So, this post will contain massive spoilers.
If you haven't finished watching, leave now (unless you're okay with knowing beforehand what's up).
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Are you gone?
Okay, good. Also note that the analysis is written as an afterthought to help explain my criticisms.
Wirt and his little half-brother Greg are lost and are trying to find their way home. Over eight mini-sodes (at about 10 minutes each), they meet numerous people and creatures along the way, all while getting bits and pieces of warning about "The Beast," an enigmatic creature who appears to sow despair wherever it goes. The serious and thoughtful Wirt leads his energetic and carefree companion through some of the most surrealistic animation landscapes since The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. The two solve their problems through dumb luck and sheer willpower time and time again amidst a cast of mostly non-recurring characters except for Beatrice, their bluebird companion (and almost betrayer) and the woodsman, a man who seems to want to protect the two from The Beast while trying to keep alight a mysterious lantern. This leads up to the final act where Greg sacrifices himself to save Wirt from falling into despair and being swallowed by the forest. As it turns out, the woodsman has been serving as The Beast's pawn, keeping his soul alive with the souls of the people in the forest who gave in to despair.
After defiantly refusing to be tricked by The Beast, Wirt takes Greg and heads off, only to exit a dreamstate, where we find that the two had been drowning in a lake. They're rushed to a hospital where Wirt wakes up to find Greg recounting stories of their adventures in the Unknown world. There are a few hints to suggest that their adventures were real rather than just a death-dream, but interpretation is left open to the audience. This is in keeping with the show's general vibe, which is to give just enough information for the audience to make their own guesses as to how the situations of individual characters came about and/or were resolved respectively.
Now, my criticism of the show is a bit more... thought-out, albeit frustrated.
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I genuinely don't know how to feel about this show. The art,
music, voice acting, lighting- all gorgeous. Phenomenal. Easy 10/10 on
those elements individually. However, the show felt like it was trying
hard to be funny, dark, surreal, and teaching lessons of morality all at
once, but I never felt that it did any of those particularly well. The
only clear feelings of morality I had were the Huntsmen, who didn't
understand what he was doing until the final episode, at which point, it
was a relatively quick decision for him to blow out the lantern; Wirt
not caring about Greg, an ethical issue which he basically solved by
virtue of being knocked out and waking up to Greg missing, and Beatrice
leading Wirt and Greg to what was effectively a slaver (though she too
didn't understand what the request really was until right before they
barged in). In every instance, the moral dilemma seemed to clear up on
its own without any serious questions about character ethics having time
to grow. The lesson was: everyone felt justified in being selfish until
a twist showed them the error of their ways, at which time, they
quickly corrected their moral problems.
It was an adorable show, and I love what they did with the world
building in the last two episodes, but without building any hints as to
where they came from, it was just kinda' out of the blue. I realize that
one is a personal preference that simply missed the mark for me.
The ending, while certainly a warm and fuzzy one, wasn't at all what I
was expecting as far as emotions go. No one made any difficult
decisions (except the woodsman sorta'), and yet everyone was able to
live happily ever after. At the beginning of the episode, I had started
to have a gut feeling that something awful would happen, which is awesome.
I love it when a show foreshadows an unhappy truth and then carries
through, but this show felt like they just said "nah, no one needs to be
unhappy." Not even Jason Funderberger, who wound up holding hands with
the girl in the glasses.
The whole somber and surreal mood of the show was underscored by this
sense of dread that something wasn't right, and that things were going
to get worse before they got better was just shattered by Wirt casually
deciding that that was "dumb." I'll admit that I like how he wrecked a
cliche, but it was such a crucial cliche to the story that it makes me
think the whole thing was irrelevant. The vicious and unsettling cycle
of death, despair, loneliness, and darkness is "dumb," so he just got
rid of it. Deciding that the concept of death (since that's the metaphor
of the show) is dumb and just getting over it isn't how it works, and I
feel like that fundamentally threw the show off for me.
I want to love this mini-series like everyone else seems to,
but that ending, capping off the weird feeling that the show was trying
too hard to be too many different things, and it all just falls apart
to me. And maybe that's a problem with being a show on a kids' network,
but hell, look at how the third season of Legend of Korra ended- not
everything has to end happily, and even when it's sad, it can have a
bright spot of hope supporting it. Or, it could be like season 1 of
Korra, where even a happy ending has a long shadow of despair running
underneath the surface.
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