Over the Garden Wall and into Halloween

By Adeline Beason

Late September marks the beginning of Fall, our collective favorite time of year. 

Affectionately dubbed “spooky season,” this is the season when many of us will enjoy apple cider, dressing a little more warmly, and settling in to watch our favorite comfort movies. 

This October, I made time to rewatch my favorite miniseries, Over the Garden Wall (OTGW).

Set in a gloomy, New England-esque forest, OTGW follows two brothers, Wirt and Greg, who are trying to find their way back home after mysteriously getting lost on Halloween. As they travel through the woods, they encounter talking bluebirds, dancing pumpkin-people, and ghost-possessed colonial witches who help guide them. 

However, not everyone means well. 

Loosely inspired by Dante’s “The Inferno” epic, each episode in the 10-part series takes the boys through a few of the circles of hell: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, heresy, violence, and treachery. 

Even if you haven’t read “The Inferno”, it’s impossible to miss the creepy, old church vibes, and that’s not just because the characters look like something out of the Salem witch trials. 

Like any good spooky movie, Over the Garden Wall is not complete without its evil villain: The Beast. 

As the name implies, The Beast is a thinly veiled version of the Devil, whom Wirt and Greg must defeat to escape the permanently-Fall forest and get home. 

What makes The Beast so scary is not his deep, glowing eyes or huge tree branch horns, but the slow realization that Wirt and Greg are perhaps not in a forest at all, but an in-between world where The Beast is after their souls.

If you are a fan of flannel shirts, crunchy leaves, and the feeling of that first chilly breeze of the season, I cannot recommend Over The Garden Wall enough. 

It is endlessly charming and just creepy enough to be enjoyable without gore. Each episode is 11 minutes long, making it perfect to binge all the way through (and rewatch every year, like I do!). Streaming on Hulu.