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Ever since the show first aired in 2014, fans of Cartoon Network’s Over the Garden Wall have been trying to dissect the mysteries within the show’s brief two-hour run time. Composed of fantastical characters and profound lyrical music, the show offered a surprising amount of information for viewers to think about. However, the one thing fans could never figure out was the mysterious land the show was set in: The Unknown.
Over the Garden Wall is about two brothers who get lost in The Unknown and must find their way home. The land possesses everything from forests of oil trees to talking animals, but the one thing the boys never find is answers about where they are. Some fans theorize that the brothers are stuck in purgatory, while others believe that the story’s events are just a dream. However as they travel through The Unknown, the boys come to the realization that The Unknown is not something to be solved, but something to be adapted to.
On their journey, the brothers met many characters that inhabited The Unknown, each one having a different way they coped with its mysteries. Some characters were more similar to Wirt, the elder brother, who anticipated the worst, while those closer to Greg viewed The Unknown as an opportunity for adventure. With a wide cast of characters, Over the Garden Wall created a spectrum of philosophies for approaching life’s mysteries and showed the futility of trying to answer them all.
Wirt: Safe Yet Stagnant
On this spectrum of philosophies that Over the Garden Wall explored, Wirt sat on one end of the extreme. He feared anything he didn’t know and anticipated the worst. Back in his hometown, his worries often got the better of him and led him to refuse new opportunities. It was only when Greg stepped in that Wirt’s life gained new developments. His younger brother had a hard time letting a chance go to waste, and Wirt provided several for him to take.
Each brother carried their individual attitudes with them upon entering The Unknown, a land named after what Wirt feared the most. His immediate instinct was to distrust everything and navigate his way out as soon as possible. Even when Beatrice, a talking bird the brothers met after first entering the woods, offered to help them get home, he refused her. Fortunately, Greg took it upon himself to speak with her, that choice being the sole reason they progressed further on their travels.
Wirt approached uncertainty with safety and comfort as a top priority. He would rather stick to what he knew than throw himself into a foreign situation. However, it was this tendency to stand back that slowed him down on both his journey and personal growth. In Wirt’s efforts to escape The Unknown, he poured his energy into finding directions, seeing those as the answer to his way out. But The Unknown was much different from the world he came from and his approach would need to change if he wanted out.
The Woodsman: A Haste For Answers
The first human that Wirt and Greg met in Over the Garden Wall was known as the Woodsman, a man who traveled the forest chopping down edelwood trees. His reason for being in The Unknown was a mystery, but viewers quickly learned that he needed the land to fuel a lantern he had an obsessive attachment to. According to the Woodsman, his daughter’s soul was trapped inside the lantern by a creature called the Beast, and he would lose her forever unless he kept it lit with oil from the trees.
The boys’ initial encounter with the Woodsman was brief, but he left them with a message that would stick with Wirt for episodes to come: “Beware The Unknown, fear the Beast, and leave these woods.” Like Wirt, he feared this land. However, in order to ever see his daughter again, he had to rely on it. His venture into The Unknown was forced, but it was enough to push him slightly closer to Greg, the other end of the extreme, on this spectrum of philosophies. While Greg possessed a naive trust in the Unknown and it’s inhabitants, the Woodsman’s faith in the land stemmed from desperation. Using the Unknown’s resources was his only chance for ever seeing his daughter again.
Once the Woodsman received an answer for what would happen to his daughter, he latched onto it. In his panic to solve the situation, any answer would do for him, even if that answer came from the one who caused the problem in the first place. Despite his warning to the boys, the Woodsman was placing his full trust in the Beast and never once questioned the answer he gave him. This desperation from the Woodsman led him down a path of wasted time, the answer he was chasing revealed as meaningless later on. The Beast was known for preying on children, but the Woodsman proved to be the villain’s easiest target yet with his haste for answers.
The Dark Lantern: Seeking Definition
By Over the Garden Wall‘s fourth episode, Wirt had finally trusted Beatrice to lead him and Greg home. The trio was on their way to visit Adelaide of the Pasture, a good woman who could supposedly help them, but the wagon they were stowing away in threw them off course. They stopped at a nearby tavern called “The Dark Lantern” to ask for directions, but found themselves getting distracted by the jovial patrons. Rather than going by names, the tavern people were referred to by their roles — the Tavern Keeper, the Butcher, even the Highway Man — and pushed for Wirt to go by his.
There is nothing more complex and nuanced than a human, but the tavern people stripped all that away by identifying with roles. In his attempt to find a role, Wirt declared himself as “The Hero,” but the tavern people didn’t buy it, instead dubbing him “The Young Lover” with all his talk of Adelaide. For Wirt, his fear had come from the mystery that was The Unknown. But for the tavern people, Wirt was the mystery that they desperately needed to define. Like the previous characters, it was their fear of uncertainty that drove their actions. However, this fear led to a simpler state of mind that discouraged personal exploration.
