The Collector (The Owl House)

The Collector is the (now reformed) secondary antagonist of the animated series The Owl House. He is a mysterious entity imprisoned within the Boiling Isles that has come in league with Emperor Belos, intent on gaining freedom on the Day of Unity and taking revenge by wreaking havoc upon the Demon Realm. After Belos betrays him, he promptly defeats him and proceeds to turn the Boiling Isles into his own personal playground.
==Background==
The Collector is an enigmatic figure with vague, obscure roots in the history of the Demon Realm. The youngest of Collector siblings, he went to the Demon Realm to make friends with the Titans. However, his siblings killed them all and abandoned their younger brother, leading to sole remaining Titan imprisoning him due to mistakenly believing he was at fault for the Titan genocide.
He was worshipped as the patron god of the Titan Trappers, a warrior clan of witches dedicated to finding the last Titans and killing them. They referred to the Collector as "The Grand Huntsman". However, it’s implied this was a different Collector.
During the 1660s, a human witch hunter named Philip Wittebane sought the Collector, as he was said to have the information he needed to complete his mission: construct a portal back to the Human Realm following his incidental transfer to the Demon Realm, as well as exterminate all life in the realm. To do this, he needed to acquire a mirror found in the ruins of the Titan's skull, except that it was guarded by a Stonesleeper. After a couple of times, including attempting to sacrifice a time-displaced Luz Noceda and Lilith Clawthorne to the beast, Philip retrieves the mirror, although he is wounded after by the infuriated duo. Philip later activates the mirror, unleashing the Collector, then requesting his help with his goal.
As time goes on, Philip adopts the image of Emperor Belos, establishing dominion of the Boiling Isles. The Collector remained his closest ally, and together they concocted a complex plot that would complete their common goal on the Day of Unity. Not one of Belos' followers, or even anyone on the Isles, were aware of their Emperor's partnership with the Collector except Kikimora.
===Physical appearance===
The Collector wears a cloak that has celestial decorations on it; one side black with moons and stars, and the other grey with black suns. As a spirit, he appears as a two-dimensional being with a half-split design; again with one side black with three sun symbols, and the other grey with three crescent moon symbols. He also has a half-moon face pattern and his head is shaped like a cowl.
===Powers and abilities===
*Magic: While it is unknown if he is a witch or biped demon, the Collector has demonstrated that he can use magic.
**Flash bangs: The Collector can use flash bangs to blind an opponent.
**Shadow control: The Collector is shown to be able to manipulate shadows. He uses this to trap anyone he wishes to capture, or project themselves through living shadows.
**Binding: He can bind living beings to curses, transforming them into scrolls, as shown by what he did to the Owl Beast.
==Role in the series==
In present day, the Collector pays a visit to Belos through shadow to check on his progress with the Draining Spell. Belos assures the Collector the Day of Unity will come, right before Hunter arrives to deliver Belos the Portal Key after his solo mission at Eclipse Lake. Belos coldly dismisses the boy, but takes the key. After Hunter leaves, the Collector comes out from hiding and jokes with Belos about his doubts of Hunter's loyalty, eventually questioning Belos if the false purpose he gives Hunter is another way of tormenting the boy like he has with previous Grimwalkers. Belos disagrees with the Collector, and states that it hurts him every time the clones turn against him.
In "Edge of the World", Luz, King, and Hooty travel to the remains of another Titan on the other side of the Demon Realm and meet the Titan Trappers, believing they are King's people. However, they instead learn they are a cult worshipping the Collector and that they seek to kill King, who is actually the last Titan. The Trappers plan to use King in a ritual to free the Collector from their prison. King lights the Collector's mirror (which was been broken into two for an unknown reason) with a flame, causing him to establish a 'connection' with the entity and hear their voice in his mind. Fortunately, Luz rescued King before the ritual could be completed and prevent the Trappers from following them.
Later, the Collector questions if Belos is nervous about returning home since everything could’ve changed by now. He begs Belos to free him but Belos tells the Collector they have to wait until after the Draining Spell is done.
