phone: Witches are able to summon scrolls which act as magic cell phones, using them to connect to social networks like Penstagram. Boscha also talks on a crow that doubles as a phone, which she lets fly away once she's done.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Boscha will freak out over a moving house, but a talking one is met with the most nonchalant of reactions.
• We Used to Be Friends: Willow reveals that she and Amity were inseparable childhood friends until Amity developed a strong talent for magic and Willow didn't, after which they stopped hanging out together.
• Would Hurt a Child: The demon hunters have no problem throwing three children off of a cliff. One of them even admits he always wanted to do it since he was a kid. He was a strange child.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After Willow explains how she and Amity drifted apart, Luz tells Willow that, next to Eda, Willow's the most powerful witch she knows.
• You Won't Like How I Taste: Played with. Luz tries to convince that demon hunters that Hooty wouldn't be a good meal, but Hooty insists that he's "a refined taste".

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