Over the Garden Wall is a 2014 show that aired on Cartoon Network. It’s a fairytale-like show, spanning only 10 short episodes, following two young brothers named Wirt and Greg. They are lost in what’s called The Unknown, a dense forest harboring many secrets and an elusive Beast that threatens their lives. Right off the bat, you have two very different characters. Wirt, the older brother, is a worrywart like his namesake, and a meticulous planner. Greg is the younger of the duo, and much more upbeat, optimistic, and impulsive. He carries around a live frog as a pet along their adventure.
With it being a show on Cartoon Network, it generally strays away from being too heavy, but it does feature some dark undertones and themes. It has a whimsical, dark feel to it as their adventure goes on. It’s largely based in the autumn season, giving it a colorful, yet mysterious aura with beasts lurking about a dangerous environment for children.
We’ll explore the show in its entirety, covering each episode and a retrospective at the end.
Episodes 1-5
Episode 1, “The Old Grist Mill”, mostly begins to introduce the world they’re in. You don’t get a whole lot about the world except the two brothers, and a woodsman who warns them of the dangers of The Unknown and the Beast that lurks within. Greg leaves a candy trail to the woodsman’s mill, which attracts a wolf-like beast. It attacks them and ultimately destroys the mill when the duo defeats it. They thought they killed the Beast the woodsman mentioned, but it wasn’t and he warns them once more before they leave into the woods.
Episode 2, “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee”, provides a lot more world-building, where they run into a talking bluebird they briefly saw in the last episode named Beatrice. She begrudgingly joins them since Greg helped her so she owes them a favor. She tells them about Adelaide, a woman in the woods who can help them get home. By the end of the episode, she doesn’t reveal much about her own reasons to see her except that she’s trying to find her way home too “in a way.”
The main focus of the episode is the group stumbling upon a small town called Pottsfield, where they interrupted a celebration from a town of pumpkin headed people. Immediately you get this eerie feeling about them, something Beatrice continuously points out. Wirt tries to ask them if they can help them but they’re quickly surrounded by the townspeople and face their giant pumpkin leader. You think the group is in danger, but the show subverts that by making them do a few hours of manual labor to make up for their minor transgressions. Then, Wirt and Greg are digging holes and Wirt starts thinking they’re digging their own graves, but they’re actually digging up deceased skeletons that come back to life and put on pumpkins. You realize at the same time as Wirt that everyone is dead and they were just helping the townspeople bring back more members. Wirt hurries off to meet the others, knowing they’re not endangered by the townsfolk, but unnerved nonetheless.
Episode 3, “Schooltown Follies”, introduces a little character conflict among the brothers. Beatrice tells Wirt he’s a pushover so Wirt makes it his mission to follow every order to spite Beatrice. Greg wants to make the world a better place, but during the course of the episode, he finds that he made things worse, but is accidentally inspired by Wirt to continue to try to make it better, which the pair end up doing after all.
In the beginning of the episode, they reached a schoolhouse for young animals to teach them, where they’re struggling to keep it open. The teacher isn’t the most entertaining, and the food is bland, so Greg makes it better by singing and giving everyone molasses with their potatoes. The teacher’s father comes and shuts it all down, forcing the children to bed. The group sneaks out to find the father huddled up in the woods nearby, talking about how he’s struggling to keep the school running. This inspires Greg to steal the instruments the father was planning to sell, and the school holds a banquet for people to donate while the animals play instruments. This wound up being a happier ending to an episode and the group continues on their journey.
The show starts to get darker in episode 4, “Songs of the Dark Lantern.” The group finds a tavern to go ask about directions to find Adelaide. They speak with some of the people in the tavern, who break out into songs about who they are and then make Wirt sing on stage. Here, you get context that Wirt and Greg aren’t directly blood-related, but they’re half-brothers that Wirt sings about in his song. The tavern folk then “figure out” that Wirt is a pilgrim, someone who is adventurous and a hero. They also tell him more about the Beast, the first time it’s mentioned again since episode 1. The way they describe the Beast misleads Wirt to think the woodsman they met tricked him.
Beatrice, who was kicked out of the tavern in the beginning, screams, and feeling inspired by the tavern folk, rushes off to save her on a talking horse. They find her with the woodsman, and they mistakenly think he hurt her, while the woodsman is confused. They fight them, get Beatrice, and take off. This time, the Beast makes his first appearance as a shadowy figure with antlers branching out of his head. He taunts the woodsman about his daughter, who is stuck in the lantern he always carries and must keep the fire going or she’ll die. He asks where the children went and the woodsman tells him off, leaving a more ominous ending to juxtapose the more optimistic ones the last few episodes had. It leaves you with a lot of questions; why and how did his daughter get stuck in the lamp? What does the Beast want with Wirt and Greg?
