Dana Terrace’s animated TV show The Owl House intentionally avoids the biases and plot holes of the Harry Potter series, moving the fantasy genre forward. The Owl House follows human teenager Luz Noceda who falls through a portal into a magic world, where she befriends and learns magic from Eda the witch and King the demon. The show shares some recognizable plot elements with Harry Potter, namely the education of young people with magical powers.
However, The Owl House alludes to and even challenges Harry Potter in more specific ways. Sometimes, the show deconstructs tropes and plotlines that the audience likely knows are essential to Harry Potter’s story, or simply portrays them differently. In other cases, The Owl House specifically references and makes fun of something unique to Harry Potter, leaving no doubt of what the writers are doing. Despite being a critically acclaimed series, The Owl House was canceled after three seasons.
10 Witches Before Wizards
The Owl House makes a different distinction between witches and wizards than Harry Potter.
While Harry Potter depicts a gendered social structure where men are wizards and women are witches, all the main characters in The Owl House are witches, regardless of gender. However, Luz meets a wizard in season 1, episode 2, titled “Witches Before Wizards.” The wizard Adegast is played as a joke and is revealed to actually be a monster who is scamming Luz.
King tells Luz that “Wizards are just old people with glitter in their pockets” and Eda agrees that “Wizards are the worst.”If there is any difference in magical ability between witches and wizards, The Owl House does not specify what it is. Harry Potter typically uses “wizards” to refer to magical society in general (e.g., the Wizarding World). Therefore, The Owl House might be mocking Harry Potter through its sole “wizard” character.
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9 The Choosy Hat
The Owl House features an evil Sorting Hat.
One of The Owl House’s more specific references to Harry Potter is the human-eating “Choosy Hat.” In season 1, episode 13, Principal Bump tells Luz that she must pick one type of magic to study. Luz cannot choose, and asks, “Is there some sort of enchanted article of clothing that could sort this out for me?” Bump says that they used to have something like that, and he has a flashback of the Choosy Hat attempting to eat a new student. Moments later, this hilarious take on the Sorting Hat breaks free from its cage.
8 Hexide School Of Magic
A school of magic is also central in The Owl House.
The Owl House gives the impression of being a soft parody of Harry Potter by also including a school of magic in the story. Like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hexside School of Magic and Demonics teaches several different kinds of magic and doles out incredibly dangerous punishments – Luz spends season 1, episode 9 trying to escape Hexside’s detention pit. Hexside’s presence in the story alone alludes to Harry Potter because the latter is the most prominent example of a school of magic storyline in pop culture. However, some joking criticism of Hexside’s policies, such as dangerous detentions and a stratified curriculum, criticizes Hogwarts by extension.
7 Weaponized Herbology
Willow’s plant magic is more destructive than Hogwarts’ herbology.
One of Hexside’s educational tracks is the Plant Track. Plant Magic is also the specialty of one of the nine major covens in the Boiling Isles. Willow, one of Luz’s best friends, is adept at using Plant Magic. While Professor Sprout teaches Hogwarts students about potentially harmful species like Mandrakes and Devil’s Snare, The Owl House depicts Willow and other witches summoning vines to physically crush and trap opponents. Characters in Harry Potter could theoretically do this using knowledge of herbology, but they have significantly less control over magical plant species. Characters in The Owl House essentially use plants as a substitute for ropes or sledgehammers.
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6 Modern Technology In The Boiling Isles
Luz’s witch friends have versions of cell phones and TVs.
Harry and his friends do not have access to any kind of modern technology at Hogwarts, and many people in the Wizarding World barely know what phones or TVs are. The explanation given in the Harry Potter novels is that there is so much magic at Hogwarts that it makes electronic devices go haywire. In contrast, witches in the Boiling Isles have small scroll-like devices that are essentially cell phones and can watch news broadcasts and make calls via crystal ball.
Oddly, these witches do not seem to know what human technology is either. In season 1, episode 16, Luz references teaching King about the internet. In season 2, episode 11, Luz’s girlfriend Amity mispronounces “phone” after Luz leaves hers behind, demonstrating that she does not know what exactly the device is. The Owl House gets some humor out of witches misunderstanding human technology, even though they basically have the same things. In contrast, the Wizarding World seems to waste a lot of time sending messages by owl when a phone call would be much quicker.
5 Categorization is Bad (Coven System)
The coven system and Hogwarts houses are different yet the same.
When Eda expresses disdain about going to the “Covention” in season 1, episode 5, Luz says, “I get it, Eda. Covens bad. Individualism good.” While the coven system forces witches into categories based on the type of magic they want to study, the Hogwarts house system separates students based on personality traits. However, a major plot point in The Owl House is about how this is a corrupt system and young witches enjoy learning about different types of magic. Hogwarts arguably implements a harsher categorization system because houses supposedly define fundamental aspects of a person’s identity.
4 Battle Of Hogwarts Stand-In
The students of Hexside also defend their school from the forces of evil.
The Owl House again alludes to Harry Potter by depicting a battle where the students and staff at a school of magic fight off an evil invasion. In season 2, episode 18, the Emperor’s Coven comes to the school to force students into covens of their own and are met with resistance. The “Battle of Hexside” has a much lighter tone than the Battle of Hogwarts, but it is still a notably similar plot point. The confrontation at Hexside is more concerned with depicting a sense of unity among the students and showing how Emperor Belos’ rule is beginning to crumble.
3 Source Of Magic In The Boiling Isles
The Owl House has a more defined magic system than Harry Potter.
Fans have long questioned Harry Potter’s magic system because it is not clear why a combination of Latin words should produce a magical effect, or why some wizards don’t need to say these words or even use wands for their spells. The Owl House lays out two definitive sources of magic. First, witches have a magic bile sac attached to their hearts that allows them to perform magic. Luz does not have this because she is human.
However, magic also comes from the deity known as the Titan, who is intertwined with the Boiling Isles. Luz learns to utilize this magic through glyphs. The Titan, who is King’s father, dies when he uses the last of his power to resurrect Luz in The Owl House season 3 finale. After this, Luz can no longer perform magic with glyphs. As King grows up, Luz’s glyphs start to work again, since King is also a Titan himself.
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2 The Rusty Smidge
The Owl House explicitly mocks Quidditch.
One of The Owl House’s funniest quotes is when Luz very directly makes fun of Quidditch. She and her friends have seemingly triumphed over Boscha’s team in a Grudgby match when Boscha catches the “Rusty Smidge,” automatically granting her team the victory. Luz is mad because this renders the whole game redundant. Die-hard Harry Potter fans might point out that catching the Snitch is not a guarantee of victory if the other team’s chasers have scored enough points to win after the Snitch’s additional 150 points are added. Yet the team that gets the Snitch usually wins, which is why Luz’s quote is so funny.
1 The Chosen One
The Owl House deconstructs Harry Potter’s foundational trope.
The Chosen One storyline is central to Harry Potter, in which one particular character is deemed the only person who can defeat the main villain and save the world. This is a very popular trope in mainstream pop culture. For example, it is also essential to the plots of the Star Wars and The Matrix franchises. On the other hand, The Owl House rejects the idea of any one person having a destiny to save the world.
After Luz is lured into Adegast’s trap with promises of being a Chosen One, Eda gives her some sage advice. Eda says, “Everyone wants to believe they’re chosen, but if we all waited around for a prophecy to make us special, we’d die waiting, and that’s why you need to choose yourself.” By taking apart tropes like this and satirizing Harry Potter every once in a while, The Owl House reminds its audience to look to the future of the genre instead of the past.
