YMMV / The Owl House S3E1 "Thanks to Them"

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Luz projects that the hero of the book her class is discussing has made so many mistakes that they might as well have "never been born". Her teacher tries to point out that the hero's good deeds actually outweigh their mistakes. This just goes to show that when making a story, the mark of a hero is a character who does more good than harm; and a hero who makes mistakes does not necessarily make them any less than they are.
  • As Hunter learns the very painful way, don't touch random stuff on the ground with your bare hands, especially if those hands have open wounds from beforehand.
• Evil Is Cool: As twisted as it is, Belos possessing Hunter and giving him a Voice of the Legion and his trademark Horns of Villainy is surprisingly badass-looking.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Not that fans haven't been doing this already, but since we've gotten more context on what they've been doing since arriving in the human world, what kind of other adventures has the Hexsquad been on? You could make an entire story on a single picture from their scrapbook and then some.
  • On the same context, Belos has been on the Human Realm for a couple months now. What has he seen, and how has he reached to Earth having changed so much since he left it?
  • What is Jacob Hopkins up to now that he's been fired from the museum?
  • The fight against Hunter-Belos shows Vee's capable of siphoning Belos off the possessed Hunter. The amalgamation stops her before she can finish, but what if she had successfully siphoned Belos?
    • Another thought is what would happen if someone else found Belos instead of Hunter, and was the one who was possessed by him.
    • For Luz who has already been through so much, and Willow and Gus who are especially close to Hunter, what must it have been like to be forced to fight him? And what are the after-effects of essentially witnessing his death, resurrected or not?
  • Vee and her goth friend Masha get some hints at a mutual attraction, and given that a lot of fans were already shipping the two of them...
  • Luz's remarks in her class can be easily interpreted as a thinly veiled admission of suicidal thoughts. Many writers have run with this idea.
  • What if Belos had chosen someone else to possess instead of Hunter? Immediately after the episode released there were already edits popping up depicting other characters being possessed by Belos, ranging from the ones that make some amount of sense (Luz, Amity), to the ones that are a bit of a stretch (Camila), or ones that are just for fun (Boscha).
  • Huntlow fans have been delving into Hunter's Disney Death and the effect it's had on both him and a now traumatized Willow, who held him as he presumably died and was resurrected.
• Fridge Horror: We were introduced to Masha as one of Vee's camping friends from the Reality Check Summer Camp. When we first meet them, they are giving tarot readings to their friends using Hexes Hold'em cards, implying that they could have been sent there for their weird hobbies like Luz. With the reveal that they're non-binary, we are introduced to a new unsettling theory that their parents sent them to camp for being gender-queer. If this is the case, we should count them lucky that they were sent to a generalized Obsessively Normal curriculum instead of an actual Conversion Camp. ^note Although given they're wearing the non-binary pride colors on their nails, one would hope that their parents are a bit more open-minded than that.
• I Knew It!:
  • Most fanfiction implied that shortly after the end of "King's Tide", Camila would just take the Hexsquad in and they'd move in with Luz. The Cold Opening has that exact thing happen.
  • One of the scenes shown during the Time-Passes Montage is Luz and Vee introducing the others to the non-boiling rain on Earth, which was an incredibly common plot in fan works.
  • One of the pictures in Luz's coming out video is her and Amity reading Azura in Amity's secret hideout, an extremely common situation in fanfics.
  • Another popular plot for fan writers was the Hexsquad getting to meet giraffes now that they're stranded on Earth. Sure enough, they get to meet some giraffes at a zoo.
  • The witches hide their pointy ears whenever they're in public, something which most fan-artists depicted them doing.
  • Some fans theorized that Vee could just eat Belos in his diminished state due to him being Made of Magic. In the final battle, Vee attempts to eat Belos via Vacuum Mouth but Amity has to knock her out of the way of his counterattack.
  • Speaking of Vee, it was also very popular to ship her with the Goth teen, Masha, she had gone to camp with. The episode was able to sprinkle a little bit that hinted at an attraction between the two.
  • "Evelyn" was a popular fan name for the witch Caleb fell in love with.
  • Prior to this episode, Flapjack's death—namely as a Heroic Sacrifice—was predicted by many in the fandom.
  • After some slime was seen dripping onto Hunter at the end of "King's Tide", some fans theorized he would be possessed by Belos at some point.
  • Because the Wittebanes' parents were out of the picture in Belos' mindscape, some fans theorized that Caleb and Philip were orphans.
  • A few fans predicted Hunter would try to act reverent towards any adult taking care of him, due to how Belos raised him. In the beginning of the episode, he disturbs Camila by bowing to her when she gives him blankets.
• Memetic Mutation: A new member of the "Bad End Friends"^explanationFan artists have had a field day partnering Belos-possessed Hunter or "Helos" with the other cartoon protagonists who were possessed by eldritch horror villains such as Bipper from Gravity Falls, Darcy from Amphibia or Ice Finn from Adventure Time.
