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Wirt, Greg & Greg’s Frog
Wirt's last name is McLoughlin
(This is actually more like multiple WMGs condensed into one.)The Frogland Ferry is labled "McLoughlin Bros." If the Unknown is actually Wirt's Dying Dream he may have named the Frogland Ferry after himself and Greg. Greg is actually his half-brother, and would not have the same name, BUT since this is seemingly the first episode where he willingly joins in with Greg's antics, and seems to truly care for him, it may be that he finally is considering Greg his brother. (And joining in in his interests, if HE was the one imagining the boat filled with frogs, but Greg is the one with the frog obsession. This supported, when he wakes up in the hospital and tells Greg that Jason Funderburker the Frog is "Our Frog".) If his last name WAS McLoughlin and he was considering Greg as a brother they would be the McLoughlin Brothers.But that's all "What If"s the REAL WMG here, is that Wirt and Greg are related to the boys shown in the theme song who are placing a toy version of the Frogland Ferry in a river. I think these were the ORIGINAL McLoughlin Brothers. They appear to be similar to Wirt and Greg in age, physical appearance, and nose style.(Wirt's triangular nose style is rare in the series, being only shared by a few other visible human characters.) The littler one even closely resembles an initial concept design of Greg that had him in a sailor suit.But there is one BIG difference and that is that these brothers are clearly having fun together, something that cannot often be said for Wirt and Greg, EXCEPT when they are singing The Adelaide Parade on the ferry (and when Wirt starts tapping his cup with a spoon along to the rythym of Potatoes and Molasses, though that's not as blatant).To finish off this incredibly long theory, I will say that, yes, I know that the McLoughlin Brothers was a company that made books and games for children, but I think the theory is plausible anyway. Wirt is dressed as himself for Halloween
Seeing how iconic the characters are, it's not too far off they'll make Halloween costumes, and, since it's Halloween, it stands to reason Wirt is dressed as himself in his own universe.- Probably Jossed. We see him make the costume out of a santa hat and a uniform jacket.
- Also, the Unknown is a land of folk stories, and the apprentice calls him a "pilgrim" or folk hero so he COULD be dressed as himself.
The brothers never really left The Unknown.
The Unknown is possibly constructed by the people who reside in it, and as such it's possible that their memory of their hometown let them just recreate their normal life the way they wanted it to work out. Greg's frog was watching over Greg and Wirt.
- In the prologue and epilogue, we see Greg's frog (or at least, it's implied to be Greg's frog, due to having the same voices and all) is seen playing a piano in the middle of empty space. What's weird is that the frog's appearance is the only scene that doesn't connect to the story in any way. This could hint that the frog is "outside" of the story.
- The frog's two songs: Into the Unknown and Over the Garden Wall, are the show's main theme song and a title drop, respectively.
- The frog is the only character who had been with the brothers since the start of their journey. Greg finds him after they climb "over the garden wall" and sticks with them throughout. Even when he's offered a job at the frog ferry, he still comes back to the them, despite the fact that he has nothing to gain from it.
- The frog ate Aunt Whispers' bell. This could be HandWaved as the frog doing stupid things, but maybe he ate it because he knew that the bell would be the key to curing Lorna's illness, knowing that if she goes out, she'll be possessed.
- The frog goes with Greg and Wirt into the Unknown. This is weird because, since he's a frog, he shouldn't be drowning in the river, and as such, shouldn't have accompanied them to the Unknown. He even goes with them to the hospital, but why would the police bring the frog with them? Perhaps it's because there's a special connection between them?
- Maybe the frog's a psychopomp—a spirit that guides souls between the world of the living and the land of the dead. He followed the kids into the Unknown with the intention of leading them back out again. He's an amphibian to boot, a creature who lives between two worlds (water and earth).
Wirt's name is short for Stewart.
