I've always seen the ending as one giant lie with the narrator sounding incredibly dismissive of everything he's saying, everyone getting their perfect happy ending, and the song practically confirming it. I don't buy that it was a rewrite of a darker ending mostly because I can't imagine them getting away with it. Like imagine being the person who wanted it rewritten and they come back with "And everything was totally fine, trust me bro."

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

Wait just to clarify - you think the ending is a lie but not one of a darker ending? Major networks require rewrites of dark content all the time - that narrator line is subtle enough to get away with (shows like adventure time and regular show have had less subtle rewrites haha)

@sandshrewreacts5277

10 ай бұрын

@@JesterBrosCartoonTheater I think the ending was always intended to be a lie. The foreshadowing sets expectations of a darker ending but by giving us a lie, we don't really get an ending at all. This pushes the viewer to imagine what really happened just like we're all doing now. A definitive ending would've robbed us of the theories, like this one, that keep this beautiful story alive. It's prefectly possible that it was a rewrite but I can't imagine why he wouldn't share his original vision with us in some form so I'm taking silence as denial for now.

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

@sandshrewreacts5277 that's super fair! I like the idea it was intentionally a lie as well - I was looking around for any other interviews or lore dropped from Patrick McHale and couldn't find much (outside of the comics which didn't give me much - and I'm not sure how involved he was with them) - would love to hear him talk about this gem of art a bit more 💎 if anyone knows of any interviews I may have missed plz share!

Hey, so actually you didn’t have to upload this video and shatter my understanding of Over the Garden Wall this HURTS 😭😭😭 (great video!!)

Okay, but that reworked ending is just so much more satisfying somehow.

@joshuaokparaocha331

5 ай бұрын

Lmao it was but it felt like a “okay you get the point. Here you go”

"The loveliest lies... of all." Maybe the creators hint that this theorized darker ending is the true one, if you consider that that line could be referring to Greg being okay and in the hospital with Writ? Also I loved this theory video! I usually get distracted watching them, but this was great Lu and it makes so much more sense thematically!

Okay, A+ for the Film Theory joke

Your first theory and you use to make me cry. How dare you

WOW!!! this was a great video!! I had never thought of the show in this way before but it makes SO MUCH SENSE!!

I'm high so this might be dumb, but wouldn't the "two cents" thing be tied to the mythology of the river styx where passage is the 2 cents they would lay over the eyes of the dead?

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

Sounds reasonable to me haha - but I just spent a month making a theory video so I might not be the one to ask 😅

@WindierIndoors

10 ай бұрын

@@JesterBrosCartoonTheater I think it corroborates your theory. The Greg is dead and his soul bound to the wood because he never actually paid the fare to cross the river. I ended up rewatching most of the show and found much of your theory to stand up within numerous small details. I loved your theory video!

This is great but gonna be honest it would be such a downer if Greg died, like it wouldn't be as good of a show, if Greg survives then Wurt learns his lesson and so we all can. There's the old style of "they failed so learn from their failure" and then there's the kittens and rainbows "they learned their lesson and so can you" i don't mind them changing the cannon ending and making it sort of behind the scenes, they went a little too far with the bell thing but Greg living is just fine to me

I remember in one of the DVDs extras , one of creators , considered to leave greg in the unknown , but they changed it due the heavy message, it's kinda supported by the artbook , the concept story itself looks way more lucidity and dark , they becoming talking animals , the woodsman being kinda a darker figure, the beast stealing faces etc , So 100% they had to change things , but i think they really kept the message you exposed here it's a journey about acceptance by wirt of his burdens and learning to love greg , the beautiful lies leaves it open to a different ending . A bittersweet but fitting ending , kinda parallels with the book of lost things too. It hits in the feelings because I'm a older brother and the idea of losing him for mistake mine is heartbreaking.

@vladthecon

Ай бұрын

although I am ok with the idea of greg living since it's a kids show but it seems like wherever the brothers went they were being tested and greg failed both mentally and physically. it seems like greg should've died as a result of the beast's lies because despite everything that had happened greg was still insanely optimistic. the woodsman was fooled by the beast's trick but was strong enough to be used as a tool until he could find wirt who was smart enough to see the true nature of the lantern.

@ghsvideosreviews5499

Ай бұрын

@@vladthecon yes that's why i think they changed their ideas , the extra material, and the author's, plus the own story , give this away , the lesson was more deeper than what we got , and if greg stayed dead , then the impact would have been bigger , he was always positive, and wirt have to move on accept everything ,while it is an bittersweet lesson , it's an real one .

