The Owl House’s Belos is a walking contradiction. He claims he wants to save humanity from the evils of witchcraft and magic. Yet he spent centuries masquerading as a witch, building an empire on the very thing he vowed to destroy. His hypocrisy is the cornerstone of his character.
Belos’s arc is the clearest case of “you become what you hate.” What makes him terrifying isn’t just the hypocrisy. It’s that he never once saw himself as the villain. To the very end, he believed he was humanity’s savior, even as he slipped deeper into madness and magical corruption.
How a Puritan Became a Tyrant
Before he became Emperor Belos, he was Philip Wittebane, a human man from the 1600s. Orphaned alongside his older brother Caleb, Phillip was raised in a puritanical culture that saw witches as demonic and magic as blasphemy. Philip’s hatred ran deep, but it wasn’t just ideological.
His brother Caleb had fallen in love with a witch named Evelyn. To Philip, it was the ultimate betrayal and he murdered his brother in retaliation. In his mind, Caleb had been “tainted” by magic. The only way to protect humanity was to eliminate the source: the Boiling Isles, magic, and everyone who used it.
Justifying the Unjustifiable
Here’s the part where it all begins to unravel. In order to destroy magic, Belos had to use it.
He mastered glyph magic, even carved glyphs into his own skin and consumed magical creatures called Palismen. To a purist, that would be blasphemy but to Belos? It was just the cost of doing business. His mission was so sacred that any means were justified.
This is the hallmark of a zealot. Belos could mutilate himself with glyphs, use dark magic, and lie to his followers because he believed his end goal of wiping out magic was righteous. When your cause is “holy,” anything you do in service of it feels like salvation.
Power Built on a Lie
To carry out his plan, Belos had to become the very image of what he loathed. He built a magical empire, created a coven system, and posed as the most powerful witch of the Boiling Isles. Because fear alone doesn’t win followers, but admiration does.
He manipulated the entire Boiling Isles into trusting him. By banning wild magic and presenting himself as a wise and benevolent ruler, he positioned himself at the center of power. All the while, he was laying the groundwork for the Day of Unity, a genocidal ritual that would either kill every witch in the Demon Realm.
But to do that, he had to become exactly what they admired: a magical leader. A figure of trust. It’s the ultimate long con.
The True Face of Fanaticism
What makes Belos such an effective villain is how deeply his contradictions are woven into his character.
Fanatics don’t see contradictions. They twist logic to justify them. Belos truly believed that magic was evil, even as he used it. He thought he was righteous, even as he mutilated himself and murdered countless beings in pursuit of his crusade. His entire identity was a delusion.
When that delusion began to unravel when Luz and her friends exposed the truth, his body and mind collapsed right alongside it.
Hatred Always Comes Back to Bite
Belos’s story arc doubles as a warning. His descent shows us what happens when someone is so obsessed with destroying something they hate, they lose themselves in the process.
The real tragedy is that Belos refused to see himself as anything other than the selfless hero in his delusions. When he was finally defeated, there was nothing left of Philip Wittebane. All that was left was a blob filled with bitterness and self-righteousness. The most haunting part is that he never even realized it.
