Owen Wilson has delivered his trademark wow across many of his film roles, and fans began collecting the moments into compilations that turned the single word into a running joke. Shared widely on YouTube, TikTok and meme pages, the wow became shorthand for sincere amazement, gentle irony and deadpan appreciation. Its staying power comes from that flexibility: the same short sound can praise something genuinely impressive or undercut something deliberately unimpressive, which keeps it useful long after the original scenes.