@vladthecon

Ай бұрын

@@ghsvideosreviews5499 my biggest issue is that greg never had a big character change if they made him survive they should have made him grow or add a little more evidence that he actually died. I like the woodsman's daughter living because it add a lot of dimensions to the woodsman's fall into despair without making him darker.

@ghsvideosreviews5499

Ай бұрын

@@vladthecon yes ,they could add more details, tho i believe it didn't had any space anymore, it's a mini series, and Network was over them , didn't had choice, except hidden the message in sight but also deliver what the company asked from them . Give a look to the art book, it has a few of the concept ideas for the show, Greg arc is what is , he like any children for more hopefull it is , at end exist people who will take advantage on their innocence , like the beast did and just hope doesn't win everything.

Oh boy.

I feel like this theory twists some of Greg’s character traits and the lack of care from his brother in the beginning into foreshadowing that Greg would die. Now who what where and how anything is, is quite unknown. For example, who and what is the Beast, and is anyone alive or ever dies or died. Not too bad of a theory in general as it pulled evidence from things no one else has and used theme in its proof but I feel that it is not that obvious. It still could be purgatory, hell, a dream, or a 1920s board game.

C.W. Stoneking-- voice of John Crops-- sang a song called Zombie with his group. McHale animated the video. Worth a look as far as tone.

I think you picked the wrong Enoch though. The Enoch most talked about in the Bible was one of only 2 persons charioted up to Heaven without physically dying. I think the cat may be more like the cat in Coraline, whom could move back and forth between Coraline's world and the other mother's. Just my "2 cents". 😊

Great job Lu! This video was amazing. The foreshadowing does make more sense this way. It's be nice if Patrick McHale every said yay or nay to it. That short he did though was so creepy with the sounds in it.

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!! I really appreciate it - I labored hard into this theory and it really changes the ending for me - in a really good way 🎃

A bit late to the party, and it'll probably get missed, but I needed to comment. Great theory! Part of why I love this mini-series so much is because it's open enough to allow for many different interpretations and basically the only thing I fully reject is people saying "this is the truth" because it's way more fun if it ALL can be considered potentially true. I will say, this didn't ~quite~ convince me - or rather you're objectively right, but it's a lot more open than that. McHale's been pretty open about the fact that the series got a lot of rewrites and that the ending changed frequently. (For example - the original story had the woodsman as the villain and the beast was a morally neutral agent trying to get them where they belonged - which they thought meant death, but they weren't scheduled to die yet so he was to bring them home.) McHale specifically mentions that there were versions of the story which ended with one brother getting home, versions where the other brother got home, and versions where NEITHER of them got home. (If you think about it, a lot of what you mention also works foreshadowing Wirt's death - and there is that old man in cloud city dressed like Wirt and carrying a lantern - leftover foreshadowing of him taking the beast's deal to get his brother home while he stayed behind? maaaaaybeeee) It's probably why the first episode can feel a little chaotic at times because he talks about how it kept having to be re-written when the ending changed. But it also means you're totally right!...but probably so is everyone else. XD Add to this that the episode order got cut from 19 episodes to 10 (the seams of the cut content are all over the series) can lead to a lot of things being jumbled. Still, knowing all this, it's mind-boggling how complete the story feels, by rights it should be a complete mess, and it allows it to be about so many different things at once. I will agree with you that by your interpretation, this ending would be better...but that's only in this interpretation. Looked at another way, the story as is can be seen as having the proper ending. Looked at ANOTHER other way, both of them are wrong. And that is what I love about it! Haha! And since I love EVERY theory, even ones I'm not totally sold on, I'll add some fuel to yours that you probably thought of but didn't include in the video. (Or if you did and I missed it cause I was doing work, ignore me.) You mentioned Grimm's Fairy Tales, but didn't specifically call out "Babes in the Woods" which surprised me a bit because it was deemed important enough to get an episode title. In it, two brothers are abandoned in the woods. They die at the base of a tree and birds cover their bodies with leaves before their spirits are taken into heaven. This pretty much literally happens in that episode and the moral of that particular fairy tale is for caregivers to take better care of their charges. Fits pretty neatly into this one, eh? ((Also, Auntie Whispers almost definitely looks the way she does due to eating the turtles. the art book refers to her as a 'Sin Eater". Make of that what you will. XD)) Thanks for sharing this theory, though! Loved it! A lot of thought and care went in, and I really love that!

