Recap / The Owl House S3E2 "For the Future"

"I wanna be a witch, and help my friends. But doing one always seem to mess up the other. Why did this get so complicated?"

"Collectors live long, we watch things pass. To preserve, to observe, we must amass. What flies, what swims, be it predator or prey, seal them up so that they never fade."

— King, reading to the Collector

Original air date: 1/21/2023 (produced in 2022) ^note Leaked on Canadian iTunes on 1/5/23. Removed shortly after.

Production code: 302

Luz and her friends open the portal to the Demon Realm, but now must race against Belos to confront the Collector and save the Boiling Isles.

The full episode can currently be watched for free on the Official Disney Channel Youtube.^note The video is, unfortunately, region blocked outside of the US, UK, and Australia, precluding the use of a VPN.

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Tropes in this episode include:

#-E

• 11th-Hour Ranger: Stringbean, Luz's new palisman, finally hatches just in time to help her deal with Kikimora and take on Belos and the Collector when the time comes.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • Filled with the strong desire to save Willow, Hunter is able to unlock the ability to Flash Step like he used to with Flapjack. It's not until he, Willow, and Gus are safely out of the collapsing cave that he even realizes what happened, and only after Gus points it out. The implication is that Flapjack didn't just save Hunter's life last episode, but also gave him the ability to use magic, though he's got no idea how to do the more complex stuff that Willow and Gus can without training, implying it might be the only move he can presently use reliably with his new ability.
  • Stringbean, Luz's new Palisman also qualifies as this. Before she awakened, Luz had to rely upon the usage of her Glyphs in order to fight and cast magic. With Stringbean, Luz is able to cast spells without the need of any Glyphs. Additionally, the very first spell that Luz casts with her new staff is miles ahead of any other spells that she has cast throughout the series in terms of raw power. Specifically, she gains the ability to cast massive beams of magical energy that completely vaporize absolutely anything it touches for miles, and given the fact that Luz cast this spell by accident, this is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to what Stringbean is capable of.
• Abstract Eater: Discussed. As an immortal, the Collector is unfamiliar with what mortals need to eat and briefly suggests that Eda might like to have gravity as a snack. This also implies that Collectors as a species are capable of eating things like gravity if they so chose to do so.
• Abusive Parents: Deconstructed. Odalia's controlling attitude towards her children and expecting them to fall in line one-sidedly with whatever she ordered, without even trying to understand them, meet them half-way or compromise with them, means she has no idea how to handle a child with the ability to force her to do whatever it wants. Her attempt to direct the Collector's attention towards making the Boiling Isles "bigger and better" falls flat on its face, as the Collector ignores her request and orders her to feed the Owl Beast instead.
• Abusive Precursors: As it turns out, the rest of the Collectors were apparently this to the worlds of the Demon Realm. If the book King reads is accurate they were Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist types who "collected" and "preserved" mortal creatures, but they were willing to Final Solution planets that stood up to them. When they realized that the Titans could cancel out their magic, they went to war against them to avoid a threat to their absolute control.
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: New Hexside is ruled by a student council, which it didn't even have before (despite Amity apparently having tried to create one many times). Boscha pretty much acts like a tyrant. Justified since there is no other authority around, all the adults having been taken by the Collector, and the "student body" is more a post-apocalyptic group of survivors.
• Accidental Misnaming: Camila calls Kikimora "Kikimiki" (a combination of her real name and her alias).
• Accidental Public Confession: Kikimora reveals she was going to betray Boscha and start her own empire to the Hexsquad. Little did she realize Boscha and the others were within earshot, and they pelt her with grudgby balls.
• An Aesop:
  • "Making mistakes is part of living". Just because you stumble from time to time and accidentally cause harm with your well-meaning actions, doesn't mean that you are a terrible person for doing so. While it's important to take responsibility for your mistakes, it's equally important to forgive yourself for them.
  • You shouldn't hide from your friends and loved ones that you're hurting inside, even to be the reliable one. They're called "friends" for a reason: they should be a shoulder to cry on just as much as they cry on yours. Otherwise, ignoring your feelings is a recipe for them to fester inside.
• Affectionate Nickname: Zig-Zagged: The Collector refers to Odalia as "Mamadalia", though Odalia herself treats it with barely-concealed disdain. It's likely because she wants to manipulate the Collector but is well aware of the fact that they could almost certainly annihilate her with little more than a gesture, thereby effectively making her a prisoner of the Collector's whims even if she is technically fulfilling the role of his caretaker.
• All for Nothing: Camila's 'mistake' of moving to Gravesfield is framed as this. She moved her family there because it was closer to "that fancy hospital" and might somehow help her husband Manny heal. The fact he's not alive today paints a picture of how Camila feels they moved to Gravesfield with nothing to show for it.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • Raine gets rather starry-eyed when they see Eda transform into her harpy self.
  • Luz has a Luminescent Blush upon seeing Amity cutting loose a bit with some Abomination slime she finds on the ground after returning to the Demon Realm.
• Ambiguous Situation: With The Reveal that there used to be other Collectors who were apparently more malicious with their godlike powers against sentient life, most of the Offscreen Villainy attributed to the Collector's past actions can be attributed to them. With this in mind, it's left unclear if King's father's last action of sealing the child Collector was a desperate attempt to protect his son from their 'playtime', or if he simply didn't want to hurt a (relatively) innocent child, even if it belonged to his enemies. With both King's father and the adult Collectors having passed away/vanished as the result of an apparent Great Offscreen War, the answer is left unclear. The Collector themself doesn't look too favorably upon the motives behind their imprisonment, but they've also demonstrated a naïve outlook on events because of their relative youthfulness.
  • There is also the matter of Caleb's ghost. It's unclear weather it is a hallucination of Belos's rapidly decomposing mind or if the phantom is truly haunting him.
• Amusing Injuries: Besides being a Bandage Mummy, Edric willingly inflicts further pain on himself just so he can hug his younger sister after not seeing her in months.
• And I Must Scream: Being transformed into a puppet/toy subsumes the victim's consciousness and renders their bodies into mindless zombies. At the very least, Hooty was able to regain his consciousness to be able to talk to the outside world, even if he's unable to move.
• Angry Collar Grab: Well, he's not exactly angry, but Hunter does grab Gus by his collar in an attempt to wake up the latter when they both end up in the detention pit.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: A (partially) platonic version. After hearing Willow call herself "Half-a-witch Willow", Hunter manages to tap into Flapjack's power and tears himself and Willow free from the vines, before finally telling her and Gus how he really feels.
  Hunter: (tearing up) You didn't make anything worse, you didn't do anything wrong! You guys mean the world to me, and I... I didn't know how to say that yet. Just please, don't call yourself that ever again.
• Annoying Laugh: Miki's familiar hyena-like cackle is what causes Luz to realize she's really Kikimora in disguise.
• A Place Holds Memories:
  • The main characters visit the remains of the Owl House, which holds many memories for Luz in particular. She ultimately curls up in Eda's nest both because she misses Eda, King, and Hooty and as a desperate attempt to get her palisman to hatch.
  • Belos goes to his old hideaway as Philip Wittebane, seeing visions (or ghosts) of his brother and the countless Grimwalkers he has killed.
• Apocalypse How: The outcome of "Kings Tide" has been revealed to be a class 2.
• Arc Villain: While the Collector is the main overarching threat throughout the episode, and Belos is constantly on the heroes' minds, the actual main opposition they face this episode comes from Boscha and Kikimora. Luz appears mildly frustrated at this, as she didn't come all this way to fight the class bully and a power-hungry bureaucrat, who are not exactly the good guys' top priorities at the moment, and their actions only distract Luz and co. from dealing with a true, dangerous threat to them all, showcased at the episode's end by Belos manipulating the Collector to start a malicious game against Luz, her friends, and King's group, once he "proves" King's planned betrayal with Luz's entrance.
• Asshole Victim: The Collector forces Terra to play Eda the Owl Beast for their Owl House role-play games, pestering her to get Eda's character right before turning her into a puppet for annoying them. They also made Odalia into their surrogate mother, which is more or less a glorified maid forced to clean up the Collector's mess. Given that Terra and Odalia are such horrible people who actively aided Emperor Belos and his Day of Unity plan, they deserve every second of it.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Boscha's authority is based on the fact that "Miki" and "Roka" act as her enforcers that none of the other students can stand up to. This certainly bit her in the ass big time.
• Atrocious Alias: "Miki and "Roka" put together is just an anagram for "Kikimora".
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Losing Cat and Amelia affected Boscha a lot more than she's willing to admit, and she immediately tries to change the subject when they're brought up. Amity also shows sadness when she sees the two have been turned into puppets.
• Bad "Bad Acting": An aggravated Terra ends up doing a very poor impression of Eda the Owl Lady during the Collector's game of "Owl House", much to the child's frustration.
  Terra: (flatly) Who's got a pint of apple blood? Hoot hoot! (later) Ooooh, I like musicians!
• Bad Boss: The Collector is not known for his patience, that he can and will turn anyone into a puppet at the slightest provocation, and it's not pretty, though he's still leagues better than Belos. At worst, any lethal effects from their godlike powers are done non-maliciously or out of ignorance for the fragility of mortal life, such as not comprehending that mortals need oxygen to live, and wouldn't survive being teleported to the moon.
• Bait-and-Switch: Belos' new body is faked out twice.
  • First he goes for an unborn Grimwalker, but their body ends up falling apart under the stress immediately.
  • When infiltrating the castle, Belos briefly spies an aggravated Odalia, bemoaning her situation and wishing she could have a chance to prove her worth. Belos rises behind her, commenting that his target will be "quite useful"... before immediately jumping into Puppet Raine's body. It's rather telling that someone even more despicable than she is dislikes her enough to NOT want to possess her.
  • Also occurs during Boscha's confrontation with Amity. The former coldly approaches the latter, looking like she's ready to battle her... and instead, Boscha gets down on her knees and begs Amity to come back to Hexside and be friends with her again.
• Bandage Mummy: Edric is shown in a full-body cast from falling into an empty well.
  Edric: Not empty! (cheerfully) There were ROCKS at the bottom!
• Based on a True Story: The "Owl House" game King teaches the Collector appears to be a retelling of the adventures he, Luz and their friends have had, with himself and the Collector filling in the roles as heroes.
• Batter Up!: Camila puts the bat she took with her to good use, throwing it into Kikimora's face.
• Big Bad Wannabe:
  • Both Boscha and Kikimora end up being this; Boscha wanted to start her own reign and partnered with Kikimora, who's been giving her ideas. However, Boscha's heart isn't exactly into it as much as she thought, and Amity is able to talk her down. Of course, Kikimora reveals Boscha was just a pawn in an attempt to start her own empire, only to be stopped by her and the other students.
  • Odalia tries to take advantage of her present servitude to the Collector to manipulate him into making a "bigger and better" Boiling Isles, but since the Collector has no interest in any such thing, her attempts fall flat and she quickly backs down when she ends up annoying him.
• Big Brother Is Watching: When Belos warns the Collector that King is up to something, he pulls down his cap to spy on King talking with Eda and Lilith about him. He stops spying once he hears that King is considering a permanent solution, but misses King saying he intends to try talking to him.
