With autumn just around the corner, many are looking for something to watch to celebrate the season. Some prefer something cozy like When Harry Met Sally, Fantastic Mr. Fox, or Practical Magic. Others flock to horror flicks like Scream or IT to prepare for Halloween. But no other piece of media captures the wonderful feelings of nostalgia, comfort, and the quiet sense of grief that comes with fall as perfectly as the television series Over the Garden Wall.
What is ‘Over the Garden Wall?’
Directed by Patrick McHale, Over the Garden Wall is a 2014 Cartoon Network animated television miniseries with 10 10-minute episodes that follow two brothers, Wirt and Greg, as they travel through the Unknown to return home. Over the past decade, it has received endless acclaim from fans and critics alike. Other Her Campus writers have also praised the series for its abstract ideas.
Over the Garden Wall is impeccably crafted television, but what makes it a fall classic? Many great pieces of media exist without representing a holiday or season. The ones that do try to capture the spirit of fall typically lean into one of two feelings the season brings: comfy or frightening. Comfy movies concentrate on the warmth of the season, while frightening films zero in on the horror and gloom of the end. Over the Garden Wall is a classic because it balances both tones extremely well, while also following the many aesthetics that have evolved from this period.
The Style of ‘OTGW’
The character designs, backgrounds, music, and even the story structure in Over the Garden Wall perfectly capture the popular styles and comforting nostalgia of autumn over the years. Over the Garden Wall features a very autumnal color palette in its characters and setting, with oranges and browns alongside splashes of greens and yellows. The wild array of characters wear vintage or cottage-core clothing, reminiscent of 1920s American fashion mixed with the fairytale aesthetics of gnomes, anthropomorphic woodland creatures, witches, ghosts, and monsters, to name a few.
All of these characters mimic the style of old Fleischer cartoons, a popular rubberhose animation studio credited with creating Betty Boop, Raggedy Ann, and Popeye. Art director Nick Cross noted in an interview with Frederator Studios that the backgrounds were inspired by classic painted Disney backgrounds akin to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. “I received the first background design from Chris Tsirgiotis, in pencil and rendered. It just looked like a beautiful old Disney background. I was like, Oh okay, THIS is what it’s going to be.”
The music featured in the series was composed by The Blasting Company, a folk band that infused the soundtrack with references to 1920s America through folk, early jazz, western, ragtime, and swing. The structure of the show itself featured a hero’s journey through a fantastical place, with the desire to return home, a story told through the ages from Homer’s The Odyssey to The Wizard of Oz.
A reason for the season
What is the purpose of these references to classic works, or the use of vintage imagery? They create a comforting, nostalgic atmosphere that is an essential part of fall. Fall, more than any other season, connects us to the past and the warm feelings that come from it. In America, the most popular holidays at this time are Thanksgiving and Halloween. Both grew out of earlier harvest traditions and have existed long before their modern interpretations. Fall is our period of reflection, when the world around us slows and cools, but the glow of life and the fruits of our labor remain for us to celebrate and reflect on.
Even if someone doesn’t know the full history of these holidays, or the importance fall has held throughout time, you can still see remnants of those traditions in our pop culture today. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the whole season are different from years past, but they still have roots in our past. And Over the Garden Wall clearly celebrates that time. It returns to our past, decorating its kooky world in old-fashioned autumnal aesthetics, or anything that reminds us of a distinct time before our own. It is purposefully comforting in that way, but melancholy in its praise, too.
The Melancholy of Autumn
Do not fear, I haven’t forgotten the other crucial piece for why Over the Garden Wall is a fall classic. The balance between its warm, sentimental tone and the series’ haunting mood creates a feeling that perfectly encapsulates the beauty of the season. The inclusion of the adorably antique fashion, buildings, and animation brings fluffy emotions from our childhoods, but also makes the entire world of The Unknown feel aged, near death, eerie, and even sad.
In the show, death is a vital part of the plot and themes. Many of the conflicts and creatures the brothers Wirt and Greg meet on their journey home through The Unknown include skeletons wearing pumpkins, ghosts, a Woodsman keeping a lantern lit to save his daughter’s life, and the embodiment of death itself, the Beast. The conflicts vary in the mood they bring: the skeletons party, families connect because of or despite the ghosts they face, and the cheerful brother Greg is relatively undisturbed but delighted for most of the series. But the Beast is a different entity entirely. The Beast is an entity referenced throughout the series, something to be feared, something never seen and always in the dark of The Unknown.
In the final episodes of the series, the weather shifts and the setting changes to a desolate forest, full of thrashing wind and snow, devoid of any life. With the end of the fall comes the beginning of winter, of death. It is revealed that all the Edelwood trees the Woodsman tears down at the Beast’s command—to keep the lantern lit and his daughter alive—come from the bodies of people, lost souls the beast tricks into his grasp. The young Greg almost falls victim to this trap, but his brother defeats the beast.
capturing the profound beauty of fall
Despite the fear, there still is beauty. Despite the sadness that comes with the world aging, and with the possibility we’ll lose those we love, there is beauty in recognizing that sadness, moving on, and continuing to live despite it.
That is the beauty of Over the Garden Wall, one that doesn’t drown itself in saccharine-sweet fairy tales or depressing stories of death, but is a hauntingly strange and beautifully quirky series that encompasses the melancholy joy of the fall season.