Alternatively, his name could be Walter, but his nickname came about through mispronunciation of either name. Wirt blames himself for his parents splitting up
In the episode at the Inn, Wirt mentions in song that Greg is is brother because Wirt's mom "remarried and then gave birth to [Greg] with [his] stepdad." This makes Wirt and Greg technically half-brothers, and Wirt's biological father is different from Greg's. Assuming that Wirt's father didn't die, that would mean there was probably a divorce involved. Maybe deep down, Wirt blames himself for the divorce, and he tries to cover that up by (at first) being dismissive and annoyed by Greg. After all, Greg is a constant reminder that Wirt's mother is now with someone else, who is not Wirt's dad; therefore, Greg is an easy target for Wirt's resentment. In the last episode, after Wirt's Character Development, he finally takes responsibility for his actions, and proclaims "everything's been my fault." On the surface, this could just relate to him and Greg ending up in the Unknown, but it could also be Wirt finally admitting that he blames himself for the divorce, and not Greg or his stepdad.Wirt is Dipper and Mabel Pines' father.
Over the Garden Wall takes place in the late 70's or 80's, judging from the fashions and use of cassette tapes, and Gravity Falls is shown explicitly to take place in the modern day (2010's). Wirt and Dipper bear more than a passing resemblance, and Wirt's stories of the Unknown to Dipper as he grew up might go some way to explaining Dipper's own fascination with the weird and wonderful.- WHICH would explain why shermie pines is the only known member of the pines family who isn't even mentioned ONCE in the series.(people will be sad if reminded of his, probably, death.
"Wirt" is a nickname given by a younger Greg.
When Greg was a baby, he couldn't properly pronounce Wirt's full name, Steward or Walt or something, so he fixated on the closest he could manage: Wirt. Eventually, the nickname was adopted by Wirt's friends. (As Into the Unknown indicates, he is not nearly as unpopular as he believes.)- In The Sword in the Stone, "Wart" is the name given to the young Arthur Pendragon. I assumed that "Wirt" was a deliberate shout out to the Arthurian legends.
Wirt and Greg are Hobbits.
And they are trapped in the Old Forest. Barring the whole taking place in modern times/70's thing, Wirt could just be an unusually slender Hobbit from Buckland. The living pumpkins from Pottsfield are undead cursed to remain on Middle-Earth in the same vein as the Paths of the Dead. Sentient animals are minor forest spirits. Lorna was possessed by corrupted Maiar, and the Beast is Tom Bombadil! As explained in this scarily plausible article ([1]
), he is an evil spirit that turns lost Hobbit-children into Huorns.Wirt and Sara did not end up together.
Poetic soul that he is, Wirt's primary weakness is a tendency to blow things out of proportion. Should the Unknown have been a real place, Wirt's experiences there put the little things he freaked out over into perspective, and he works up the courage to hang out with Sara and his peers more. However, Wirt soon realizes that he had been obsessing over his idealized idea of Sara and not the girl herself, and he decided they were Better as Friends.- No! No! I reject the premise of this!
- Adding onto this theory, the tavern residents at first believe Wirt to be the young lover, but then they change their mind and call him The Pilgrim instead. Perhaps this is foreshadowing the fact that he was never meant to be “the young lover” at all?
Wirt and Gregory's family name is Universe.
See here.- Alternately, "Universe" is not their real family name, but one that Greg picked up to make him seem more like a rock star. "Greg Pines" doesn't have the same ring.
- Don't forget that Wirt and Greg are half-brothers of different fathers. Obviously when Wirt's mother got remarried to Greg's father, Mr. Universe Sr., Wirt kept the last name of his biological father, Shermie Pines.
- There is no "Mr. Universe Sr." Greg's original last name was DeMayo, and he legally changed it when he ran off to be a rock star.
Wirt is 13 or 14
In episode 6 Auntie Whispers says that she can smell children, Wirt is insulted saying he's in high school but doesn't say exactly what age he is. Odds are Wirt is a freshman trying to claim he's older than he is like a lot of kids do. Greg's real reason for throwing away those two cents?
He was already starting to feel guilty about stealing Mrs. Daniel's rock. After all that talk about stealing while they were at Quincy Endicott's mansion and Fred turning over a new leaf, Quincy praising him as "a sweet boy with good sense" just made him feel bad about, so he concluded he had "no sense" and threw the money away. Somewhere in an Alternate Universe, Wirt and Greg were sucked onto a neverending, reality-hopping train instead.
