A boy named Mark was born on April 26th, 1976, fourteen years and one day before a boy named, uh, me. We’re both Virginians, but he moved to Florida as a kid while I stayed in the Old Dominion through college. Summers in Virginia are hot and humid and full of mosquitoes, which is why I love winter so much, but summers in Florida are so much worse. Despite that, Mark was an outdoorsy kid, and his adventures along the water inspired a literal dream he had around the time I was born about going on adventures across the seas, a dream that saw him start to make up stories about this alternate self. (I had nothing to do with it, we’ve never met and even if we had I wasn’t a particularly inspirational baby, but after so many introductions about animators of the past, it’s neat to think about how recently this last bit of history spans).

Mark moved to Utah in high school, and his swashbuckling appearance and attitude reminded his new classmates of Thorpe, Errol Flynn’s character in The Sea Hawk (as one of my sources helpfully notes, the reference to a 1940 film is likely due to the more conservative leanings of early 90s Salt Lake City). It’d be weird enough for “Thorpe” to become a lifelong nickname based on this tenuous connection, but the nickname Mark ended up with is actually a mispronunciation of name that I guess nobody felt the need to correct. High school, am I right?

Thurop Van Orman began his career in animation as an intern at Cartoon Network, and parlayed that into storyboarding gigs for The Powerpuff Girls and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. He learned from the likes of Craig McCracken as he honed his idea into a pitch for a show about a kid like him who loved capers on the high seas, and in 2008, the stories inspired by his childhood dream became a cartoon. For two years and three seasons, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack not only entertained with its hilarious and surreal escapades, but incubated a crew of animators that shaped the 2010s.

J. G. Quintel, creator of Regular Show? Flapjack alum. Peter Browngardt, creator of Secret Mountain Fort Awesome and Uncle Grandpa? Flapjack alum. Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls? Flapjack alum (who brought Thurop in to voice the villainous Gideon). Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors? Flapjack alum, and his continuation of the Flapjack style of storytelling, where writers doubled as storyboarders, would shape Adventure Time alum Rebecca Sugar’s own methodology as she created Steven Universe. This would not be Thurop’s only “grandchild,” as the likes of Bee and Puppycat, Clarence, OK K.O., Summer Camp Island, and Infinity Train were all created from alums of shows created by Flapjack alums, and we’re even starting to see great-“grandchildren” like Craig of the Creek and Victor and Valentino.

But I left out one Flapjack alum who worked with Ward to develop Adventure Time from a viral short with a ton of potential into a sustainable television show, becoming the show’s creative director for the first two seasons. His name was (and still is) Patrick McHale, and in October of 2011, he started working on a pilot of his own.

“The river runs cold, the fight is over; still, the haunted ruins of night call your name.”

A trope that I’ve never been fond of when it comes to twists is when flashbacks are used to remind us of the foreshadowing or give old scenes new context. It can work in the right circumstances, but more often than not it shows a certain lack of trust, either in the audience for not paying attention or in the material for not being memorable, and it sucks the joy out of rewatching the story to catch hints for yourself. I much prefer a twist that maybe gives us a moment to take it all in (which is frankly pretty easy to do, all it takes is a character who’s as stunned as we are to allow us that time to process), and believing in us to understand the ramifications of this twist on our own.

Into the Unknown thrives in its bluntness. There’s no attempt to be clever about the reveal that Wirt and Greg are of our world in the late 20th century, we just begin right away with Wirt wearing semi-modern clothes in a semi-modern bedroom fumbling with a semi-modern cassette, all to the backdrop of a semi-modern-sounding song sung by Pat McHale himself. His actions are confusing at first to match our own initial confusion, creating the outfit we’re familiar with by taking the coat from an old-timey uniform and cutting the fluff off a Santa hat and putting on a fan to let his cloak billow in the wind (it helps that we already know he’s a weird and overdramatic kid). But our questions answer themselves with time: it’s Halloween, Wirt’s planning on giving his crush a mixtape, and Wirt’s series-spanning kettle hat is just his glorious take on an elephant.

