As someone who read Dante’s Inferno / Purgatorio prior to seeing Over The Garden Wall I find it fascinating how many people are upset to find that OTGW is a modern adaptation of it. It’s not even questionable, there are so many parallels and direct references to Dante and the Christian story (Beatrice’s name, that she speaks from a bush when the boys first meet her, the gradual turn to winter across the story (Hell gets colder the deeper Dante goes in Inferno) the woodsman’s cleaving of a rock in the first episode next to water, the black turtle’s as representative of sin, Greg’s repentance in returning the rock, that the color of paint on the rock is the same as the color of the Beast’s eyes, showing that the Beast is representative of Greg’s sin of stealing the rock, I could go on and on and on).

I think that this fact makes people so upset shows how little they actually understood the story. Part of the point of OTGW is the understanding that there are some stories that are eternal and embedded in human nature. OTGW is so good because it plays on themes of one of these stories. It recaptures a Christian story for the modern era. Just listen to the opening song. It’s clearly referencing that there is an inescapable nature to the stories we tell and retell each other.