Original air date: 6/26/2021
Production code: 203
King's delusions of grandeur lead Luz, Lilith, and Hooty to a dangerous new island.
Tropes:
- Accidental Kidnapping: Eda, having stumbled onto the island looking for a place to hide from the Emperor's Coven, thought that a young King was in danger from Jean-Luc and took him with her, not realizing that he was sentient or capable of speech until some time later. It's later revealed that Jean-Luc was actually a young King's guardian.
- An Aesop:
- There is a fine line between fantasy and delusions. Know when to step back and be rational.
- Accepting the truth, however unglamorous, is better than living a pretty lie.
- Supporting friends is great, but indulging lies or delusions will do them more harm than good in the long run. Support should come with honesty, not in place of it.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Luz suggests that if Eda is left alone, she'll end up drinking too much apple blood, citing a Noodle Incident where they ended up having to pry her off of the roof.
- The Alleged Car: Since Luz took Owlbert, Eda has to follow them using a decrepit flying bathtub with a propeller.
- Appropriated Appellation: King took on his name after Eda noted his habit of constructing friends out of whatever was at hand made him look like "a king amongst his subjects."
- Bait-and-Switch: After seeing the carvings of what looks like a larger and more powerful King, Lilith and Hooty start to think that King might really have been the King of Demons. While Eda later clarifies that King wasn't the powerful figure in the murals, and that she merely found him there eight years ago with his memories of kinghood being fragments of infantile memories conflated with tales of royalty Eda told him, the end of the episode reveals that the figure was likely King's father or ancestor instead, implying that King might actually be demon royalty.
- Baby's First Words: King's first word was "king", surprising Eda with the revelation that he is able to talk.
- Bloodless Carnage: Hooty removing himself from the house's door leaves viscera in the hole, but no blood.
- Break the Cutie: When Eda confesses the truth to King, he has a Freak Out and runs off, his entire world-view shattered.
- Broken Tears: During his Break the Cutie moment, King begins sobbing and spouting off a Rapid-Fire "No!" in panic before running away. He is then found on the beach, crying tears of heartbreak and confusion.
- Call-Back: Hooty sarcastically mentions King's "Crown of Power", the cardboard crown King, Eda, and Luz tried to reclaim from the first episode. King states it was a test, and his "real crown" is still out there.
- Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: King lampshades this trope during his Despair Event Horizon.King: Everyone lied! And I was too caught up in the fantasy to realize it. (sobs and tears up) I do- I don't know what to do, Luz! (sniffles) I can't tell what's real and what's fake!
- Cerebus Retcon: King's delusions of being the "King of Demons" throughout the first season were hilarious, but this episode makes them heartwrenching by revealing it was all King really ever knew and believed.
- Chekhov's Gun: Luz is shown coming up with an invisibility glyph combo at the start of the episode. The protagonists make use of it near the climax against Jean-Luc.
- Childhood Brain Damage: Jean-Luc accidentally chipped off one of King's horns when Eda "rescued" him, which gave him some form of amnesia. Said amnesia led him to believe Eda's story that he was the King of Demons.
- Clean, Pretty Childbirth: King had popped out of his egg completely clean.
- Congruent Memory: King's earliest memories become much clearer when he returns to where they happened and puts his broken horn back in place.
- Continuity Nod:
- Eda first met King while seeking shelter from boiling rain.
- When King asks Luz if Lilith is being blackmailed by Hooty to be nice to him, she replies that they have become friends, which happened back in "Separate Tides".
- Jean-Luc's design matches the shadow King made when he was first introduced all the way back in the first episode.
- Conveniently Unverifiable Coverstory: Lilith initially believes King's claims of amnesia are a cover for any holes in his story, as there is no record in all the Boiling Isles' history of there being a "King of Demons".Lilith: How convenient, a hole in your memory for each hole in your story.
- A Day in the Limelight: King gets his day in the sun, with the episode exploring his origins and how he and Eda first met.
- Despair Event Horizon: After Eda reveals how she and King really met, King soon realizes that his memories as the "King of Demons" were just fake and has a Freak Out, running off in tears. When Luz catches up to him, he fully believes he's a nobody.King: Eda was right, wasn't she? I was never king of anything. I'm nobody.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Played for Laughs when King throws a stuffed toy at Lilith and Hooty jumps in the way of it before collapsing in her arms, hamming it up, and asking Lilith to avenge him.
- Disappeared Dad: After getting his true memories back, King states that he heard his father speaking to him when he was still in his egg. But by the time King hatched, said father was nowhere to be found.
- Easily Forgiven: King is quick to forgive Eda for essentially lying to him his whole life, only asking for the truth from now on.
- Eye Scream: Lilith and Hooty sharing a "high five" results in Lilith giving Hooty a black eye.