This is Wirt pre-development, so he’s back to the dithering and the abysmally low confidence and the open hostility towards Greg; the last of these makes a comeback when he reaches peak despair, but even while depressed he’s moved beyond the crippling indecision of his early adventures (although certainty in one’s looming demise isn’t much better). Still, even this early on we can see that he’s not a lost cause. He might get lightly teased by the first teens we see, but his appearance at the party reveals that he’s liked by plenty of his classmates, and Sara’s mutual crush is immediately obvious: his biggest enemy is his lack of self-esteem. And while he loses his nerve as soon as he sees Sara the Bee, this wouldn’t be possible if he didn’t have nerve in the first place: the beginning of Into the Unknown, and thus the first chronological moments that we see of Wirt, shows him getting out of a funk to take a genuine risk, one that fully merits him dropping the episode’s title on us.

The pursuit of Sara the Bee shifts us wildly from the dark atmosphere of the Unknown to classic teen comedy territory, where one crazy night can change everything. The stakes are fully personal for the bulk of the episode: Wirt needs to get his tape back to avoid embarrassment, and Greg wants to get the tape back so Wirt will hunt frogs with him. I like the detail that Wirt’s been flaking out on his promise and that Greg almost gets that he’s being blown off, but clings to that childish hope as he bulldozes through the barriers Wirt puts up for himself. Greg is first seen as a helper, doing chores for Mrs. Daniels for the candy he’ll use to make a trail in The Old Grist Mill instead of trick or treating, which implies a certain level of neglect: nobody’s around to take him door to door to get candy the proper way, and we don’t see him interact with any kids his age.

That said, the mood of the episode is definitely more mellow than melancholy, with Wirt’s awkwardness earning laughs and cringes in equal measure. Sara is delightful as she assures Wirt (and parents in the audience) that the teens are gonna drink age-appropriate drinks and do age-appropriate stuff, and she’s got the best costume game of anyone, first as a mascot and then as a skeletal clown. The cops try for humor as well, and while it’s funny for us, their position of authority makes them terrible at telling jokes in a way that will come back to haunt us. This is the last bit of levity before the finale, and unlike Babes in the Wood, hindsight never taints its goofiness. Particularly because the greatest joke of the episode, and perhaps the series, is far more upfront about its larger story implications than Greg’s magical dream.

Jason Funderberker is an oddly central character in Over the Garden Wall, a figure of dread established midway through the series as Wirt’s impossibly perfect romantic rival and the eventual namesake of Jason Funderburker. We confirm that Jason is a big deal when Wirt talks to the girls at the big game; sure, most of the impact comes from his outsized reaction, but Jason is still presented as serious competition for Sara’s heart. After going full crisis mode at the thought of Jason and Sara listening to his tape, we get a red herring of sorts in Jimmy the Jock. He certainly fits the “total package” bill that Wirt promised: a kind hunk who clearly respects women’s boundaries but warns Wirt off spying on Sara rather than trying to display his machismo through force. All signs point to a hopeless situation until finally, with perfect comedic timing, we meet the man in question.



It’s not just that Jason Funderberker is small and scrawny, or that his outfit and hair are pretty dorky (that said, let’s consider the source): it’s that damned voice. He’s given an absolutely perfect grating squeak from Cole Sanchez, yet another Flapjack alum who took over as creative director on Adventure Time after McHale moved to New York. The idea that this dweeb is the object of Wirt’s unending jealousy is an amazing punchline by itself, but as I said, the larger story implications are immediately clear, because there’s one thing that truly separates Jason from Wirt: confidence.