• Big Damn Reunion: When the Hexsquad returns to Hexside, they are almost immediately greeted by the remaining students who are hiding from the Collector.
  • Willow is greeted by a relieved Viney, who then asks her for help after her orchids came to life and started feuding with the kindergarteners.
  • Gus is approached by Eileen, who asks him if human paper clips are suitable meat substitutes... only to find out they weren't.
  • Amity is then reunited with her twin siblings, who escaped from their family's company to look for her...until Edric fell into an empty well and hurt himself, causing him and Emira to take shelter in Hexside.
• Big Little Brother: As "Miki", Kikimora passes off the Abomatron as her "little sister, Roka".
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: The Owl House has been tagged with insulting graffiti, though considering it's a kid's show, it's not nearly as mean nor creative as it could have been. Highlights include "OWLS R DUMB", "Kiss my Grass", and "BAD WORD".
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Seemingly in a jab at the Disney Company for cutting this show's third season short, the villainous Kikimora goes by the alias "Miki", which is pronounced identically to "Mickey". Mattholomule states that every time they try to change things, "Miki" shoots down their ideas and forces things to remain the same. Luz also accuses them of never having had an original idea in their life.
• Bittersweet Ending: On the sweet side, Luz's Palisman egg finally hatches after she and her mother have a heart-to heart talk, Boscha turns over a new leaf, and King, Hooty, Lilith, and Eda reunite. On the bitter side, Belos is now possessing the Raine puppet and manipulating the Collector through them for his own dark plans, pitting the two sides against each other. The two groups of heroes also have yet to reunite.
• Blaming the Victim:
  Belos: (to Caleb's ghost) Don't... mock me! I tried to save your soul. It's your fault this all happened!
• Blunt "Yes": When Gus finds out about Mattholomule's ideas to help better manage things at Hexside and realizes that he's actually a decent leader, the latter asks the former if he ever had any doubts, to which Gus gives this as his response.
  Gus: Many doubts.
• Body Horror: Although Belos managed to reconstitute his body, it isn't holding together well, either because it was a rush job or because it's finally giving up the ghost after he's had his lifespan extended for so long, to the point that his legs comes off when he's dragging himself back to his base in the Skull.
• Bookends: The heroes spend the episode trying to reach the Collector's Archive House, which resembles a crown or halo floating above the Titan's skull. Just like in the very first episode of the show, the goal is to reach a Titan's crown.
• Breather Episode: Somewhat. Things are a bit lighter and more comedic than the often-gloomy, cynical tone of "Thanks to Them", and the Collector's antics, though dangerous, also make it clear that they're not naturally malicious. The most prominent antagonists, Kikimora and Boscha, are also dangerous, but not that threatening in tone, especially with Boscha's more sympathetic qualities being emphasized. However, the scenes with Belos in them have a decidedly more visceral and unsettling horror feel to them, including visible blood on the knife present in his hallucinations of Caleb and the literal piles of decayed Grimwalker corpses scattered around his lair, one of which partially rots away on-screen when Belos desperately possesses it for sustenance.
• Bridal Carry: Hunter holds Willow like this when he catches her out of the sky after she was knocked off of her staff by Kikimora.
• Call-Back:
  • Willow's habit of ignoring her emotional issues forms the crux of the B-plot.
  • Luz's plan to get to the Titan's skull involves using memory tweezers to get a picture of Philip's teleportation glyph.
  • "Half-a-witch Willow" is brought up again.
  • When they're cornered in the detention pit, Matt casts the same spell Gus used in "Clouds on the Horizon" to swap his and Amity's places, since Boscha is only after one of them. He even mentions that Gus taught him that particular trick.
  • Camila briefly has a fangasm about Cosmic Frontier, which causes Luz to realize her mother was always there to support her, being just as much an outcast for her hobbies as she.
• Calling Your Attacks: Camila shouts "Bruja toss!" before throwing her bat at Kiki, which hits her in the face.
• The Cameo:
  • When Luz wakes up in the Between Realm, she glimpses the silhouette of a winged figure walking across the inverted ceiling, who waves at her just before she's pulled through to the Demon Realm. The following episode reveals that said figure was the Titan's spirit.
  • While she's wearing a mask, one of Boscha's guards appears to be a witch version Anne Boonchuy, having the same hair and skin color as her, and wearing an outfit consisting of blue, green, and red.
• Cardboard Prison: Eda's prison would keep the Owl Beast secure... but for Eda, mostly cured from her transformation? It's practically useless.
• Cathartic Crying: Once the gang and Camila make it to the Boiling Isles, Willow tries to be strong for her friends. Camila tries to tell her that she shouldn't repress her feelings, but Willow insists that she's the reliable one. However, as the journey progresses, Willow begins to lose control of her plant powers to the point where she accidentally encases herself, Hunter, and Gus in vines. When she begins to loathe herself, Hunter breaks free of the vines and rescues Willow. He and Gus then tell her that reliable people also need someone to rely on, and convince her to let her stress out. In a fit of Inelegant Blubbering, she confesses that she misses her dads.
• Cheeky Mouth: Willow's mouth is drawn this way when the Hexsquad walks past the Slayground.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • A three-way example. The Collector's tiara castle being partially formed out of half the Titan's skull, Philip's Glyph array that he used to access said skull in the past with Luz, and the Photo memory magic room all come into play for the Hexsquad's plan to reach the Collector's archives. Using the photo magic on Luz allows them to extract the memory of Philip's Glyph array, allowing them to re-create it and beam themselves straight underneath the castle.
  • A background example, but the ruined archway nearby where young Eda tripped over the buried portal door in her flashback in "Keeping up A-fear-ances" is revealed to be the exit point of the portal in the Gravesfield graveyard, again hinting that Evelyn was a Clawthorne, given it was nearby Eda's family house.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends on the Collector and a Belos-possessed Raine looking on at the newly-arrived Luz and friends, with Belos successfully convincing the Collector that Luz being there is proof that King plans to betray him and bring him down. The Collector decides he wants to play a new game and snaps his fingers for a Smash to Black.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Boscha's We Can Rule Together offer to Amity in the Detention Pit reads off as a WLW version of this trope.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: After stepping back onto the Boiling Isles, Hunter is reminded at every turn of his beloved Flapjack, from sights of red grass to a red cardinal who looks near identical to the palisman.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Belos is shown opening the door of an old hideout with a glyph array by using the slime of his own decaying body as it falls off his finger.
• Condescending Compassion: The passage about the Collectors pulling a Final Solution on the worlds that they're "preserving" if their inhabitants irritate them too much implies that for all their Well-Intentioned Extremist airs, they don't actually care for what said lifeforms want, merely how they can make the Long-Lived Collectors feel superior to them.
• Continuity Cavalcade: When the kids try extracting the memory of the teleportation glyph from Luz, important moments from multiple episodes are seen.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Camila mentions how Luz does taxidermy.
  • Amity mentions Mildred Featherwhyle by name when talking about how she first bonded with Ghost.
  • Camila has the exact same reaction that Luz had upon seeing King for the first time.
    "Ay, que lindo!"
  • Once again, Luz cries out "Not yet" while being forcibly separated from a family member.
  • The fact that Willow used to be a part of the Abomination Track is brought up in her and Gus's story.
  • Bump's Memorial Statue labels him as "Princy B".
  • Emira is wearing a sweater that says "Grom" on it, just like the ones that Skara and her date wore.
  • The twins are no longer wearing their concealment stones.
  • The wall of the photo room includes Willow's memory photos and Luz's awkward hair phase picture. There are also several of the Emerald Entrails, including one of Viney angrily looking at Jerbo that is labeled "traitor".
  • When preparing to use the memory tweezers, Willow reminds Luz "No schemes, no plots, no ruses... and definitely no shenanigans."
  • Gus holds up a photo of Caleb's statue when revealing that he knew about Hunter being a Grimwalker.
  • Camila's tries to cast the ice glyph and mixes it with the light glyph, causing a glyph malfunction like Eda did in "Escaping Expulsion". Her learning glyphs (and struggling) was also shown in the Credits Montage to "Thanks to Them".
  • Boscha brings up how Amity quit the grudgby team when confronting her.
  • The giant Abomination Amity summons when confronted by Boscha is the same size and design as the one she summoned in "Covention", except this time she can do it without her magic being boosted by a construction power glyph.
  • During her talk about all the mistakes she's made, Camila mentions how the family originally moved to Gravesfield because she thought that a nearby hospital would be able to help Manny.
  • At the end of the episode, everyone lists off common fan theories as to the identity of Luz's palisman right before it reveals itself. Amity is the one who suggests it being an otter as she was the only one present during Luz's "otter... with a dark side" gag.
• Costume Evolution:
  • Eda and Lilith have both cut their hair short, and Lilith's has returned to its natural color. They've also taken to wearing new outfits with Eda sporting bandages on her severed right arm.
  • All the Hexside students are still wearing their uniforms, but they're now torn, some of them sporting spiked armor.
    • Skara and Mattholomule incorporated face masks, gloves and knee pads on their right knees. Skara's features come from her flyer derby uniform with the addition of a coven scout mask being used as a pauldron on her left shoulder, and Mattholomule now has Permastubble that has been drawn on with a sharpie.
    • Barcus has swapped out his normal glasses for shades with red frames and has an additional earring on his right ear. There's two bandages on his right cheek, his face is more angular, and he's got a sword holstered on his back.
    • Edric and Emira no longer use concealment stones, showing their true appearances. Additionally, Edric has shaved off his peach fuzz while Emira has her hair braided, is wearing a Grom sweater and boots with purple toes, and the hem of her skirt is torn like Viney's.
    • Boscha's hair is longer and tied in a low, messy ponytail rather than a tight bun, she is wearing a mix of her school uniform and grudgby outfit, and has a headband with crab claws, evoking her palisman.
    • Jerbo simply has a rope belt and fingerless gloves in addition to all the tears on his uniform.
  • For her "Miki" disguise, Kikimora dons a St. Epiderm abomination track uniform. To hide her distinguishing features, she wears a white wig in a ponytail, gloves, and goggles while keeping her mouth uncovered.
  • Odalia's hair is now almost wholly green with blonde streaks on the top of her ponytail, as opposed to the neat white stripe we saw previously.
  • Braxas is now wearing a miniature replica of his father's Warden uniform, complete with a tiny mask.
• Creative Sterility: When Kikimora captures everyone, Luz proceeds to accuse Kikimora of doing little more than copying Belos' fearmongering to amass power.
• Credits Montage: Like in "Thanks to Them", the credits show a series of illustrations based on events from the timeskip, this time on the Boiling Isles;
  • King looking out over the changed Boiling Isles.
  • Boscha and Matt arguing in front of the statue of Bump, with Skara, Jerbo, and Viney watching.
  • King and the Collector having a tea party with the puppet coven heads, King looking concerned and the Collector ecstatic.
  • King with the transformed Eda and puppet Lilith, the Collector looking on in confusion and concern.
  • Skara, Jerbo, Matt, and Barcus fight a Collector's spy, with Boscha hiding behind a wall looking frightened and sad, with Kikimora comforting and/or manipulating her.
  • Jerbo and Matt getting ready for the day in the Hexside bathrooms, Jerbo brushing his teeth and looking at Matt drawing stubble with a marker.
  • Eda giving a very poor haircut to Lilith, with Lilith looking blissfully unaware and Eda looking satisfied. King is sitting on Eda's shoulder giving her a critical look.
  • King looking into a pond showing a reflection of himself, Luz, Eda, and Hooty, all looking like they did in season 1.