Episode 5, “Mad Love”, is the halfway point of the show. It also goes back to its lighter tone for the time being. The episode opens with everyone having dinner with an old rich businessman, where they pretended that Greg was his nephew in order to get two pennies for the ferry to Adelaide’s house. The old man, Endicott, talks about a ghost he saw in another wing of his mansion that he doesn’t remember building and fell in love with the woman in the portrait there. Greg, the horse, Fred, Endicott goes there while Wirt and Beatrice stay behind to find loose change. Here, we find out that Beatrice was human and cursed her and her family when she hurt a bluebird. Wirt tells her some secrets which are just normal preteen hobbies and they have a heart to heart for a change instead of bickering.
Greg and Endicott find the portrait and the “ghost” which just happened to be another rich businesswoman and they build theory mansions so large that they’re connected and they had no idea. The episode ends with them together, Fred the horse stays behind to help with Endicott’s business, and Greg is handed two pennies. The three leave the estate, but not before Greg tosses the pennies in a nearby fountain.
Episodes 6-10
Episode 6, “Lullaby in Frogland”, has a more fun and whimsical beginning where they snuck on a ferry full of frogs, but Beatrice is wistful about almost being at Adelaide’s house. Wirt notices, but she won’t say why. Then, they’re noticed by frog police and chased around until they disguise themselves as musicians. Wirt plays the bassoon, and Greg on drums, and then his frog, whose name keeps changing, breaks out into song and serenades the whole boat.
Once off the ferry, Beatrice deters them from going to Adelaide’s for the night, but she sneaks off to talk her out of the deal she made with her; a child servant for her family turning back to human. Beatrice tries offering herself up as the servant before the pair arrives. They get caught by Adelaide’s strings, but Beatrice frees them, and feeling betrayed by Beatrice, the pair leave without her. Greg doesn’t fully understand, but Wirt presses on, upset with himself for trusting anyone.
In episode 7, “The Ringing of the Bell”, they find a run-down looking house to hide from the rain. There’s a lone girl Wirt’s age cleaning the place and she helps them hide from Aunt Whispers or they’ll be devoured by her. You see the girl, Lorna, controlled by a magic bell that compels her to work, then Whispers goes to bed. Wirt develops a small crush on Lorna and they help her clean the floor. Once done, Greg’s frog disappears upstairs and wakes up Whispers. They run from her with Lorna, only to discover she’s the one that devours souls and Whispers keeps her from changing. They save her when they shake Greg’s frog, because it ate the bell, and commanded the spirit to leave Lorna. Lorna is saved and chooses to stay with Whispers as she considers her family.
The pair press on, but Wirt is losing hope that they’ll ever get home. The Beast lurks nearby, pleased that they’re losing hope, and once all hope is lost, then he can take them.
Episode 8, “Babes in the Woods”, has the boys walking in the woods, but Wirt loses all hope so he makes Greg take over as the leader and they go to sleep under a tree. Greg sees a star and makes a wish and he dreams of being in a cloud city with singing and talking animals. Then the wind comes to terrorize the city, which makes the real world turn from fall to winter. Greg defeats the wind and is visited by the queen of the city to grant him a wish. He initially wants to go home but the queen says Wirt can’t go with because the Beast claimed him. So, Greg makes a different wish, but whispers it to her so we don’t know what it is yet. Greg leaves with the Beast, perhaps having made a deal with him, and Wirt realizes and panics. He runs around in the wintery night, looking for Greg, when he falls in a frozen over lake. Beatrice and a large fish on a boat rescues him, and all you hear as the episode closes out is Beatrice asking where’s Greg to a disoriented Wirt.
Episode 9, “Into the Unknown”, takes us back in time for the majority of the episode. It’s Halloween and Wirt wants to give his school crush, Sara, a tape he made for her. When he goes to the football game, he watches her as a mascot for a while, with Greg nearby, until he loses the nerve. Greg takes the tape and gives it to some bullies, which it then gets to Sara’s jacket. He also finds out that a different classmate, Jason, is going to ask Sara out, but throughout the episode, you can ell she’s not really into Jason but likes Wirt. It’s simply Wirt psyching himself out when he has a chance with her. At a graveyard with Sara and other classmates, a police officer shows up to prank them, but everyone runs and that leads to Wirt and Greg jumping the wall that sends them down a steep hill, presumably how they’ve ended up lost in the first place.
