The Unknown

What is the Unknown?

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Everyone has had a near-death experience in their lives once. Humans are fragile creatures, so it’s completely normal to be suddenly reminded of this once in a while. Perhaps you had a nasty fall once, leaving you with a broken arm instead of a broken neck. Maybe you got lost in the woods at night, eventually finding your way home to a house full of light and a warm blanket. Maybe you even fell into a deep lake once, leading you to a mysterious world full of strange creatures and into frankly terrifying scenarios. This is the case for the two protagonists in Patrick McHale’s Over The Garden Wall, a cartoon miniseries that centers around brothers Wirt and Greg, who must find their way home through a mysterious forest called the Unknown.

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The Unknown bears a certain resemblance to Purgatory from Christian theology as well Limbo, a theoretical place between life and death. Also alluding to this is the episode structure within the miniseries, as each episode parallels a layer of hell from the epic poem Dante’s Inferno. For example, both series follow a protagonist wearing red who travels with a companion that leads them through a mysterious place that they enter by traveling through a forest at night. Even more evidence points to the influence of Dante upon Over The Garden Wall with the co-companions being led by a mysterious woman named Beatrice. The fact that the show has these easter eggs to such a piece of literature gives notion to the popular fan theory that the Unknown is supposed to represent a sort of in-between place where neither the dead nor alive reside, a Limbo of sorts. There’s a plethora of evidence for this, such as the fact that many characters appear to dress from several different time periods. The gravestone of a character that appears in the Unknown can even be seen briefly in Wirt’s flashback to the real world just before him and Greg enter the unknown. The fact that they’re about to drown when they enter also hints that you must be dead or close to death in order to enter the Unknown.

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But what exactly is it?

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The answer, well, is unknown. Patrick McHale, the creator of Over The Garden Wall, has neither confirmed nor denied any fan theories, preferring instead to let people have their own ideas about the true meaning behind the series instead of giving a concrete manner.

However, the interesting fact about the Unknown is the fact that in each episode the audience’s initial perception of the environment and the characters within the dark woods is always subverted. For example, in Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee, the crew happens upon a town of pumpkin people. The pumpkin people seem friendly at first, but become more sinister when they won’t let the boys and Beatrice leave. Their leader, Enoch, a giant pumpkin with reeds dangling from it and apparently floating gives them judgement:

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Enoch: So, by order of the Pottsfield Chamber of Commerce, I find you guilty of trespassing, destruction of property, disturbing the peace, and murder.

Wirt: Murder?!

Enoch: Oh, no, not murder. But for those other crimes, I sentence you to...a few hours of manual labor.

Wirt: Wait, what? Really? That’s it?

- Over The Garden Wall, Episode 2.

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The Unknown isn’t about being terrifying and purgatory-like. It’s about subverting the audience’s, (and the character’s) perceptions of the world around them by instead revealing it to be actually something simply previously “Unknown”. McHale plays on our most basic fears in Over The Garden Wall by having the expected be the unknown: one of humanity's' most basic fears.