What set apart the tavern people’s search for answers from Wirt’s and the Woodsman’s was that they didn’t need an answer they liked, just an answer that made sense. Each of the patrons boasted their roles in song, letting the Highway Man, a thief admitting to his crimes, have his moment to shine too. The roles each of the tavern people played were defined by their place within their community, so those might not have been their true identities. Their identities could only be discovered by reaching outside of their comfort zone. But as long as there was some definition to attach to themselves, the tavern people were satisfied.
The Beast: A Fearsome Facade
While some viewed The Unknown as the brothers’ greatest foe in Over the Garden Wall, it was the Beast who threatened to harm them. The Beast was a shadowy figure who travelled The Unknown, luring in children with his singing so he could steal their souls and turn them into edelwood trees. The boys knew to be wary of his evils thanks to the Woodsman, but it was the Woodsman who was unknowingly fueling the Beast’s schemes all along.
In terms of the spectrum, the Beast was at a strange middle ground. Like the fearless Greg, he took control of The Unknown, using it as a tool for his schemes. But like Wirt, it was his fear of uncertainty that led him to doing so. Despite some fans believing that The Unknown was a cover for purgatory, some form of death was still possible in the mysterious land. If the Beast stole your soul, you were done for. But the Beast was not immune to death either, and that fear of what would happen after was what drove him to committing his evil deeds.
For the whole of Over the Garden Wall, the Woodsman had been wandering The Unknown to keep the lantern that the Beast bestowed upon him lit. The Beast constantly tormented the poor father, reminding him of what would happen to his daughter if the light went out. For his scheme to work, the Beast had to instill more fear within others than he held within himself, that way no one would question his words. However, in the show’s finale, Wirt had noted that the Beast was more obsessed with the lantern than the Woodsman. In an instant, the Beast’s terrifying facade crumbled, revealing that it was his soul in the lantern the whole time.
The Beast had no backstory or explanation as to why his soul was so vulnerable, but in his efforts to protect it, he turned his life into something meaningless. Since the uncertainty plaguing him was about his own life, he spent his days ensuring he could live it rather than actually doing so.
Beatrice: Taking Control
Beatrice was the final character forming Over the Garden Wall‘s main trio. Wirt and Greg knew her as a talking bluebird promising to lead them home, but that was neither her true form nor intention. After throwing a stone at a bird one day, Beatrice and her whole family were turned into bluebirds as punishment. The only person who could change her back was Adelaide of the Pasture. But if Beatrice ever wanted that favor, she would have to do something for the woman of the woods in return.
Beatrice was the first character on the spectrum to lean closer to Greg than Wirt in her philosophy on The Unknown. While she didn’t embrace it as Greg did, she certainly didn’t fear it. Beatrice already had something to fear: her family’s fate as bluebirds. Time and time again, the bluebird proved that she was a character who could take control of a tough situation and pull through. She was the one who pushed the brothers along on their journey, even when the going got tough. For Beatrice, uncertainty was far easier to control than the fate she already knew.
The biggest uncertainty that Beatrice faced was whether or not she could rope Wirt and Greg into her plan to become human again. If she wanted Adelaide to change her back, she needed to provide the old woman with child workers. It was risky to pursue with Wirt’s initial distrust for her, but she eventually gained his confidence. Though by the time they were near Adelaide’s, Beatrice, having grown close to the boys on their adventure, was prepared to back out of the plan and instead scour The Unknown for a different solution to her fate.
Up until arriving at Adelaide’s, Beatrice wrestled with her eventual betrayal. She could either betray the boys to change her family back into humans like she promised, or she could betray her family by keeping the boys safe. Beatrice’s identity as a bluebird brought its own shame, but whichever option she chose would bring even more. Later on in Over the Garden Wall, Wirt would encounter her avian family and learn of their wish to see her again, human or not. Because she was so eager to change her fate, Beatrice never checked in with her family’s feelings on the matter. If she had, she would have learned that she never needed to head into The Unknown in the first place.
Pottsfield: A Life In The Unknown
In the second episode of Over the Garden Wall, the trio came across their first form of a society within The Unknown: a surprisingly normal-looking town called Pottsfield. It had homes, farms, and shops, giving them hope of a way out soon. On the day they arrived in Pottsfield, all of its inhabitants, people with pumpkins for heads, were having a festival in the barn. They were friendly at first, until Wirt got into some trouble and landed him and Greg a couple hours of community service.
The people of Pottsfield were the most comfortable with The Unknown. They had developed their own economy, holidays, and government, and led normal lives despite being in such a strange land. Rather than trying to uncover The Unknown, the people of Pottsfield used what the land had to offer to make something of it. The brothers experienced this first hand as they fulfilled their community service, picking their carefully planted cornfields and pumpkin patches. The final task Wirt and Greg had to do for their sentence was dig holes, but the bones they soon found at the bottom sent them into a panic.