The Collector worried over the possibility of Belos betraying him. Later, when Belos activates the Draining Spell congratulates him on his success on the Draining Spell, he asks Belos to free him. However, Belos reveal he never intended to free, he was going to leave imprisoned the whole after he wipes out everyone on the Isles. Enraged, the Collector calls him out for going back on the deal until Belos throws his tablet down below. Later, King decided to free the Collector in order to stop the Draining Spell, while there King touches the Tablet, summon the Collector who was still upset about Belos' betrayed but had trouble seeing King due to wearing the collar around his neck. King removed and revealed himself to him, to his surprised, King was a Titan and he always wanted to play with him.
King convinced the Collector to draining spell or else no one would play his new game: "The Owl House". The Collector accepted his offer to play "Owl House" and free him from his prison. Once freed, he saves Luz, Amity, Willow, Gus Porter, and Hunter from Belos. When Belos sees him free, he pretends to tell he's freed as promise, but the Collector isn't fooled, he asks him if he wants to play tag by pulling Belos towards him. He then touches and sends him flying across the room and spatter him into pieces. He then proceed to turn to the group to continue his game of tag, offering them a head start. King stops him from touching them and reminds the child of their promise. After The Collector looks what the Draining Spell is doing to everyone, he moves the moon away from the sun with a simple movement of the finger, stopping the eclipse and with it the mortal spell. With the draining spell stopped, The Collector intends to make King fulfill his end of the promise, pulling him towards them when the young Titan used his sonic blast to send Luz and friends to the portal back to Earth.
For the next few months, The Collector has turned most of the residents of the Boiling Isles into puppets for them to play The Owl House game, which is a recreation of all the adventures Luz had while being on the isles. The few that have escaped are either in hiding or doing The Collector’s bidding to avoid suffering the same fate as most of the residents, such as Odalia and Terra, with the latter being turned anyway when she insulted King. When not playing, King and The Collector spend their time in the Archives, a building The Collector created shortly after reshaping the isles and turning it into their playground and where all the puppets are kept when not in use. 
King reads to The Collector when it’s time to sleep, learning much about the star child during that time, and also hiding the fact that Eda is not under her Owl beast form anymore, and together with Lilith, they try finding ways to stop The Collector. When Luz returns to the Boiling Isles, so does Belos, who possesses Puppet Raine and starts manipulating The Collector once his attempts at possessing him fail. Belos reveals to The Collector that Luz has returned and reveals that there are people conspiring against him, convincing him to spy on King, Eda and Lilith, who are discussing plans on how to stop him. When King tells them they have to stop The Collector for good, the child falls for Belos’s manipulation, failing to listen to the rest of the conversation where King is suggesting to talk to him instead of trapping him again like he believes. Belos then takes The Collector outside the Archives, where Luz and the others are celebrating the birth of Luz’s Palisman. Belos convinces The Collector Luz and her friend have to be dealt with, with The Collector saying he wants to play a new game before angrily snapping his fingers.
Luz’s friends and mother are then captured and turned into puppets by The Collector, while Luz, Eda and King are afterwards trapped into nightmares to ‘make them see the error of their ways’ as Belos suggested. Luz manages to escape when Amity manages to resist control long enough to reveal to her the torture is not real and gives her a light glyph that frees her from the dream. Once released, she proceeds to free Eda and King, with The Collector angry that Belos’s plan isn’t working and that King will hate him now. When Belos, still possessing Puppet Raine, suggest that it could be easier to just wipe them out, The Collector tells him that he wants to try being their friend instead, in the process revealing that his magic won’t work on King anyway because he is a Titan, giving Belos an idea. When he suggests to The Collector that he can play with the trio so that they’ll want to be his friend, The Collector takes the suggestion and appears in front of Luz, Eda and King, showing confusion as to why King would rather spend time with them instead of him. The trio prepares to confront him, but The Collector simply tells them that he doesn’t want to scare them anymore and that they’ll play his favorite games, believing that he can fix them as easily as a broken toy if they get hurt. 
After several rounds of playing The Collector’s favorite games, the trio manages to survive through a combination of their own wits and abilities, with The Collector getting angry after each loss. After getting tired of the humiliation, The Collector brings them back to their original location and goes to sulk in a corner. Sympathizing with him, Luz approaches the child and tells him the games can’t last forever. The disheartened Collector then proceeds to vent with her and tells her about how his siblings, The Archivists, convinced him to go play with the Titans, tricking him into acting as a scout to them so they could proceed to wipe them out when they discovered Titan magic could dispel theirs. The last of those Titans, who is actually King’s father, hid his egg from him and believing he was to blame for the genocide, trapped him in the In Between Realm, where he remained for centuries before Belos found him. Tired of always being used, The Collector reveals how he doesn’t care that King never considered him a real friend, only caring that he found the last Titan and that he was his friend now, even if it was just through pretend. 
