Lunter

"I thought you might have been a good guy. But I guess that was just wishful thinking. You’re not my friend. You’re just- the Golden Guard."

- Luz to the Golden Guard, before her words gets him to tell her his true name

Lunter is the het ship between Luz Noceda and Golden Guard/Hunter from The Owl House fandom.

Separate Tides
Luz first saw Golden Guard in an Emperor’s Coven poster. Intrigued, she asked Lilith if she knew him from the Coven. Lilith told her he was “a child prodigy who’s really just a brat”. Later in the episode, she meets Golden Guard who gives her the ultimatum to kill the Selkidomus or he would drown King in the Boiling Sea, which caused Luz to heavily dislike him, sticking her tongue out when he leaves.

Hunting Palismen
In the episode Hunting Palismen, Luz is captured by the Golden Guard in a mission to retrieve the hand-me-down palismen, which she happened to attempt to bond with and ended up napping in their shelter. When Luz wakes up, she meets Golden Guard the second time and noticed that they are being captured, proceeding to attack him with a fire glyph, sending him flying. To not much effect, he teleports back and holds Luz captive, whilst threatening her for punishment if she sabotages his mission. While held captive, Luz uses her feet to draw an ice glyph, which launches Golden Guard’s mechanical staff, frustrating him, saying that it would take much more than that to defeat him.

His mission is sabotaged anyway, when Kikimora’s creature attacks his airship, in an attempt to kill him. The two crash, and end up nearby Belos’ castle. Luz wakes up and notices Kikimora’s plan to sabotage Golden Guard’s mission, and attempts to wake him up, taking his staff for safekeeping. She sees his face, and looks endearingly. In an attempt to wake him up, we are made to believe that Luz was going for a kiss, but instead slaps him in the face, waking him up, startled. Luz shuns him with her hand, and Golden Guard proceeds to lick it, and Luz gets disgusted. Luz tells him that Kikimora is trying to kill him, and he doesn’t believe Luz, until he sees the monster consume his helmet. Luz convinces the Golden Guard to team up, but he heads toward some members of the Emperor’s Coven, and tries to convince them that he is the Golden Guard. Unconvinced, he tells Luz to give him his staff back in order to use magic, and Luz refuses, resulting in him chasing after her. When Luz realised that he is a powerless witch, she uses it in her favour and convinces Golden Guard to team up with her, agreeing that if he helps her save the palismen, she would help him return to his coven. She asks his name, to him refusing to. The two make a plan to distract Kikimora, and as Luz creates a compound glyph, the Golden Guard expounds on his knowledge on wild magic, which surprises Luz. Seeing her reaction, he explains that he studied wild magic in a book, which Luz has also read as Eda had stolen a copy. The two seemingly bond, and a palisman attaches himself to Golden Guard, and he gets scared as he is told that wild magic is dangerous. Luz asks him if he really thinks it poses a threat. The two begin to initiate their plan. After successfully putting Kikimora under a spell, Golden Guard is conflicted to betray Luz. Luz is disappointed at him, and her hopes of him becoming her friend are down. Golden Guard realizes this and reveals that his real name is Hunter. Luz, regaining some hope, is surprised that he willingly revealed his name. Kikimora sees the person that casted the spell on her, and attacks Hunter, as Luz leaves him and takes the palismen. Later, in his room, Hunter is shown signs of hope as he sees that he can now wield a palisman to become a proper witch, hinting the possibility of redemption.

Reaching Out
When explaining to Eda and King everything she plans to do today, to distract her from an important "ritual", Luz says that Willow gave her Hunter's Penstagram contact "RULERZREACHF4N" and uses Eda's scroll to message him. Luz asks if Hunter is good now and if Belos is evil, but Hunter replies "LEAVE.ME ALONE". Then Hunter accidentally sends Luz a picture of his palisman sleeping only to add "sORry.wrong.person", showing he's still struggling with Penstagram.

Fanon
At first, the two seemed to have a childish rivalry with each other. In "Hunting Palismen", the fandom was split on weather to see them as having a sibling-like relationship, or a possible love triangle between Luz, Amity, and Hunter. In the same episode, we are made to believe that Luz is going for a kiss to wake up Hunter, but instead she hilariously slaps him. The ship existed as far back as "Seperate Tides", their first meeting, and became popular in "Hunting Palismen", as the two spend almost the entire episode together, and develop a somewhat friendship. The fact that Hunter needed someone the same way Amity did parallels Lumity, and Amity’s relationship with Luz.

In some fanwork on the ship that is based on the Hunter redeem theory, Luz manages to help Hunter leave the Emperor's Coven and talks Eda into making Hunter a member of their make-shift family, like the way Lilith became a temporally member of the Owl House Family. Hunter's interests in wild magic got fans to imagine Luz teaching him how to use glyph magic. The events of "Hunting Palismen" have also got fans to parallel the two with Zuko and Aang (or Katara ) from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

After "Eclipse Lake" reveals the exitance of Grimwalkers and how their eye color and nose shape are just like Hunter's, it began the theory of Hunter possibly turning out to be a clone, and the reminded that Belos has told Hunter that the Titan has plans for him, fans begin to worry that Hunter's life could be in danger and hope that Luz will be able to save him from Belos and his coven. Along with her helping Hunter to come to terms with him being a Grimwalker by being the friend or sister figure he needs.

Controversy
A ship war also began as a group of Lumity shippers began sending hate claiming that it would be ‘queer-bating’ to ship Hunter and Luz, and that it’s ‘incest’ as they had a sibling-like relationship, despite Luz herself being bisexual and the two are not even related by blood, let alone by species even if Hunter ends up becoming half-human. A portion of Lumity shippers also say that Hunter is ‘too old’ for Luz, given their two year gap, despite people having no problem with ships such as Connverse, which has a similar gap. While agebending can allow fans to make one of the two older or young or simply make them the same age to bridge the age gap.

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 * Luminter refers to the ship between the two and Amity Blight