Wirt was the one the train came for, due to him still struggling with his emotional issues over his mother re-marrying. Greg just got dragged along due to being in such close proximity to his brother when he was pulled in. Naturally, then, it's just Wirt with the number on his hand. Wirt really did become an edelwood tree
The Queen of the Clouds was right it was too late to save him. Greg used his wish to give Wirt a Dying Dream that he would be able to make it up to Greg, help Beatrice and go home and get to date Sara. In reality though he really just became another tree to burn in the lantern. Beatrice & The Woodsman
Beatrice
Beatrice is a ghost
In the ending, we see that Beatrice was apparently a normal person who lived with her family in olden times. Now think about how close the river the boys fell in was to the graveyard. One of the gravestones says Quincy Endicott on it, which was the name of the crazy guy who lived in the mansion. Add in the fact that the fantasy world was similar to Purgatory and think about it. All of the strange people they encountered where just the warped souls of people who had died in the past. Beatrice had a crush on Wirt.
Come on! Don't tell me you didn't see the Ship Tease!Beatrice threw rocks at a bluebird because...
She had learned that her parents set her up for an Arranged Marriage. Her clothes are recognizable from the early 19th century, one of the eras when this modus vivendi was common, and Beatrice appears to be in a foul mood when we first see her in the first episode's opening.Woodsman
The Woodsman's daughter was completely fine this whole time.
Simply put, the Beast never let him return home, since if he did he would have found that his daughter was not even turned into a tree. While we are initially led to believe whatever spell the Beast had on her is broken at the end, the above explanation fits with the whole "things are more benign then they first appear" theme of the series.- Or more specifically, maybe the Woodsman isn't from the Unknown: he's having some kind of Near-Death Experience just like the brothers are, wandering the woods at night and despairing of finding his daughter. The Beast kept him trapped in the Unknown with the lantern job, but once he finally sorted his shit out he returned to the real world right at the moment he left and found his way home in the morning.
- Original theory confirmed by the last episode, and elaborated on in the ongoing comic series.
The Beast
The Beast can never be truly killed
The Beast is Satan or Angra Mainyu
Warning: spoilers ahead.Since the Unknown is kind of implied to be the afterlife, and we have an outright Heaven analogue with the Cloud Queen and her angelic servants, it makes sense that the Beast, the other most influential supernatural character, would be her opposite. He is revealed to feed on the souls that give in to despair, and his true form appears to be entirely made of said souls. He tricks and manipulates people to his ends, and he is associated with evil witches and other demonic creatures. He thrives in the dark, yet his Soul Jar is a light and without it he will die, probably refferencing Lucifer's meaning as "light-bringer". To say nothing of his antlered form. The Beast is a Cosmic Entity.
The only reason why he seems so laughably weak compared to other Devil-type characters is because the creature we see is merely an avatar. The true Beast is an unimaginably powerful and godlike being that transcends reality itself and interacts with the mortal plane via lesser aspects.- Alternatively, the Beast is far closer to the original interpretation of the Devil rather than his overpowered Expys, and genuinely is weak enough to be taken on by children.
The Beast, at least in part, represents suicide.
His preferred mode of operation is to inspire so much despair in his victims that they give themselves over to him. In addition, his victims being turned into trees is a clear allusion to The Divine Comedy. The Beasts' real name is Quincy Endicott
It is the only readable grave in episode 9.- No. We met Quincy Endicott in Episode 5
The Beast used to be an ordinary person... who ate an Edelwood turtle.
