Headscratchers / Over the Garden Wall

• So as far as I can tell, all of the short scenes from the first episode intro have some relevance later on, and are mirrored in the show's ending... except those two boys setting a toy boat into the river. Who were they? Did we ever meet them again?
  • We don't see the boys, necessarily, but the toy boat they're sailing looks very similar to the one that Wirt, Greg, Beatrice, and Jason Funderburker (the frog) ride on in Episode 6.
  • Some background frogs on the ferry also happen to be wearing the boys' outfits.
• What is the significance of the black turtles? The scary dog had been a nice normal pet who had eaten one of them. Auntie Whispers ate one and as far as we know they've done nothing to her. They show up frequently in the show but nothing is explained about them.
  • The turtle in the first episode was covered in edelwood oil, which is connected to the beast. That's why Greg's candy sticks on it. Auntie Whispers' turtles are fresh and clean.
• If Wirt's gnome hat is supposed to be a Santa hat, how does it stand straight? Usually Santa hats are floppy and never stand stiff on their own. Unless it's a handmade Santa hat that was made out of construction paper and cotton balls, but that brings up another question:
  • How does the hat not get ruined when Wirt gets wet or falls into the lake? What is it made of?
  • It's a gnome hat, not a Santa hat, those normally stand up straight. Anything is possible with enough starch and optional supports inside the fabric.
    • It IS a Santa hat. We see him cut the white trim off before making it a gnome/wizard hat. Santa hats have fuzzy white trim, gnome ones don't.
  • There are different depictions of Santa, some of them have him wearing a gnome-like hat, mostly in Europe though.
• Is Lorna somehow not aware of the fact that being in a room alone with the boys while she's not working will bring out the evil spirit? Surely she didn't do that on purpose? Also- does she ever sleep?
  • When Wirt offers to help her run away, she says "Perhaps this time it could be different," implying that this has happened before. On a WMG note, the hungry spirit who possesses her may be subtly influencing her behavior so that it will be able to feed.
  • Is Lorna even aware that she has an evil spirit inside of her? Alternatively, what if we never actually saw Lorna at all until the banishment, only the evil spirit influencing her? Given that Before!Lorna is all too happy to run away with Wirt and Greg, while After!Lorna prefers to stay with Auntie.
  • Lorna's evil spirit would be more than happy to leave Auntie Whispers' control- if Lorna did run away, Auntie Whispers probably too old and slow to chase after her, leaving her spirit loose to rampage the Unknown once again. The evil spirit saying "it could be different, this time..." implies that it has tried to run away before, but Auntie Whispers had caught up before Lorna could run too far. The spirit, really, is a genius for making Wirt feel bad for Lorna.
• How was Beatrice able to move Wirt and the frog to the tree (and for that matter, how did her family lift them up into it)? Surely, big as that fish who helped her was, couldn't have done it.
  • She probably has that kind of strength thanks to being a magical talking bluebird. That, or she kept the strength she had as a human
• Where are all Endicott's servants?
  • Two guesses, one Watsonian, the other Doylist. 1)Endicott (possibly absent-mindedly) did something Cuckoolander-ish that resulted in their removal from the picture. 2)Law of Conservation of Detail; the writers and animators didn't bother putting the effort into writing and animating characters who wouldn't even be necessary to the plot.
• Why does the Midwife cough up a fish?
  • Rule of Funny?
  • It could be foreshadowing that Wirt and Greg are actually drowning in a river.
• Why does Wirt (not Greg, who is too young to care or notice) not find anything strange about the fact that everyone in the Unknown are clearly not from his time period? Does he just not notice that somehow?
  • Wirt only found a talking bird slightly strange. The Unknown clearly has some effect on how they perceive things.
  • Also, he has no way of knowing what the culture in The Unknown is like. He has no reason to expect their customs to resemble those of early 1980s America.
• Adelaide claims to work for the Beast. Was there any reason the creators added that? We never see her actually do his bidding. Wanting to make mindless slaves out of the boys seems solely her own goal.
  • The Beast feeds on the souls of lost, wayward children, and he has a known modus operandi of getting people to run themselves ragged and remain single-minded doing something that seems like it'll accomplish something important while they burn themselves out; Adelaide probably helps accomplish the first through the second.
  • Given the Beast's preferred victims are children who are going to give up hope in the woods, it would lead us to believe anyone who is going to enjoy their time in the Unknown are probably worthless to that cause. Greg seems to carefree but it turns out still has confidence issues. If someone like Adelaide shows up it doesn't seem unlikely the Beast would reach some kind of agreement to co-exist with them. Adelaide seems to mostly want slaves and should her slaves runaway to the woods, they are perfect beast food. Seems like a good co-existence racket for both.
