Luz is kinda right to be oblivious
I know you all are relentlessly teasing Luz for being completely oblivious to Amity’s clear romantic advances. And while you definitely have a point, Luz isn’t entirely wrong to do this. Luz’s assumption that her and Amity are just friends is her way of protecting herself and Amity.
Let’s start by laying out the scenario from Luz’s POV. You’re a human from another realm who visits a magic realm. There you meet a bunch of amazing people, but one lettuce-headed blushy mess sticks out to you. You start doing all these favors for her, things you would only do for Eda and King in the past. She returns a few of them. Then she starts getting comfortable around you, where she feels good enough to hug you and stuff. Well, then there’s this dance, and she doesn’t ask you out, and she feels bad because she’s afraid of being rejected by the person she does want to ask out.
Well, duh, of course Amity likes her! But Luz has quite a few things to disprove that.
First off, we’ll start with the psychology that makes this possible. (This is what happens when the analysis blog takes a psych class). There’s this thing called confirmation bias, which I’d say a good proportion of you are familiar with. For those that aren’t: if you have a preconceived opinion, you’re more likely to look for things that support that, rather than those that disprove it. Everyone uses this all the time. Usually it’s fairly harmless, but when in the wrong hands, it is a powerful tool that can be used to influence elections and such.
In Luz’s case, her confirmation bias comes from good evidence. Any wlw who has actually lived on Earth knows that it’s dangerous to assume your friend likes you. First off, there’s the selfish aspect of it (you know, the “who am I to assume that I’m cool enough for someone to have a crush on me? You can’t control those things!”). Second, there’s the fact that straight girls on Earth can be very affectionate. One of my straight friends kissed me twice until I asked her to stop because I did not want to fall for her. In Luz’s mind, Amity could easily be one of those touchy straight girls. So of course she’s looking for evidence to stockpile and convince herself that Amity doesn’t like her like that.
And there sure is a lot of evidence to stockpile.
To start with, Luz doesn’t think she knows Amity that well. I mean, the girl has been to Luz’s house twice. They haven’t had a lot of time to spend together. And even their dates have been sporadic: Luz took her top student badge so Amity watched her get dissected, Luz and Amity fought to what should have been their death, Luz almost got Amity killed at the library, Luz almost got Amity’s friends killed at the Knee, Amity almost got Luz’s friend killed, and then they danced. That’s it. As for the rest of Amity’s life...that’s largely a mystery. Luz didn’t figure out that Amity’s parents are abusive until last episode! Amity was actively avoiding her on the first day (hiding out in the halls and such), so who knows what she was doing then? And she spends a lot of time with rich kids: what if one of them was her crush? There’s a lot of Amity’s life that Luz can leave up to her imagination.
Secondly, Amity has shown Luz explicit proof of liking non-girls. Particularly, Malingale the Soothsayer. While their gender was never confirmed, Malingale seems to be male or nonbinary. With Luz, this could be some extra proof of not liking girls.
Okay, well how has she not even noticed all of Amity’s blushing? She has. But here’s the thing about white people: we blush a lot. As a blush-prone white person myself, I will blush when I’m angry, when I’m humiliated, when it’s too hot, when I exercise, when I’m uncomfortable, when I’m insecure...the list goes on. From Luz’s point of view, Amity really has permanent redness. I mean, she’ll hold her breath when she’s angry and her face will go red. She could be always angry to be around Luz. And especially in the past two episodes, whenever she so much as looks at Luz, she blushes. With how red her face is, Luz could even think it’s how her face always is. Or, that it’s a skin condition she got recently. Yeah, a lot of that evidence is grasping for straws, but remember that Luz has confirmation bias working against her.
How about all those times that Amity did heroic things? Luz’s love language is literally acts of service, and Amity has done those several times. Like when she caged Luz because “you’ll only get hurt.” Or when she burst from the trees as the leaves formed a heart around her and T-posed in front of Luz. The truth behind that is that Amity is starting to pick up on how Luz shows affection and is reciprocating it in her attempts to be the type of person Luz can love. But there’s another interpretation, which Luz could easily be using.
Luz was the one who started the acts of service. She was the one who decided to befriend the Amity, to burst in as Luzura and save her, to say she’s not actually a witch, to save her siblings, to learn an extra spell and be in Amity’s class, to go fix Willow’s memories...the list goes on. So for Amity to reciprocate that? Maybe she’s just making it up to Luz. Amity probably feels bad about all the times she has let Luz be the hero, and wants to make her feel better about it.
Amity has also shown Luz proof of liking another girl. Right before Grom was Understanding Willow, which was an episode about Amity reminiscing over her childhood crush and fixing the damage between them. Sounds like friends to enemies to lovers, the trope that She Ra showed us to be an emotional and rewarding trope. Since Luz is a fanfic type, she could totally be looking for that trope.
And besides, you saw Luz in Willow’s mind. She literally watched Amity and Willow hold hands, gaze into each other’s eyes, apologize, make up, and look like they were going to get married. Sure, Luz wanted to go in there and claim Amity, which is part of why she put her hand on Amity’s shoulder there. But she is big enough to know that when her crush likes someone else, she should back off and support it. She would rather see Amity happy than see Amity with her, if those happen to be mutually exclusive. Which she thinks they are.
Going off that, Amity’s last words before her fear was revealed were a bit suspicious. She said “I’m sorry.” Who the hell would apologize as she was saving her friend?
As audience members, Amity’s reasoning for this is clear to us. She did this because she thought Grom was going to out her in front of everyone. She thought Luz would see her crush and hate her for it. Which makes sense if you assume the point of view of Amity’s repressed self, where her only crush was literally removed by her parents, and proceeded to hate her for years afterwards. If Luz knew that a monster like Amity liked her, she would remember what happened to Willow and cut Amity off like she was a long hairstyle.
From Luz’s point of view, it’s much worse. Deep down, Luz knows that she likes Amity and wants Amity to like her back (although she might not have the words for it). And think about it: if Amity’s fear is romance-related and she’s apologizing to Luz for something, wouldn’t it be for not liking her? From Luz’s point of view, she has been pretty obvious about her crush. She literally risked her life countless times for her. She even faced her worst fear for Amity, even though Eda strongly cautioned her against it. And besides, it wouldn’t even occur to Luz to hate Amity for liking her. So Luz thinks Amity is apologizing because Amity knows that Luz likes her, and she knows that her crush will hurt Luz. That also explains why Luz didn’t recognize her own mudsona: she was looking for someone else’s face to be reflected in it, so she could maybe help Amity by being her wingman.
Also, Luz can’t even stay in the Boiling Isles. Let’s say that everything goes perfectly. Luz falls for Amity, Amity falls for Luz, they date, they kiss, they face the Emperor’s Coven together, they face whoever’s writing notes to Luz’s mom together, they call each other girlfriends...all that won’t last, because Luz has to go home.
Luz knows this. She already knows that making attachments is bad. That’s why her mom is her worst fear: it means she loses her real mother figure Eda, her best friend King, her love interest Amity, and her friends Willow and Gus. So of course she wouldn’t want to fall in love! She’ll only end up breaking Amity’s heart, and breaking her own. She saw how Amity reacted to having to leave Willow. Do you really think she would do that to Amity?
So can you blame her for the pain in her voice when she said “that’s what friends do?” She knows that’s not what friends do. But she has to put up that wall or risk hurting everyone.
