Work Text:
Hi! This is a script for a podcast episode I recorded all about Amity Blight from The Owl House. I thought it would be fun to start posting some of those scripts so people can actually read them. If you want to listen to this essay or other conversations about The Owl House (including one conversation with Not-So-Average-Fangirl from YouTube), check out the podcast "Determination, Deliberation, and Dragons" wherever you get your podcasts.
On to the essay!
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I’ve previously talked about the show The Owl House, created by Dana Terrace, and my adoration of the main protagonist, Luz Noceda, the human from Connecticut who stumbles into the Demon Realm and trains to become a witch. She is nerdy, kind, funny, and eternally optimistic in an infectious way. Though she doesn’t have any friends back on Earth, we the audience can’t help but feel that she would make an excellent friend, and we learn that some of the denizens of the Demon Realm also see that. Throughout her journey she remains true to who she is and learns to embrace her weirdness rather than reign it in.
But despite her cheerful and supportive disposition, Luz does make an early enemy in the Demon Realm as well. In the third episode of the series, she meets Amity Blight, an ambitious witch studying in the abomination track at Hexside School of Demonics. Amity is the top student in the class, and even has a star to prove it. The initial meeting between Luz and Amity is tense at best, potentially lethal at worst. Luz sneaks into the school disguised as an abomination (a magical slime being created by a witch), and Amity, in an attempt to save her position as the top student, tries to have Luz dissected. It really puts your own high school drama into perspective, doesn’t it? Thankfully, the two characters don’t remain enemies. They do face off in a duel where Amity is almost impaled by spikes, but soon after that they become friends, and by the middle of season two they’re actually dating. Even Luz’s antagonists can’t seem to help but like her. So that’s what I want to talk about today. Amity Blight, and why she is such an amazing character.
In my previous episode about Luz, I mentioned that Amity is the character I relate the most to. She and I are both good students (though I’ve never been the absolute top student in my high school, despite taking on my entire 7th and 8th grade history classes in Jeopardy single handedly and winning). We’re both ambitious and will do our best to impress our teachers. We are introverted and like to stick to ourselves, though we also enjoy spending time with good friends. Amity’s introversion manifests in her secret library study room. I’ll talk about my own experiences at the local library later, but Amity’s connection to the library is something I connect with rather strongly. Aside from her personality, she’s also a fantastically designed character, and I may have even dyed my hair green because of her. Also make a cosplay. Amity is fantastic, and it’s really fun watching her develop as a character and interact with all the others.
One of the things I like the most about Amity is how she grows from a bully to a more careful and considerate person. I wouldn’t classify myself as ever having been a bully, but everyone has said or done things that have harmed someone else. Humans are all imperfect, and even the best of us have moments in which we were unkind, or hurtful in some way, even if we didn’t realize it or intend it at the time. But doing something bad doesn’t necessarily make someone a bad person. Everyone has the potential to learn, and grow, and to do better, and I think Amity does show us exactly that. When we’re introduced to Amity, she’s not very nice. She mocks Willow, seems to have an overly selfish perspective, is constantly belittling and threatening the people around her. I don’t think this can be overstated, but she almost had Luz dissected in her first appearance in the show. And her feud with Luz doesn’t end there. In the Covention episode, Amity stomps on King’s cupcake that he dropped, proving that she’s willing to not only hurt Luz, but Luz’s friends as well. If stepping on a little dog creature’s cupcake isn’t the height of evil, I don’t know what is.
