The Owl House: Eda Clawthorne and Chronic Autoimmune Disease

I love The Owl House for many reasons and that list of reasons seems to grow with each episode. Now, after episode 4 of season 2, it’s clear that Eda’s beast curse is a metaphor for chronic autoimmune disease–or chronic illness in general.

I wasn’t expecting this reading of her character or story, but episode 4 strongly positions it this way. Every other character I’ve seen in fiction dealing with a “beast within” plot doesn’t have their experience framed in this way.

Since I’m a year into a serious chronic autoimmune illness myself, I was pleasantly surprised at making this connection. But the metaphor works, beat for beat, for almost every part of my experience. And I feel like I can express my own experience indirectly by referring to Eda.

First, there’s the mechanics of the curse. When it’s not managed well, the beast takes over Eda and she no longer has control or agency over her body. So many autoimmune flares work this way–I literally did not have full control of my body when I had the flare that got me diagnosed. Flares in other conditions may cause extreme pain that’s a lot like something angry coming out and rendering you unable to live your life.

Then there’s how Eda manages the curse–the elixir that keeps it at bay. Episode 4 most clearly positions this as medicine whereas in earlier episodes, we’re meant to see it more as a magic potion (which of course it’s that, too). There are three main elements in this episode that frame the elixir as the fantasy equivalent of autoimmune meds:

1. How Eda tells Lilith to take a swig every time she feels symptoms coming on.
2. How Eda’s mother, who fell deep into a scammer’s lies about a cure, throws lines like “You have no idea what’s in that elixir!” and her strong distaste for/skepticism of healers and potion makers (the Boiling Isles’ equivalent of medical professionals).
3. How the elixir, therefore, is positioned as opposite of these nonsensical “cures” in this expert’s book series that you have to keep paying for to find the true cure (e.g. aromatherapy for broken bones).

Also, many real-world autoimmune meds are literally liquids that are injected into your body. I’m on one of them. And as much as I use diet and lifestyle and aromatherapy as elements to manage my condition, I definitely got a familiar feeling at this dichotomy Eda’s mother presents between “traditional” medicine (the elixir) and (bad/harmful) “alternative” medicine that specifically advocates for not using medication at all.

Of course, some people may be able to go off of their medications using alternative practices and that’s fantastic. But what we see in this episode is Eda, who is content with how she’s managing her symptoms, versus her mother, who is insistent on curing Eda by any means necessary to the point of taking away from her the one thing that actually works because she fully bought into the “potions are harmful” rhetoric. In other words, the family member who isn’t sick is imposing their will on the person who is. It’d be a completely different story if Eda explored these alternative practices herself and chose to use some of them in her own disease management, but that isn’t the case here. And while I’m thankful no one in my immediate network hit me with “this essential oil will cure you,” I fully expect to run into people like that (even though I think essential oils smell nice and are relaxing!).

By the end of the episode, Eda’s mother realizes that she shouldn’t have spent so much time, energy, and money trying to cure her daughter. This attitude made Eda feel broken and like she wasn’t good enough because nothing she did made her better. In one powerful line, she says “We didn’t want this to happen, but it’s part of you.” And that is such a succinct way to summarize chronic autoimmune disease. It’s something I’ve had to grapple with since my diagnosis.

The beast curse is literally the worst thing that has ever happened to Eda. It was sudden. It made her lose control of herself. It took away the life she thought she’d have. My condition did the exact same thing to me and many others with autoimmune disease have a similar experience.

The metaphor begins to fall apart when looking at how Eda got the curse. Yeah, Lilith did it to her and in real life, autoimmune disease isn’t thrust upon you by your sister who’s jealous of how good you are with magic. But everything after Eda getting the curse is treated as a chronic autoimmune disease experience as opposed to a psychological/mental health experience, which we see in stories like Naruto with the nine-tailed demon fox.

But now in season 2, Eda and Lilith are dealing with a curse that has shifted. They both share it, but they have to relearn magic. This is yet another parallel to autoimmune disease. It can progress and it can take away things you used to be able to do normally, so you have to relearn them in a different way. Not only are Eda and Lilith relearning magic as a result of the curse’s effect on them, but Eda is now a guide to a newly diagnosed Lilith. Lilith is now having to deal with the fear and uncertainty of this new condition, and the fact that “stress makes the beat comes out” is such a common refrain with autoimmune disease.

One last element of the beast curse that makes it like chronic autoimmune disease is how at the end of season 1, Eda got better by sharing this burden with her sister. Before this, and even before Luz, Eda was managing her condition all by herself. Now, she has a much better support system. And sure, those of us with autoimmune disease aren’t literally splitting our diseases with siblings or family members and giving them what we have, but the speculative/fantasy element of the show allows for this to happen to highlight not only the benefits of having a good support network when you have a chronic illness, but also the relationship between those who have been diagnosed and managing their conditions for a long time and those who are new to the whole thing.

It’s so important to represent these types of experiences, especially in adult characters in a children’s show. I think Eda and Lilith are meant to be older than me, but I’m closer to their age/experience than early high school like Luz. Many autoimmune diseases hit in your 20s and 30s, and autoimmunity generally is on the rise. Having metaphors like Eda’s beast curse in fiction can prepare us for dealing with autoimmunity when/if it happens to us.