lev got a very interesting ask about how her perception of Philip became as it is now so we with Ludwing and Mila wanted to participate!^^ A little reminder for all of us on what is important for us.
PART ONE. First Impressions.
At first, I only saw his mask and his role as Hunter’s personal tormentor—not even in the actual show, but in the Confrontation animatic, where it wasn’t clear who this scary bastard in the mask was to the kid, but definitely someone important. Right away, I felt their dynamic—how the younger one refused to become a copy of the older, how the older one crushed him under his heel. I’ve always loved parent-child conflicts in stories because I feel deeply connected to that theme.
HUNTER.
So, I sat down to watch the show properly. The end of the first season and almost all of the second left me in awe. I got attached to both Hunter and Belos—though more to Hunter at first, because his sarcasm, his desperate need for approval, his feeling of being unloved—all of that resonated with me. But the moment Hunter "resolved" his conflict, my interest in him vanished. I didn’t need comfort—I needed a proper resolution, for Hunter to witness his uncle’s death. I missed the buildup from the sharp, defensive kid to this softer, calmer version. But whatever. We’re not here to talk about Hunter.
BELOS.
The first thing I noticed was his sly, mocking voice. How he provoked and teased Luz, how overwhelmingly powerful he felt to her and to us, the audience. That’s what thrilled me. Look at what he can do! What an asshole! Damn. I was drawn to his mystery, his playfulness, and most of all—his oppressive strength, experience, and charisma. Back then, I knew nothing about him, and just those traits alone made him compelling. I didn’t give a single fuck what his face looked like.
FACE REVEAL.
Then came the scene where Belos’ face was finally shown—the talk with Hunter by the portal. My brain short-circuited. THOSE CONDESCENDING TONES, THAT MANIPULATIVE NATURE. I’ve always been weak for manipulative characters, and when they’re also a parental figure? I foam at the mouth, clawing at the walls. Again, I didn’t care about his appearance—only his personality, his role, his actions, and his influence.
HOLLOW MIND.
Hollow Mind intrigued me in terms of Philip’s backstory and curse. But there still wasn’t enough information to draw conclusions. So, in the moment, I just enjoyed how menacing Belos was and how creepy his transformations were.
SEASON TWO FINALE.
I wasn’t thrilled when the charismatic villain was reduced to a near-feral state. But at the same time, given the deliciously bleak mood among the kids (I savored it, rewatching the rain scene and Luz & Co.’s return home multiple times), I hoped Season 3 would give Belos a proper ending—both for Hunter’s sake and his own arc of downfall. I wanted at least some exploration of his story, a final conversation between him and Hunter, but instead…
SEASON THREE.
Season Three was a complete letdown. My hopes were crushed, and my fears came true. Belos was turned into an animal—a stupid, vicious one that wanted nothing but to kill the kids, despite everything that had once driven him. We didn’t see his reaction to returning to the human world, to his own pitiful state—not a single second of reflection, not one coherent thought. Total character assassination. He felt like a completely different entity—simplified, just a plot device, not the same living being who had made the choices he did in Season Two.
SERIES FINALE.
The peak of this degradation was how they said goodbye to him. They stomped him into the mud. Hunter wasn’t even there—he didn’t witness his death. I watched the rest of the finale in shock and horror.
That’s it?..
The sheer hatred dripping from Belos’ sendoff. The way his attempt to understand (through the Collector) was mocked… I was stunned. It felt like watching a mother strangle her own child, then proudly brag, "Yeah, got ‘em!"
Later, I found out why it had turned out that way. Dana Terrace, the show’s creator, had designed Belos purely as a boogeyman—the face of conservatism and everything she despised. The face of that one older relative who’d never understand, never accept, never change.
Politics ruined everything, as usual.
