Owen Wilson's "Wow"

Confirmed 112,185

About

Owen Wilson's "Wow" refers to jokes about the actor Owen Wilson's unique intonation when saying the word "wow," which has been used in supercuts, parodies and remix videos online.

Origin

On November 4th, 2013, YouTuber Andrew Barber uploaded a video in which he impersonates Wilson while exploring Vancouver, Canada, where he repeatedly says "wow" (shown below).

Spread

On May 9th, 2015, YouTuber Owenergy Studios uploaded a supercut of Wilson saying the word "wow" in various films (shown below, left). Within three years, the video gained over 3.8 million views and 1,900 comments. During the Summer of 2016, video gamer streamer Bonesaw577 famous made several jokes about Owen Wilson's use of the word "wow" while playing Jak and Daxter at Games Down Quick. On November 6th, 2016, YouTuber RollyFaibel edited clips of a large tortoise grunting with footage of Wilson saying "Wow" (shown below, right).

[This video has been removed]

On April 22nd, 2017, the ShitHeadSteve Facebook^[2] page posted a parody of Kendrick Lamar's "Damn" album cover featuring a photograph of Owen Wilson with the word "Wow" (shown below). Within three months, the post gathered upwards of 1,800 reactions, 960 shares and 260 comments. On July 18th, the single-serving site WowOwen^[1] was launched, which contains an autoplaying supercut of the actor saying his iconic catchphrase.

Lightsaber Dubs

On November 30th, 2016, YouTuber Drunken Leprechaun uploaded an edited clip of a lightsaber duel from the film Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, in which the lightsaber noises are replaced with clips of Wilson saying "wow" (shown below).

On July 14th, 2017, Twitter user @jbillinson tweeted a similar video using the same lightsaber duel. Over the next week, the tweet gained more than 225,000 likes and 130,000 retweets.

Star Wars, but all of the light saber sounds are Owen Wilson saying "wow" pic.twitter.com/t5Yll0AV4h

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) July 14, 2017

On July 20th, YouTuber Ursinarium uploaded a similar video in which a duel from the film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is dubbed with Wilson's "wow" over the lightsaber strikes (shown below). That day, the video reached the front page of /r/videos,^[3] where it received more than 29,200 points (75% upvoted) and 960 comments within four hours.

[This video has been removed]

Gathering

On August 5th, 2017, a Facebook ^[4] group entitled Owen Wilson Wowposting, a Wilson-focused shitposting group launched.

On February 26th, 2018, the group held a public event in Federation Square in Melbourne, Victoria, Austraility to "Say Wow like Owen Wilson at Federation Square.^[5] According to the event page, 5,300 went and 18,000 were interested in the event, though those numbers have not been confirmed.

The Facebook^[6] account for Fox Melbourne shared a video of the event (shown below). Within one week, the video has received more than 50,000 views, 600 reactions and 60 shares.

Several media outlets reported on the event, including The New York Daily News,^[7] The AV Club,^[8] NME,^[9] EW^[10] and more.