Over the Garden Wall is a mini-series on Cartoon Network. It consists of ten short episodes about two brothers, Greg and Wirt, lost in the forest of the Unknown and trying to find their way home. The show is based on Patrick McHale’s (the creator who has also worked on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Adventure Time) animated short Tome of the Unknown. Featuring voices from Elijah Wood, Collin Dean, and Melanie Lynskey, Over the Garden Wall first aired on November 2014, and has since won a Reuben Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.
Although the art style is reminiscent of Adventure Time with its simple shapes and unshaded characters, Over the Garden Wall handles some pretty dark themes. The Unknown in which the two brothers wander is pretty much a purgatory, a limbo between life and death. The other characters they encounter, such as the Woodsman (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) and Beatrice, the girl cursed to be a bluebird (Melanie Lynskey), are also lost souls, trying to accomplish their own quests. There is also the Beast, a mysterious antlered figure who lures the unaware and unguarded into hopelessness and despair. Once a soul has given in to the Beast’s wishes, they turn into a Edelwood tree, which is then turned into oil to keep the Beast’s own soul aflame. And the Beast has his eye on the two lost brothers.
Wirt and Greg try to keep their chins up as Beatrice leads them to Adelaide, the Good Witch of the Forest. But when they discover the witch is anything but good and that Beatrice has tricked them in an attempt to break her curse, they escape. They no longer have a guide or any leads on how to get home. Wirt, the older of the two brothers, falls into despair. It is only when Greg, the more carefree and reckless of the two, makes a deal with the Beast and almost ends up as an Edelwood tree, does Wirt snap out of his depression and realize that hopelessness and negative feelings cause people to do stupid things. He faces the Beast head on and uncovers his plots to keep his soul aflame. Then he leaves the Beast to the Woodsman, who has been tricked into thinking the flame in the lantern he carries is his daughters, while Wirt tears branches off of Greg and leaves.
Over the Garden Wall may seem like another silly children’s cartoon, but the content it deals with is anything but childlike. Death and uncertainty follow the brothers around every turn; there is even an episode where Greg departs from his body and ascends to a “heaven” in which everybody loves him and is glad he is there. Bullying is present in Wirt, who hides his passion for poetry and clarinet so he is not mocked by his peers. The issue between the Beast and the Woodsman brings up the question of doing something wrong or unethical to fulfill your own good desires. This mini-series definitely deserves the awards it has received and is anything but a children’s cartoon.