While Wirt thought the citizens of Pottsfield had him digging his own grave, what he was really doing was digging up more members of their community. The pumpkins, it turned out, were just bodies for the skeletons that lived underneath. There was no explanation as to how the skeletons got there, but it didn’t matter to them as long as they could lead the lives they wanted to. With that as their main goal, they discovered that even the mysterious Unknown could sustain such a thing. And so rather than wasting time to question what all was going on, they partied their days away.
By using The Unknown to create a regular life, the people of Pottsfield gave themselves a simple purpose to follow. They didn’t have to discover or define anything, they just had to exist within their community in whatever way they chose. This was the key difference between Pottsfield and Over the Garden Wall‘s other community, The Dark Lantern. The tavern people tried to create a purpose for themselves by picking a strict personal path to follow, and deviating from it meant an unfulfilled life. Pottsfield solved this unnecessary pressure by creating a simple, flexible purpose to follow. With a purpose as easy as existing, the citizens of the town were guaranteed a fulfilling life.
Greg: Adventurous Yet Vulnerable
While Wirt was on one extreme of the spectrum, Greg was on the other, having total faith in his ability to survive a new situation. To him, uncertainty wasn’t something to fear, but something to explore. Back in the brothers’ hometown, just before they wound up in The Unknown, it was Greg taking the opportunities that Wirt let go. In one night, Wirt had given up on delivering a gift to his crush, going to a Halloween party, and hanging out with his classmates. And in that one night, Greg took on all those opportunities.
Even if The Unknown was a completely foreign land, it was still an opportunity for exciting adventures with interesting people for Greg. However, his love for exploration instilled an unhealthy amount of trust towards The Unknown within him. Of the trio, Greg was the member that got them into the most trouble over the course of the show by being careless. In just the first episode, he knocked out the man trying to help him and destroyed a mill by fighting with a wild animal. Despite the trouble this got him in, he continued to follow his impulses for most of Over the Garden Wall.
Greg’s approach to uncertainty was optimistic. As long as he was having fun, there was no hurry to leave his situation. But as much as he enjoyed his time in The Unknown, he also wanted to return home. In the last third of Over the Garden Wall, Greg had an attitude change. As the calm autumn weather they had grown used to was fading into winter, the chance of returning home was slimming. The guilt of his reckless decisions had caught up with Greg and he realized that he had only slowed them down, so he decided to adopt a new approach to The Unknown and paid a visit to the Beast.
While his mischief was certainly fun and often beneficial to the fear-filled folks he met, throwing himself into uncertainty wasn’t teaching Greg anything. The majority of the other characters could only grow by stepping out of their comfort zones and facing their fears, but Greg didn’t have any fears to begin with. At least, not any that The Unknown itself could offer. With all these new adventures Greg went on, Wirt was his only constant (well, and his pet frog George Washington/Kitty/Jason Funderburker). But as soon as he realized that he was a burden to Wirt, the risk of losing him set in, meaning the time they spent together would have been pointless and he would be more vulnerable than ever.
Overcoming Futility
With Wirt and Greg being so different, one would think that the brothers could easily make up for each other’s weaknesses. It was clear that their own weaknesses were slowing down their journey home, so they should have easily fixed that issue by playing to their strengths. However, it wasn’t until they were exposed to the philosophies of others that they began to take responsibility for their individual weaknesses. This eventually became the key to returning home.
Where Wirt slowly grew into the hero who foiled the Beast’s plans, Greg’s growth was due to a sudden decision to adopt a new approach to The Unknown. With winter on its way, he knew he had to do something to take charge of the situation and get him and Wirt home. With some encouragement from the Beast, Greg decided he would need his help if they wanted to leave The Unknown. Taking on an attitude like Beatrice’s and desperation like the Woodsman’s, he was open to anything by this point.
The Beast of course had no intention of helping him and only wanted his soul, but if Greg hadn’t gotten tangled in his schemes, Wirt would have never had his hero moment, completing his arc once and for all. Ready to let go of the fearful philosophy he had been living by, Wirt jumped into the action and challenged the Beast. He had seen the sad state the Woodsman was left in by listening to the Beast and refused to let himself end up that way. After exposing the Beast’s image of an all-powerful being, he removed Greg from the edelwood encasing him, and the brothers left The Unknown together.
Real Change
Over the Garden Wall ended with Wirt and Greg arriving at a hospital after nearly drowning in a river. By now, they were home and far from any beasts or talking animals. Whether The Unknown had been purgatory, a dream, or something else entirely wasn’t clear, but the change in philosophy that each brother underwent was certain. Not only did the boys get to witness a wide array of philosophies on the unknown during their travels, but they also got to leave knowing they could take on any uncertainty life had in store for them.