A collection of drabbles, babbles, doodles, and whatever else pops into my mind
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One of the best things about Over the Garden Wall is that you can watch it in less than a hour and a half and spend the life of your life thinking about it. Many questions are left unanswered and several mysteries unsolved by the end of the ten short episodes, but I actually enjoy not having all of the answers. In its own beautiful way, Over the Garden Wall is like poetry; a lot of it is up for your own interpretation. Unless more information about the Unknown and its inhabitants comes forth, I believe that there are no right or wrong theories as long as you have evidence to back yourself up.
I just finished up my yearly rewatch of OTGW (because autumn isn't just Halloween and Pumpkin Spice season, it's also OTGW season), and I still come away with a lot of questions, especially concerning the character who has given me nightmares on multiple occasions: the Beast.
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He's the Big Bad of the Unknown and of the show, and yet we know very little of him. He's a creature of mysterious origin who needs a lantern, which runs on the oil of Edelwood trees/lost souls, to stay alive and powerful. But where did he come from? What exactly are his powers? Does his powers include turning lost souls into Edelwood trees, or do lost souls in the Unknown naturally do that on their own? What is his deal with the lantern? There are several theories surrounding the Beast, and I'll do my best to cover some of the most popular and probable ones, including my own personal theory.
The Beast is Death
A major theory considering the Unknown itself is that it is some sort of afterlife or purgatory. This is a pretty solid theory with loads of evidence to back it up, the most famous one being a tombstone with Quincy Endicott's name on it being in the graveyard where Wirt and Greg spy on Sara, Jason, and the others in Episode Nine. Since death is a major theme throughout the series, it has been theorized that the Beast is death itself.
In a way, it can make sense. Wirt and Greg enter the Unknown when they're at near death, and the consequence of not ever returning home would be their death in their "real life". The Beast taking lost, hopeless souls and turning them into edelwood trees for his lantern would result in death, fueling his power with every fallen soul. With the Beast and his power of death defeated at the end of the series, Wirt and Greg are able to return home, and the Woodsman is reunited with his daughter, who has been freed from the Beast's clutches.
If this theory is true, then how would the Woodsman's daughter come to fall victim to the Beast? Since this theory is so closely associated with the Unknown-afterlife theory, you can't separate the two. If the Unknown is an afterlife, then everyone living there, like the Woodsman and his daughter, are already dead. Death isn't a threat to dead people. They're already dead. So how would the Beast, the personification of death, be a threat to the Woodsman's daughter, a dead girl?
The Beast is a non-tangible illusion of the lantern
This theory suggests that the lantern is the true threat of the Unknown, not the monstrous being who we see speaking to the characters. Throughout the entire series, we never see the Beast in proper lighting. He's constantly hidden in the shadows, behind trees, and off in the distance. In almost all of his scenes, the Beast appears whenever the lantern is also in the scene with him. This theory presents the idea that the lantern is creating the illusion of the Beast with its light to convince and bully people into keeping it lit. This can be supported that the Beast never touches anything or anyone, not even the Woodsman what is seen of their fight.
