"I love a good body swap. It's like demonic possession with the ones you love."
Original air date: 3/6/2020— Eda
Production code: 115
A simple disagreement leads to a complex situation when Eda, King and Luz triple-down on a wager.
Tropes:
- All There in the Script: The leader of the vampire ladies, Roselle, was not named in the episode itself. Her name was revealed in the credits.
- And Call Him "George": The vampire ladies kidnap cute creatures and brainwash them with constant babying.
- The Bet: Eda makes a bet with Luz and King on whoever can prove who has the easiest life in their new body can get out of house cleaning duty. In the end, they all lost. Luz suggests they could clean the house together, but Eda and King immediately call "Not it!", thus making Luz the one to clean Hooty.
- Big "NO!": This is Eda's reaction when she tries to escape the Kitty Café only to find she's just jumped into the store window compartment.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Both of the old ladies who run the Kitty Cafe, intially coming off as friendly but in reality are hiding a dark secret.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Right as Luz finds Eda and King, one of the vampire ladies is reassuring the other that it's not "kidnapping" if they entered their shop voluntarily, it's "good customer service".
- Borrowed Catchphrase: While in King's body, Eda uses his "Wha?" catchphrase when she firsts runs into the two old women.
- Contrived Coincidence: Eda finds herself captured by the vampire ladies. King then stumbles upon the cafe and is captured as well. Then Luz does the same and is able to break them out.
- Cute Little Fang: Luz gets one while King is in her body.
- Cuteness Proximity: Boscha and her friends find King adorable, as does everyone else, to absolutely no one's surprise.
- Disproportionate Retribution: When King (in Luz's body) accidentally destroys their precious clubhouse during a race against Boscha, the other teens don't know how to react to this change of events. Boscha quickly takes advantage of the situation and convinces her hormone-addled peers that the appropriate response to this simple accident is to turn on King and gang up on him.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Luz-in-Eda's body is relieved to see Lilith and tries to explain about the Body Swap. Lilith shuts her down and sees her sister's sloppy attempts to hide from the cops as a cry for help.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the only episode in the series where you'll hear Boscha refer to Luz by name rather than calling her "human" like most of the cast outside of Luz's friends.
- Forgot I Couldn't Swim: While in King's body, Eda once attempts to cast a spell before remembering she can't.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- Eda casts a body swap spell that switches her into King's body, King into Luz's body, and Luz into Eda's body. Hilarity Ensues. Luz even mentions a similar movie to the trope namer, albeit with a guy and a duck.
- In order to escape from the various groups chasing them, Eda casts the spell on their pursuers so they'll be too confused to follow.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: One of the monsters is reading a newspaper with the headline "Giraffe Sighting Stokes Panic".
- Glass Smack and Slide: When they first switch bodies, Luz tries to find a mirror and immediately runs into one that she couldn't see because of the smoke, leaving behind Eda's makeup.
- Hate at First Sight: Boscha laughs off Eda's attempt to sell the teen human clothing, and Eda immediately decides she hates her.
- High Heel Hurt: Luz stumbles trying to walk around in Eda's heels, and wonders how she can stand wearing them all day.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Luz has seen Eda use her powers, but has no idea how they actually work. She thus ends up casting random spells every time she tries, though she does successfully work out a few of them.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: Boscha makes a comment about humans being venomous, which King immediately believes despite having known Luz for at least a couple of weeks by that point. Eda's attempt at selling Boscha on the "latest human fashions" doesn't exactly fit what we would call fashion either.
- I Meant to Do That: During the rat worm race, King has no idea what he's doing. He winds up seated backwards on the rat worm and ricochets off the walls, somehow catching up to Boscha by dumb luck. But he doesn't miss the chance to gloat over it.King: This is how the cool kids ride. Super backwards, on purpose.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After escaping their respective pursuers, Eda remarks that they should never speak of the body-swapping incident again.
- List of Transgressions: Lilith unfurls a list of Eda's crimes which stretches across the table and hangs off the end.
- Mirror Reveal: This is how Luz first sees herself in Eda's body.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Giant rat worms, which Boscha and King use as racing mounts.
