What Could Have Been / The Owl House

Concept art of the "beta designs" for Luz, Amity and Willow.

The Owl House has a lot of storylines that were taken out.

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• In an early design, King was originally going to have a complete skull for his head and golden fur.
• As seen in some Concept Art and a season 1 poster (which can be seen in the season 1 section on the Recap page), Eda's shop was originally going to be at the Owl House itself, with a clear shop front to the house. In the series proper, she just has a stall in town, with the house being hidden away from the town. Which makes sense considering she's supposed to be in hiding from the Emperor's Coven.
• Eda was originally meant to look much older and haggard. If this was before Wendie Malick was cast, they could've been inspired by her current good looks and former modeling career.
• The woods of The Boiling Isles were originally going to have a dark color palette, but to contrast with Luz’s hair color, the creators opted to make the woods predominantly red instead.
• At one point, the show was about Luz's adventures after she died, taking place in the afterlife.
• According to Dana Terrace's Twitter, an early concept for "Enchanting Grom Fight" had the big event at Hexside still called "Prom", but it stood for "Perennial Ritual Offering Maiden" and involved Luz almost ending up a Human Sacrifice.
• Lilith was originally principal of Hexside.
• Luz was originally going to get stuck in the Boiling Isles. She did however end up getting stuck at the end of Season 1.
• There was going to be a running gag where Eda would try to eat King.
• Dana Terrace uploaded some more Concept Art not too long ago, showing different clothes and/or personalities for the characters. This included Luz with a white and purple striped shirt, Amity with slightly different clothes, and Willow seemingly being a dirt-loving tomboy that held dead rats in her hand for some reason.
• Some concept art of Emperor Belos◊ has him wearing five different versions of a massive stone rock with a face over his head, instead of the more animalistic mask he wears in his final design.
• Dana Terrace actually said in a tweet that she was hoping Season 3 would've been 10-20 episodes like the average Disney cartoon, but was left with Disney's corporate choice for the entire season (and remember, this one's supposed to be the show's Grand Finale) with three 44-minute specials (which eventually became two 44-minute specials and one hour-long episode), meaning things will have changed from what she and the crew planned to the final product we'll actually see.
  • After receiving news of the shortening, Dana briefly toyed with the idea of ending the series on a massive, unresolved cliffhanger, but several of her friends (including Matt Braly) eventually convinced her to continue.
• Zach Marcus, a storyboard artist and writer for the show, originally pitched an unaired short involving Tiny Nose trying to sell Creepy Dolls while trying to assure the audience that her dolls aren't cursed. It was rejected by Disney who deemed it to be too scary for the channel.
• According to Zach Marcus, when Belos gets splattered across the wall in the climax of Season 2's finale, Hunter was originally supposed to get hit by some of his gooey "chunks". He was also supposed to start bawling soon after.
• Cissy's Post-Hoot on "King's Tide" confirmed that Gus's Palisman's name would've been revealed in "Any Sport In A Storm", but it got cut due to time constraints.
  • In the same Post-Hoot, Dana revealed the Collector (and by extension, the Collectors from "For the Future") didn't exist prior to the shortening. (They had wanted to include a morally-gray doll-like character from the start, and tossed the Collector in once the show got shortened and Season 2 had to be reworked.) When the cancellation news came, the writers decided to go nuts with him, resulting in the terrifyingly adorable god kid we see now. This is further proven in an October 20 article.
  The news of the show's cancellation propelled the crew to put story points into the show that they were previously unsure of, Terrace said, including the character of the Collector, who is a chaotic childish immoral god.
  "The first special [of season 3] would literally not exist in the way it does...without that cancellation and I am very proud of that episode. A lot of the crew is very proud of that episode. People seem to love it, so that's our silver lining," Terrace said.
• After fans noticed the similarities between Matt Tholomule and Steve, Dana confirmed that the two were half-brothers whose small storyline wound up being cut due to the shortened season 3.
• According to Dana Terrace, the show was initially pitched to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network before being rejected and taken up by Disney Channel.
• As revealed in the Gallery Nucleus panel:
  • Camila was planned to arrive in the Demon Realm as early as Season 1, Episode 6 (what eventually became "Hooty's Moving Hassle").
  • There was a "floating pirate ship".
  • Belos originally served as the Evil Chancellor to the insectoid rulers on the Boiling Isles — his original plan was to keep the latest Emperor — named Pupa — from hatching, claiming he could speak to the unhatched insect in the same way he can speak to the Titan ("I'm the only one who knows why it screams!")
  • One of the storyboard artists tried sneaking Donald Duck into the background multiple times, but S&P consistently vetoed it.
  • The Hades icon displayed on Luz's desktop in "Thanks To Them" was originally going to resemble the Hercules incarnation, but copyright prevented it, so they used something closer to Cerberus' design in the game.
• From the February 2023 posthoot:
  • "For the Future" was going to feature a segment involving going into Hooty's body, Body Horror galore (including "as many legs as he has ribs").
  • The final fight of "Thanks to Them" was going to feature the bog bodies from the graveyard, with Philip jumping between decaying corpses.
  • In "Thanks to Them" Vee was going to be uncomfortable with Hunter being in the house because of his connection to the Emperor's Coven, but this was cut for time.