But Amity grows from that. She has a bit of a rocky road on her transition away from being a bully. It isn’t as smooth as it could be. She continues to make mistakes, some more dire than others. She burns some of Willow’s memories and tries to uphold her superior social status even as she’s realizing who she wants her friends to be. But the longer she knows and spends time with Luz, the more willing she becomes to move away from that persona and learn to act with kindness. I’m not sure if she could have grown without Luz, but her path is certainly altered (quite dramatically) because she met this human. Luz was a jarring addition to her life that she wasn’t ready to deal with, but over time the shock of Luz is lessened, and Amity begins to allow herself to learn from Luz, not just harshly react to her. The people we meet can have major impacts on how we conduct ourselves and who we imagine ourselves to be, and I think Luz is the catalyst for Amity’s journey of understanding herself and what is important for her. It isn’t that we need someone else to show us who we are, I think it’s quite possible for us to figure things out on our own, but a little nudge from the people around us has the power to shape our perspectives and sense of self in really big ways. As Uncle Iroh says in Avatar the Last Airbender, “while it is always best to believe in oneself, a little help from others can be a great blessing.” Assuming we’re open to learning from the people we meet, of course. I could talk more about this, but this isn’t a character analysis, so let’s move on.
I want to return to Amity’s connection to the library. There is so much we can learn about her character from what we see of her at this one place. I also worked at the library as a high schooler, stacking shelves and keeping things organized, so I was excited to see that Amity also has a high school job at the library. Just like her, I worked a lot in the children’s section, though I was a page, not a storyteller. The other pages wouldn’t work in there since the shelves were so disorganized (little kids seemed incapable of returning books to their proper places), but I enjoyed the everlasting struggle of keeping the room organized. Working at the library was one of my favorite jobs, and I’ll always be grateful to the people I met there who made me feel welcome. Even though my boss didn’t give me a secret study room hidden behind a bookshelf, I was well taken care of and had an incredibly supportive boss and group of coworkers. But back to Amity. Her secret room to me is cool on a few levels. First of all, I’d love to have a secret hideout just like it one day. It looks like an excellent place to write and read in peace, away from the distractions of other people and the danger that someone may spot you. When I used to study in the library at Vassar, I would do my best to find a secluded spot where I could remain out of sight of most people. I don’t know if that’s what Amity is feeling, or if this is more an issue of privacy to her, but I imagine herself as being an extremely introverted person. One could argue that she just doesn’t know how to interact with other people outside of the members of her family’s social class and that she has a lot of trauma that causes her to hide her true self, but I don’t think that necessarily negates Amity’s introversion. The way she presents herself to the world is as an extrovert and a person with a certain family status to uphold, and she retreats to her study to socially recharge and be herself away from her classmates.
Maybe it’s the comfort of the library, but this is where we get our first glimpse at the true Amity. She can’t stay in her secret room forever, and has to go to the children’s section for work. In fact, that’s where Luz spots the green-haired witch during her first visit to the library. At that point, Luz has only ever had two interactions with Amity: the near dissection at Hexside school, and the witches duel at the convention. Luz only knows Amity as a bully. It must have been a bit of a shock to see Amity reading to a group of children, using fun voices for the different characters in the picture book, and yet that’s exactly what she’s doing. As Luz points out, this sour lemon drop does indeed have a hidden sweet center. And the kids seem to really love Amity too. One little demon (I’m not being mean here, he’s literally a demon with a giant red head and fangs and the deepest but most adorable voice) named Braxus even hugs Amity when story time is over. Amity is a great storyteller, and really manages to capture the attention of the kids. Though she’s struggled in her interactions with Luz, she is, ultimately, a kind and loving person. It just takes a while for her to let others see it. Other than the kids of course.
By now you may asking, but does Amity really become a good person? And how on Earth does being a good storyteller excuse her almost dissecting Luz? Very good questions. I’m going to ignore the second. And let’s appreciate some of Amity’s better qualities.