- Morphic Resonance: Besides the voices staying the same, the trio's eyes also make the swap across bodies with them, along with other traits like Eda's gold tooth. When they swap back near the end of the episode, they're wearing the additional clothes that they had put on while in the body they were borrowing, implying that it was less a "Freaky Friday" Flip and more Eda somehow physically transforming them.
- Mundane Utility: Luz uses her knowledge of the light spell to make a tacky neon sign for Eda. Once she's in Eda's body, she one-ups that with an even bigger display.
- Mysterious Past: Lilith reveals to Luz, unaware that she swapped bodies with Eda, that Eda wanted to join the Emperor's Coven when she and Lilith were kids, but something happened that changed her mind and made her oppose being in any covens.
- Not Helping Your Case: Luz as Eda insists to Lilith that she isn't a danger to anyone, as she accidentally traces a giant magic circle and blows up the side of the police station.
- The Pig-Pen: Part of why getting out of house-cleaning duty is the prize of The Bet is the fact that Hooty loves to roll around in the dirt.
- Prank Call: King-as-Luz dials the Owl House and then tosses the crow phone into a loudspeaker, broadcasting Hooty answering to all of Bonesborough.
- Properly Paranoid: Luz thinks that Eda is being overly cautious when trying to avoid drawing the attention of the guards, since she doesn't see any around, and conjures an even flashier sign for the stall when in Eda's body. Guess what happens.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Subverted with Lilith. Luz tries to explain to her about the Body Swap spell while in witch's jail, but Lilith doesn't realize that anything is wrong. She instead assumes that Luz saying, "You're Eda's sister, right?" and getting her name wrong is a cry for help and that her sister wants to join the witch's coven.
- Sarcasm-Blind: A sarcastic comment from Boscha makes King think humans can spit venom.
- Selfless Wish: A variant; Luz wants to attract more customers to the stall using magic in Eda's body, and is very happy about selling out Eda's inventory. Compared to King and Eda's desires — to be respected or babied — it is actually very generous of her as a witch's apprentice.
- Severely Specialized Store: A stall near Eda's is "Just Skulls 2", for buying, trading, and selling skulls.
- Ship Tease: Played for Laughs; King is attracted to Eda in his body, though he finds it "confusing".
- Shrug Take: While King and Boscha's crew are rearranging facial features a la Picasso, one of the witches has a face that already looks that way. King shrugs incredulously at this, and they change the witch's face to something normal-looking, to her horror.
- Signs of Disrepair: One of the pranks King-as-Luz pulls is removing letters from a sign for "SELF STORAGE" so it reads "ELF RAGE", inspiring a buff elf to let out his repressed anger ("Yeah, this sign gets it!") and go on a rampage. He ends up attacking the teenagers who vandalized the sign.
- Story-Breaker Power: The Body Swap spell is outrageously overpowered, which may have contributed to the fact that it was never used again after this episode. As Eda shows in the episode's climax, it can be casted almost instantly, it can be used as a laser to force multiple swaps at once, it does not require the consent of its targets, and it can be used on anything from a witch to a pig. Even Lilith, one of the most powerful witches on the Isles, is helpless against it.
- Strangely Arousing: When Eda shows herself off in King's body, King's response has a certain suggestion to it:King: I've got some... very confusing emotions right now.
- Teens Are Monsters: The owners of the cat café certainly think so, and Boscha's friends do nothing to argue against that.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Being swapped into King's body leads to Eda adopting his "Weh" when she runs into the vampire ladies, which is a trait of his species.
- Voices Are Mental: Eda, King, and Luz keep their voices while swapped. Possibly justified, since it's implied that they were actually transformed into each other rather than just having their minds swapped (it is called a body swap rather than a mind swap after all). No one comments on their voices though, so it's unclear if their voices really did stay the same, or if the trope was only used for the audience.
- We Have Become Complacent: According to Bowtie, this is the true danger of staying too long in the monstrous Witches' cafe. The longer a cute demon lives their life waited on hand and foot, the more dependent they become, until they can't remember how to take care of themselves.
Luz: Eda, I just wanna say that things can be more complicated than you think. But with you guys, it all feels a little less mixed up.
Eda: Aw, that's sweet, kid. Now, let's never speak of this again.
Eda: Aw, that's sweet, kid. Now, let's never speak of this again.