The dog swallowed a turtle and became a shaggy, pitch-black monster with Technicolor Eyes. The Beast shares many of the same characteristics, the identical eyes being the most notable. The Beast is The Erl-King
He tempts a boy dying of exposure to remain in his wooded kingdom forever, and resorts to force when his attempts at temptation fail. The Beast is a Wendigo/The truth of The Unknown
(Shoutout to altavanator on Tumblr for helping me come up with this) These sort of tie together, so bear with me. The beast was once a normal dude looking for a place to settle with some other travelers from a different area. They ended up nearly dead once winter hit, and he was forced to eat some of his companions. Now, depending on what culture's interpretations you find, the Beast looks a lot like a Wendigo, a creature that's basically a monster created from the twisted soul of a cannibal. The Unknown formed around him. I mean think about it: He has to be a really integrated part of their culture because not once in their journey did the brothers find someone who wasn't weary of the Beast. There was not a single skeptic, so even if little enough people encounter him that he's something of a wives tale, people are scared of him across the Unknown. The Unknown and it's people grew around him, because the ones he didn't churn into oil eventually settled there and villages sprouted. There's also a deep-rooted fear that without the Beast, there is no Unknown, since it's all based on his existence.- I thinking Beast is mixed between Wendigo due to his appearance in last episode and Satan because he's a demon that turns their souls into edelwood trees, And with some of Celtic God Cernunnos (Who an deity in Celtic Mythology with Antlers for Horns) thrown in, due to its personality seeming similar as all he does is wait on his prey.
- I think we're gonna have to chock some of this on most of the people who worked at CN in this period were art school students with very postmodern views. The Beast and unknown pull a lot of ideas and aesthetics from various places rearranged into a cool original version. But from an ideology standpoint it's very confusing. The Beast fits a lot of the more pagan view of the fae or the view of the wendigo. At the same time the series has a lot of odes and references to Dante's Inferno, which makes somethings related to Christian morality seem wildly out of place in a world being ran by what is pretty much a dark interpretation of rebirth as a tree.
- As far as the Beast being the creator of the unknown that would make a lot of sense in the fae interpretation. He seeks out lost stories and tries to manipulate them for his own gain. He just hasn't been that successful as each section of the unknown are people who never succumbed to his game.
The Beast is an alternate version of the Anti-Spiral
Oh, come on! I can't be the only one thinking that they look similar! There's more, though. He could go after children due to the fact that they have high potentials for harboring Spiral Power, and thus, causing the Spiral Nemesis. And his Soul Jar? It's an alternate container for the Anti-Spiral planet. Also, Wirt is an alternate universe version of Simon due to their similar character development, and explains why the Beast goes after Wirt prior to Greg volunteering to take his brother's place: Wirt has tons of Spiral Power in him — He just hasn't realized it yet.- Wirt's drill is his hat.
The Beast is unable to inflict any major physical harm.
If he could, he would have been able to kill whoever he wants to make more Edelwood oil for his lantern. Instead, he only has control over souls that are already dying or have given up. Rather than physical means he uses his cunning to manipulate others around him, from exhausting Greg to near death with tasks or lying to the Woodsman about his daughter. The woodsman said he fought him for the lantern before, but seeing as he was tricked into collecting even more oil as a result, it’s possible that this was an intentional loss. Even when the woodsman was swinging an axe at him again in the final episode all The Beast did was dodge his attacks and taunt him instead of put up any resistance. In the final confront he surrounds Wirt in darkness but it could have just been a flashy attempt at intimidating him, which failed. Even after Wirt gives away the lantern, The Beast could only instruct the Woodsman to finish them off, instead of taking any action himself now that they held no advantage over him. The fact that he gives no resistance to the threat of his soul being extinguished as from telling them to stop also supports the fact that he cannot lift a finger against anyone. The Beast is the Horned King
The Beast sent the spirit to possess Lorna
The Beast isn't quite dead.
The Beast's soul is stored in the Woodsman's lantern, but blowing it out doesn't destroy his soul, it just keeps him from manifesting a physical body (or, given that the Beast is made of edelwood, turns him back into a regular edelwood tree). All it would take is some unwitting soul lost in the Unknown to find the lantern and light it again... The Unknown
Purgatory / The Afterlife
The Unknown is a type of purgatory
.The final two chapters reveal that Wirt and Greg are close-to-modern-day kids who got into the Unknown after falling to the bottom of a river. When they leave the Unknown, they get out of said river and almost no time seems to have passed. The Unknown could be a type of purgatory, where visitors can choose to either leave or stay. The Unknown might be different for everyone, and it helps people to think about and overcome some of their flaws. The people and scenarios Wirt comes across all help him become a stronger person. The Beast is something of a devil figure, who tries to get people to stay and fall into despair so they turn into the trees that help keep his lantern lit.- Evidence supporting:
- It costs two pennies to cross the Ferry.
