“Over the Garden Wall” Cartoon Network

It’s almost that time of year, the time when the leaves change, the temperature starts dropping, and the air starts to become a little crisper. Grab your flannels and your pumpkin spiced everything, it’s almost fall. Fall is without a doubt my favorite season of the year, there’s a coziness to it that you don’t get any other time. The weather outside is perfect, the seasonal food is some of the best there is, and the holidays are the greatest!

Everyone has their fall traditions, one of mine is viewing “Over the Garden Wall” at least once. Over the Garden Wall is a fantastic animated miniseries that premiered on Cartoon Network in 2014, created by Adventure Time alumni Patrick McHale. The miniseries consist of 10 episodes and has a total runtime of 110 minutes, or about two hours. Which makes it perfect for either watching it all in one night, or splitting it up through the week.

The series just has that “fall feeling” to it, in part by it taking place during the end of October. The forrest environment is full of trees with golden and red leafs, there’s plenty of creepy and unsettling characters, everything about the show perfectly encapsulates the spirit of fall. It’s almost required to have a slice of pumpkin pie with a hot drink and a warm blanket wrapped around you while watching the series.

Wirt, Greg, and Beatrice “Over the Garden Wall” Cartoon Network

The series has absolutely beautiful animation, a stellar soundtrack, and a really great voice acting cast. A cast that includes Elijah Wood as the main character Wirt, Christopher Lloyd as the Woodsman, John Cleese from Monty Python voices Quincy Endicott and Adelaide, and even Tim Curry makes a voice appearance! It’s not all about the big names though, the lesser known voice actors also give just as strong and rememberable performances.

The premise of the story is there are two brothers, Wart and Greg. Wirt is the age of highschooler and Greg is likely closer to elementary school age. The brothers are walking through the woods when suddenly they realize they don’t know where they are, they are completely lost. After wandering around some, they run into a talking bluebird named Beatrice who claims she can lead them to a women named Adelaide who would be able to help the boys get back home.

Throughout the miniseries our three main characters run into all sorts of strange situations, weird characters, and dangerous encounters. All while being stalked by “The Beast”, a supernatural like forrest demon that harvest the souls of those whole are lost. There’s the “Woodsman”, played by Christopher Lloyd; one of the first strange personalities the brothers encounter. The Woodsman warns Wirt and Greg about the beast, but the brothers aren’t sure if he’s to be trusted.

So much that happens in the show is strange and unexpected, so I don’t want to give anything away to anyone that might have not seen the series yet. But if you’re a fan of great animation, fantastic and sometimes down right frightening characters, truly incredible music, and an overall powerful story; do yourself a favor and watch Over the Garden Wall!

The entire mini-series can be found on Hulu and I would think they’ll air it at least once this year on Cartoon Network so look out for it! The show also has a great fanbase, I’d recommend going to the show’s subreddit reddit.com/r/overthegardenwall/ to talk to other fans of the show! There’s lot of really interesting theories going around about the show’s ending that really make you think about it in a whole different way. If you haven’t seen the series yet I hope you give it a watch, and maybe you’ll even enjoy it enough to include viewing it as one of your yearly fall traditions, such as I have and many others fan of the series has done.