Jason might not be the most conventional ladies’ man out there on paper, but unlike Wirt, he’s capable of making a move. He’s as blind to Sara’s lack of interest as Wirt is to Sara’s active interest, but dammit, he tries. And he doesn’t even try in a gross or intrusive way, handling Sara’s implicit rejection well enough and ending up holding hands with his bespectacled admirer in our final episode. Literally all it takes for Wirt to “compete” with this guy is an ounce of self-assuredness, so it tracks that his journey through the Unknown achieves just that.

The Unknown might be another realm that these brothers have yet to face, but our understanding of it seeps throughout the episode. There’s the obvious reference to the show’s title as the pair climbs over the wall of the Eternal Gardens cemetery, and the grave of Quincy Endicott in said cemetery, but it’s also felt in the inability for Wirt to see the truth that he’s well-liked and that Sara definitely likes him back. It’s in the recurring bird imagery, with one girl dressed as an egg (who, and I noticed this for the first time in this watch, is voiced by Ashly Burch!) and another as a bluebird. It’s the fact that we’ve got disguises in general because it’s Halloween, considering the sheer amount of characters who aren’t what they appear in the Unknown: Enoch is really a cat, the gorilla is really a circus performer, the ghost is really a tea magnate, the huge singing frog is really our heroes huddled under a big coat, and the devourer is the sweet girl rather than the witch.

The most straightforward character, of course, is Greg. To be as fair to Wirt as I can be, his little brother does throw a wrench in things when he can’t stop giving the girls hints about Wirt’s crush, which sets off the chain reaction leading to what appears to be a disastrous night, so if you squint hard enough, Wirt isn’t wrong to blame the kid for his troubles. But without Greg, Wirt never would’ve gotten the courage to talk to Sara, and he certainly wouldn’t have entered the party uninvited. Greg’s willingness to engage perhaps needs to be tamped down in the same way Wirt’s needs to be amped up, as he has all the social skills of a little kid, but at least Greg has the excuse of, well, being a little kid.

More importantly, Wirt’s instinct to blame everyone but himself makes it impossible for him to see that he’s the one holding himself back. Acceptance and a relationship with Sara are right there in front of him, he just needs the courage to acknowledge it. Greg’s best bit of advice is that he join marching band, given he plays the clarinet anyway and it would allow him to spend time with Sara organically, but Wirt angrily dismisses the suggestion as interference while revealing that Greg’s father has given the same advice. It’s the second and final time we’re reminded that these two are half-brothers, but only now do we bring up that there’s distance between Wirt and his stepfather that seems to be one-sided. As per his song in our fourth episode, Greg was born after Wirt’s mom remarried, so his stepdad has been his stepdad for a significant period of time by now, but Wirt still venomously refers to him as “your stupid dad” as if he’s a stranger, even though the guy is ostensibly encouraging Wirt via his interests. Sure, there could be plenty more to this story that we’re not seeing, maybe the guy’s a huge pushy jerk, but Wirt’s refusal to consider good advice cements his inability to allow himself means of being happy, which of course ensures that he’s never going to be happy.

Which is what makes the ending of Into the Unknown so perfect. After finally finding their frog, the old black train whose whistle we hear at the beginning of nearly every episode nearly kills them, and as they tumble down a hill into the cold-running river foreshadowed by the episode’s opening song (and the opening sequence of the series), everything finally clicks into place: these boys are more lost than they realize.

But when Wirt awakens in the present surrounded by Beatrice’s family, he’s finally able to use the word “brother” to describe Greg. Over the Garden Wall began with a version of Wirt who failed to be heroic even when instructed to be, then moved to a version who could stumble his way through heroics on command, which evolved into a version who could perform heroics autonomously, but now we’ve gone above and beyond: this is a version who’s heroic even when others beg him not to be. We’ve wrapped all the way back around to disobedience, but this time it’s for the sake of helping others. And after dismissing and blaming Greg in the Unknown and the land of the living alike, it’s downright beautiful to see Wirt set off into the unknown once again, willing to put his life rather than his reputation on the line to save his brother.

Rock Factsheet

We come close to learning some valuable rock facts, but Wirt’s too distracted.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?