Managing Expectations for Amphibia and Owl House

Disney when it green-lights great premises knows how to lure in an audience. We have to give them credit for that. They understand what viewers want, even before we know it sometimes.

I for one am looking forward to the stories from Gravity Falls and Steven Universe veterans, because two years without new episodes has filled me with loss. Also, the new shows on Disney do their best to fill the gap, but you can see why the executives wanted Alex Hirsch to do one more season.

Amphibia is about a girl who ends up in a magical universe with sapient, talking frogs. Owl House is about a girl who goes to another dimension to become a witch. Both are POC leads, who have rather opposite approaches to their scenario: Anne from Amphibia decides to adapt with resignation, while Luz in Owl House embraces the call to adventure.

I am excited, and impatient. The months seem to drag until we get premiere dates. And yet, I need to remind myself of one important thing:

Amphibia and Owl House Cannot Replace Gravity Falls

My problem will be wanting more magical adventures about a family that ends up having to face their demons, literal and metaphorical, to prevent tragedy. I was devastated when Alex Hirsch announced Gravity Falls’s cancellation, especially in the wake of Wander Over Yonder getting cancelled.

We have to view these shows on their individual merits. They can’t replace previous shows or replicate what worked. As we’ve seen with certain reboots, trying to simply copy what happened before or make arbitrary updates doesn’t please an audience. Ducktales managed to toe the line by showing love for the comics and show lore, while adding new elements that were plot and era relevant.

Gravity Falls when broken down had several key ingredients: a strange town with multiple secrets, mysterious lore that the audience could find with detective work, relatable morally ambiguous protagonists that have different reactions to weirdness, and threatening antagonists that vary from lawful paranoid to outright chaotic. The Pines family had to learn to reconcile their differences, after spending a summer finding or befriending monsters. All of these elements make a great show. But we cannot impose them on different premises and successors.

Amphibia has a different take from Gravity Falls, in that its hero Anne seems to be an only child, and her friends feature more prominently in the opening. Her adventures seem to involve more befriending and running than fighting, all the while knowing she’s far from home. She’s also biracial, half-Thai according to the pre-show info we’ve received, while the Pines were Jewish like the real-life Hirsches.

The Owl House in contrast makes it harder to judge the story since we’ve only seen promotional art. Luz unlike Dipper doesn’t seek grounding as she answers the hero’s call to adventure. Her name implies that she’s either Hispanic or Latino. She’s fine with demons, and the potential of power corrupting. Dipper had to pull back before he hurt people, and what are Luz’s limits? What if she has no limits? That would be EXCITING!

There will Always be the Shipping Problem

I’m deeply worried that either show could fall victim to canon shipping. Even in fandom, shipping can be interesting to watch, and devastating when it hurts real-life people. For me, Star vs. the Forces of Evil lost me when it focused more on the shipping in the show rather than the lore and the wonderful platonic relationships from its pilot. Gravity Falls knew to balance its ships and characters’ romantic aspirations with reality.

Mind, shipping is okay. I’m not shaming anyone for shipping. Shipping is great to me, as a romantic. It’s more my worry that canon shipping will mess with the story, or that fandom shipping will hurt people. But I hope we are all mature adults and understand that shows are not reality. We will not harass the creators or voice actors about their opinions, or demanding they make a ship canon.

My hope is that since Amphibia is filled with frogs that fandom shipping, and canon shipping, will be minimal. Unlikely, since anything can be shipped, but one can dream. Not sure about The Owl House, since who knows when there’s a demon involved? Demons are awesome.

A Long Wait

It’s going to be a while before we even get a glimpse of the pilots. Still, a few congrats to Disney need to come out.

We get not one, but TWO shows where girls are the lead protagonists. They won’t be marketed exclusively to girls! That is a huge step in progress for the animation industry. Also, both of these leads are POC, and taking charge of their adventures. That is something this generation’s kids need to see, of different faces that would have faced exclusion or whittling down ten years ago.

Disney,we will wait. And we will get hyped! Let’s make these shows successes, without imposing too many expectations on their narrative.