• Paranoia Fuel: Ironically a case where horrors that you are normally accustomed to are NOT present. It hits home especially for people who grew up surrounded by danger. Imagine if you've lived your whole life in a place where with Everything Trying to Kill You in broad daylight and you can't go a whole day without a damn creature popping out at you or an object coming to life. Just because you're used to them doesn't make them any less scary, and you have no reason to believe that any object is harmless. All of sudden, you find yourself in a town, which even if it's spooky, is so quiet and lacking in demons and monsters that you're paranoid at even mundane things. Amity embodies this the most, even thinking a creature was supposed to come out of a filing cabinet.
• Realism-Induced Horror: While the episode is fairly scary in terms of the fantastical department, some elements have hit home for some viewers in the most depressing ways...
  • Even though it's shown during the first minutes of the episode, being displaced from your home is still a hauntingly real scenario that can happen any time. Gus' reaction, which is bursting into tears and dropping to the ground does not make it any better at all, especially with the fact that all of the Hexsquad is separated from their loved ones.
  • Camila's Flashback Nightmare is both haunting and depressing, due to the fact that there are many people out there who have experienced bullying and judgement, both Luz & Camila themselves. It's made even worse with the implications that Manny's death had a major factor with Luz' quirky antics, and it's the same for Camila due to her trauma of also being bullied as a child as well, which led to the first episode happening simply because she didn't want Luz to go through what she did. A few viewers have expressed sadness and sympathy for the two's respective situations, with one viewer stating that it was genuinely traumatic to watch, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Manny's aforementioned death also shows just how major the effects of grief it can have on people, leaving a void for their loved ones, and the greivers themselves.
  • As seen above in Accidental Aesop and Fanfic Fuel, Luz is so upset at her role in enabling Belos' rise to power that she delivers the aforementioned rant below, with the last part sounding dangerously close to thoughts of suicide, and it's a Tear Jerker for those exact reasons, especially with the fact that Luz's guilt has gotten so bad that she possibly wants to die...
    Luz: Who cares about the ripple effects? He was just a pawn in someone else's game. A-and he was never smart enough to realize it. If his friends and family knew about his mission, they'd know that their lives would have never been in danger if it weren't for him. They should hate his guts, AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF HE LITERALLY NEVER EXISTED!
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The latter half of "Danger, Deep Water" seemingly lifts the main melody and some percussive elements from "Brothers In Arms".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Word of God after the series ended confirmed there was no "original season 3", as they hadn't written or planned anything for that season when they got news of the shortening. That being said, a number of interesting plot points are teased that could have had their own side episode if this specific version of the series had gotten a full 3rd season, or if the episode had been longer. Some examples:
  • Despite Belos being stranded in the Human Realm for at least a few months, he's never shown actually exploring Gravesfield to see how much has changed. While it's clear he spent most of his time rebuilding his strength and body, he immediately leaves for the Demon Realm once expelled from Hunter's body without even commentating on the state of modern society.
  • At most, all we learn about Jacob was that he was fired from the Gravesfield Historical Society due to vandalizing some exhibits and getting escorted out by the police when he tried to prove that Gus was not human. It would have been interesting if he encountered Belos and either entered a Villain Team-Up or a Big Bad Ensemble with Jacob's extremist actions of taking out Belos endangering all of Gravesfield or the protagonists.
  • Masha is the only one of Vee's friends who appears in the episode proper (one of the other two appears in the credits) and even then, they don't recognize Vee in her new disguise. There's not a single scene or reference that the trio interacted with Luz at any point during the Hexsquad's stay on Earth despite them making friends with Vee when she was passing off as Luz.
  • There's also the fact that Luz and Vee didn't appear alone in a scene together once, Vee spending most of her time with the Hexsquad. It would've been a good chance to see both girls adjusting to practically being sisters.
  • We don't get to see Willow and Gus interacting with Luz in the episode either, robbing the audience of their reactions to hearing Luz confirm that she was manipulated by Philip. Sure they would've been hurt that she didn't confide something so troubling to them, but seeing as they're her first real friends, they could've comforted and assured her they'd never turn their backs on her.
  • Vee and Hunter have no animosity between each other; considering that Hunter was Belos' right hand man, Vee could've held some initial distrust towards him. At best, there could've been a brief glimpse of this during the Time-Passes Montage but by the end of it, they get along fine with no hard feelings between them.^Although...It was later revealed in the February 2023 posthoot that this was going to be a plot point in the special, but was cut for time.
  • While understandable that she just isn't ready to go back^{Additionally...}There was also a brief scene of Vee being clearly scared of going inside the Gravesfield Historical Society due to the events of "Yesterday's Lie". and that someone needs to make sure nobody notices that Camila had left, a minor amount of fans grieved for the lost opportunity of Vee being able to confront Belos himself, alongside being able to give him what for.

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