Adaptability in the Unknown | Over the Garden Wall
Seasonal shows or movies are definitely a thing, but mostly are references to Christmas stuff. But autumnal shows and movies are definitely a thing, and this is the perfect season to curl up with a pumpkin spice latte and watch some autumnal classics. And for me, the perfect autumnal classic, is Over the Garden Wall.
Over the Garden Wall initially came out in 2014, and despite that it has a feel of something that’s been around for many years. Partly this is due to its aesthetics - it has a hand drawn, hand painted, style that makes it feel like it’s a bit older than it is, while having a lot of the modernisations that would be off putting if they weren’t present. The show is a quick ten episodes, each only about ten minutes a piece. It’s really a segmented movie rather than a lengthy television show. It’s creator, Patrick McHale, also had a hand in Adventure Time and Gravity Falls. Gravity Falls feels like it’s also begging for a video essay, but I’ll leave it for now.
The story of Over the Garden Wall is that two brothers, Wirt and Greg, are lost in some woods and a place referred to as the Unknown. The humour is sweet and innocent, while also relaying complex conceptions of different levels of understanding and knowledge.
It’s a simple concept that feels so typically familiar, and even the circumstances they find themselves in feels like the types of stories we’ve heard time and time again. But Over the Garden Wall keeps things fresh by providing small alterations to the archetypes. For example, one of the first encounters the brothers have is with creepy pumpkins all dancing. It becomes apparent that the pumpkin people are dead people who are keeping Wirt and Greg from leaving until they dig what seems like graves. The assumption is that they are going to try and kill the brothers, but it’s revealed, actually, the brothers were helping to dig up new skeletons to join the party. The pumpkin people so offer to let the boys stay with them for safety. Similarly, when the boys encounter Auntie Whispers, the true villain is the small sweet female child, and not the scary looking Auntie Whispers.
The ninth episode of the series is a flashback, which helps to explain how the brothers found themselves in the Unknown. This episode has set up many different theories in the fanbase to try and explain what the Unknown is. Theories range from the Unknown as purgatory, to it all just being a dream. Like every other fan, I have my own theories, but mine is built on metaphorical readings of structural elements based on my experiences studying myths, and a bit less on deep readings of the text itself. So let’s talk about how the Unknown is adaptability.
The Unknown is full of strange events, people, and interactions that requires the brothers to have an extreme creativity of thought. The two brothers approach this requirement in two very different ways. Wirt is rather stubborn and resistant in his approach to the Unknown, which is reflective of his approach in life. We get glimpses of this resistance to change throughout the show, even how it relates to his relationship with his brother. Because Greg is Wirt’s half brother; Wirt sings about the changes in his family when at the tavern - about his mother’s new partner which also brought a new brother. This meant that Wirt’s core family unit added two new people in a relatively short time period, which he had to re-dress, though in the song it seems he’s still struggling with these changes. In the flashbacks, we also see his resistance to change the status quo that’s set up between him and his peers. Wirt’s hesitancy in giving Sara his mixtape, for example, is partly due to normal crush butterflies, but also due to his fear of changing the dynamics of his friend group. Wirt is crippled with a fear of change.
This is reflected in the way he navigates the Unknown. He is stubborn and consistent. He tries to follow the directions with no deviation. He’s not willing to trust where he already didn’t have trust - he doesn’t allow himself to be wrong in an original thought, and adapt to the new position. He remains still and stubborn and constant, which is often to his detriment.
Greg, however, is the epitome of adaptability. He’s constantly altering and shifting, allowing his creativity of thought to take control of the moment. Even the names for his frog constantly changes, from Wirt (yes, the same name as his brother) to George Washington to finally Jason Funderburker, with many more in between. His position and understanding of his relationship with Wirt is also constantly changing. In the flashback episode, he asks Wirt to go frog hunting with him, which Wirt never does. However, Greg has referred to going frog hunting with him, including finding the frog friend while going frog hunting. Greg is constantly adjusting his perspective on the people around him and his environment.
What happens to children who get lost in the woods is a result of the Beast. The Beast is the ever looming threat in the show, despite only actually appearing in four of the ten episodes. He’s still a constant presence, whispered about from other inhabitants of the Unknown. His threat is presented to us immediately in the first episode, when the Woodsmen warns the boys of the Beast who may haunt them in the forest.