- Quincy Endicott's name on a tombstone in the cemetery.
- A "Potter's Field is where the unknown are buried.
- In The Divine Comedy, people who committed suicide would become trees.
- Word of God is that Beatrice is named after the Beatrice that leads people through Purgatory in said book.
- Adding to that, Over the Garden Wall might be a loose adaptation of The Divine Comedy as explained here.
- Expanding on this, is Cloud City Heaven and only Greg is worthy to go there, and not Wirt?
- Seems reasonable- after all Greg is five years old, so many people would say that means he gets there automatically.
- Isn't Cloud City a fake dream the Beast gave Greg to trick him into leaving Wirt?
- No, because the Beast wouldn't have bothered to make sure that Greg really meant what he said. He'd be happy just to have another tree.
Only the deeper woods are Purgatory
The rest of The Unknown is...some kind of fantasy land, akin to non-hallucination Wonderland and Oz.The Unknown is Purgatory, and the inhabitants of Pottsfield are trapped there because they never had a proper burial.
They cannot move on because they were never mourned, they never had a priest bless them, they were literally just unknown corpses buried in a mass grave. However since they did nothing wrong Enoch is there to tend to them, he takes their naked bones and dresses them, welcomes them, throws them a party and tells them how happy everyone is to see them. Pottsfield is pretty much unique in the Unknown in that it's bright, safe and everyone seems happy, almost as if it wasn't a part of the Unknown at all. Everyone from The Unknown actually existed
.Assuming The Unknown is some sort of purgatory it's possible that everyone who is in The Unknown were people who had been on the verge of death, just like Wirt and Greg and that The Unknown exists outside of time allowing the souls of the dying to congregate. Evidence for this is the gravestone of Quincy Endicott in the graveyard just before Wirt and Greg nearly die and enter The Unknown.- I'd like to add another theory to this one: Beatrice was somehow responsible (directly or indirectly) for her family's death. Her inability to forgive herself and join them again is represented by their being turned into bluebirds until the finale. Her family has long since forgiven her, but Beatrice still hasn't forgiven herself, hence why she's still essentially in Purgatory.
Everyone in the Unknown didn't die, but got lost as the boys had.
Quincy's tombstone is the biggest piece of evidence used to support the theory of the Unknown being Purgatory. Could be. Or he didn't actually die in the real world. He, like Wirt and Greg, got "lost" and ended up in the Unknown. But unlike the boys, he never made it home. He was stuck there, and so his family assumed he had died and gave him a grave. He just has forgotten them (which explains why he so readily accepts the brothers as his nephews and bonds with Greg easily). Like how Wirt doesn't seem to remember he and Greg have parents and a life back home and is content with the idea of staying in Pottsfield.The same is said for many, if not all, of the other residents of the Unknown. Why aren't there more elderly or sick there (given that, you know, people usually die that way more)? Why don't some, like the Langtrees or Beatrice's family, seem to have anything to do with death? It's not a place for the dead; it's a place for the lost.- The one exception to this might be the people of Pottsfield, since they are actually skeletons dug up from graves. Their comments to Wirt that he is "early" and that he will (not might, will) join them in the future might imply that Pottsfield is the afterlife in this series. Even Quincy's tombstone doesn't prove much. He was an old man from the past who would be dead anyway by the late 20th century.
- Yes, I'd forgotten about them. But given how bizarre a fantasy word the Unknown is, with several different eras in American history existing at once, I shouldn't be surprised if there's a section in the Unknown for the dead too. My overall point being, Pottsville and maybe Quincy aside, nobody else the boys meet seems to be dead.
Pottsfield is the afterlife of those who have forgotten all connection to their former lives.
