The Woodsman's Dilemma – Over the Garden Wall Analysis

"Do you really want to go back to that empty house?" Always gets to me

The Woodsman's daughter being home all along, to me, was supposed to mean that while he was looking for his daughter who was lost in woods. He actually was the one lost wandering in the woods, and when he finally came home his daughter had been there all along.

That “I didn’t know!” From the woodsman is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen in a show

The Beast was an amazing antagonist.

Imagine how much darker the story would be if the daughter had turned into an edelwood tree and the woodsman found out he had burned her alive as fuel for the lantern.

The woodsman always tells Wirt and Greg not to fall for beasts tricks, when the whole reason he is there is because he listened to the beast

The woodsman's dilemma: 1. Go to town and talk with at least one person, and find out the beast tricking him 2. Don't do that

“Beware the unknown! Fear the Beast! And leave these woods.... if you can” - Woodsman

I've watched Over the Garden Wall more times than any other movie. It is my favorite thing to watch. Not favorite cartoon, favorite thing to watch.

Okay the thing is; When Wirt corrects the tavern people about the lantern and that the Woodsman had it and was was a good guy, the tavern people stated that the beast could only have the lantern. If he stopped by the tavern for any reason, the people there would probably assume that he was the beast because of the lantern and would not help or trust him. Also, I think the comics went into detail that he was exiled from his original town by criminals and forced to live in the middle of the forest, which could play a part in his introversion as well.

I always assumed that her soul WAS trapped in the lantern and that when the woodsman chose to extinguish the lantern her soul was released and traveled back home. Even though that's probably not the intended interpretation I like it because it means that while the woodsman THOUGHT he was saving his daughter he was actually keeping her trapped all along.

I love the Woodsman.The fact he decided to throw hands with the Beast the minute he found out about the Edelwood trees and the line "I DIDN'T KNOW!" always breaks me. He was a good man, trying to save his daughter. He deserved his happy ending.

You should all read the comics. Anna's story is very interesting and really adds depth to the story.

Sometimes happy endings that are super cheesy are the best

i personally believe its also a metaphor for accepting loss. when he finally accepted that his daughter was gone for good, that his lantern was the beasts soul, trying to get him to waste his life tending to it, that acceptance allowed him to return to her. i take it as also an acceptance of his own potential death as i interpret everyone in the unknown as dead or on the verge of dying (wirt and greg obv)

HE'LL TURN YOU, INTO A T R E E O F O I L

I always thought the death of the Beast resulted in his daughter coming back.

Hmm I always interpreted the huntsmans daughter coming out of the building as them meeting in the after life. This goes along with the whole purgatory theory (which I love, and think makes the story stronger as a whole). So while still a happy ending, it’s not as much of a contrived out of no where ending.

BOOK SPOILER In the OTGW art book, Nick Cross (art director) says that they thought of the Adel wood tree near the tavern was actually the people in the tavern themselves. That the tavern itself is the representation and embodiment of the lantern. Thus the name of the episode, “Song of the Dark Lantern “. I’d love to hear what other people think about this being revealed.

Even though this is a great point of view that I really enjoy I personally always believed in other theory regarding the ending of the woodsman. We all know the unknown is some sort of purgatory, a limbo between life and death so, what I believe is that his daughter was indeed dead, while he was trapped in this limbo by his own guilt. Once he let go of the lantern his soul was able to finally rest and that's when he was able to reunite with his daughter