  • Original scripts for the show would've shown that Eda Really Gets Around, with a scrapped B-plot for "Lost in Language" (as implied by this) involving her going on a date with a playboy merchant to get a deal on crow heads, but Disney didn't approve of having a Dirty Old Woman in something made for kids. Dana theorized that Disney was just being weird about it since she tried to justify it as Eda going on a date.
  • Another episode would've featured Eda and Odalia as rivals competing for roles in a musical where Odalia would've entered an Abomaton she disguised as her own child, making Edric jealous in the process.
• From the leaked animation test reel:
  • Eda's voice sounds slightly different, implying that Wendie Malick wasn't initially chosen to play her.
  • Luz says that King used to know magic, which isn't brought up at all in the final series. This also gives the implication that his delusions of grandeur were actually true at some point in development.
  • Willow was originally named Paulina and voiced by Eden Riegel, who would end up voicing Willow's rival Boscha.
• Alternate concept art for Luz's Titan form.
• From the April 2023 posthoot:
  • Dana hoped to prioritize the Galdorstones, Bat Queen, and Coven Heads more.
  • An episode was planned showing Eda carving her palisman with Dell.
  • Originally, Caleb and Philip's graves were in the basement of the old Gravesfield house, but it was axed for not serving a story purpose.
• Writer/artist Zach Marcus posted a bunch of notes and sketches from during the development of season one on twitter. Some highlights include:
  • He reveals that they initially struggled with what to do with Camila and came up with a bunch of rejected episode ideas involving her. One of them had King secretly texting her at night (while pretending to be Luz) and using her as a therapist.
  • "Something Ventured, Something Framed" was originally about Gus taking part in a "ritual flower cutting ceremony" with Gus refusing to do it after learning that the flower was part of a little creature. Another iteration of the episode had it be a mystery story with the flower creature being stolen and Gus and Luz playing detective to find it, eventually discovering that Willow had taken it.
  • Matt's original name was Fenris.
  • There was a scrapped episode about Hooty becoming sick and turning into a haunted house with Hooty-themed ghosts acting as his antibodies. At the same time, Luz would become close to Hexside's Healing magic teacher, preferring her teaching style over Eda's, upsetting Eda in the process. According to Marcus, the episode was fully written out, but they ultimately couldn't get it to work.
• According to Rebecca Rose, a scene cut from the finale had Camila meet Odalia in the archives, resulting in "mama drama".
• A deleted storyboard in "For the Future" would have revealed that Camila met her husband Manny at a Cosmic Frontier convention.
• From the leaked pilot animatic and series bible:
  • Amity was originally a classmate of Luz's, having disguised herself as a human to study in the Human Realm. Luz first enters the Boiling Isles by following her home from school.
  • King originally truly was a former "King of Demons" with his dog collar acting as a Power Limiter, keeping him in his current form. Eda forces him to work for her in exchange for finding a way to remove the collar and also as payment for his former minions trashing her shop. Whether or not King was in any way related to the Titan in this version of the story is unknown.
  • Lilith was the headmaster of Hexside as well as a much more villainous character with her cursing Eda under direct orders from Belos (or Obron, his original name). The act happens when they’re adults, not kids and is a result of Lilith being disgusted with Eda’s refusal to join a Coven.
  • The nature of Eda's curse was also different, the curse is simply an aging curse and seemingly has nothing to do with an Owlbeast form. As a result of this, Eda is secretly forced to work for the Emperor's Coven to find a cure. A potential plot line would have involved Eda discovering a way to cure the curse involving a human soul, which would have started a rift in her relationship with Luz.
  • Bump was originally a corrupt magistrate serving under Belos/Obron.
  • Gus was seemingly just a background character with a lot of his traits, namely his obsession with Humans originally belong to Tibbles, who was originally supposed to be an ally of Luz.
  • The original concept of Hunter was much different, to the point he's more of a Composite Character of Caleb/Philip Wittebane than what Hunter turned out to be. He was originally a character named William, a boy (and witch hunter-in-training) from 16th Century England who was put in an enchanted slumber from which Luz wakes him up from. His character arc would have been Luz helping him regain his memories (including his familial relationship with Belos/Obron) as well as adjust to life in the Demon Realm, despite his repeated attempts to burn Luz at the stake for being a witch and being a girl who wears pants.
  • Similarly, the original Emperor character was going to be Emperor Pupa, an insectoid creature trapped in his cocoon and only capable of shrieking, which is "interpreted" by his council (in actuality lying and claiming their will is the Emperor's, much like Belos does with the Titan in the finished product). Belos was originally Councilor Obron, the leader of the council and the one responsible for keeping Emperor Pupa trapped in his cocoon. Like in the finished product, he is actually a human who is hundreds of years old and created the Coven system as a means of controlling witches and their magic. Unlike Belos, however, Obron actually plans to take over the Human Realm by possessing the Titan's corpse itself from the start... after sacrificing a human soul.
  • There was supposed to be a trio of humans named Sashley, Pasha, and Bruno who had become trapped in the Demon Realm and got mutated from their "toxic island diet" (one had a fish for a head, another had a tentacle replacing their arm, the third had pincers in place of their hands). They would've tried to get Luz to join them, but she'd reject them after seeing them mistreat weaker demons, causing them to turn on her.

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