Ironically, Humans being the fallible, flawed beings that we are, are much happier without memories of their lives.A Dying Dream
We saw two Dying Dreams in this miniseries.
I mean, since the plot focuses a lot on Wirt, I sort of figured that the Unknown was Wirt's Dying Dream, but I kind of wondered about Greg, too. In episode 8, as the boys are trying to keep warm, Greg has a dream about going to Cloud City, fighting off the North Wind, and getting a wish from the Cloud Queen after an offer to stay with the city's residents. That got me thinking- what if it wasn't just Greg's subconscious reinterpreting the events surrounding them, but it was also Greg's Dying Dream as he's drowning in the river? It sort of works like a double dream, if you ask me:- The North Wind acts as the cold chill he's feeling in the Unknown, and also the cold feeling of the river water he's drowning in. He can fight back against this feeling in the dream, but he can't in reality.
- The rubber-hose characters honestly don't feel out of place in Greg's mind if one simply remembers his brother's obsession with old things (ex. rococo and Gregorian structures), which he probably had in real life as well.
The boys' journey is both real AND a dying dream
.The Unknown is said in the opening narration to be a place of forgotten stories. Perhaps its inhabitants are all lost souls. Some, such as the residents of Pottsfield, are dead. Others, such as the Woodsman, are merely searching for something. The Unknown is a magical place out of time where these souls are gathered. Wirt and Gregory are in fact dying in the river, but their souls are elsewhere. That's how they had the same shared memories when they woke up in the hospital. You can either add the "Beast represents suicide" and "Frog watching over them" WMGs into this or not. Neither are necessary for this, but they don't cancel it out either. (Personally, I think they're part of it, but you can make up your own minds.)- I kind of like the interpretation that the Unknown is the purgatory for people whose stories are going to become lost to time.
Other
The Unknown is the afterlife, but not for people - it's the afterlife for stories
It's where stories goes when they've been completely forgotten by the living. This is why it feels so much like an old timey children's books, fairy tales and 20's cartoons, those are the kinds of stories who tend to get lost in there. The narrator even called it a place "Where long forgotten stories are reaveled..." and the theme song is about "If dreams can't come true\then why not pretend?" and "The loveliest lies of all", which could refer to stories .The Unknown is such an Anachronism Stew since it's full of stories from different times. The Tavern goers can't understand the idea of someone having a name, rather than a title, is because their original story was a Nameless Narrative.- Beatrice and her family, Adelaide, Auntie Whispers and Lorna were originally fairy tales
- Pottsfield was an old timey urban legend
- Miss Langtree and her school and Frogland were originally a children's books. The Fishing Fish was a small illustration from one as well
- The Tavern and Cloud City were animated movies made in the 20's (The Tavern obviously SET in an older setting). The Tavern Keeper was the main character and a Betty Boop expy. Cloud City a cartoon for very young kids and sickeningly sweet
- Fred the Stealing, Talking Horse was a main character from a series of comedic oral stories
- Quincy Endicott and Marguerrite Grey were from a satiric limerick about greed and the rich
- The Beast was once a mere Boogie Man to keep children from wandering off into the forest
- It's hard to say with the Woodsman and his daughter, since we know very little about their story. Maybe they were a fairy tale, too - or just part of the Beast's legend
- Taking into consideration that we catch a glimpse of his headstone in episode 9, the character Quincy Endicott, and possibly Marguerrite as well, could be based on real historical figures, similar to how "Jack and Jill" is based on the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
- Quincy Endicott may have come from a Ghost Story about a mansion being haunted by a previous owner.
- Confirmed in various interviews like this one: "The Unknown is literally the unknown. There are stories that were once told, and are gone forever. Words that have been spoken and forgotten. Ideas that have been thought, but lost. And there's plenty of stuff mankind has never thought of, and will never think of. The Unknown is all that stuff."
- The two boys playing with the wind-up boat in the opening may not actually be in the unknown at all, but merely playing a game of make-believe that would eventually become part of the unknown in the form of the frog ferry.
The story takes place in the New World of Darkness and the Unknown is The Hedge or part of it.