  • The Collector alone, floating in front of the Titan's skull and looking up at his castle.
• Cruel Mercy: Terra was briefly spared being turned into a puppet like the other Coven Heads - but only so she could play Eda in the Collector's games.
• Crush Blush: Happens a few times actually:
  • Raine blushes when they see Eda's harpy form for the first time.
  • Luz blushes when she sees Amity cutting loose a bit with some Abomination goo after returning to the Isles.
  • Willow blushes when Hunter performs a Bridal Carry to save her from falling, and later they both blush hard when they are holding hands after Willow thanks Hunter for helping her.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • Camila is so instantly smitten with Stringbean that she falls to her knees and starts cuddling everyone's Palismen while cooing at them in Spanish.
  Camila: (in Spanish) Oh, look at all of mama's precious babies! Come here, come here!
  • Early on, when Camila sees King for the first time, she has the same reaction of Luz when the latter saw him in the first episode (although Luz was less composed back then).
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: While Hunter stresses out about Belos' potential location while pacing outside the Owl House, he hears a noise in the bushes and proceeds to grab his staff, only to remember that Flapjack is gone when he doesn't feel the staff form in his hands.
• Darkest Hour: Despite finally making it back and with Camila joining them, things for Luz and her friends are still looking bad for them. The Collector has turned most of their allies into puppets. Belos is still breathing, despite clearly being in a weakened state. Luz is still having self-loathing thoughts. And Boscha isn't letting the Hexside students improve the Hexside shelter. It's only when Boscha starts helping the Hexsquad, Camila and Luz having a heart-to-heart, and Luz gets her palisman things start to look up. Unfortunately, Belos has possessed Raine's puppet body and tricked the Collector in attacking Luz instead of him. Which means that things are likely going to get worse.
• Demonic Possession: Belos takes control of the Raine puppet in order to get close to the Collector and try to take control of him. When that fails due to the sleeping child waking up, he claims that Raine was brought to life due to the power of the Collector's kindness.
• Determinator: Unable to cast magic cleanly anymore because of his unstable body, with said body falling to literal pieces and his mentality along with it, Belos' iron willpower is the only asset remaining to him that allows him to persist onward and remain a credible threat. It's made clear he didn't have a concrete plan for how to actually enact his Final Solution when he returned to the Isles, just the sheer determination to ensure his efforts weren't All for Nothing. He spends much of the episode desperately staving off his impending destruction by any means necessary, in the sorriest state he's been seen in so far, and only manages to reach the Collector's castle in the end by several strokes of luck. Yet his ability to adapt and prey off of his hosts means he still ends the episode in a position of power, discreetly manipulating the Collector against Luz and the rest when his direct attempt failed.
• Description Cut: As Eda and King lament over how much they miss Luz, Eda states that she's back in the Human Realm with her family, and Lilith adds "At least Luz and her friends are safe and far, far away from this madness." Cut to Luz, her friends, and Camila hiding out at Hexside, which is surrounded by the Collector's floating spies.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: After Kikimora takes over as Boscha's Dragon-in-Chief, she interferes with all of Mattholomule's attempts as reforming their living conditions no matter how sensible his ideas are before eventually trying to arrest him for conspiracy to commit a coup, more concerned with starting her own empire with the Hexside students than maintaining a proper community.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Odalia swore service to the Collector, hoping to be able to manipulate them into aiding her agenda. Unfortunately for her, while this did save her from becoming a puppet, being an Abusive Parent means that she has no backup plan for someone like the Collector, who is powerful enough that she can't do anything to them. Thus, while King is actually able to steer the Collector to less malicious actions on occasion, she's been basically reduced to a maid.
  • Belos' choice to return to the Boiling Isles and finish what he started being an impulsive snap decision in response to Luz's Accidental Truth hitting him right in his emotional soft spot is emphasised here, as it's made apparent that he had no concrete plan for how he was specifically going to do that. Without a host to drain from, he's visibly and mentally falling apart, spending much of his screen time literally falling to pieces and ranting at hallucinations of Caleb and the past Grimwalkers that their fates are not his fault, to the point he would have perished if he hadn't luckily found a single remaining Grimwalker corpse in his old cave hideout, something his dialogue makes clear was a long shot he was gambling on. Without that, he would have perished alone without ever confronting the heroes once more. Even that doesn't do more than sustain him long enough to reach the Collector's tiara castle, and it's revealed he was hoping to try and possess the Collector themself to use their powers for his own gain, an extremely risky move that fails very quickly once they wake up, forcing him to fall back on his old tactic of manipulating a gullible innocent once more.
• Did You Think I Can't Feel?: Part of the intent behind Boscha's pleading to Amity was to make it very clear Amity leaving their friend group did upset her. Boscha may seem like an uncaring bully, but what this means is that she just processes her emotions very differently.
• Distant Reaction Shot: The Penstagram feed during the opening ends with a picture taken from the Knee with the Collector's magic visibly washing over most of the Titan's chest.
• Divided We Fall: Boscha's community is split between students loyal to her, and then those loyal to Mattholomule, who is allied with the Hexsquad, with Skara apparently defected from Boscha's friend circle. The latter group is dissatisfied with how Boscha is running things and is secretly trying to undermine her. However, Boscha's so-called lapdog Miki happens to be Kikimora, who is also secretly plotting against Boscha.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Boscha's desperate plea for Amity to be friends with her again and Amity & Mattholomule's uncomfortable reactions to it gives off the impression of a former lover unable to move on from their ex and begging for another chance.
• A Dog Named "Dog": It's revealed that "Collector" is the name of the Collector's species rather than the one individual we've seen specifically.
• Doorstopper: The Collector's bedtime story book is an outright tower that stretches all the way around the tiny moon he sleeps on, though this is Played With as the pages appear to be made of stone tablets, so the actual contents of the book are likely to be rather reasonable in length despite the presentation being rather absurd. The pages being carved out of stone implies that the book has been around for a long time, its first lines noting how "Collectors live long".
• Dragon with an Agenda:
  • While "Dragon" may be overstating it, it's implied Odalia wants to manipulate the Collector into using their immense power for her agenda, judging by her remark about "remaking the Boiling Isles into something bigger and better". However, since the Collector is vastly more powerful than she is, and does not share her interests, she is easily cowed. And, it's implied he dumped his transformed puppet subjects on her not just to have them moved, but to remind her what happens if she tries any funny business.
  • Belos, when possessing Puppet Raine, manipulates the Collector against Luz and the other heroes when his initial attempt to possess them fails.
  • Kikimora acts as Boscha's advisor, but is mostly just trying to elevate her own power. By the end of the episode she casts aside the facade and simply goes the aggressive route.
• Dramatic Irony: The Hexsquad are concerned about the danger Belos poses based on his threatening last words to them and apparent confidence in succeeding as he fled through the portal, with Hunter in particular wanting to make finding Belos a priority. But in the sections focusing on Belos, thanks to his unstable nature, the witch hunter actually spends most of the episode struggling to survive minute to minute against his inevitable decay, proving his cocky attitude is just a desperate bluff. After a lifetime of feasting on the life force of others, when deprived of a suitable host, Belos' body cannot sustain itself, and will fall to pieces without the heroes even needing to fight him.
• The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party: One image in the credits shows King and the Collector having a tea party with the puppeted Coven Heads, much to the former's discomfort and the latter's glee.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Played With. Though it doesn't obscure his appearance, when pretending to 'play' alongside the Collector and corralling the collateral damage, King dresses in a similar onesie-with-nightcap outfit as he does.
• Due to the Dead: Not technically dead, but Bump was turned into a puppet while protecting the Hexside students. To honor him, the students have constructed a statue in his honor... depicting him wearing sunglasses, caps, and doing a skateboard trick. Camila is not sure if she should be touched.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When Camila first gets a good look at the Boiling Isles, she assumes that the giant skull is what's wrong with what she's seeing, rather than the Collector's sparkly alterations, before being set straight.
  • Touchingly intermixed with Mama Bear when, after crying out in terror, Camila tries to order the kids behind her in case "that thing" was dangerous. She is the absolute least suited to deal with any sort of danger in the Demon Realm out of the six^note (Even if Luz has no glyphs on her, she spent months adjusting to the Boiling Isles compared to Camila's minutes) and objectively speaking should at least let the combat capable mages and/or trained Child Soldier take point.
• Entitled Bitch:
  • While cleaning up the Collector's toys, Odalia wishes there was someone who could recognize her "potential".
  • Even after being exposed, Kikimora rants about how everyone should obey her.
• Et Tu, Brute?: As it turns out, Boscha isn't happy with Amity betraying her and abandoning her. First, she sics Kikimora onto her as revenge, then she begs Amity to come back. Clearly, she doesn't know what to do about Amity.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Not so much "evil" as badly misguided and operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality, but the Collector for the most part just sees the mortals of Bonesborough as amusing potential playmates rather than people with feelings, and gets annoyed with them easily. However, they do genuinely care about King, calling him their best friend, getting angry enough at Terra for insulting him that they turn her into a puppet, and getting upset when Belos-as-Raine convinces them that King is going to betray them.
  • Boscha may not want to acknowledge it, but she does care about Cat and Amelia more than she realizes, and she admits she does miss having Amity around.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played With. When Belos successfully makes it to the Collector's castle, he comes across Odalia directing Raine on how to move the puppetized Coven Heads back into storage. Despite having the choice of taking a flesh-and-blood body once again before him, he instead picks the puppetized Raine as a host instead. While somewhat funny that he was unwilling to possess Odalia even when his life was literally on the line, he has pragmatic reasoning to do so, as Raine is a much more sympathetic human shield against Luz and the others, and is better able to manipulate the Collector with a trustworthy face when his direct possession attempt fails.
• Eviler than Thou: Boscha finds herself at the wrong end of this trope as Kikimora intended to start her own empire, and Boscha was just a pawn. Boscha didn't take kindly to this. Belos is also still the most morally repugnant antagonist of the show, and his successful manipulation of the Collector agaisnt the heroes is played quite seriously in contrast to the antics against Kiki and Boscha.
• Evil Chancellor: Kikimora poses as a student to act as one to Boscha.
• Evil Is Petty: After failing to possess the Collector, Belos instead manipulates him into attacking Luz and the others out of sheer spite.
• Evil Stole My Faith: A shot shows that one of the graffiti on the ruined Owl House is "There is no Titan", equivalent to "There is no God" in human terms. There's also one in Bonesborough saying, "Where's ur Titan now?"
• Extreme Omnivore: There are a couple examples of this Played for Laughs:
  • Apparently the Hexside students have been using human paperclips as a meat substitute, much to the shock of Gus when he returns.
  • The Collector is so out-of-touch with mortal biology that he at least semi-seriously asks King if they eat rocks, fire, or gravity.