- Flesh Golem: Jean-Luc is one of these, being an automaton that appears to be made out of flesh and bone.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The terrifying guardian is dubbed "Jean-Luc" by King after essentially adopting it at the end of the episode.
- Foreshadowing:
- When first telling our heroes about the events that took place after he lost power, King narrates how he woke up in Eda's arms and she carried him off "like a widdle baby". Later, we learn that wasn't a metaphor, as King really was just a little baby when Eda first met him.
- Jean-Luc didn't attack King when he was the only other one in the ruins. It is actually meant to protect him from intruders.
- When the gang first arrived in the ruins, Jean-Luc only swiped at Luz who was holding King, but didn't swipe at King himself, and ignored Lilith and Hooty until they started attacking it, which is further foreshadowing that its purpose was to protect King.
- When King first starts giving Luz a tour of his castle, he claims the enemies' hearts that he devoured tasted cold and bitter. The next shot is of a fly buzzing away from a little statue, which is a subtle hint that his real memory was eating bitter little bugs he found in the ruin.
- Freak Out: After King learns from Eda that he isn't actually the King of Demons, he has a breakdown at realizing everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie and that everyone was playing along with his delusions. He runs off in tears, later despairing to Luz that he's a nobody.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The potion that's thrown at Jean-Luc's face has a note depicting a doodle of Eda making an Eyelid Pull Taunt face, signed "From Eda".
- Gene Hunting: After realizing that the larger figure in the murals was likely his father (or potentially his ancestor), King decides to try and find him if he's still out there.
- Improvised Weapon: Hooty's Stomach of Holding and Eda's hand potions make him an excellent Grenade Launcher.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: Lilith considers watching ink dry to be the best part of glyph research. Although, given how haggard and out-of-it she seems, how genuinely fun she finds it is debatable.
- Invisibility with Drawbacks: In this episode, Luz creates a glyph array that allows her to turn herself invisible, but it only lasts as long as she holds her breath.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Though she wasn't being overly antagonistic in this case, Lilith was right to point out that Luz and Eda constantly feeding, rather than moderating, King's ego, clearly does far more harm than good for him. Luz has the excuse that she doesn't know King's backstory and humors him because while he's delusional, she had little reason to consider he was fooling himself apart from the Crown. Plus, her experience on the Boiling Isles has taught her not to dismiss a claim on the grounds of being improbable or weird.
- Landmark of Lore: The temple on the island where Eda found King is older than recorded history and has Mesoamerican-style wall art depicting a colossal horned skull-headed demon — who King assumes to be himself but is revealed to be either his father or a more distant ancestor — being worshiped and battling foes such as a Giger-esque dragon-like monster. Lilith is awestruck by this discovery, as it changes everything the Witches think they know about the world in which they live.
- Larynx Dissonance: When in action mode, Hooty drops his falsetto voice and drops down to the Voice of the Legion.
- Lies to Children: Eda initially went along with King's delusions of being a ruler of demons because he was a very young child when he started making them, and she never had the heart to dispel them afterward.
- Literal Metaphor: When Eda says she's putting her feet up, she means detaching them and putting them up on the couch.
- Living Relic: King is a descendant of a creature far more ancient than even Emperor Belos himself.
- Lost World: The island on which Eda originally found King is unlike any other part of the Boiling Isles. It's completely shrouded in mist, the jungle is too thick to fly through, the temple is covered in murals and carvings of unknown origin and is guarded by a shapeshifting, robot-like demon that only listens to King. Whatever it is, no one else on the Boiling Isles knows about it. Lilith — who was a member of the Emperor's Coven with vast knowledge of the Isles' history — is at a complete loss as to what she's looking at.
- Loyal Phlebotinum:
- The door to the room where King's egg was is seemingly enchanted to only respond to his touch.
- Similarly, Jean-Luc responds to King's commands, having been simply trying to defend him from the others.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Building off of Lilith's discovery regarding glyph combos in the previous episode, Luz finds that glyphs can have entirely different properties depending on where they're placed in the combo's circle. Using this knowledge, she's able to construct a glyph combo that turns things invisible.
- Mechanical Abomination: Whether Jean-Luc is a demon following orders or some kind of Magitek designed to protect and look after King is still a mystery. It seems to be made of some kind of flesh and bone-like material capable of shifting its body parts into weapons, but it is incapable of leaving the temple due to some kind of force-field that only affects it. It stops attacking the others when King commands it to, and when they manage to get it out of the temple, it shuts down completely.
- Minimalist Cast: The only speaking characters are Luz, Eda, King, Hooty, and Lilith.
- Monster Is a Mommy: A variant; Jean-Luc, King's past guardian, was actually trying to defend King the entire time, having mistaken the others as threats to him. He stops the moment King tells him to.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After King runs off in despair after learning his true origins from Eda, the rest of the heroes are left feeling incredibly guilty for playing a part in encouraging his delusions.