The general disjointed nature of the world and the fae-like creatures like Auntie Whispers and The Beast wouldn't feel out of place. In particular, the Beast is either a powerful Darkling or perhaps a True Fae banished from Arcadia. Other Residents of the Unknown
The Inhabitants of Pottsfield
Some catastrophe had befallen Pottsfield in the past, and Enoch is helping them move on.
A potter's field is a sort of graveyard for unknown or poor folks who have no one to remember them. It's likely that something, like a plague or disaster, wiped out so much of the town's population that there was only enough time to bury them all. Enoch found their graves and decided to help their spirits find peace by making them bodies out of the pumpkins he grows and digging out their bodies.The Inn Guests
The Inn Guests are an Improv group
Which is why they all have roles and asked Wirt and Greg for theirs...also the Highwayman is probably just a singer...it also fits the overall theme of the series that things may not be what they appear....a cute little inn actually being something as depraved and godless as an improv group?The tavern's residents are the Craftsman's dolls.
In the opening and the epilogue, the corresponding shot for the Tavern is a table of wooden doll versions of the Tavern inhabitants. In Songs from the Dark Lantern, we see the Craftsman sandpapering some wood, indicating that he's the dolls creator. The Unknown's weird power brought them to life because the Craftsman wanted somebody to talk to. When Wirt and Greg visit the Tavern, he thinks the boys are just more of his dolls. The people at the Dark Lantern are lost souls who have forgotten their names, and have only their occupations with which to identify themselves.
They seemed a bit testy when Wirt and Greg introduced themselves by name; perhaps they envied them for being new arrivals to the Unknown, still able to remember their names?Fred the Horse
Fred the horse used to belong to the Highwayman
A highwayman was a bandit who did his robbing on horseback (the unmounted equivalent being known as a "footpad"). Fred was the only horse shown to be present, and having been an accomplice to violent robbery on multiple occasions would explain his nonchalance about stealing things.- Confirmed in the comics.
Fred the horse is a human transformed by magic
Of all the anthropomorphic animals encountered in the Unknown, the only ones capable of human speech are Beatrice, her family, and Fred. The reason Beatrice is able to talk is because she was cursed to take the form of a bluebird. It's possible that Fred is also the victim of vindictive magic. He enjoys theft, so perhaps he stole from someone well versed in sorcery and was stuck in the form of a horse as punishment.- The frogs could talk too, though the theory still works if they're all cursed, I guess.
- The animals who can't talk might have just been animals for far longer, to the point they forget what they are. Considering identity is a big theme of the series, maybe it's common for those who prey on these souls to strip them of their identity by taking away their very form.
Fred joined the Endicott tea company to steal everything from it.
He wanted to do an inside job.Quincey Endicott
Quincy Endicott is an honourable businessman
Despite his ramblings implying that he's done some less than moral things to earn his fortune, all of Endicott's misdeeds are in his imagination. Believing himself mad, he spiralled into crazy, paranoid conclusions about his past decisions. Like, "What if the person I bought out is living off rainwater in a phone-booth right now instead of comfortable in retirement like I left him?" for example.Lorna & Auntie Whispers
Banishing the spirit wasn't such a good idea.
Because if it was that easy, you'd think Auntie Whispers would have done it a long time ago. Maybe by making the spirit leave Wirt gave it greater freedom.Alternatively, Auntie didn't banish the spirit because she was afraid that Lorna would leave if she did.
Lorna killed her family
Auntie Whispers is Lorna's only family because Lorna's real family became her first victims.Lorna is Auntie Whispers' apprentice.
Since her sister Adelaide seems to be the garden variety Wicked Witch, there is reason to believe that Auntie Whispers is a genuine sorceress, not just a creepy old hermit with a magic bell. In the folklore and legends Over the Garden Wall is based on, a magic-user often takes on a wide-eyed apprentice to pass on their knowledge, and Lorna can easy fit that bill. The spirit possessing Lorna
is a metaphor for chronic illness.The Queen of the Clouds The Queen of the Clouds is the Beast's creation.
