While we’ve slowly watched Hilda adjust to life in Trolberg, she still bears plenty of quirks from her time in the woods. She’s still making up her own rules and going against the grain. Which is a good thing, especially for the stuffy Frida and David. However, there’s always the chance she can take it too far and make life for her friends all the more difficult. Warning: contains SPOILERS.
1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Fear
“The Nightmare Spirit” explores what scares our characters, specifically David and Hilda. The episode opens up with a nightmare where Frida, David, and Hilda get lost in the sewers and are absorbed by the Rat King. “At least the last thing I ever did was be right!” screams dream David just as he wakes up. It makes sense that David would be the primary focus here, since he’s such a panic-stricken character to begin with. As the episode progresses, the characters learn a group of Mara — dressed like teenage girls — have been haunting him because he’s so easily terrified. Hilda, who has dealt with much more throughout her childhood, doesn’t have the same problems. “Once you’ve seen enough scary things, you don’t get scared anymore,” she declares.
Hilda clearly has some thoughts on David’s penchant for terror and Hilda’s brazen bravery. On one hand, you have David, who rarely does anything on his own and has little to no experiences to show for it. And then there’s Hilda, who endangers her friends and risks all sorts of harm by blindly jumping into any situation. The show strives to portray a balance between the two moods, to tell its audience when it’s all right to turn and run away or when it’s best to face whatever’s happening.
2. What We Talk About When We Talk About the Creature of the Week
This week, we meet two new creatures. The first is the Rat King, a collection of rats bound together to form one massive rat. The animators give this creature a motion that mimics the swirling courses of the city sewers. The Rat King is only on-screen for a few minutes, enough for Hilda to learn that David’s persistent nightmares are purposeful, maliciously implemented by some dream demons preying upon him. Also, for her to tell it something that will play off near the end of the episode. I’m willing to bet we’ll be seeing more of that thing in the coming weeks.
The other creature, and the one “The Nightmare Spirit” focuses on, is the Mara. Similar to some of the other creatures the show’s presented us, these stem from Slavic folklore. Traditionally, they ride on people’s chest and give them nightmares, which they in turn feed upon. Hilda takes some liberties with their presentation. Here, they’re depicted as teenaged girls, aloof and dismissive. They move through rooms like spiders. In the show, they collect the nightmares and frights to take them to their circle of friends. It’s never clear if this is how the Mara sustain themselves or if it’s just their source of entertainment, either way, they’re given spooky green eyes and the ability to turn into mist.
There’s also a new character introduced: a librarian who miraculously knows exactly what book to give the kids. Much like the King Rat, the librarian doesn’t have much to do in this episode but I suspect they’ll appear again as the series progresses.
3. What We Talk About When We Talk About Gags
Let’s take a moment to single out some of the great visual work in “The Nightmare Spirit.” The animators have a lot of fun with their dream world. Though none of it feels original or like something we haven’t seen before, they manage to present it like it’s fresh and exciting. It shifts and moves through its scene like Buffy‘s “Breathless.” Things pop up and figures mutate into all manner of various items.
The standout for me, though, was Hilda and her friends trying to enact their plan to ensnare the Mara. It wasn’t anything too complicated, just some business with wigs, close calls with parents, and the recurring joke of David being constantly covered in bugs. I just thought it was well done and the wig reveals were cute. Also, when Hilda’s Mum (apparently named Joanna but I’m going to keep calling her Hilda’s Mum) discovers David in Hilda’s bed, the weird hair snafu is straight out of vaudeville.
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4. What We Talk About When We Talk About What Scares a Fearless Adventurer
In trying to help David, Hilda naturally offers up herself to the Mara. She brokers a deal for the creature to try to scare her or leave them alone forever. The Mara tries the usual things: those flying creatures from the first few episodes whose names I don’t remember, giants stomping around, thousands of spiders pouring out of the house’s woodworks, but none of them seem to stick. Finally, the Mara tries a different approach, leading us through the denouement.
It’s here I think Hilda shows its heart and gives us a great sense of Hilda. It’s here where I think kids are most able to relate to her. Because it turns out what frightens Hilda most are bicycles. During an earlier chase, she’s reluctant to hop on Frida’s handlebars and go careening after the Mara. She runs everywhere rather than ride with her friends. But it’s not the mechanics of the bicycle that set her off, but what the bike represents. This is something she sees kids from the city all knowing how to do. “Even I can ride a bike,” David says to her in the dream. It’s not normalcy, per se, but community. We’re given a glance that Hilda still struggles to deal with being thrown into a more conventional life, not that she can’t be fulfilled by it but that she fears she has no idea how to exist within it. She wants to be part of this community but, with her background, she doesn’t know if that’s possible, so certain that she’ll be revealed as some sort of fraud.
When, of course, it’s the exact opposite.
5. What We Talk About When We Talk About Hilda
For all the supernatural and magical and paranormal stuff permeating Hilda, this show seems mostly about a young girl learning how to adjust to a new world. So where is Hilda now compared to when we first met her out in the wilderness? This ties into the earlier point about the bicycle being the metonymy of her fears. Because Hilda’s also learning her adventuring skills can be applied to interpersonal relationships. By the end of the “The Nightmare Spirit,” she realizes she may sometimes push her friends too far. She sees how she can bogart their time and attention in favor of her interests. The episode ends with her asking if they could teach her to ride a bike. “If it’s not too boring.” Being on her own, or at least with Twig in tow, had its merits but she’s learning the fullness of human connection. She’s not trying to figure out how to get out of Trolberg anymore. She’s ready to change her definition of adventure.
