Listen, normally I am not about 2edgy theories about cartoons meant for children, but the facts of OTGW are this:
It’s explicitly stated in the text that the whole thing takes place after the protagonists fall down a very steep hill, onto train tracks, almost get struck by a train, and end up drowning in deep water.
All the scenes that take place in the Unknown, which, again, is a place explicitly stated to be outside of life and at least on the border with death and dreaming, have a soft-focus blur all around the edges of the frame.
This blur is not present during the single flashback episode where we get the story of how Wirt and Greg found themselves in the Unknown in the first place. That episode takes place entirely in the ‘real’, living world.
This blur, however, is present in the final episode, after Wirt and Greg supposedly ‘wake up’ back in ‘the real world’. It doesn’t go away.
The show also ends with a scene of the woodsman’s daughter alive and well, though she is explicitly stated earlier in the text to be dead and lost forever.
The show is bookended with the lyrics “the loveliest lies of all” and “if dreams can’t come true, then why not pretend?”. The implication being that at least some of what we’ve seen on the screen is a fabrication, which is most likely just a meta callout meant to disquiet the viewer.
But if that’s the case, it’s interesting that it refers specifically to “the loveliest lies”, when so much of what happens in the show is Extremely Upsetting -
Except the ending.
Like, I don’t want to be the one to say it, but…whether Wirt and Greg actually survived that Halloween is at the very least not certain, in my mind.