F-I

• Failed a Spot Check: The Collector twice.
  • First, he fails to realize Eda effectively escaped already, and she and King have made contact with Lilith.
  • Second, he fails to notice the unusual green splotches on a Belos-possessed Raine's face.
• Fertile Feet: Played for Drama. Plants sprouting around Willow's feet are used as a sign that her magic is slowly going out of control. The more she tries to repress her pain, the worse it gets until it finally overwhelms her and everything is encased in a tomb of vines.
• Final Solution: In the bedtime story about the Collector's species, we're shown the entire story on the page and find out that if the organisms on the worlds they're preserving irritate them too much, the Collectors will "clean the planet and scorch the air." It's also revealed that they waged an extermination campaign against the Titans due to the latter species' ability to negate their magic.
• Fisher King: The Collector REALLY made himself at home on the isles, making the area around the skull lush and colorful.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When the Hexsquad arrives in Bonesborough's town square, some graffiti (obviously written by Boscha) can be seen to right that says "Amelia! Cat! Where r u?", hinting that they were already captured by the Collector. Sure enough, they're among the puppets he's using in his current game when he shows up shortly afterward.
  • While fighting Boscha, Mattholomule uses abomination gloves to catch a rock she kicks at him and Amity: sure enough, it's Amity under an illusion. In fact, the first hints of this is when she and Matt run out of the fog he casts in the opposite positions they were in beforehand, not to mention Matt (really Amity) was composed during the fight while Amity (really Matt) did nothing and wore a panicked expression the whole time.
• Flat "What": Luz's reaction upon seeing that the "Owl Beast" in the Collector's game isn't actually Eda, but Terra being forced to dress up as and pretend to be her.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Hunter rants that saying Belos' name will not suddenly summon an army of ghosts. Later in the episode, Belos is confronted by the silent specters of the previous Golden Guards.
  • The shape of Luz's Palisman Stringbean has been hinted at throughout the show by the title screen itself. The H and O obviously line up to make Owlbert in staff form, but the L and S inversely line up to form a staff with an S shape atop it, hinting that Luz's Palisman would be snake-themed — though it turns out that their Snake form is merely their default form.
  • When Boscha corners Amity and Matt in the detention pit, Matt casts an illusion spell before he and Amity use the smoke to run. If one is paying attention, Amity and Matt have switched places when they pass through the smoke, and "Matt" casts a quick abomination spell to catch the projectile Boscha sent after them with pink spell circles instead of his normal orange. Like in "Clouds on the Horizon", the two have swapped appearances.
  • The fact that there were other Collectors beside the one trapped in the In-Between Realm was hinted at by the Owl Beast's trippy recollection of them being cursed, said Collector figure being far taller and more menacing in appearance than the shorter child Belos interacted with. Furthermore, their relationship with the Titan Trappers and guiding them to enact a Final Solution against the Titan species showed a more malicious nature than the Collector's childlike attitude and love of playing games, hurting people either by carelessness or simply not understanding what mortals can and cannot survive.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • One can pause the Penstagram scroll in the intro to catch the posters.
    Horns_Not_Thorns [picture of people fleeing]

    "Day of unity [three thumbs down] #IWantARefund"
    Eyeleeen [Hexside students watching the Collector's spies arrive at Hexside, Skara pointing out the window with a frightened look]

    "What are those things???? #WeirdWeather, #Time2Panic, #Bye [three waving hands]"
    friendly_neighbourhood_pointyhead [Hexside staff fighting the spies, Boscha visible in the frame]

    "OHMYTITAN OH NO NO NONOONO #Hexside, #DayOfUnity, #Help"
    Daily_Knee_Views [The Collector's magic spreading from the skull, as seen from the Knee]
  • In the scene showing the Collector and King descending into Bonesborough on a star, Amelia and Cat can be seen, both turned into puppets. Amity actually notices them, and winces slightly.
  • In Boscha's throne room, one of the guards that can be spotted in the background is a cameo from Anne Boonchuy.
  • When Belos enters his old cave hideout and crawls to the room where he 'grew' the Grimwalkers' bodies, the knife that he killed Caleb with can be seen stabbed into a pile of research books in the background, next to a partial ribcage lying on a ledge. It's hinted this ribcage is all that's left of Caleb's original body after using so many pieces of it in creating the Grimwalkers.
• Gave Up Too Soon: When Belos tries to manipulate the Collector by convincing them that King is going to betray them, they eavesdrop on King when he's talking with Eda and Lilith. While Eda and Lilith wants to trap the Collector again, King doesn't want to do that, which pleases the Collector, but King continues to say trapping them won't work and they need to be stopped for good and he knows a permanent solution. After the Collector stops eavesdropping on King with the idea that Belos might be right, King continues again to say that the Collector is just a sad and lonely kid and he's going to try to talk with them to get things back to normal.
• Given Name Reveal: Played for Laughs. Thanks to Boscha's announcement over the school intercom, the Hexsquad learns that, when everyone addressed "Mattholomule" as such, they were on a Full-Name Basis with him; his name's actually Matt Tholomule.
  Gus: (slowly turning to look at him) Wait. Has Tholomule been your last name this whole time?!
  (Matt smiles, making a "that's right!" gesture)
• Goal in Life:
  • As it turns out, Amity didn't know what she wanted to do with her life and merely wanted the power to make the choice for herself. This is how she was able to bond with Ghost.
  • Thanks to her heart-to-heart with Camila, Luz finally figures out hers, which causes her Palisman egg to hatch at last: all she's ever really wanted was to be understood.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: We have Luz and her allies as the Good, Boscha and Kikimora as the Bad (though Kikimora was the more dangerous of the two), and Belos as the Evil. The fourth party, the Collector, certainly isn't good, but doesn't squarely fall into the latter two categories.
• Grand Finale: The second of three extra-length specials that collectively serve as this for the series.
• Great Offscreen War: The Reveal that there is (or was) more than one being of the same race as the Collector, the storybook passages implying that they were more actively malicious than the current remaining child, Bill and the Titan Trappers' worship of the Collector's image, and the apparent antagonism between them and the Titans, all imply one of these occurred between the Titans and the Collectors. The elder Collectors' absence from the present and the landmasses formed from the deceased Titan bodies implies that it was a Mutual Kill on both sides, leaving King and the Collector as the sole remaining survivors of the conflict.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The other Collectors are, by all accounts, long since gone, but their impact can be felt in the modern Demon Realm to this day, namely in how their war to wipe out the Titans are the reason that the Boiling Isles even exists.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Collector shows signs of jealousy at how close Luz is with King; they gets annoyed at being reminded that King only lets her hold Francois, they're flabbergasted when Belos/Raine tells him that she returned to the Demon Realm, and upon seeing that for themself, he falls for Belos's lies that Luz has arrived to help King defeat him for good, sealing their decision to "play a new game".
• Gross-Up Close-Up: When Belos is wandering through the forest, we get a very up close look at his rotting skeletal face.
• Guilt Complex: Luz blames herself for messing up her plan, even though it was only because Kikimora and Boscha ambushed her and her allies as opposed to anything Luz did.
• Hates Being Alone: The Collector asks King at the very least to allow Francois to watch over him, citing how he hates being alone, likely from having been sealed away for a long time and being the only known member of his species on the Boiling Isles.
• Haunting the Guilty: Belos is haunted by the specter of his murdered brother Caleb and the many Grimwalkers he's created from Caleb's remains. To drive the point home even further, Caleb perpetually has a bloodied dagger floating above his head. Belos denies his guilt, blaming Caleb for his own death, but his attempts to silence the ghosts only hasten his unstable body to weaken further.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Boscha was always The Bully at Hexside, but here, she's taken over as the leader of the remaining students residing there and proves to be pretty ineffective at it. By the episode's midpoint she seems to have gone full villain, allying with Kikimora to enforce her rule on the school and knocking out and capturing the heroes to lock them in the detention pits. Ultimately, though, Amity is able to convince her to back down and rethink her actions via Talking the Monster to Death, and then she learns that Kiki was planning to betray her eventually anyway so she could build her own empire. This is enough to get Boscha to lead the other students in defeating her so Luz and co. can continue on with their mission to get to the Skull.