But ironically, I never paid attention to that. Belos’ religiosity always felt superficial to me—just a tool. Turns out, the author wanted it to read as… just some old conservative religious fanatic forcing his ways onto a "progressive" world, ruining lives, and getting his comeuppance. That’s it. And all that depth in his backstory—the weariness, the loneliness, the guilt over killing someone he once loved, his protectiveness toward Luz—all of that? An accident.
The more I learned, the more betrayed I felt. Turns out, Dana and the Owl House fandom and I weren’t on the same wavelength. I thought we were going to explore complex emotions and pull something meaningful from it—that not everyone can change, but everyone deserves to be understood. Turns out, only the young deserve that. The rest can go fuck themselves and die in a ditch. The finale showed that the author’s heart is rooted in pure hatred.
PART TWO. THE FANDOM.
First, I scoured the internet for Belos and Hunter content (having learned from past mistakes, I avoided anything with shipping). I looked for fanfics, art focused on drama, symbolism—anything addressing how unsatisfying the ending was and trying to fix it.
I found “At the Dawn”. I found Lavash’s sketches and posts, even a short video about how much the finale sucked and how to salvage it. By then, it was clear there’d be no redemption arc for Belos. So he needed a proper death. And At the Dawn gave it to him—long, agonizing, and bleak. So everyone could fucking feel it.
I also devoured fics about Philip and Hunter’s conflict. I needed someone to properly close that chapter. To this day, I haven’t found it. It faded away. Though I did see a few good attempts: "Was Not the Hero", where the old man got every accusation thrown at him, and "Blunt Force Treatment", where Belos, thanks to external factors, became what he’d pretended to be—an emperor and a good uncle.
But that wasn’t enough. We weren’t ready to say goodbye to Philip just yet. So I pitched our first AU to the girls…
OUR CREATIONS.
There were so many. AUs and stories. What if Philip faced the Collector’s judgment ("Favorite Toy")? What if he won ("Pyrrhic Victory")? What if the main tragedy never happened and Caleb lived ("Axe", "Murmur", "Clean Page")? What if Philip were different ("Anarchist")? We explored countless possibilities, and in the end, we crafted our own vision.
OUR PHILIP.
Our Philip drifted further from the original with time. First, the smug grins vanished, then the self-aggrandizing—until only what we deemed the real Philip remained. Our Philip is an intelligent man with a tragic past and a rotten personality. A passionate scholar, yet broken by fate and the era he lived in. Cunning, resourceful, and cold to all but those he calls family. The Belos onscreen dissolved into a distant ghost of the past. He no longer felt like ours. All that remained was Philip—the Philip who wanders the woods searching for his brother, who builds a cult not for revenge, but to prove to himself that the Demon Realm could become his home. And now, alongside the world he hates, he has…
CALEB.
Our Caleb is nothing like the one in the show. To match Philip, he became harsher, stronger—but unlike Philip, he isn’t cut off from the world. Caleb embraces the witches’ realm, and it embraces him. While the brothers’ tragedy in the show ended at the start of Philip’s story, we… we made their saga span centuries, alive even now. And it’s no longer about revenge—it’s about what it means to live when the one person you love keeps hurting you, over and over. Our story is a deep family drama, and that’s exactly what I wanted from the start. I wanted feelings, I wanted connection. And what I once failed to find between Belos and Hunter, I found here—in the saga of the Wittebane brothers.
CONCLUSION.
In the end, Philip’s character taught me that… often, our interpretation of a creator’s work differs from their intent. That love isn’t conditional on how "good" a character is in the author’s eyes, but on what you see in them. On how much time, effort, thought, and soul you pour into understanding them—and what your opinion of them says about you as a person. Because it’s always the most ambiguous, darkest things that help us realize who we are. What moves us. What we fear, what we want. And somehow, Philip became the lens through which we studied ourselves.
So in the end, I don’t regret that our Philip and the canon one diverged. Nor do I regret the disappointment his ending made me feel. After all, everything happens for a reason. Otherwise, I’d be somewhere completely different right now.
Thank you for reading uwu