Wirt wakes up in the present day surrounded by bluebirds and Greg’s frog. Beatrice had left them there and off to find Greg. In a moment of character development, the mother bluebird asks Wirt to stay because it’s dangerous out in the snow and he wouldn’t do good for his brother being dead. Wirt responds that he wasn’t good to him alive either, finally realizing how much of a jerk he’s been to Greg, and leaves to find him.
We’ve reached the final episode, “The Unknown”, where Greg is doing tasks for the Beast, which is tiring him out in the cold to break him down. Meanwhile, the woodsman is trying to keep the lantern lit and hears the Beast singing. He confronts the Beast and discovers that all the Edelwood he’s been chopping to keep his daughter alive were actually the souls of children all along and he refuses to keep lighting the lantern, even if it meant killing his daughter.
Wirt is trying to find Greg and runs into Beatrice and they go together to find him. He’s entangled in the Edelwood, and rips it off him as he’s dying. Wirt also hands Beatrice the scissors from Adelaide’s which will turn her and her family human again. The woodsman is knocked down and the Beast confronts Wirt, trying to make a deal with him that he could keep Greg in the lantern and keep him alive. Wirt almost agrees but realizes it’s dumb and also realizes that the lantern is actually the Beast’s soul and the woodsman has been manipulated by the Beast this whole time. Wirt blows out the lantern and the Beast freaks out.
The pair of brothers are then seen in the lake that they fell in the night they went missing, but it turns out barely any time passed at all. Wirt comes to his senses and grabs Greg and the frog before pulling them up to shore to be rescued. He wakes up in the hospital and gets to talk to Sara and they make plans to hang out as Greg is telling their adventure to everyone.
The show closes out with some nice loose ends tied up. Beatrice and her family, now human, eat a meal together. The woodsman is sitting on his porch and his daughter emerges from the house, alive and well, and the final shot you see is the rock Greg stole from a neighbor and he puts it back where he found it.
Why is it so good?
To me, even though I unfortunately never got to watch it during its original airing, I found it to be very whimsical and fun with so much darkness right at the forefront. Ultimately though, while the journey was fun and magicalin its own right, the story at its core is Wirt learning to appreciate his half-brother. Wirt saw Greg as an annoying kid who ruined everything he touched in his eyes, but he wasn’t willing to see all the good Greg does. He helped a teacher and animals keep their school open; he helped an old businessman realize he’s not going mad, and he inadvertently helped Lorna when his frog was the one that ate the bell and came up with the idea to shake the frog to save her.
Despite all of those things and more, Wirt was still frustrated at Greg because he didn’t see things the same way as him. It only took going on this adventure with him to realize he’s been a bad brother to Greg, not the other way around, and vows to save him from the Beast, even when Greg thought he was saving him by essentially sacrificing himself.
Of course, there’s also the strange detail of them falling in the lake right before they go on this adventure. In the end, you see that only mere minutes passed, but during the course of their adventure, it went from Halloween to winter, so it must’ve been a few weeks of time at minimum that they were lost. I found this interesting, and I wonder if it had to do with the Beast potentially messing with time, or maybe they were transported to another place entirely as a sort of purgatory between life and death. I’m sure there’s plenty of intriguing theories out there as to why this is here, because I firmly believe with this show that all details, even minor ones, matter.
I also wonder why the show isn’t very popular. It has a cult following for sure, but it’s not nearly as talked about or mainstream as many other Cartoon Network shows. I imagine it has something to do with its very short runtime. It’s only one season containing 10 eleven minute episodes, so you can easily get through the show in under two hours. I also never heard of it up until two years ago by word of mouth, but I had also stopped watching Cartoon Network for the most part by 2014, so I must’ve missed it.
I would say the one complaint I have about the show is that it’s simply too short. I wish there were more content, but at the same time, It’s perfect in its own way that any more content would dull the impact it already leaves.
This show was the perfect start to the fall season to get into the spooky vibes, and even though I watched it two years ago, I had largely forgotten what happened in the show so it was fun to experience it largely for the first time again. I would definitely recommend a watch for a quiet evening in and enjoy a whimsical but spooky adventure of two lost brothers.