• Heel Realization: Belos being haunted by hallucinations (or actual ghosts) of his past victims imply that his current sorry state and lack of success have forced him to confront the fact he is the villain, not the hero, of the story who has committed too many sins to redeem himself... which just drives him ever onward for the vain hope that his final plan will somehow make up for it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Boscha's teammates perform one when she's about to be turned into a puppet, with Amelia shoving her out of the way and Cat taking the hit herself, and then Amelia quickly being hit too.
• He's Back!: Following her depressive slump in "Thanks to Them"— heck, after putting down and blaming herself ever since the trip into Belos' mind where she discovered she indirectly had a hand in helping that monster with his plans for genocide on top of forcing herself to follow through on keeping her promise to Camila, Luz starts to recover after Camila talks to her and admits she failed to understand her daughter. Their conversation about making mistakes helps Luz figure out her Goal in Life and she soon gains both her staff and her palisman, giving her some extra firepower to face Kikimora. Before then, in a downplayed example, returning to the Boiling Isles allows Luz to use her glyphs at full strength once more, putting her back on even footing with her friends.
• Hijacked by Ganon: After being seemingly usurped by the Collector as the Big Bad since the Season 2's finale, Belos manages to worm his way back as the true Big Bad by manipulating the Collector as his pawn, albeit it's made clear that his control over the godlike child is tenuous at best, and Belos himself is making his plan up as he goes because of his unstable existence preventing him from doing anything by himself.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Belos, after possessing Puppet Raine, immediately moves to possess the Collector. When this fails due to the Collector waking up and restraining him, Belos settles for turning the Collector against Luz so she can't stop his plans anymore.
• Holding Hands: Willow and Hunter hold pinkies after he previously told her that she and the others "mean the world" to him, and she confesses that he means a lot to her as well.
• Holy Halo: The Collector's new castle floats above the Titan's skull, shaped like a spiked tiara, evoking the image of a halo. It both references how the Titan was an object of worship for the Isles, and the very first episode of the show. In "A Lying Witch and a Warden", the goal was to reach the crown of a Titan. Now the goal is yet again to reach the Titan's crown, albeit the stakes are much higher.
• Horrifying the Horror: When King gets to the part of the Collector's book about what the Collectors do to those who oppose them, the Collector we know quickly asks King to skip this part with a terrified expression and tone of voice, indicating that despite his power, he is scared of his older kin. Given they were apparently much more malicious with their godlike abilities and are apparently the ones responsible for the Titan genocide, it's not hard to put them in a similar category of malice as Philip/Belos himself.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The Collector understands the basics of how mortals work, but struggles with the fine details. They know that mortals need to eat, but doesn't know what. They know that mortals breathe, but doesn't grasp that they need air and can't simply "hold their breath".
• Hypocritical Humor: Kikimora calls Matt "Little Mattholomule", despite her being smaller and shorter than he is even in her "Miki" disguise.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: It turns out that this is Luz's true deepest wish (and in hindsight, the main reason why she ran away to the Demon Realm in the first place). For most of her life, she felt she couldn't connect with people, especially with her mother, because of her weirdness, and she believed that she could just bring misery to everyone around her just by merely existing. But once Camila assured her that's okay to make mistakes, and that she was wrong about forcing her to suppress her quirks out of a misguided, yet genuine desire to protect her from the same hardships she went through in her youth, Luz finally realized that the only thing she ever wanted in her entire life was to be understood and accepted for who she was. This in turn caused her Palisman to awake from her egg, revealing herself as a snake-like shapeshifter.
• I Want My Mommy!: Willow, when finally letting loose all of her suppressed emotions that have caused her powers to go haywire, sobs, "I miss my dads!", who she had earlier discovered were turned into puppets like most of the rest of the Isles' citizens.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • While it's condescending and snide on the surface, Boscha low-key telegraphs that she knows what Willow is going through. When Boscha offers to give her advice, Willow (taking it as her bully's opportunity to kick her while she's down) turns down any advice she might. Justified, as Boscha doesn't exactly have a good track record for ever saying anything kind, encouraging, or heartening to Willow.
  • The hallucinations of Caleb and the Grimwalkers that his fraying mentality conjures up (or possibly his dwindling stability bringing him closer to death and his waiting victims) imply that some part of Philip does recognize how far he's fallen from the 'noble quest' he started out on when he first tried to 'rescue' his brother. However, he's committed far too much of himself to ever consider turning back or stopping now, determined to eke out some victory before his inevitable passing and ensuring that all his efforts weren't for naught in the end.
• Immediate Sequel:
  • Played with during the opening scene. While there was an episode in between it, it shows King's perspective after King blasted Luz and the others to safety at the end of "King's Tide".
  • Played straight with the main plot of the episode. It picks up immediately where the Hexsquad left off in "Thanks to Them".
• Inelegant Blubbering: When Willow lets out her pent up emotions, she full on ugly cries with tears streaming down her face as she wails loudly.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Downplayed. Luz tells Amity that she'll find Eda and King, "no matter how long it takes", indicating that she expects it to take a while to find them... which is promptly followed up by Hunter shouting "It's Eda and King!" from outside, having seen them on a passing shooting star. Though, once the group catches up, they find that "Eda" is actually Terra being forced to cosplay as her by the Collector, and though King is with them, they head back to the castle before Luz can talk to him, without even seeing her and the others at all.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Luz undergoes a massive example of this after her conversation with Camila. For Luz's entire life up to this point, she always felt a major disconnect between herself and the mother that she loved so much. Additionally, when Camila starts her pep talk, Luz is once again blaming herself for an unlucky set of circumstances. As such both hearing that just because she makes mistakes, it doesn't mean she is a bad person in addition to also finally hearing her mother express her wholehearted support for Luz's authentic self and admission that she was wrong to try to send Luz to Summer Camp serves as a massive healing moment for her. In fact, Camila's understanding prompts Luz to realize that understanding is what she always wanted, and this revelation results in her Palismen Stringbean awakening.
• Irony:
  • The main conflict in season 1 was driven by Lilith feeling inferior to Eda in magic skill. Here, Lilith shows that she is more accomplished than Eda in one field, Potions, as she was able to brew the elixirs for Eda's curse from scratch using limited supplies, whereas Eda always got it from her apothecary and did not know how to make it on her own. Potions happens to have been both Clawthornes' chosen subject at Hexside, and Eda's profession in her adult life (when she wasn't selling junk).
  • An irritable Hunter mocks the Hexsquad for not referring to Belos by name, saying that it's not like a swarm of ghosts will suddenly appear if they do. Belos meanwhile, actually is being haunted by the ghosts of his many, many victims, something which noticeably rattles him.
  • For all Boscha's taunting to Willow about "watching her back" and to Luz about "expecting the unexpected", she clearly didn't take her own advice and anticipate that Kikimora was playing her for a fool and would eventually double-cross her.
  • Luz, the primary Token Human of the Boiling Isles, has a palisman that resembles not a common Earth creature like her friends', but instead has quite the unique mythological creature instead.
• It's All My Fault: After Kikimora's ambush and attack in the detention pit, Luz actually blames herself for it, claiming her plan to infiltrate the Collector's castle failed before it even began. This is what convinces Camila to talk to her about her not wanting to leave the Demon Realm right then and there.
• It's Personal: Since the Collector (or a member of their species) is the reason why it was turned into a curse and indirectly trapped it into Eda's body, as soon as the Owl Beast sees them, it overtakes Eda while she's in harpy mode, clearly to get its revenge.