After a frightening night in the library during which Luz and Amity fight a children’s character who came to life, emerging from the pages of the book he was drawn into, Amity admits that she hasn’t exactly been the friendliest witch. First of all, in today’s culture of people refusing to take responsibility for anything, this is an incredible admission. Remember Percy Weasley from Harry Potter? That guy who leaves his family, stops talking to his parents and siblings, just because he thinks they might hurt his chances at earning a promotion at the Ministry? Everyone in the fandom seems to hate him, but he did something truly incredible at the end of The Deathly Hallows. He admitted that he was wrong and showed up at Hogwarts ready to defend his family from Voldemort. At that pivotal moment in wizarding history, he showed up, he acknowledged his failings from the past few years, and he put himself in harms way to help the rest of the fighters at the school. Amity’s situation is a bit different, but she also recognizes that her past actions were terrible, and she tells that to Luz. And we see that her actions do change. It takes some time, but she eventually risks everything – her social status, her friends, her grades, and even angers her parents – in her efforts to begin sticking up for people like Luz and Willow. She goes from making fun of Willow, in public and private, to defending her against bullies. When one of Amity’s popular friends, Bosha, makes fun of Willow in the hallway at school, Amity says that she grew up, and asks Bosha “when will you?” There’s no obvious benefit to defending Willow, at least none that Amity would have appreciated in the past number of years, and that speaks to just how much Amity has grown since meeting Luz. And when things escalate and Luz makes the error of challenging Bosha to a sports match, Amity joins Luz and Willow and helps them to defeat their bully. What a turn-a-round for this character who, not to belabor this point, almost had Luz dissected during their very first meeting. And if I needed any more reason to like Amity, she also breaks her leg and is scooped up by Luz in one of the most adorable and awkward scenes in the series. While I can’t say that I’ve ever been scooped up in quite the same way, I do connect a lot with characters and people who break their legs, having broken my femur when I was four. Seeing Amity sitting out of the adventure in the next episode because her leg was broken made me feel for her. I had so much fun during that time period because everyone wanted to take care of the four-year old bound to a wheelchair, and I hope that she also had friends and family members spend time with her.
One of the most important things that I haven’t talked about yet is Amity’s crush on Luz. Back when I was a kid, queer relationships in books and movies and tv shows weren’t a thing. In the Owl House, it’s one of the reasons viewers are so smitten with the show. After Amity begins to realize that, you know, dissecting or dueling people isn’t the right thing to do, she quickly develops a crush on Luz. It isn’t just subtext. We see Amity repeatedly blush around Luz and say some of the cutest and awkward things. The aforementioned scene where she breaks her leg? Luz offers to carry her and Amity laughs and says, “who’s Amity?” When Luz does carry her, we are gifted the line “oh, wow, sports!” I think other stories get love wrong. It isn’t some seamless meeting where two people know they are meant to be together, and flirt with all the confidence in the world. No. Love is awkwardness. Preceded by a period of abject hate and the risk of dissection. Of course. It’s not just the queerness of Amity’s crush that won over fans, but its sincerity and awkwardness. This is the hidden sweet center that Luz is talking about. At her core, Amity is just a person who wants to belong, and her process of figuring out how she belongs is adorable.
Her journey is also one of happiness. I never really thought about whether or not she was happy, but a friend recently pointed out to ne that she starts off the show being unhappy. Emira, Amity’s sister, even points this out after Luz and Amity’s disastrous adventure into the Forbidden Stacks at the library. Amity says that everything changed since Luz came to the Boiling Isles, and Emira suggests that Amity wasn’t happy before. I don’t even know if Amity herself realized it. As things have been changing, as she has been changing, she becomes a happier person. She’s learning to be kinder to others, and is becoming a happier person as a result. There’s still a lot of progress she can make – we see her fail to stand up to her parents when they manage to ban Luz from school, and she continues to struggle with her sense of ambition and need to constantly prove herself or risk rejection – but step by step she is moving along on her path of becoming a better and happier person. And that’s really cool to see.
We may not start off in the best of places. Everyone is flawed, and will always be flawed. There’s no way to be perfect. I think Amity shows us how perfection, or the idea or desire of it, can trap us in harmful cycles, perpetuating the harms of older generations, or even past versions of ourselves. Amity didn’t have to grow and become a better person. There’s a version of this story in which Amity does succeed in dissecting Luz. Thankfully that’s not a story we can see, but my point is that Amity easily could have become something different, or remained the bully she was introduced as. But she doesn’t. Luz, or light, enters her life, and she begins to think about who she is. Luz makes her think about the kind of person she wants to be. But best of all, she tries her best to act better. People can grow. Amity shows us the possibility of our own introspection.