Feeling sorry for The Collector and realizing now that he never meant any genuine harm to anybody, Luz, along with Eda and King, take the star child on a tour around the Boiling Isles and show him how they became friends and how far kindness and forgives can go when befriending others. By this time, The Collector takes notice of the isles somehow coming to life, and along with Luz, Eda and King, proceed to investigate.
They find out that Belos, upon learning the isles is the corpse of a Titan, infects the hearts and began possessing it in order to finally destroy the Boiling Isles and its residents and finish what he started. The Collector heads to where Belos is, but instead of blasting him like the last time, proceeds to hug him, much to everyone’s confusion. It turns out The Collector was trying to follow Luz’s advice about kindness and forgiveness, believing it could work on Belos. When he turns around to show Luz what he has done, Belos takes this opportunity to try blasting him, with Luz intercepting the blast to save The Collector. The child is left confused as to what he did wrong, with Luz reassuring him that he did nothing wrong and that Belos is a complicated case, noticing the blast got her and starts to slowly disintegrates. 
Luz dies in front of everyone, with The Collector trying to bring her back with a snap of his fingers, and is left confused on why he is unable to. Devastated by Luz’s death, both King and Eda transform into more bestial forms, and The Collector can only watch helplessly as their feral forms attack Belos in grief and anger. He keeps trying to bring Luz back, to no avail. Finally realizing what death means to mortals and that bringing them back is something beyond his powers, a devastated Collector remorsefully apologized to Eda and King for everything he has done and begs them to run away, shedding tears for the first time and realizing Belos infection moss is getting to him as well. 
When Belos is about to finish them off, Luz saves them just in time, having become a Titan hybrid after King’s father sacrificed himself to give his remaining life force to her in order to revive her and stop Belos once and for all. The Collector is confused at first, but is nonetheless happy that she’s back, and when Belos’s continued possession of the corpse starts to make the Archives collapse, The Collector volunteers to keep it afloat while Luz, Eda and King deal with Belos. The infection moss continues to weaken The Collector, but he manages to keep the Archives afloat long enough for Luz’s friends and mother to rescue the puppets inside from falling.
Once Belos is defeated for good, and exhausted Collector collapses in front of Luz’s mother and friends, and cowers when he believes they’ll hurt him for all the harm he has caused. He is relieved and delighted when Amity shows him compassion and gives him a hand to help them up. Together they watch as the infection moss disintegrates and the Boiling Isles start to return to normal. Shortly afterwards, The Collector returns every citizen back to normal and later meets everyone at The Owl House, revealing his decision to go live in the stars for some growth and soul searching. Finally considering The Collector a real friend, King gifts him his precious François, leaving the child deeply touched by the gesture. He gifts Luz a portal door so she can come and go between the Human and Demon realm as many times as she wants and pinky swears to each of them keep doing their best.
Four years later, while The Collector is still living in the stars, it’s heavily implied that he visits the isles often, and gifts Luz a spectacular display of light for her belated quinceañera after she misses a few birthdays helping to rebuild the Boiling Isles. When he’s about to leave, Luz and most of the isles’s residents bid farewell to the child as he flies back to space.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*The Collector was listed in the credits for "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door", but went unnamed in the episode itself. It was not until "Elsewhere and Elsewhen" that his name was mentioned.
*At the beginning of the scene where they catch the Owl Beast, a different titan skull shape can be seen in the background; that could either mean they at least caught the Owl Beast on another titan corpse archipelago, or that the Boiling Isles consist of more than one titan's corpse.
*In "Separate Tides", it is revealed that Eda has been cursed for about thirty years, meaning that the Collector turned the Owl Beast into the scroll more than or about thirty years ago.
*According to himself, he lurks beneath the bones of the Titan that make up the Isles.
*According to Dana Terrace, the Collector uses he/him and they/them pronouns. This was shown when Philip referred to them with masculine pronouns.
*He somewhat resemble Dimentio from the video game Super Paper Mario.
*His prison orb resembles a Beast Ball, a type of Poké Ball from the Pokémon franchise, introduced in generation 7.
==External Links==
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