- No Infantile Amnesia: King is somehow able to recall past events from his life even before he hatched from his egg. In this case, he seems to have gotten amnesia after hitting his head.
- Noodle Incident:
- Luz reveals that the last time they left Eda alone, the latter drunk so much apple blood that they had to pry her off of the roof.
- This isn't the first time King has tried to go back to the island where he was found by Eda, if the latter's reaction is any indication.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Apparently, King has attempted to find his kingdom before, given that Eda reacts with these exact words.
- Once More, with Clarity:
- The opening flashback strongly hints that it's King stalking Eda, but cuts away before he actually shows himself. When the flashback is shown again later, during The Reveal, we learn that it was King... as a baby.
- After finding the place he hatched in, King realizes that his recollection of being "shrunk" was actually him as a puppy falling down a hole, that his "subjects" were built by him out of random objects, that his "feasts" were whatever food he could find, and that the memory of his lost "crown" was based on the loss of one of his horns.
- Opinion Flip Flop: After taking a look at the murals on the temple wall, Lilith and Hooty (who had been mocking King's claims from the start) start to think that King really is a ruler of demons. Both immediately start treating him with far more respect and reverence, with Hooty cowing to his authority and Lilith trying to pry historical information from him.
- Poor Communication Kills: If Jean-Luc could talk, or if Eda had given King back his horn piece or told him about the truth of his origins sooner, the heroes could have avoided a lot of trouble in this episode.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Hooty delivers one when he and Lilith distract Jean-Luc.Hooty: Special delivery: pain!
- Rapid-Fire "No!": When King learns the truth about his past from Eda, he tearfully lets out a string of this in denial before running away.
- The Reveal: King isn't actually a monster dictator reduced to Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear, but a monster child Eda found in a temple who took her play-talk to heart. However, this clearly isn't the end of the story, since said temple was built to house his egg and filled with sentinels to guard him, ancient writing in a language Lilith is unfamiliar with, and murals of a larger member of his species (once presumed to be him, now presumed to be his father) that predates even Emperor Belos. King determines that his father will have the answers about who or what King really is, and resolves to find him.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Two words: Baby King.
- Running Away to Cry: As King has his Freak Out over the origins of his idiosyncrasies, he runs away wailing in despair.
- Sand In My Eyes: When King "reminisces" about his "kingdom", he tears up and chalks it up to bone dust.King: Ah, my kingdom. I, uh...I got some bone dust in my eye.
- Schizo Tech: Lilith apparently has a Polaroid-type camera with bat wings on it.
- Shout-Out:
- One of King's plushies resembles the Knight, and another looks like Puu.
- Jean-Luc's sinewy body and ceiling crawl resemble a Licker. He's also presumably named after film theorist Jean-Luc Godard (as King's stuffed toy is named "François", as in fellow film theorist François Truffault).
- Squick: In-Universe, Luz, Lilith, and King are highly grossed out by the sight of Hooty removing himself from the door to the Owl House. We thankfully don't see it, but Luz in particular struggles not to vomit and we do see the throbbing guts left behind in the hole made.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Eda accidentally made King believe he was an all-powerful demon ruler by telling him stories when he was a baby. She didn't want to break his heart, so she just played along with his delusions, not realizing she was doing any harm. By extension, Luz hasn't believed he was the King of Demons for a long time (if she ever did), but lets him believe what he wants, encouraging Lilith and Hooty to do the same because from her perspective the Boiling Isles is full of surprises and you never know that a weird thing may actually be true.
- Symbolism: When King decides he's ready to learn the truth about his origins, he steps under the spotlight formed by the skylight in the room. This subtly signifies he's ready to stop being in the dark about who he is, and to (so to speak) shed some light on his past.
- Take Our Word for It: The audience doesn't see Hooty remove himself from the door, but judging from the others' reactions and the visceral sounds, it's an unsettling sight.
- That Liar Lies: After King learns the truth, he calls everyone liars for going along with his delusions.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Creator Dana Terrace provides the voice of Baby King.
- Unreliable Narrator: As both Lilith and Hooty point out, King's alleged backstory is filled with plot holes. It's justified following The Reveal that a younger Eda found King when he was a puppy and told him stories about kings and what they do, convincing him that he is the King Of Demons and causing him to attempt to fill in the gaps to match his delusions of grandeur.
- The Unreveal:
- Luz discovers an invisibility spell that is a combination of three glyphs, though we're not shown what glyphs are used to make it.
- Though we do get a lot of information, we still don't know who King's father is, nor what the carvings and markings in the temple actually mean. King determines that he needs to find his father to get some answers about who and what he is.
- Whale Egg: King is revealed to have hatched from an egg, despite his canine-like appearance.
- Wham Episode: King's true origins are revealed, although some questions remain.
