Time to talk about this frame, because I’m obsessed with it.
This is moments after Amity is in the gay brooding pose. She turns to face her friends, and this is her expression.
You can tell by the tilt in her eyes and the slant in her eyebrows that she is sad. But try covering up the shadowed part of her face. If you just look at the part of her face that’s in the light, she looks tired, detached, and done with the situation, same as always. When she’s near the window and the light, where people can see her, she automatically puts on her mask of indifference. But if you cover up her left eye, she looks completely devastated. Once she’s in the shadows, where no one can see her, she shows emotion.
You see this in Covention, too. (Oh, look, my brain is taking me on a tangent). When she’s under the lights of the covention floor, Amity is cold and calculating. With the lights of the Witches’ Duel glaring down on her, Amity is crueler than ever, shown by her reaction to Luz’s attempt to protect her from the spikes.
But once she’s hidden behind a stand, cloaked in entirely shadow, her guard disappears. She cries. And only Luz can bring a softer light, one that Amity’s light-averse expression can handle.
Later, in Lost in Language, the motif continues. When Amity comes to find Luz reading her diary, she is a dark form silhouetted in light. She is in light, much more light than her secret room has, and she is angry, unwilling to listen to Luz. Only when she enters the room and steps out of the light can she admit her true feelings: that Luz hurt her.
She shows more emotion under the book. She laughs for the first time in the entire series when she and Luz are trapped under a massive book’s shadow. Outside the library, she admits that she may have been wrong about Luz. While she still wears her mask of indifference, there is a crack, one that light can enter.
Adventures in the Elements explores this even more. This episode starts in day and moves to night. At the beginning of the episode, Luz and Amity are standing in the middle of broad daylight, in front of Amity’s family. While Amity clearly cares about Luz, she still carefully words her warning to Luz. It isn’t an insult when she tells Luz that she might end up in the baby class, but it isn’t an offer to teach her, either. While Amity’s mask is crumbling, it’s still there.
Once the night falls, everything changes. Amity locks Luz away because she doesn’t want her to get hurt--a parallel with how Luz protected Amity from the spikes, and the beginning of what I hope is a long series of Luz and Amity looking out for each other. Luz and Amity work together to save their families. Even though the day breaks later, Amity is able to continue her “adorable banter,” as Eda calls it, with Luz.
Luz is Amity’s light. Amity doesn’t know how to be happy in the light, but Luz is teaching her, bringing the light to her in a way that no one ever has. If the arc continues positively, then hopefully the two of them will be together in the light by the end of the series.
