Over the garden wall episode 2
Forced turn back, he encounters Virgil, an ancient Roman poet who helps him find an unguarded entrance to the afterlife. Later, Dante is confronted by three angry animals as he encloses upon the entrance to Hell - a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf (not to be confused with Shakira's underrated 2009 bop), all seemingly deterring him from entering the underworld. "Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear." "Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost," the poet marvels. Continue Reading BelowĪt the beginning of Inferno, Dante, too, finds himself wandering aimlessly through the wood, frightened and unsure of how he grew just so lost. Since the show's release, fans and scholars alike have long drawn parallels between OTGW and the first Divine Comedy, namely, through Beatrice, the bluebird who guides the boys through The Unknown for the majority of the series, however, this direct episodic correlation has yet to take off as a common explanation for the show's events, having only been noted a handful of times elsewhere, most notably through Tumblr user Globe Gander's thoughtful analysis, and a video dissecting the topic by YouTuber, T REY the Explaine r. After mulling over the show's episodic order and correlating themes, I noticed something interesting - the latter nine episodes of Over The Garden Wall directly correspond to the rings of hell from Dante's Inferno, from purgatory to treachery. But then, during an unseasonable rewatch last July, it finally clicked.
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Since first discovering the series in 2016, I mused over the show's every detail, fell down Reddit rabbit holes of fan theories, consumed hours of interviews, and savored YouTube videos explaining the lore and behind this beloved series.
This gave me nightmares as a full-grown adult. Aside from having arguably the scariest villain in cartoon history, a hollow, trypophobia-inspired tree-man covered in the screaming faces of the damned, OTGW's appeal runs deeper than the average children's Halloween series, its layers of complex, seemingly unsolvable mysteries lending itself to rewatch after rewatch.
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Unsure of how they arrived there or how to return to where they came, the trio grows lost in the vast forest, encountering several folkloric figures from various points in Ameican history as they narrowly avoid succumbing to the evil clutches of The Beast, or, well, Satan in the flesh. But what if I told you there was a children's series that was all but canonically confirmed to be set deep in the depths of Hell - a kid-friendly adaptation of Dante's Inferno, with each episode aligning with a circle of the afterlife, and the devil himself the as villain?įirst airing on Cartoon Network over the course of five nights in November 2014, Over The Garden Wall is an autumnal cult classic from the mind of Adventure Time's creative director, Patrick McHale, recanting the tale of our two kid heroes, Wirt and Greg and their pet frog as they desperately attempt to find their way home from a purgatory-like state called The Unknown. Many of our favorite children's cartoons, from Rugrats to Phineas and Ferb, to Adventure Time, all carry dark secrets, from unknowingly dead characters to a nuclear apocalypse. It's a trope as old as time, er, well, Creepy Pasta circa the early 2010s.