Staff Writer Grey Schessler
On Jan. 10, 2020, we were introduced to the Disney animated series “The Owl House” and its titular character Luz Noceda, her mentor Edalyn Clawthrone and her companion King. From Episode 1 “The Owl House” distinguished itself as one of a kind in so many ways from the setting, humor, message and characters.
It’s one of the few shows that establishes its identity from the get-go. So, it was no surprise when the fantasy adventure series blew up in popularity. However, to the heartbreak of many fans, the show has not been picked for a full Season 3. Instead, “The Owl House” has only been given three 45-minute specials in place of Season 3.
Despite the show’s popularity and milestones in representation, it seems as though every opportunity Disney has had to make the show flourish, they have either let it go or purposely sabotaged it. But it’s also no surprise that part of the reason Disney decided to cancel the show is because the show “did not fit their brand,” according to Dana Terrace, creator of the show, on Reddit. Now many have been quick to jump on the bandwagon that Disney chose to sabotage the show due to its immense role in representation. And, admittedly, initially I wasn’t exempt from this opinion. I am still not, although I don’t think it’s the only thing that played into the show cancellation. However, many moving parts played a role in the cancellation of “The Owl House,” a lot which could have been prevented on Disney’s end.
I want to discuss what “did not fit their brand” in its full context means. After “The Owl House” cancellation was made public, Terrance went to Reddit to clarify why the show was canceled. In her post she specified when the decision was made, when she was informed and to her knowledge why the show was canceled.
“So, it was the ratings. That argument doesn’t hold water either. Our ratings were GOOD (for a show during the streaming wars lmao) but they were also incomplete. This decision was made, to my knowledge, before ‘Agony of a Witch’ premiered and WELL before we were on Disney+,” said Terrance.
“Also, how are you gonna judge ratings when you don’t rerun the show you’re trying to measure?”
Later in her post she also talked about other reasons the network gave her for the cancellation, “At the end of the day, there are a few business people who oversee what fits into the Disney brand and one day one of those guys decided ‘The Owl House’ didn’t fit that ‘brand.’ The story is serialized (BARELY compared to any average anime lmao), our audience skews older, and that just didn’t fit this one guy’s tastes.”
Naturally, after this was made public many people were angry and quick to call out Disney and question them about what they meant when they said, “The Owl House” did not fit their “brand.” Disney never responded to this (at least not directly) and while most people are still upset about this, most of the heat surrounding this has gone down.
Despite many feeling that the implications that the show doesn’t fit the Disney brand due is to its LGBT+ representation, and is why the show was canceled. However, upon further digging about Disney, their multiple channels, demographics and the type of content they strive to make. This gave me more insight about what the actual Disney “brand” is. Disney has more than one channel on cable and each of those channels that Disney has is different from one another in its age demographic and the type of content created. In total channels related toward content aimed toward a younger audience Disney has six channels: Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Junior, Radio Disney, Disney TV Animation and Disney Channels Worldwide.
The channel that airs “The Owl House” is the main Disney Channel and Disney TV Animation (or Disney TVA), as well as Disney Channels Worldwide for international audiences. These channels are all essentially parts of Disney channel. The exception, of course, is Disney TVA which animates series for different channels for the Disney brand in general. When I found out all this, I ended up finding out that the Disney Channels age demographics are actually from ages 6 to 14 and Disney XD a variation of Disney channel that’s marketed for older children and preteens age demographics are 6 to 11.
I was caught off guard when I found out about this, because Disney has always made it seem like Disney XD is exclusively for older kids. And I’m not alone in this. When people found out part of the cancellation was due to the audience skewing older, I saw people left and right asking why Disney wouldn’t just move the show over to Disney XD. But based on their demographics Disney was right not to move it as it would’ve just lowered audience engagement since the audience age pool would be smaller.
All of this left me mad because this ultimately brings me back to one main issue where this all branched out from. “The Owl House” wasn’t originally made for children.It was made for teenagers, which is part of the reason the audience skews older. And despite making Terrance change the protagonist from 16 to 14, changing more of the darker undertones of the show to lighter tones to appeal to a younger audience and interfering with the show’s production in any way they can, the show managed to retain most if not almost all the qualities that were wanted for the show when it was first pitched.If Disney had simply taken the time to listen to the creator of the show, a lot of the problems they created could’ve been avoided had they simply not ignored her or made her do changes that wouldn’t have had to focus on marketing the show toward children and instead marketing it toward teenagers and young adults.