The Beast appears to be part of the forest, even though we only see him in shadowed silhouette. His body is tall and thin like the trunks of the trees in the forest, and his antlers are shaped more like tree branches than traditional antlers. His form is like that of the Leshy, a forest deity from Slavic mythology. Like the Leshy, the Beast seems to rule the forest like a deity, spoken in hushed tones as if his power is somehow beyond what the other individuals know. I do stress the Leshy here, and not a Wendigo because the idea of the wendigo being antlered isn’t actually the indigenous understanding. I’ll link a blog post I wrote on the topic for anyone interested.
The Beast in Over the Garden Wall feeds on lost souls. He waits for those who have lost their way in the forest. But from what we see of the Beast, he doesn’t seem like he simply grabs those who are lost, rather he has to wait until the right and perfect time. When Greg decides to go with the Beast, the Beast doesn’t just grab him and take him. He has to coax Greg to the point of feeling unable to keep going.
In other words, the Beast requires hopelessness. Before Greg leaves with the Beast, we see Wirt slowly lose hope in finding their way home, and from that some branches of a tree start growing up and around him. As the branches grow into him, he would eventually become what they refer to as an Edlewood tree - a type of tree that looks like a gnarled oak with a face. Always gotta love the spooky faces in trees thing.
While Wirt began to falter simply through the lengthy time spent searching for home, Greg holds out far longer due to his incredibly skill at adapting to a situation and providing strong creativity of thought. The Beast constantly gives him what seem like impossible tasks which Greg accomplishes easily. For example, when asked to put the sun in a tea cup, Greg puts the tea cup on a tree stump and says we just have to wait for the sun to set, which will happen in the tea cup from a particular angle. It takes many of these particular tasks over what seemed like an indeterminate amount of time before it started to get to Greg.
For the Beast to have to wait until the lost souls grow into trees demonstrates an important facet of the Beast - it’s not lost souls, but a particular type of lost soul. It has to rely on souls who have truly lost their way, not just in an inability to find home but in an inability to continue to go. Hopelessness is what comes to those unable to adapt to the new situations presented to them. It’s hopelessness that truly loses the way in the Unknown’s need to adapt, not just an struggle to find home.
The Unknown’s function as needing adaptability is an important reflection on aspects of life. As we see in Wirt, a discomfort with change and an inability to change to accommodate situations outside of your control can result in hopelessness to continue onward. The brother’s being lost in the woods is representative of their movements through life. Greg’s always looking to Wirt, simply wanting to be around him and spend time with him, while Wirt is unable to adapt to accommodate the brother he suddenly has. The Beast feeds on hopelessness in the face of continuing forward.
In fact, the Beast is in physical embodiment of hopelessness. When fighting with the Woodsmen and Wirt at the end of the show, the lantern falters and shows the Beast for a quick second. His body looks exactly like one of the Edlewood trees. The tree grains look like faces which paint his tree-like body. It’s not that he is one of the trees, but rather his control over the trees is like the control an Ent has over the forest - he is the embodiment of what it is he shepherds.
The Beast sometimes lets hopelessness sink in, as it did for Wirt. But he also can bring it on through lying and manipulating people around him. We see aspects of this in his interactions with the Woodsmen, who he convinced to bear his lantern by lying and saying that the lantern held his daughter’s soul. Wirt, however, figures out that the lantern houses the Beast’s soul, not the daughter’s.
The Unknown as adaptability may not fully make sense in the same narrative way as theories like purgatory. It doesn’t explain where it is, or how the brother’s got there. But I think the core thought behind Over the Garden Wall is like other aspects of mythology and folklore. As I mentioned in the episode of Buffy’s Hush, there’s not really ever a need or reason for a myth. Often small details like where something is or how the individuals got there isn’t really dealt with. What matters is the story, the connections it makes to those listening, reading or watching it.
Over the Garden Wall is an interesting contemporary myth. It builds on similar archetypes of narratives, but presenting it with enough of a twist to give it a place in our contemporary society. It teaches us something really important about our current world - the need to adapt and alter our approaches to the people and environments around us. It may seem hopeless, and it may be tiring, but there’s always a reason to keep going and keep figuring out a new solution to the problems around us.