Hannah covers horror, sci-fi, and games at Collider, where she writes news and features, reviews new releases, and interviews the people who make them. She’s helping build out Collider‘s gaming coverage, with Pokémon as one of her specialties. If she isn’t writing about a monster, she’s probably watching one on a tape from her VHS collection.
Beatrice has very little patience for the two boys she finds wandering through the Unknown, which makes her an excellent traveling companion for them. Wirt already worries enough for everybody, and Greg is unlikely to take sensible advice anyway. The irritated bluebird fits into Over the Garden Wall so naturally that imagining her as anything else feels strange. However, early drawings tell a different story.
For fans making their annual autumn return to Patrick McHale’s animated miniseries, the work behind those familiar characters offers another reason to linger. The show’s finished world leaves plenty to examine through repeat viewings. Its development reveals how much could have looked different before Wirt and Greg ever entered the woods.
Collider can exclusively share five pages from Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition, including early character artwork and a new interview with Beatrice’s voice actor, Melanie Lynskey. The upcoming Dark Horse Books release revisits the original 2017 volume with more than 30 additional pages. Written by McHale and Sean Edgar, the 240-page hardcover arrives February 9, 2027. The excerpt includes sketches of Greg’s frog and several approaches to Beatrice, including an earlier incarnation as a bee. Alongside those drawings, McHale offers a practical explanation for changing direction: “A bee wouldn’t be that great for fall weather.” Readers can explore the artwork and Lynskey’s complete interview in the exclusive pages below.
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
about five minutes and has never stopped. - This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
single person in your life would be. - The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
do with things you love. - The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
arguments are about to start all over again.
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it. - This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
alarming, and it has good reasons for that. - Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes. - Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
that argument.
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that. - Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
1980 with no sign of resolution. - The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
and the look of a used and dented galaxy. - You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
time.
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
franchise still willing to say the future might be better. - The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else. - Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar. - You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
will always find somebody willing to have it.
Melanie Lynskey Looks Back on ‘Over the Garden Wall’
Image via Penguin Random House- Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House- Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
- Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random House
Image via Penguin Random HouseAsked about her first impression of McHale’s script, Lynskey recalls: “I thought the script was so beautiful. It was unlike anything I’d ever read before. It just had magic in it. It felt like it was written with care and love and like it came from a place of pure artistic expression, and not from someone wanting to get something on TV.”
The interview also revisits Lynskey’s recording sessions with Elijah Wood, who voices Wirt, and Collin Dean, who plays Greg. Of Wood, Lynskey says, “He brought so much to Wirt. I can’t imagine anyone else playing him.” She adds of Dean: “His authenticity really grounds the whole thing, and there’s a true innocence to him that made that character really special.” With the series continuing to find viewers more than a decade after its debut, Lynskey also considers its lasting appeal:
“You can’t go to whatever streaming service and watch something that’s like Over the Garden Wall. There is only Over the Garden Wall. And the story and characters and the art and music are so timeless and eerie and gorgeous, and I really do think it will continue to be watched and cherished for years to come.”
</blockquote>“You can’t go to whatever streaming service and watch something that’s like Over the Garden Wall. There is only Over the Garden Wall. And the story and characters and the art and music are so timeless and eerie and gorgeous, and I really do think it will continue to be watched and cherished for years to come.”
The expanded book features a new cover by art director Nick Cross and a new foreword by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch, alongside cast interviews, BOOM! Studios comic artwork, and concept designs for Mondo’s collectible figures. The standard hardcover retails for $54.99.
Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition arrives February 9, 2027. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
Over the Garden Wall
- <
Wirt (voice)
- <
Collin Dean
Gregory (voice)
- <
Beatrice (voice)
- <
Samuel Ramey
The Beast (voice)
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