The Owl House is an American animated fantasy television series created by Dana Terrace that aired on Disney Channel from January 10, 2020, to April 8, 2023.
[1][4][5] The series features the voices of Sarah-Nicole Robles, Wendie Malick, Alex Hirsch, Tati Gabrielle, Issac Ryan Brown, Mae Whitman, Cissy Jones, Zeno Robinson, Matthew Rhys, Michaela Dietz, Elizabeth Grullon, and Fryda Wolff.
The series centers on Luz Noceda, a 14-year-old Dominican-American human girl who accidentally stumbles upon a portal to the Demon Realm.
She arrives at the Boiling Isles, an archipelago formed from the remains of a dead titan, and befriends the rebellious witch Eda Clawthorne, also known as "The Owl Lady", and her adorable demon housemate King.
Despite not having magical abilities, Luz pursues her dream of becoming a witch by serving as Eda's apprentice at the Owl House and ultimately finds a new family in an unlikely setting.
[12] In the second season, Luz attempts to return to the Human Realm, Eda tries to confront her curse, and King searches for the truth about his past while contending with the Boiling Isles' ruler, Emperor Belos, who is preparing for the mysterious "Day of Unity".
[6] In the third and final season (labeled as specials), Luz and her friends journey to save the Boiling Isles from Emperor Belos and the Collector.
[21] Terrace is the fourth woman to create a series for Disney Television Animation, after Sue Rose (Pepper Ann), Chris Nee (Doc McStuffins), and Daron Nefcy (Star vs. the Forces of Evil).
[25] Terrace said that the visual style was inspired by paintings by Remedios Varo, John Bauer, and Hieronymus Bosch, as well as Russian architecture.
[28] Disney initially refused for the series to have an in-house animator, feeling Wan may not meet their "overseas pipeline", but he was eventually hired.
By March 2020, Disney Television Animation was closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the production crew to work on season 2 remotely from their homes.
[34] The show released a sneak peek and an official end credit sequence on October 4, 2019, during a panel at New York Comic Con 2019.
Terrace also noted that due to the pandemic, budgets were constrained and episodes were cut, further adding that she was not allowed to present a case for a fourth season.
[65][66] Series creator Dana Terrace first implied a romance between the two on July 7, 2020, when responding to a fan who posted a screenshot from the upcoming episode "Enchanting Grom Fright" on Twitter which showed Amity putting her hands on Luz's shoulders and looking into her eyes.
[67] On August 8, 2020, the episode, written by Molly Ostertag,[68] aired, and it featured a scene in which Luz and Amity dance together while casting spells to defeat "Grom", a demon that manifests as their deepest fears.
The animation supervisor for the show, Spencer Wan, referred to their intimate dance as "the gay thing"[69] and the first time he got to "do anything even remotely queer".
[71] The two girls represent Disney's second animated LGBTQ+ characters after Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland in Gravity Falls, and the first to be unambiguously portrayed as such.
[83] In March 2022, Lilith, Eda's older sister, was shown to be aromantic and asexual during a charity Livestream, via an in-character letter read by the character's voice actress Cissy Jones.
Jade King of TheGamer noted that Cissy Jones said that her letter during a charity stream saying that Lilith didn't have any romantic attractions was "basically canon".
[91] Whip Media, which tracks viewership data for over 1 million daily users worldwide of its TV Time app, calculated that The Owl House was the eighth top-rising show across all platforms based on the highest week-over-week growth in episodes watched during the week of June 13, 2021.
[94] Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media rated the show 4 out of 5 stars and said putting different elements together made the series quirky and likable.
It was also described as well-written and animated, and speculated that "[the show] likely will be one you will want to watch alongside your older kids and tweens, allowing you to discuss these kinds of themes as they come up.
[97] The conservative evangelical Christian religious television network Christian Broadcasting Network attacked the show, declaring it was part of a "witch agenda to make witchcraft look positive", an assessment that a writer for The Mary Sue called "hyperbolic", and stated that a "rebellious Latina witch" is, to those like CBN, "probably the scariest thing", while stating that the show sounds like "a ton of fun".
[102] Jade King of TheGamer described the show as a "groundbreaking queer adventure" that has broken boundaries in LGBTQ+ representation, noting how it builds off of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Steven Universe.
[120] According to Dana Terrace, the novel was to feature an original story based on the in-universe fictional series The Good Witch Azura.
[121] However, Terrace confirmed on March 25, 2022, in a now-deleted tweet, that the light novel had been cancelled due to financial disputes between the publisher and authors hired to write the book.