Over the garden wall series#
The word "cottagecore" wasn't part of the popular lexicon when this series first aired, but Over the Garden Wall is it. That is, until you get to the final three episodes, in which the endless woods themselves are revealed to me something much more terrifying than they seemed. Each episode is its own self-contained story in their woodland escape, with titles like "The Old Grist Mill" and "Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee," and always the threats in each are never what you expect the thing that seems most sinister at the beginning turns out to be something familiar and comforting by the end.
Over the garden wall full#
The trio are intercepted by various forces along the way, including a frightened woodsman bearing a lantern, an anxious schoolmarm trying to teach forest animals to read and write while mooning after a lost love, a town full of people in pumpkin-heads preparing for a harvest festival, and a steam ferry full of dancing frogs. Along the way, they meet Beatrice, a talking bluebird (Melanie Lynskey), who promises them she'll help them find a way out of the woods.
The show begins with Wirt and his little brother Greg (Collin Dean) walking through a dark woods, known as "the Unknown," Wirt searching for the pathway home while Greg bumbles around spouting "rock facts" and thinking up names for his pet frog.
Every episode contains elements of the sinister and the uncanny, from vine-limbed pumpkin-headed giants to toothy black dogs with glowing eyes to people possessed by skull-faced demons kept in check with the ringing of a bell. Let me make this clear: The show is scary. Over the Garden Wall, which broadcast on Cartoon Network from November 3 to Novem(and is now streaming on Hulu and HBO Max), is a ten-episode animated miniseries about two young boys, Wirt (Elijah Wood) and Greg (Collin Dean), who get lost in a forest full of strange and sinister creatures, and must find their way back home before they're taken by an evil being called "The Beast." It was created by Adventure Time writer Patrick McHale and, like Adventure Time, it has a dark little heart masked by what appears at first to be simple child-friendly whimsy. Or, if you haven't seen it at all, you might be wondering why those two little boys and their frog keep burgling people's turts. It's fall at last, which means the leaves are turning, pumpkins are appearing on doorsteps, you've traded your iced coffees for hot ones, and you're rewatching Over the Garden Wall.