Now that The Owl House has ended, fans are left to wonder whether it got a satisfying conclusion. Due to the series’ untimely cancelation, it had to rush through a lot of major plot points and skip over many character arcs. This fate can similarly be observed in a lot of manga canceled by Weekly Shonen Jump.
By comparing TOH to some canceled Jump titles, it’s easier to get an idea of how well it handled cancelation. Every creator has their own way of dealing with suddenly being told that their series won’t be running for nearly as long as they had hoped, but some of them can stick the landing regardless. If TOH, for all its anime influence, is anything like these series, it will have either properly avoided or fallen right into some of the pitfalls of story writing that come with cancelation.
What Does The Owl House Have In Common With Canceled Shonen Jump Manga?
One of the big issues with impending cancellation is having to reveal major plot twists right away. For Example, TOH had to reveal a secret insurgency, that two minor antagonists were part of it, and that one of the main characters wasn’t brainwashed in one episode. The recently-canceled Ginka & Glüna had to give away a lot of its major twists, too, like what Ginka looked like as a human or that Glüna is a reincarnation of his dead sister. Twists like these could have easily been the hooks at the ends of their own chapters or episodes, but they had to be laid out right away for the sake of writing a cohesive story with a proper ending.
Rushing to the end also means forcing the main characters to show their ultimate techniques early regardless of proper buildup. In Luz’s case, she gained a new form and all the powers of a Titan from King’s father in the middle of the final battle. A similar phenomenon has happened in series like Candy Flurry, Bone Collection, and Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru; that last example is especially infamous for bumping the main character’s stats straight up to infinity in the final chapter. These characters’ power-ups might have felt more deserved if they had the time to work their way up to them, but they didn’t.
Some creators use cancellation as a chance to vent with some meta-commentary about the cruelty of the industry. For example, in TOH Season 2 Episode 19, “O Titan, Where Art Thou,” Luz comments how she might have liked a day a the beach if she had “another 20 adventures” to do it; in other words, if the series had at least another 20 episodes, there might have been time for an anime-style beach episode. Similarly, The Hunters Guild: Red Hood used its wind-down chapters to give a not-so-subtle explanation of how the editors use audience popularity to dictate whether a series will continue in Jump. It’s a little passive-aggressive, but anyone with plans for a lasting series can understand how frustrating it is to have things cut short.
Does The Owl House Still Have a Good Ending Despite Being Canceled?
At the very least, TOH got to have its ending fleshed out well enough between its remaining episodes. Some manga like Guardian of the Witch or PPPPPP have to skip straight to whatever ending they had planned — without any proper buildup. TOH may have been rushed into its ending, but it at least got to cover all its major plot points, thus delivering a relatively satisfying conclusion.
For the most part, TOH handled being cut short with grace and dignity. It still managed to flesh out the characters that really needed it, cover a lot of major plot points if not all of them, and give just about everyone a well-deserved happy ending. The action was also pretty great. That’s a lot more than most canceled Jump manga can say for themselves. In any case, clunky ending or not, the fanbase for this series will continue to praise it for its merits for a long time.