J-O

• Jerkass Has a Point: Although she leads in with calling Willow a "half-a-witch" again, Boscha (in her own bully-some way) tries to telegraph to Willow that she knows what she's going through. It turns out she's secretly talking about herself, as it's later revealed she's secretly hiding how insecure and lonely she feels:
  Boscha: Leading isn't easy, is it? All your time is spent helping the team, keeping people from fighting, planning your next move. And Titan forbid you show any weakness, everyone else falls apart.
• Jerkass Realization: A mild one. Hunter is a Perpetual Frowner in a gloomy, unhappy mood for most of the episode due to his desire to stop Belos and, implicitly, his lingering despair from losing Flapjack. Later, his nonplussed reaction to Willow attempting to cheer him up with a picture of him and Flapjack inadvertently causes her to get upset and leave, thinking she just made things worse for him instead of better, and before Hunter can catch up with her to straighten things out, they're all captured by Kiki and thrown into the detention pit. Seeing Willow so distraught about not being able to control her powers and calling herself "half-a-witch" causes Hunter to tear up, and after he saves her from the vines, he is quick to reassure her that she didn't do anything wrong and, despite him having difficulty expressing it, the rest of the Hexsquad means the world to him.
• Junior Counterpart: Kikimora is trying to set herself up as a tyrant the exact same way Belos did, by exploiting and manipulating a lonely and vulnerable child. Luz even calls her out on just following in Belos' footprints without any original ideas of her own. The difference is that Kikimora is far less serious or threatening, and Boscha's power is a drop in the bucket compared to the Collector's.
• The Klutz: It was only a matter of time until this trope would seriously get Edric in trouble. He was running from the Collector's spies, which caused him to trip and take a huge fall into an empty well.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Once it's clear that she's starting to annoy him, Odalia immediately stops trying to influence the Collector and submissively bows in response to his demand that she make pizza bagels.
• La Résistance: The Hexside students who avoided the fate of most of the rest of the Isles of being turned into puppets have been hiding out at the school. It's subverted, though, because while Luz and co. want to lead the kids to be this by finding a way to stop the Collector and rescuing everyone who's been made a puppet, the school's self-proclaimed leader, Boscha, is refusing to mobilize any effort to do so. Her "plan" is to just keep residing in the school and avoiding the Collector's scouts indefinitely, justifying it with a defeatist attitude that trying to stop him will just get them captured too. What's more, she won't even listen to Matt and Jerbo's suggestions to at least make the school more livable, thanks to "Miki" (Kiki) getting in her ear.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Odalia's been reduced to being essentially a maid in the Collector's home. Given how she abused her children and husband, tried to kill Luz, and sold out the Boiling Isles to Belos, not much sympathy is felt by the audience. Even better, because she spent so much time ordering her children around and being distant to them unless she wanted something from them, she has no idea how to handle the mentality of a childish being that can force anybody around it to do whatever they want, whereas King has far more success in part because he knows how to treat the Collector as a child in playtime rather than a powerful asset to re-shape the Boiling Isles with. She is even dismissed by Belos, who instead goes after a literal puppet of Raine to use as his body rather than hers.
  • Belos' invincible status and unshaken belief in himself as a hero is now decaying before his eyes. His monstrous body is falling apart far more quickly than he anticipated, and he is now seeing ghosts of Caleb and the other Grimwalkers, haunting him for his crimes. While Belos still persists enough to possess Raine's puppet form, he now fears the memory of Caleb and the possibility that he was wrong all along.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Among the guesses everyone makes about what Luz's palisman will be are a dragon, a bird, an otter, a bat, and a snake, all of which were popular guesses by the fans as to what Luz's palisman would be before the episode aired. As it turns out, because Stringbean is a "snake shifter", all of them are technically correct.
• Les Collaborateurs: Once the Collector takes over the Boiling Isles, Odalia becomes his servant and "mom" to avoid becoming a puppet. She also tries to convince him to use his powers to fulfill her ideas, but he doesn't care.
• A Lighter Shade of Black:
  • While what the Collector is doing to the people of the Isles is rather horrible, they're still alive, unlike what Belos would have done to them — and is still hellbent on achieving regardless of the odds.
  • They're also this to their own species, as while the other Collectors would have pulled a Final Solution on the Demon Realm for resisting them the Collector just wants to play.
• Long-Lived: The book King reads to the Collector outright says that "Collectors live long", showing that the Collector seemingly having been a child for longer than the Isles themselves have existed is apparently nothing new for their species.
• Luminescent Blush: Luz blushes when she sees Amity with the Abomination goo. Hunter and Willow also share a blush when Willow tells Hunter he means a lot to her as well.
• Made Myself Sad: Gus starts tearing up when his and Willow's attempts to offer Camila advice end up reminding him that he has no idea where his father is or if he's safe.
• Manipulative Bastard: When his attempt to use his body-hijacking ability against the Collector fails, Belos falls back on his old trick of putting on a friendly and sympathetic face to manipulate a gullible innocent, using his knowledge of Luz and the other's arrival to deceive the Collector into playing a more malicious 'game' against her and King.
• Madness Mantra: As Willow becomes more stressed out, her plant powers accidentally encase Gus, Hunter, and eventually herself. She repeats "I can do this" over and over while trying to fix the problem until she gives up and devolves into self-loathing.
• Magic Misfire: When Camila tries to make an ice glyph for the first time, she gets the shape wrong and it releases a blast of energy into the ceiling.
• Man of Kryptonite: As it turns out, Titan magic can actually cancel out Collector magic, so the Collectors waged a war to wipe them out.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear if the visions Belos sees of Caleb and the Grimwalkers that he killed are just hallucinations or their actual spirits. Given the nature of the Isles, either is possible or even both.
• Mirror Character:
  • Of all people, Boscha becomes one to the Collector, albeit on a smaller scale. Like the Collector, Boscha is a scared and vulnerable child who doesn't want to be alone, Boscha having lost all of her friends over the past few months and the Collector having spent millennia in an empty dimension. Both have been given more power than is probably good for them, Boscha as the leader of the Hexside survivors, a position she is not really interested in, and the Collector with their godlike power, and that power and loneliness leaves them vulnerable to being manipulated by Belos and Kikimora respectively, adults who pretend to care for them but only want to use them for selfish ends. Even Boscha wanting to reconnect with Amity despite her disinterest, both because she's lonely and to regain some sense of normalcy from her past, could be read as a parallel to the Collector treating King as his best friend, a sentiment King does not reciprocate, both because the Collector is sick of being alone and because they "always wanted to play with" King before their imprisonment.
  • To an extent, she also winds up mirroring Philip Wittebane, and specifically his hero-worship of Caleb. Both characters demonstrate an unhealthy attachment towards their chosen idol/ally, brought about by a massive shift in their status quo and a partial desire to 'return to normal' by keeping them by their side. They disregard their own wishes and are willing to even fight them to prevent them 'leaving them' again, covering up a deep loneliness and insecurity underneath. The difference is that Boscha is able to be talked down by Amity and be convinced to accept her former friend as she truly is, whilst Philip rejected the reality of who Caleb truly was, to the extent of murdering him and then tried to remake him into his 'better version' of his brother in his idealized image.
• Missed Him by That Much: Luz comes out of hiding and just misses the Collector and King flying away on a star after their game of pretend.
• Musical Nod: When Luz and the Hexsquad gang are working together to draw Philip's teleportation glyph, a snippet of the instrumental song "Amity vs. Hunter" from "Eclipse Lake" is playing in the background.
• Musical Pastiche: When Camila mentions the "Astral Oath" from Cosmic Frontier, the background music bears an uncanny resemblance to the main theme from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: When the Collector needs to spy on King, he magically gazes upon him from a completely different area. There had been no previous indication he had this ability.
• Never My Fault: Belos says to the hallucination of Caleb (with a bloody dagger over his head) that he tried to save the latter's soul and that it was Caleb's fault for what happened, not his. Ditto for the additional ghosts of past Grimwalkers that haunt the corpse-filled corridors of his old cave lair, dismissively telling them all to 'shut up'. Though it's later implied that this is something he's desperately telling himself to suppress his guilt.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: Eda playfully pretends to be a puppet alongside the Coven heads.
• Non-Malicious Monster: 'Monster' is stretching it quite a bit, but despite the danger they're capable of unleashing with their powers, the Collector's nature as a simple child without any overt maliciousness in them is emphasized quite a bit. Rather than destroying Eda in her Owl Beast form, they've apparently kept her imprisoned and un-transformed like has happened with so many other inhabitants of the Isles, and even come up with the idea to feed her pizza bagels during her captivity (after having to remember that mortals don't eat stuff like rocks or gravity instead).
• Not Helping Your Case: Camila tries to make it look like she likes the Boiling Isles, but is unable to stop herself from freaking out over all the weird stuff there.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Camila gets this twice. The first time, she has the exact same reaction as Luz upon first seeing King, and second, when helping Luz discover the turning point that allows Stringbean to hatch, she accidentally admits she's a massive nerd herself.
  • King tells Eda and Lilith that, while for a while he was scared of making the Collector mad, he can relate to the Child from the Stars because they're both powerful beings who are also kids with no others of their kind around. This is a big part of why he wants to try Talking the Monster to Death instead of fighting them.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: In the Collector's storybook that King reads, it's revealed that the Collector species studies and preserves lifeforms to ensure they never truly die off, but a passage shown on-screen that King doesn't read is that if these lifeforms become bothersome, they will be exterminated, implying the Collectors' mission of preservation is paper-thin.
• Obfuscating Disability: King has been spending the past several months protecting Eda from the Collector's "games" by claiming that she's stuck in Owl Beast form. In reality, Lilith has been giving her a steady supply of homemade elixirs.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Edric told Amity that after she and Alador left Blight Industries, he and Emira managed to escape from the factory (and their grounding) to search for them, but were forced to retreat to Hexside after being cornered by the Collector's spies and Edric hurting himself afterwards.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Luz when she realizes that the smell Camila noticed is sleeping nettles.
  • Played for Laughs. After Luz nearly hits them with a massive energy blast with her new staff, Gus, Willow, and Hunter are shown to have subtle panic at the idea for reasons even they don't fully understand.
• Once More, with Clarity: In the Collector's palace, a series of murals showing their species' activities decorate the walls... one of which is a complete version of the wall art in the temple where King hatched — showing the fire-breathing monster to have been a Titan and the warrior fighting it to indeed have been a Titan Trapper.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: When the Belos-possessed Raine manipulates the Collector into spying on King, he stops before seeing that King doesn't want to hurt the Collector, but just try to talk him down. Belos then gaslights the Collector into believing that King and Luz intend to kill them, causing the Collector to angrily declare they intend to play a new game.

