At the very beginning, Wirt, Greg, and Beatrice meet the Woodsman, a character bound by grief and literally burdened by a woodpile slung on his back.
The strongest aspect of the show-and what will keep adults returning for multiple viewings-is the larger narrative told through the episodes. Taken together, these ten episodes add up to a whole story, and Patrick McHale, the show’s creator, compares the structure of the miniseries to a quilt: “Every episode had its own unique color and pattern, but overall it was supposed to become one quilt that all works together.” While some episodes feel hasty and too simply resolved (this is in part because some episodes had to be combined for the production budget), overall the woods of the Unknown become a believable world that seems to extend past the show itself. These stories happen in an autumnal and delicate setting, and while the character design is stripped down, small features like Greg’s massive pupils or Auntie Whisper’s oversized body add a sense of surrealism to the characters and pastoral scenes (never mind the talking animals). They negotiate with blank-faced (and terrifying) pumpkin people of Pottersfield, they rally Beatrix Potter-inspired students to save a school house, they sneak through a ferry of well-to-do frogs, and even seek a blessing in a celestial city inspired by 1930s Silly Symphonies. As the trio wanders closer and closer to Adelaide, each location presents new characters and unique challenges. With a destination charted, the show unfolds episodically. Wirt and Greg quickly meet Beatrice, a guileful bluebird that convinces them to seek Adelaide of the Pasture, the lady of the woods and a potential key to find their way home. As the show begins, the narrator tells us what kind of forest they’ve stumbled upon: the woods of the Unknown, a mysterious place “lost in the clouded annals of history…where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.”