Editorials
Cartoon Network’s “Over the Garden Wall” and Every Day as the Unknown
“Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history lies a place that few have seen—a mysterious place called the Unknown, where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.”
What is the Unknown? The mysterious woodland world lost in time, blanketed in swathes of crackling, golden leaves, grey skies and a permeating, crisp chill, Over the Garden Wall’s foremost setting drapes itself in the comforts of the most sought-after autumn staples. The Unknown is where, five years ago this November, the two young leads of Cartoon Network’s 2014 Emmy-winning miniseries, half-brothers Wirt (voiced by Elijah Wood) and Greg (Collin Dean), found themselves far away from home. Misplaced in this endless, labyrinthine wilderness that seeks to hold them hostage there for good, the two brothers must journey out of the woods before an operatic creature known only as “the Beast” takes them prisoner and forces them to become one with the trees.
But along the way, we learn of our heroes’ far more grounded fears of the Unknown as they attempt to free themselves from this never-ending autumnal prison. The “Unknown” becomes a tangible place as well as an abstract concept, a reflection of Wirt and Greg’s own real-life anxieties with each absurd circumstance they find themselves in, as they become what they believe is closer to their escape. But delving deeper into the woods only heightens the tensions between them and pushes them farther off the beaten path, allowing them to become more susceptible to the Beast’s persuasions. The brothers’ earthly troubles bind them to an endless maze of cornfields and pumpkins of their own making.
Lauded by critics as a children’s show that all should watch, not just the demographic it’s aimed at, perhaps what ends up resonating even more than the series’ exquisite embrace of possibly the most adored time of the year is its lighthearted dabbling in the existential nightmare that is being alive. One could consider the Unknown symbolic of the specific, fraught relationship between Wirrt and Greg, but also partly representative of the overarching nature of life itself. Each episode sets itself up as another interpersonal struggle cloaked underneath both absurdity and humor and utter darkness; death and life, innocence intermingling with the uncanny. It allows the show to be both a sweet pill for its core audience to swallow as well as a genuinely fascinating piece of art, one that interrogates human existence underneath… jokes about frogs and a kid named Jason Funderburker?
Revealed in the second to last episode, titled “Into the Unknown,” Wirt and Greg (and Greg’s ever-name-changing frog) became lost in the Unknown after (needlessly) fleeing from police on Halloween night, tumbling down a hill, narrowly escaping being hit by a train. Sometime after that, they woke up and found themselves in a world similar to the one they knew, but turned inside out and pushed back about a hundred years or so. In this world, a disgruntled woodsman chops Edelwood trees for oil to keep the lantern lit where the soul of his daughter’s spirit resides. There is a town full of skeletons donning pumpkin costumes, and a tavern where patrons sing about their designated character tropes. There are good witches and bad witches, a school for animals to learn to read and write, and a ferry for frogs that wear clothes.
Each episode touches on Wirt and Greg’s brotherhood and real-world troubles amidst the absurdity of the episodes’ bizarre premises – Wirt’s identity issues and problems with love and self-loathing; his bitterness harbored towards his little brother Greg, the result of his mom’s marriage to a step-dad he partly resents; Greg’s relentless naivete, a source of clear frustration as he combats Wirt’s perceptions of him with goofy jokes, and is ultimately pushed to make a life-threatening decision for the both of them. It’s as if each segment of the series offers a glimpse into a host of worries both shared by and respective between the two brothers, not all of which are even fully articulated throughout the show’s ten-minute, ten-episode run (watched in one go, about the length of a normal feature film).
In “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee,” Wirt, Greg, and their new talking bluebird friend, Beatrice (Melanie Lynskey), find themselves in a seemingly normal town inhabited by irritable citizens who dress up in harmless pumpkin garb. But the trio of youngsters ends up confronting death itself, as it’s revealed at the end of the episode that each pumpkin-clad person is really a skeleton in disguise, fancied up in celebration of the fall harvest. “Say aren’t you a little too… early?” a pumpkin maiden inquiries curiously to Wirt, upon their arrival, as he searches fruitlessly for a telephone to call home.
“What do you mean?” Wirt replies.
“I mean,” she continues, “it doesn’t seem like you’re ready to join us just yet.”
Then, “Schooltown Follies,” sees Wirt and Greg happen upon a school for little animals run by a woefully heartbroken schoolteacher on account of that no-good, two-timing, low down handsome man of hers, Jimmy Brown. Greg respectfully denies the concept of having to go to school at all, becoming the leader of a pack of homeless animals wearing street urchin clothes in place of academia. The very first episode, “The Old Grist Mill,” finds the two brothers meeting the Woodsman (Christopher Lloyd), and seems to uncover the pairs’ difficulties dealing with authority figures (furthered by Greg’s charming and bizarre encounters with Old Lady Daniels, which he describes to Wirt later on). Then there’s “Songs of the Dark Lantern,” which seems to more bluntly depict Wirt’s difficulties reckoning with his teenaged identity.
All episodes are run through with the main storyline of the Beast – a dark, perpetually silhouetted, opera-singing creature that hunts wayward souls in the Unknown to turn to Edelwood trees and fuel a cursed lantern. The Beast already has the Woodsman caught in his persuasive snare, tricking him into believing that his lost daughter is trapped in that lantern and must be kept alive – but really, the Woodsman is only keeping the Beast alive. The Beast trails Wirt and Greg ever from afar throughout Over the Garden Wall, and when it seems all hope is truly lost for the pair of them, the Beast finally sinks his teeth into vulnerable Greg so that Wirt may be allowed to escape in Greg’s stead.
Thus, if Wirt and Greg’s journey through the Unknown represents working through their unspoken, every-day adolescent woes, the Beast represents Wirt and Greg’s relationship as a whole –corrupted, all-encompassing but, ultimately, easily defeated and only existing because the two of them allow it to fester. Greg reveals his love for Wirt and Wirt, in turn, reveals his devotion to Greg, and the ease with which their tensions can be defeated, killing the Beast and setting another innocent soul free of his imprisonment in the process.
Absurdity is juxtaposed against reality, two opposing ideas running parallel to one another up until the very end, when it seems like they utterly fuse together. The Unknown suddenly blends into the real world, as it’s revealed that Wirt and Greg were left unconscious in the hospital, after their escapade out of the graveyard landed them into a cold lake as opposed to another world. There are loose ends that trickle in, like the name of an opulent tea magnate the brothers met in the Unknown carved upon the headstone of a real grave; or Greg’s frog still carrying in its belly a magical, glowing bell the brothers retrieved from a cursed young woman. You realize that the lives of Wirt and Greg and their relationships to others were only touched upon, and the show leaves you with more questions about them than answers. The narrator who carried us into the show in the first episode now closes us out with much less nuance: “And so the story is complete, and everyone is satisfied with the ending and so on and so forth,” as if he, the narrator, suddenly found better things to do than narrate the rest of his own story.
In the end, the real world is as absurd as a fantasy. The consequences of the Unknown, beyond a strengthening of Wirt and Greg’s brotherhood, are that whether or not the Unknown exists doesn’t matter. The hinted coexistence of our two worlds implies an acceptance of the unknowable; of the questions that will remain unanswered, of the imperceptible future that has yet to unfold, of the people whose inner lives we will never come even close to fully comprehending. Over the Garden Wall wants us to embrace these existential gaps and make peace with them – come to terms with our meaningless slice of existence as to better appreciate human connection and natural beauty. The world is a weird and terrifying place, but it can also be quite wonderful because of that. “Ain’t that just the way,” Greg ruminates lightheartedly. And sometimes, that’s all it really is.
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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