• Compared to the above why does it seem like most people in the Unknown know exactly what the Beast is and what he does but the Woodsman doesn't? The singer in the tavern quite literally spells what the beast is up to in clear song. Did no one try to warn him, or is he just on his own way to being a Edelwood tree himself one day.
  • There are several ways to explain his seeming cluelessness:
    • One: He genuinely didn't know. Perhaps because he lives away from most other people in an isolated house in the woods. Even if he did travel to any nearby towns to get supplies, it's possible that the townspeople would assume a man willingly living in the woods already knows about the Beast. Or, common knowledge of the Beast's trickery only became widely known AFTER the Woodsman had taken the deal—after all, he's implied to have been doing the job for many years by the time of the show.
    • Two: he knew about the Beast's nature, but was so desperate to save his daughter that he convinced himself (or let himself be convinced by the Beast) that the tales of Edelwood trees being lost souls were mere rumors and took the deal anyway, much like how Greg still took the Beast's deal despite being told how the Beast worked. The Beast's whole modus operandi is exploiting people's desperation and despair, so it would be a reasonable tactic for him to try and pull.
    • Three: he knew, and the Beast exploited that knowledge to trick him into believing that the lantern was holding his daughter so the Beast could eat her, which led to the Woodsman "stealing" it from the Beast and feeding it the Edelwood just like the Beast wanted, while making the Woodsman think he was defying him instead.
• Why didn't Auntie Whispers use the bell to banish the spirit?
  • There are three possible interpretations:
    • First one is that it never even crossed her mind that the bell could be used like that. She had used her approach for so long that it became like routine to her. There's a running theme in OTGW of the dangers of taking things at face value; Auntie Whispers' bell "commands" the spirit and keeps it under control, and as such, that was all she ever tried to use it for. It took an outsider like Wirt to come up with a fresh approach - after all, Wirt is pretty good at thinking up alternative solutions to problems.
    • Second one is that Auntie may have been concerned about releasing the spirit out into the world, where it may possess someone else.
    • The third, and arguably the darkest yet most plausible possibility, is that Auntie willingly kept the spirit in Lorna and caused the death of countless people, all because she was too paranoid that Lorna would immediately leave her if she was ever cured of her condition.
• Why does Auntie Whispers warn the brothers about Adelaide when they've already met her? Sure, she probably didn't know, but why didn't Greg or Wirt tell her, like, "We know, we ran into her and it wasn't good" or something like that? It seems like an odd thing to go unacknowledged given that they'd just experienced Adelaide's treachery.
  • As you say, she doesn't know she's dead. It's good advice from her. And really, the boys might not want to say "oh, right. Yeah. We killed her" to her sister.
  • OP coming back to add a new realization: Wirt and Greg actually look silently confused/annoyed by the warning, indicating that they're thinking "yeah, yeah, lady, we know, we killed her". So it was lightly addressed after all.
• What's up with the changing shapes of Auntie Whispers' pupils? I assume it's supposed to be part of the grotesque look, but why the pupils, and are the irregular shapes supposed to look like something?
• Given what we learn about her once she actually shows up, how exactly did Adelaide actually earn the title "The Good Woman of The Woods" in the first place? Did Beatrice just pull that out of her cloaca?
  • Perhaps she's one of those magical creatures so dangerous, she can only be referred to by euphemism (such as calling fairies "the Fair Folk" or "the Good Neighbors" to avoid attracting their attention/anger).
  • It does sound a little like Beatrice just made up the title for her.
  • Additionally, considering the reoccuring theme of "don't always take things at face value", the idea of the "Good Woman of the Woods" being an evil witch can easily go along with that.
• Regarding the song "Over the Garden Wall", how can "the moon ride the waves to the shore" when "the lake is a mirror"? Is this a deliberate Wonderland lapse of logic?
  • It almost certainly refers to the image of the moon moving across the lake when you can see it's reflection in the water.
• At the end of "Mad Love", Greg foolishly tossed the two coins into the fountain. Why couldn't Wirt just swim to the bottom of said fountain to retrieve the coins instead of having him, Greg and Beatrice be stowaways?
  • Wirt would probably consider that stealing, given how resistant he was to taking money from Endicott at all, and so wouldn't want to do it. Then, because Beatrice was already having doubts about delivering Greg and Wirt to Adelaide at that point, she would probably have decided not to get the coins in the hopes that it would deter Wirt from going forward with the plan.
• Why do the squirrels have bowties on them? Who could've sewn a pair for each and every one of them?
• Why is Beatrice blue? Her color pattern is that of a male bluebird.
  • I mean, female bluebirds look very similar to males (especially western bluebirds, which is what she looks like), just slightly more dull, so maybe she's just brightened up, being a cartoon. Honestly, she doesn't even look that much brighter than an actual female bluebird, IMO. Or maybe she's trans.
    • She became a bluebird after she was cursed by another bluebird for throwing a rock at it. She may have taken the coloration of the bird she upset.