“Over the Garden Wall” creator reflects on 10 years of an animated autumnal classic

"A lot of decisions were based on the mood that we were trying to evoke," Patrick McHale tells "Entertainment Weekly."

Over the past 10 years, a new annual tradition has developed for fans of modern American animation. The moment the leaves start to change colors and the wind gets chillier, it’s time to rewatch Over the Garden Wall.

The 10-episode miniseries originally aired on Cartoon Network the week of Nov. 3-7, 2014. It tells the fairytale-like story of two brothers, teenage Wirt (voiced by Elijah Wood) and younger Greg (Collin Dean), who are lost in the woods and trying to find their way home. But every step seems to only take them deeper into “The Unknown,” while everyone they meet to ask for help (from talking pumpkin-people to riverboat-riding frogs in fancy clothes) is stranger than the last. Wirt and Greg’s journey also parallels the change of seasons, with every subsequent episode raising the stakes that they might not make it out of the woods before the onset of cold, dark winter.

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“Years ago I was living in California and I took some time off in Massachusetts,” creator Patrick McHale tells Entertainment Weekly. “The time I was there was this perfect arc. When it started there was still green in the trees, and it all changed to these rainbow colors, and then more muted browns, and then stuff started falling and then it all got hit with a snowstorm. So the series is recreating that. It seemed symbolically important for the characters’ journey.”

Having previously worked on long-running serialized cartoons like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Adventure Time, McHale consciously created Over the Garden Wall as a single contained story. He and his collaborators also sought the right mix of explanations and open-ended mysteries to reward rewatches.

“We definitely wanted a lot of things to be foggy, by the nature of this world. A lot of decisions were based on the mood that we were trying to evoke rather than story,” McHale says. “So story elements are sometimes a little disjointed, but those things make it feel even more like a dream. Since we were constantly revisiting the dream while working on it, we could take those mistakes and call back to them in different ways and create this web of connections."

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By the time McHale began working on Over the Garden Wall, he had learned a lot about the animation process. In particular, he credits The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack creator Thurop Van Orman with allowing storyboard artists like himself (as well as future Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and future Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch) to participate in other aspects of the filmmaking, like voice recordings and animatic edits. McHale then honed these skills further on Adventure Time, where he worked not just as a storyboard artist but also as the show’s creative director.

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One thing he learned is that sound is just as important to animation as the visuals. Over the Garden Wall is well known for its delightful soundtrack, which mixes old-timey folk songs, classic jazz, and even snippets of opera into a coherent soundscape.

“The show is about this place called The Unknown, and we were trying to make it feel like these lost artifacts of stories and people coming together,” McHale says. “We were also trying to do that with music and hopefully introduce audiences, especially younger audiences, to music that maybe they hadn’t heard before. If they are introduced to it in the context of a funny cartoon, then they might absorb it better and recognize it as something nice to listen to, rather than, 'Oh, that sounds old and weird.’”

Over the Garden Wall’s voice cast (which also includes Melanie Lynskey, Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, and Tim Curry, among others) adds to its enduring appeal. Wood brought the show a fantasy pedigree, but also infused it with real poetry, while Dean’s infectious energy makes Greg so ridiculously lovable.

“When I first got auditions for Wirt, they all sounded like Woody Allen impressions,” McHale says. “That wasn’t right, so I told the voice casting director, ‘I want him to be more like an Elijah Wood type romantic lead.’ She was like, well, ‘Let's reach out to him!’ When he came on, I was able to shift the character to accentuate the poetry that his voice is capable of. That poetic side of Wirt probably wouldn't have been in the series if it hadn't been Elijah doing the voice.”

McHale continues, “The most fun thing with Collin was, once we got what we needed, I would ask him to just try weird stuff. He was good at making up funny sounds instead of words. A lot of interesting choices came from just playing around with Collin and letting him do things like say ‘what?’ eight times in crazy ways.”

Wirt and Greg’s relationship is central to Over the Garden Wall. For one thing, it defines the show’s mash-up aesthetic. “We were presenting The Unknown through the lens of Wirt and Greg's combined experience,” McHale says. “So some things manifest as cartoons because Greg’s there, and other things manifest as horror because Wirt’s there.”

McHale also says that the main thing he loves hearing from fans is how much they love the dynamic between Wirt and Greg.

“It’s nice hearing about siblings who had a similar dynamic and could really relate with those characters of Wirt and Greg,” McHale says. “I'm an only child, so it came from a mix of observation and thinking about myself as a teen versus myself as a kid, but I was hoping that their dynamic would feel right.”

Now fans can spend a little more time with Wirt and Greg, thanks to the new stop-motion short film that McHale made with Aardman animation studio to honor the show’s 10th anniversary.

“I hope that people who have enjoyed this series over the years take it as a little gift,” McHale says of the new short. “The only reason that we're making this is just to say, ‘Thank you.’”

What a wonderful harvest.