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

9 ай бұрын

Yo thanks for the thoughtful and detailed comment!! Any chance you have any citations of where Patrick mchale said those things?! I looked high and low and could hardly find any statements about otgw in general

Oh wow, wow, this theory and whole video was so good! It took a series that was already fairly dark in elements in the first place, and expanded upon it by giving it a different and much sadder and darker ending. The way everything was reworked around makes sense in hindsight, and given all the hints highlighted in each part of the video itself, it makes the theory and some evidence to potentially back it up way clearer. Whether or not the theory has some truth to it, or if you believe in it at all, I do know the message at the end is true. At the end of the day, time is fickle, life is short and we should all keep in mind how beautiful it can be and to spend time with those we love because nothing lasts forever. Lovely video, theory and Happy Halloween.

As one who knows Way Too Much trivia about black cats and the superstitions surrounding them, I can assure you that there are no myths or superstitions that directly tie between black cats and death in general. That said, one of the oldest superstitions regarding black cats is that they are actually witches/warlocks who disguise themselves as back cats during the daytime and return to their human forms to practice various rituals (such as resurrecting the dead) under cover of night. If we go by the logic of "magic and the like are all very real in this world", then the above mentioned superstition coupled with the classic "cats have nine lives" myth could point to Enoch having been a witch or warlock when he was alive, capitalizing on the extra lives his cat form would have granted him to have as much time as possible to gain more knowledge and/or power, and now he simply uses his magic to help those in the afterlife reunite with their loved ones. As for why he's only ever a cat by the time Wirt and Greg meet him, I'd say it's a 50/50 chance that it was either the form he was in when he passed away for the last time and he's just stuck like that, or he CAN still switch back and forth but just has no reason to during the time we see him (I imagine that fake pumpkin head would be awfully cramped for an adult human to be sitting in like a gundam pilot. XD)

Very good. I always felt like some things were off like the daughter coming back and just how everything was just perfect. I spent this whole ass dark journey for no dark payoff?!

can i see that "over the garden wall" seems like over the garden(graveyard) wall( that greg and wirt they jumped over and ended up in front of the train) :)

Ah the Bernie clip. The mark of a true theorist

You know that cartoon have comics don't you?

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

Definitely, i know the show has a comic series that came later. I probably shouldve mentioned it more in the video but they were written after the show so they don't really matter in the context of this theory since it's concerned with a prewriting concept change - since the comics came after they're more likely to accommodate the direction the show ended up taking (and maybe even serve to patch certain plot holes)

Well no. We clearly see that the beast is PURELY a liar and ALWAYS working some angle and fucking with people. The woodsman and his daughter somehow become seperated for awhile. She goes off to do something without telling him and is gone awhile. He goes off to search the woods. "BOO! I'M SUPERNATURAL AND HAVE POWERS!" "Can you tell me where my daughter is?" "She died horribly, but I managed to save her soul for you, get to work." Meanwhile his daughter's just been away the whole time and after the whole mess just happens to return on her own. Makes PERFECT sense.

@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

10 ай бұрын

Huntsman after hearing the beasts pitch is like "this guy seems like a reasonable person, my daughter is missing but I'll stick around and do anything he says" - idk sounds a little unbelievable to me unless the Huntsman is already sure she's dead

@FinnK-jh9zw

10 ай бұрын

Like in the comics that have a better chance of being cannon

@plsnoat

10 ай бұрын

The beast killed his wife, and he's terrified of the woods and forbid his daughter from going there because he was CERTAIN she would also die. He followed her out there, found an article of her clothing and a beast with a lantern saying, yep, your fears are true. now get to work. He was already primed to believe the beast. @@JesterBrosCartoonTheater

and if the frog is Greg, another part of he, or that wirt dont accept that greg dead.

Man… this whole theory just makes me wish that networks would stop interfering with these sorts of things It hits so much harder and has more meaning if Greg was to be dead. Kinda messed up to say tbh but if it’s anything like Brothers Grimm it’s par for the course

I agree to some point but I don’t think wirt was coping it was real but only one lived I also thought when wirt throw the Pennies was because he was paying the boat man

Y. O

Remember there were supposed to be like 4 (or was it 6?) more episodes on it, but cuz of the stupid budget they nixed those…..🙄some other silly pointless show got those extra shows! My memory jusr sucks anymore….im 52 AND smoke (not 🚬 ) daily 🤷🏼‍♀️😂