Does Wild Companion ignore the 1 hour cast time of Find Familiar?

Question

Druid Optional class feature in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, Wild Companion, states:

You gain the ability to summon a spirit that assumes an animal form: as an action, you can expend a use of your Wild Shape feature to cast the find familiar spell, without material components.
When you cast the spell in this way, the familiar is a fey instead of a beast, and the familiar disappears after a number of hours equal to half your druid level.

Find Familiar states:

Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: 10 feet
Components: V S M (10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)

Does this mean that a level 2 Druid has to spend 1 hour to get a Familiar for 1 hour? Does this mean that the Druid can cast a Familiar much faster than a Warlock can?

Answer 1

Yes, casting find familiar this way uses an action, not an hour.

As you have observed, it normally takes an hour to cast find familiar. But this is a case of specific beats general:

This compendium contains rules that govern how the game plays. That said, many racial traits, class features, spells, magic items, monster abilities, and other game elements break the general rules in some way, creating an exception to how the rest of the game works. Remember this: If a specific rule contradicts a general rule, the specific rule wins.

The feature states you use an action to cast the spell, which creates an exception to the normal 1 hour casting time of find familiar.

This is a balanced exchange - a familiar summoned this way is only temporary. Spending an hour to have a familiar for an hour would be a terrible trade off.