The Beast and the Queen are the only ones to call Greg by his full name, and they share a slim build, height, and glowing eyes. Additionall, Greg had said to the queen, "But anything is possible if you put you rmind to it, right?" which the Beast repeats word for word back to Greg, which he could only have known Greg said if he was behind Cloud City somehow.- She did show him Wirt's real situation that only the beast could have know about, explain it in a misleading way, & influence him into going to the beast. She even tried to convince him to ascend higher into a cloudy land in the sky. Accepting that offer would have probably meant staying asleep & freezing in the snow. Or freezing in the water. Sounds like the beast's work to me.
The Queen of the Clouds is the Beast.
He is disguising himself with an illusion to more easily manipulate Greg.Multiple
The talking animals are the result of a form of reincarnation due to bad karma
The only two consistently talking animals are Beatrice and Fred the Horse. Beatrice was cursed because she threw a rock at a bluebird. Fred the Horse likes to steal as mentioned in Episode 5: Mad Love. Beatrice earns her return to human form by helping the boys get home in the end. We can assume that Fred will one day earn return to human form now that he is making an honest living.Adelaide, Auntie Whispers and the Queen of the Clouds are The Hecate Sisters.
Auntie Whispers and Adelaide of the Pasture are confirmed to be sisters, but a tapestry depicting three figures can be seen in Adelaide's cottage. If this is sound then the Queen of the Clouds, the only young and beautiful sister is clearly the Maiden. Auntie Whispers is the Mother, for her relationship with Lorna, and sickly Adelaide, who turns out to be wicked, is the Crone. Other
Adelaide's scissors wouldn't turn Beatrice back to normal.
Auntie Whispers says Adelaide can't be trusted, and Adelaide herself briefly forgets about the scissors for a moment when Beatrice says she can turn her human to be her servant. Maybe Adelaide was going to double-cross Beatrice, not keep up her end of the bargain, and give Beatrice scissors that don't result in curse reversal, but clipped wings and blood loss.- Probably not, since they were all human in the epilogue, so something had to turn them back.
The turtles are part of the Beast.
Possibly a byproduct of the oil that sustains him, given how sticky they are and how they cause things that ingest them to have similar eye color to him. Auntie Whispers, being the opposite of her wicked sister that serves the Beast, actively works against him as much as an elderly lady like her can. She collects the turtles so no other creature will ingest them and become corrupted by their evil influence. Being a good witch with access to a lot of magic, they probably don't affect her, given how she eats them like candy. The Black Turtles are...
What's left behind of the people that die in The Unknown. This is symbolized at the end of the series, when the fish fishes out a black turtle, symbolizing Greg and Wirt being pulled out of the water. The Night Air is poisonous because of the Edelwood Trees.
The Edelwood Trees emit a Deadly Gas which is poisonous to certain types of supernatural creatures, such as the ghost. This is based off of one line in Come Wayward Souls: "Rise til lyour leaves fill the sky, until your sighs fill the air in the night.". Why it is harmful to them... maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Edelwood trees are made up of dead people. Wirt and Greg ended up in the unknown on Friday, October 31 1980.
- The aesthetics (décor, shape of the cars, etc.) cannot be any earlier than 1970 nor any later than 1990.
- As seen by the high school football game, that particular Halloween took place on a Friday. The only years (between 1970 and 1990) that happened were: 1975, 1980 and 1986.
- Portable tape recorders with internal microphones were not common until the 1980s.
- The moon phase for 1980 was a waning crescent at 41% illumination which more closely resembles the moon shown in the show. (The moon phase for 1986 was also a waning crescent but only at 4% illumination.)
It was a Ghost Train they narrowly avoided
- The “present day” on the show takes place during the 1970s or 80s (probably 1980) on Halloween night. Somehow, Wirt and Greg were narrowly run down on a clearly overgrown stretch of track located too close to both a wall and an embankment (according to railway standards) by a steam-powered locomotive * that produced no approaching vibrations nor noise until the whistle blew. As it passes, the first verse of an old bluegrass-folk standard about “An Old Black Train” (which is used as an allegory for death) plays.