P-S

• Paper-Thin Disguise: Kikimora's "Miki" persona visibly possesses her head shape, fang, skin tone, height, and voice. In fact, Luz recognizes her the moment she starts laughing.
• Parents as People: Invoked. In order to assure Luz that making mistakes isn't the end of the world, Camila starts naming off all the times she made mistakes, among them being how they moved to Gravesfield to be closer to the 'fancy hospital' that would hopefully help Manny only for it to be in vain. Second, to that, she admits that giving in to the pressure of sending Luz to Reality Check Camp was also a mistake unto itself. And in the process, she reveals she's secretly a Cosmic Frontier nerd. Ultimately, her opening up to Luz about how her own beloved mother isn't perfect not only strengthens their bond but also has the desired effect of lifting Luz's spirit.
• Pet the Dog: Boscha is shown to rule Hexside with an iron fist, turning down every suggestion from the other students. However, the presence of the statue of Bump seems to imply that, like her fellow students, she respected him enough to honor his sacrifice. And her initial objection to launching a rescue operation is that she doesn't want to risk losing anymore students.
• Pillar of Light: When Luz's Palisman awakens, it generates a column of purple energy, which allows Kikimora to figure out where she's hiding.
• Play-Along Prisoner: Eda and King pretend that Eda is still stuck in her Owl Beast form, allowing Eda to make a hideout for herself and Lilith.
• Pocket Dimension: The Collector's bedroom appears to be a miniature universe with a single planetary body.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Collector turns against the party after hearing King saying that he thinks he has a "more permanent solution" to the Collector. What he means is "sit down to talk to the Collector and try to convince them what they're doing is wrong". To be fair to the Collector, saying this in a grim tone while giving a sinister glance at an image of a Titan killing a Collector probably didn't help.
• Possession Burnout: When Belos tries to possess what seems to be an unfinished/failed Grimwalker to stabilize himself, it falls apart almost immediately. It does grant him a few more moments of stability to reach the Collector's castle, but it's implied that the instability of Belos' undead abomination of a body is swiftly reaching a Point of No Return, and he literally cannot keep sustaining himself on bodies living or dead for much longer. Raine seems to hold up relatively well, but it's implied that the only reason for that is that the Collector's magic is "preserving" them and reducing or negating the damage.
• Possessing a Dead Body: Belos possesses what is implied to be an unfinished or deceased Grimwalker (the hand protruding from the ground appears to be rotting, and as he climbs out of the ground its shadow shows it's rotted to bones from the waist down) to stabilize himself, but it barely lasts a few seconds after emerging before the flesh falls off the bones. What little essence he absorbed is barely enough to let him reach the Collector's castle, and it's blatantly clear that Belos is Living on Borrowed Time, barely able to threaten anybody if he's not possessing a host anymore.
• Power Incontinence: Willow holding in her own fear, sorrow, and pain at the state of the Boiling Isles for the sake of being The Reliable One on the team causes her powers to increasingly go haywire until she eventually has a breakdown and loses control of them completely. Hunter and Gus are able to talk her down, and once she lets out those pent-up feelings, she regains control.
• The Power of Friendship: Hunter manages to teleport himself, Gus, and Willow to safety out of the school's detention basement. He first assumes it was because of this before Willow corrects him that it was "the Power of Flapjack".
• Properly Paranoid: After seeing The Collector and King fly off in Bonesborough, Hunter urges the Hexsquad to follow them as Belos is probably trying to reach The Collector. At first he's wrong, as while Belos journeys to the Skull, it's to gain a new body from a spare grimwalker. Hunter ultimately ends up being right when Belos reaches the Archive House, possesses Puppet Raine, and tries to possess The Collector only to fail and manipulate them again to take down the kids.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • One scene has Amity going "Oh. My. Titan." in response to seeing her older brother as a Bandage Mummy stumbling towards her.
  • The Collector emphasizes their disinterest in Odalia's suggestion to make the Boiling Isles 'bigger and better' this way, dramatically ordering her to feed the Owl Beast instead.
    The Collector: Pi-zza. Bagels!.
• Puppet Permutation: The Collector turns his victims into living dolls. We see this happen to Bump, alongside other Hexside instructors, and the transformed coven heads (including Raine) and Hooty are also seen.
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • Luz's staff takes on a purple hue, and we don't actually see the palisman in it for some time because they're surrounded in a ball of purple light. When she accidentally releases an energy blast, it carves a path of destruction as big if not bigger than the Arm Cannon on Kikimora's Abomatron. When she finally hatches, she's a purple snake-themed shapeshifter, meaning she's quite literally every animal-themed Palisman form in one.
  • The Collector dresses constantly in a purple onesie outfit, and has even forced the last remaining Titan to dress similarly to match during 'playtime'.
• The Reliable One: Willow's status as this, which has been displayed in several prior episodes, is heavily Deconstructed here. Willow is just as upset and afraid about the state of the Boiling Isles under the Collector as everyone else is, but she tries very hard to hold her negative feelings in so she can be the strong, emotionally-put-together friend that everyone in the group relies on. Her not addressing her own emotional needs results in her increasingly losing control of her powers until she has a meltdown and accidentally traps Gus and Hunter with her vines. Luckily, the two of them are able to calm her down and encourage her to let out all the feelings she's been suppressing, and once she does, she recovers and regains control.
  Gus: Willow! Reliable people need someone to rely on, too. Just let it out! We'll be fine!
• The Remnant: Graffiti stating "Emperor's Coven wuz Here" indicates there are still some isolated holdouts existing under the banner here and there. Otherwise, the Emperor's Coven has ceased to officially exist as a government, nor do they control any territory.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Barring the Clawthorn family and the Collector (who are aware of them having gotten stranded on Earth), everyone assumed that the Hexsquad were either killed or turned into puppets in the several months since the Day of Unity. Multiple students express surprise when they show up at Hexside.
• Repression Never Ends Well:
  • Willow's attempts to be strong for her friends' sakes while repressing her own distraught, horrified feelings about the situation in Bonesborough causes her control of her Green Thumb powers to gradually slip, until she suffers from complete Power Incontinence and accidentally traps Hunter and Gus in vines, and then her subsequent panic and attempts to fix it just make it worse until she herself is also consumed by her own vines. It's only once Hunter uses his powers to escape and free her, and he and Gus both encourage her to stop suppressing her feelings, that she's able to calm down and reign her powers back in.
  • Belos has been repressing his guilt of killing his brother for over four centuries, but after his past is brought to the forefront of his mind several times since the Day of Unity, this guilt begins to manifest as hallucinations of Caleb (and later, the Grimwalkers) coldly looking down on Belos as his body begins to fall apart. Belos' attempts to suppress these ghosts did nothing but sped up the decay of his body and declining sanity.
• The Reveal:
  • The Collector's big storybook reveals that their name is actually the collective term for their entire species, and there once used to be more beings like them with apparently similar or greater immense magical abilities. Said storybook also implies the other Collectors were a lot more knowingly malicious with their abilities, implying that the Owl Beast being transformed into a curse and the extermination of the Titans were the result of their actions rather than the Child from the Stars.
  • We later learn that Titan magic can actually negate Collector magic, which is why they conducted said extermination to begin with.
  • When Amity got her staff, she couldn't bond with Ghost as she didn't respond to her desires to be a great witch or a writer like Mildred Featherwhyle. It was only when she admitted she just wanted to be able to choose her future for herself that she became bonded to her palisman.
  • Among the mistakes Camila made in her life are scheduling a wisdom tooth surgery the day before her wedding with Manny, getting road rage and cursing out Luz's principal, and of all things, selling drinks for a pyramid scheme for three years. On top of all those, she reveals to Luz that she was talked into moving to Gravesfield in order for Manny to be close to the better hospital, which ended up being All for Nothing.
• Rewatch Bonus: During the Penstagram scroll at the beginning, a post from the pointyheaded Hexside student is shown with a photo taken over the shoulders of Boscha and an unnamed student wearing a construction hat, showing the Hexside staff fighting the Collector's spies. A bit later in the episode, a flashback shows when this happened, as the pointyhead and the construction student were the ones to bring a shocked Boscha to safety while the teachers held off the spies.
• Riches to Rags: "Rags" is an exaggeration here, but Odalia has been practically demoted from the head of a successful company (which has been destroyed) and trusted servant of the Emperor to "Mamadalia" — someone who has little sway over the Collector and is around to essentially clean up their messes.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • When Luz realizes when talking with Camila that her true goal is to be understood, her Palisman egg hatches into a "snake shifter", AKA a creature capable of Voluntary Shapeshifting with a snake-like Shapeshifter Default Form, who can be whoever or whatever she wants to be.
  • Belos briefly gains a bit of stability for himself by possessing a failed Grimwalker corpse left behind in his lair, before it swiftly falls to pieces from the strain. Its features aren't seen, but the Shadow Discretion Shot of its melting body indicates that its facial shape was fairly close to Caleb's own. This shows how Philip is still parasitically clinging onto Caleb's image to keep living even 400 years after his death, no matter how unfeasible it is as a long-term solution for his problems.
  • The Belos-possessed Raine walks down a corridor filled with Murals depicting the Titan-Collector conflict, which has actively shaped the Demon Realm and bares a resemblance to the Self-Serving Memory portraits that were shown within his Mindscape. The true stakes of the conflict present in the Demon Realm has evolved so far beyond the initial witch hunter/witch conflict that dominated the first two seasons, and Belos' comparatively petty motivation for his grand ambitions, highlight him as a still-living vestigial remnant of a bygone era, whose poisonous actions still continue to haunt the narrative, much like the Collector species' actions inform the current crisis situation in the Boiling Isles.
  • Holding grief and guilt within is unhealthy, and the episode visually depicts it as magic uncontrollably leaking out of the person's body, most prominently below the feet. Willow's repressed grief and inadequacy manifest as plants growing out of her footsteps while Belos' repressed guilt manifests as his body melting off his bones, causing him to slowly fall apart.
  • After Belos declares that it's Caleb's fault for his predicament, he attacks the Caleb phantom, but the specter remains intact while Belos' hand falls off from his arm. Then Belos convulses in pain and kneels before Caleb, who looks down upon him with contempt. This highlights that Caleb is the only person beyond Belos' control, and Belos fears his brother's judgment.
• Sanity Slippage: During his desperate search to find a new body to inhabit, whatever was left of Belos' sanity has gone to pot, given that he now sees hallucinations of his brother Caleb and all the Grimwalkers he murdered. However, this doesn't affect his mentality enough to stop his insane quest, and once within a stable living host like Raine, his unraveling mentality is apparently strengthened once he has fresh life to drain.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Once Belos possesses the body of puppet-Raine, he/they get this at several points when attempting to turn the Collector against King and then Luz.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Gus has known that Hunter was a Grimwalker since the Day of Unity and his brief peek inside Belos' mind but was keeping it a secret until Hunter was ready to admit it himself. He hinted towards this several times in "Thanks to Them", most notably using Cosmic Frontier, and Engineer O'Baily, as a medium to try and get Hunter to open up about his situation, and not being surprised when Luz admitted Hunter's Grimwalker nature in the flooded graveyard. However, it's unknown how much of Belos' memories he got a look at, and whether he knows what Caleb, Hunter's progenitor, was really like.
• Senseless Sacrifice: When the Collector fires off a spell towards Lilith, Hooty immediately shields her with his body and becomes the first victim of the Puppet Permutation... followed shortly by Lilith, who gets hit with a second spell. Though she's had an Unexplained Recovery later in the episode, while Hooty has not.
• Series Continuity Error: Among the posted photographs is one of Amity hugging Willow when they were kids, previously the impetus for the shenanigans in "Understanding Willow". However, in that episode, child Amity is shown with a full head of brown hair, whereas in the photo here she's shown with her Season 1 hairstyle — green with brown roots.
• Ship Tease: Taken to a head in regards to Hunter/Willow, where they tell each other that they 'mean the world' to each other and link pinkies. Whether it is a Relationship Upgrade is unclear.
• Shadow Archetype: Again, Belos embodies the heroes' worst qualities. Specifically, Willow's handling of grief and guilt. Both try to keep their unresolved issues deep within themselves, causing magic to leak out from their bodies. And the more they deny these issues, the more unstable and uncontrollable their magic becomes. The key difference is that Willow has reliable friends who encourage her to express her grief and fears while assuring her that she is better than she thinks, while Belos has no one to help him now thanks to his backstabbing nature, and continues to deny his guilt even as his body decays faster and Caleb's ghost haunts him for his sins.
• Ship Tease: Boscha and Amity's confrontation reads heavily like a former lover begging their ex to take them back, though Amity clearly does not reciprocate.
• Shout-Out:
  • Hooty's puppet form has pictures of a shooting star and a pine tree on it.
  • During the social media reaction to the Day of Unity, one of the Penstagram usernames that quickly flashes by onscreen is "Friendly Neighborhood Pointyhead".
  • Hunter angrily rants that saying Belos' name will not suddenly summon an army of vengeful ghosts.
  • Caleb's specter has a bloody dagger constantly hanging over his head, referencing both how his brother murdered him, as well as in an allusion to the "dagger of the mind" soliloquy from Macbeth, with Belos/Philip starting to suffer similar Sanity Slippage as both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, basically for the same reasons.
  • The Owl House "family portrait" is closely modeled after the "Vengeance Dad" meme.
  • While it isn't really visible in the episode proper, production artwork reveals that the second page of the Collector's book contains references to Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
  • When the Collector catches the Belos-possessed Raine puppet in the act of trying to spread Belos' matter onto him, Belos quickly engineers an explanation as to how they're moving independently despite still being a puppet: that the collector's kindness towards the Coven head's bodies brought Raine's puppet body to life so they could warn them of 'danger'.
  • At one point, Hunter utters the phrase "The magic of friendship?"
• Sigil Spam: The Collector and his star-shaped minions fire crescent moon symbols to turn people into puppets.
• Skewed Priorities: Despite the upheaval caused by the Collector, Kikimora is intent on creating her own "empire" out of the few who escaped.
• Social Media Before Reason: After the Collector unleashes their magic upon the Boiling Isles, there's a shot of a Penstagram feed with photos that were taken mid-crisis.
• Sphere Factor: When Camila's Magic Misfire ends up causing a cave-in during the fight in the detention pit, Amity instinctively wraps herself and Matt in a ball of Abomination goo and rolls down a tunnel to safety.
• The Starscream: Kikimora manipulates Boscha during her reign at New Hexside, planning to ultimately overthrow her and take power herself.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: Once Willow, Hunter, and Gus show up to back up Luz and Camila against Kikimora, the plant girl proceeds to restrain the imp's Abomatron and use its arm to whack Kiki in the face a couple of times.
• Swiss-Army Tears: When King brings the transformed Hooty to Lilith, she embraces the puppetized demon and weeps on him. After her tear falls on his eye, Hooty shakes before replying to her pleas, restoring his consciousness and ability to freely communicate with the outside world.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Perhaps because they were friends, Amity at least understands Boscha's plight, and knows she's hurting deep down. This is how Amity reaches her.

T-Z

• Taking the Bullet:
  • Hooty stretches to shield Lilith from the Collector's first attack, which turns him into a puppet. Unfortunately, the Collector just fires again and transforms Lilith a second later.
  • Boscha was nearly turned into a puppet in the Collector's first wave, but Cat pushed her out of the way and got hit with it instead.
• Talking the Monster to Death: How Amity wins over Boscha. Instead of trying to defeat her former friend in a fight (as it becomes quite clear that Boscha hasn't really gotten any stronger since we last saw her), Amity exploits the fact that deep down, Boscha wants Amelia and Cat saved.
• Tears of Joy:
  • When Amity reunites with Ed and Em, Ed is seen crying these when he sees his younger sister for the first time after the Hexsquad went missing for months. Then Amity sheds these upon hugging her older siblings.
  • Hunter cries these when Willow tells him that he means a lot to her, too.
• Teleport Spam: Hunter gains the ability to perform these sans staff because of Flapjack's sacrifice.
• There Is Another: Somewhat Inverted, as the Collector's bedtime story retroactively reveals that, rather than the title referring to a singular individual, there is an entire race of the beings, with illustrations of them in the storybook and the wording implying that 'Collectors' is what their species is referred to. Of course, given no such other being has been seen in the present, and the Collector's relative youth, it is implied that, like King, he may be the only remaining Collector left. Given the book also hints that the other Collectors were a lot more malicious with their godlike abilities, this is probably a good thing.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After spending the entirety of the second part of Season 2 as well as "Thanks to Them" suffering, both Luz and Hunter get bones thrown their way with Luz getting the understanding from her mother that she always wanted and the awakening of her Palisman Stringbean, and Hunter learning that Flapjack's sacrifice at the end of "Thanks to Them" imbued him with the Palisman's magic, allowing him to cast spells of his own even without his staff.
• Token Good Teammate: Implied. The passage in the Collector's storybook that refers to 'clean the planet and scorch the air' has been scribbled over, with scrawled handwriting visible below that refers to how playing is more fun, implying that the Collector was reluctant to use their godlike abilities to uphold their race's values and traditions in favor of playing games. This is also Played With, as they aren't so much objecting to it out of moral concerns as a lack of interest in the 'boring stuff', and are still capable of causing mass destruction through carelessness. Nonetheless, given the passages imply the other Collectors were more controlling and malicious with their abilities against sentient life, they still count.
• Too Annoyed to Be Afraid: Luz's reaction when "Miki" reveals herself to be Kikimora is more exasperation than fear at being faced with a long-established enemy.
  Luz: Noooo, not you!
• Too Dumb to Live: While she doesn't exactly "die", Terra snarks back to the Collector despite knowing that he will turn her into an inanimate doll if she pisses them off. When the inevitable happens, she has the gall to plead.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Downplayed. Luz spent most of "Thanks to Them" effectively De-powered due to her glyphs not working on Earth, and even when she managed to activate them around a small sample of Titan's Blood, she made limited use of them to avoid hurting the Belos-possessed Hunter. Now that she's back in the ambient magical field of the Boiling Isles, Luz has full access to her array of accumulated magical abilities once again. And then it's played straight when her Palisman egg finally hatches, allowing her to use non-glyph magic, namely powerful blasts of energy comparable to Kikimora's Abomatron.
  • Mattholomule has improved his illusion magic to the point of fooling Boscha completely. He also, as Gus lampshades, gets the chance to show that he makes a decent leader, as he and Jerbo have come up with quite a few genuinely good ideas to make life in hiding at Hexside better (not that Boscha will listen to them).
  • Camila starts trying to use glyphs, though her first attempt is a Magic Misfire.
  • Thanks to the magic Flapjack left him, Hunter is now able to do things like his Flash Step trick on his own.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The promos and trailers leading up to the episode heavily spoiled that Luz would get her Palisman; while the exact form wasn't revealed, you could clearly see Luz wielding a purple staff whose top was obscured by a ball of sparkly purple light.
• Tranquil Fury: The Collector seems to default to this, the biggest example comes when they're once again manipulated by Belos to kill Luz and co. They don't rampage, yell, throw a fit or even growl. They just give a serious face with a stern frown and start levitating, saying they want to play a new game (which is implied to be a way to deal with the gang).
• Treacherous Advisor: Kikimora sets herself up as this to Boscha, manipulating her so she can rule New Hexside by proxy.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Boscha, with some help from a disguised Kikimora, has taken control of Hexside and the survivors there.
• Unexplained Recovery: As seen in the beginning of the episode as well as the credits illustration, Lilith is transformed into a puppet by the Collector on the Day of Unity. When we later see her, she's completely fine, though King does imply that he managed to persuade the Collector to free her like he did with Eda.
• The Un-Reveal:
  • Who or what the glowing figure in the In-Between Realm that Luz saw doesn't get addressed before the episode ends.
  • After Belos possesses Puppet Raine, Odalia is notably never seen again, leaving her fate ambiguous.
  • The fates of Alador, the BATs, and Steve following the Day of Unity are never given. What's more worrying is that there's still no answer to Steve and Amber not appearing in "King's Tide".
• Unwitting Pawn: After his attempt to possess the Collector using Puppet!Raine fails, Belos starts using his experience with the Collector to try to manipulate them into attacking the heroes.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Compared to the Hexsquad becoming stronger, wiser, and more mature as bigger threats emerged, Boscha has remained the same bully she's always been and more or less uses the same old tricks and tactics. It's not just that she hasn't gone through the grinder, but she lost the motivation to do so. During their brief fight, Boscha wasn't prepared for anything Amity could throw at her, so it's quite clear to Amity that her unwillingness to grow and adapt has only made her so predictable that Amity doesn't even need to fight her to win.
• Villainous Breakdown: Belos is just decaying in this episode, both physically and mentally, to the point that he's hallucinating Caleb and the Grimwalkers that he killed. It's made clear his decision to return to the Boiling Isles was nothing but a last desperate gamble to prove that everything he's done for centuries is not All for Nothing, and the hallucinations (or ghosts) that haunt him make him deathly fearful that not even success will 'make it right' in the end. It's telling that in contrast to his Day of Unity plan, which was almost guaranteed to succeed no matter what he did, Belos is visibly struggling every step of the way to form a working plan out of his deteriorating situation and body.
• Villain Team-Up: Boscha has joined forces with Kikimora to rule "New Hexside".
• Villainous Underdog: Belos spends most of his screen time visibly rotting away and decomposing without a suitable host to drain from, to the point his mind and body are literally falling to pieces with the strain of it, ranting at hallucinations or ghosts of Caleb and the deceased Grimwalkers all alone in the woods and dragging himself across the ground when his legs fall off. If not for him finding a solitary Grimwalker corpse to drain a bit more sustenance from, he would have died without ever reaching the Collector or facing the heroes once more, and his attempt to directly possess the Collector fails, forcing him to once more rely on manipulating the Child from the Stars to use their magical might for his plans.
• Void Between the Worlds: The In-Between Realm appears again in the beginning, and Luz sees a wandering winged figure, seemingly made of light, walking on the other side before Amity pulls her all the way through.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Luz's Palisman "Stringbean" is a "snake shifter", a snake-like creature who can change her shape.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Kikimora's Abomatron's Arm Cannon fires a massive torrent of energy at Luz and Camila, blasting a furrow into the forest and narrowly missing them. When Luz is experimenting with her new staff, she accidentally fires off a similarly-massive energy beam and narrowly misses her friends.
• We Are as Mayflies: Collectors, who live for a very long time, apparently take their name because they collect and preserve creatures with more natural lifespans to ensure "they never fade".
• We Can Rule Together: Boscha begs Amity to come back, promising her that they can rule New Hexside together. You can tell how well that went.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Implied. The storybook frames the Collector race's actions of transforming sentient life into other forms, whether cursed scrolls or animated puppets, as a way or ensuring that 'they never fade'. Granted, the passage that says this is immediately followed by a warning that they're willing to "clean the planet and scorch the air" if said life tries meddling in their practices, demonstrating that this interest in preservation was mostly from a self-serving angle uncaring of what said lifeforms actually wanted themselves.
• Wham Episode: We learn that the Collector is merely the child of a species of Collectors, who is apparently the Last of His Kind like King, a falling apart Belos possesses the Raine puppet to manipulate the Child from the Stars against Luz and company when an initial plan to possess him fails, Hunter learns that he can do magic through Flapjack's sacrifice, and Luz's Palisman egg finally hatches into a "snake shifter" named Stringbean.
• Wham Line: The Collector's bedtime story reveals that, contrary to what had been hinted beforehand, 'Collector' actually refers to the name of their species, and there were apparently several of them a long time ago. Given their absence in the present and the Collector's apparent childishness, it's greatly implied that they, like King, are the Last of Their Kind.
  King: (reading) Collectors live long, we watch things pass.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • This is the first time Belos is completely alone with no one to talk to, and thus his true character begins to show. He begins seeing hallucinations of Caleb and the other dead Grimwalkers, and becomes angry yet frightened. He accuses Caleb of mocking him, claims that he tried to save his brother's soul and then blames him for his predicament before immediately attacking in blind fury. But the specter doesn't go away and Belos starts convulsing in pain. When he sees the mountains of Grimwalker corpses and their ghosts, he can only muster a weak "shut up" before trudging to his secret lab. Deep down in his shriveled heart, Belos knows what he did to Caleb and the Grimwalkers was wrong and has been haunted by his sins despite his best attempt to suppress it... yet he still presses on out of fear that it would be All for Nothing, even when his mind and body are incapable of achieving his sick goals.
  • After the Collector is released, Kikimora is in a situation where, barring the omnipotent god-child, there is no one to boss her around or for her to suck up to, as Belos is out of the picture, the Coven Heads are literal puppets, and the Emperor's Coven all scattered. But rather than try to make anything better of her life, Kikimora settles for becoming the tyrannical ruler of... a children's school. In the process, she prevents the closest thing the Boiling Isles has to La Résistance from mobilizing against the Collector, all for a vain and unimaginative attempt to pursue the power like Belos she longed for.
• Wig, Dress, Accent: Kikimora's disguise as "Miki" is a white wig, some goggles, a St. Epiderm Abomination track uniform, and talking in a less squeaky voice. Given how the members of the Hexsquad aren't really used to seeing her face due to her mouth having usually been covered by the collar of her Emperor's Coven, it's incredibly effective.
• The Worf Effect: While the Collector themselves doesn't need one, their star spies serve this to the faculty of Hexside along with the adult witches of the Boiling Isles, effortlessly turning them into puppets when they tried to fight them. Being attacked after the Draining Spell didn't help matters.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Not even being an almighty, powerful god-like child can deter Belos from attempting to possess the Collector which, as seen with Hunter, would not be a pleasant experience.
  • Kikimora is downright giddy over the idea of personally eliminating Luz when she gets the chance.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Belos seems to pulling one of these, though the fact that his entire plan consists of "commit genocide on the Boiling Isles by any means necessary" means that there's a fair amount of wiggle room. His attempt to find a spare Grimwalker to possess fails? He makes his way to the Collector's castle and takes control of the Raine puppet, who is being preserved by the Collector's magic. His attempt to possess the Child from the Stars fails? He pretends to have spontaneously gained the power to move because of the Collector's kindness, and uses his experience to try to manipulate them against the heroes. It highlights how desperate and poorly-thought out his actions are since the failure of the Day of Unity, desperately trying to find a workaround to achieving his goals even as his mind and body falls to pieces as the natural consequence of his own actions catching up to him.
• Yandere: Boscha acts rather aggressive towards Amity, first begging her to come back and when she refuses physically latching onto her saying that she won't let her leave again, despite Amity's protests, and chases after her when she tries to escape, including grabbing her with obvious force. Thankfully, Boscha is willing to calm down and listen to reason once Amity stops brushing her off and genuinely talks to her.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • Surprised that Luz is putting herself down because of Kikimora taking them by surprise, Camila talks to her about her promise to stay in the Human Realm for good, telling her that messing up is part of life and confessing she's also a Closet Geek obsessed with Cosmic Frontier. Camila is able to break through to Luz and apologize for never standing up for her and accepting who she is, which is what causes Luz to figure out her deepest desire and gain her staff and palisman.
  • Hunter hears Willow talking bad about herself. He tearfully tells her that she didn't do anything wrong and to not call herself "half-a-witch" ever again.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Edric is so overjoyed and relieved upon seeing Amity again for the first time in months that he calls her out by her real first name instead of his usual "Mittens".
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Luz's reaction to seeing Kikimora is one of pure exasperation.
  Luz: Noooo, not you!
• Your Little Dismissive Diminutive: Terra, sick of being forced to pretend to be Eda for the Collector's "game", tells him that he's a real thorn in her side and she's had it with him "and your stupid little dog", referring to King. This last part pisses the Collector off enough that he responds by turning her into a puppet, too.

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"I think I wanna play a new game."

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