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Hilda Season 2 Review

The second season of Hilda was released on Netflix in 2020. It is pretty much on par with its predecessor as this flawed, but lovely season of family friendly animation.

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“But that’s all it is! Memories“

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The Troll Circle is fine for what it is, which is a diverting and charming debut, but it failed to compare to the more authentic and imaginative episodes of this season. The Draugen is wonderfully inventive in its visuals and imaginative in its ghost storyline. The Witch focuses on magic extensively for the first time with Frida becoming an apprentice. It’s a very strong episode.

The Eternal Warriors is superb. Whenever the show focuses on David, I love it as he is my favorite character of the bunch. In this installment he finally gets to be brave and that exploration of his issues is so well done. The Windmill is a phenomenal episode that is wonderfully suspenseful and creepy with David getting a proactive role and Victoria Van Gale being memorably villainous and fun.

The Old Bells of Trolberg is much more small-scale than the previous episodes, but it works as it has that charming quality to it that made the show an instant classic to begin with. The Beast of Cauldron Island has a familiar message, but it’s sweet and very adventurous. The Fifty Year Night focuses on the fraught mother-daughter relationship and some very intriguing time travel plotting that was so well executed and quite moving.

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The Deerfox is the magnum opus of this season and the best episode of the entire series so far. Twig and Hilda’s friendship is put to the test as the cute creature finds his family and goes away with them. That reunion scene was gorgeously composed and absolutely incredible in both visuals and world building. This leads to Hilda confronting existential questions regarding memories and the past and how life goes on. This was heavy stuff, maybe too heavy for what is ostensibly a children’s show, but eventually Twig returns to her, which was a fittingly happy ending this time around. This episode was so emotionally powerful that it almost made me cry.

The Yule Lads is rather inconsequential and too silly for its own sake, though it is quite entertaining. The Jorts Incident is also ridiculous, but it worked because it was memorably goofy and original. The Replacement is a fantastic Alfur episode where he faces a replacement, but the kids prove that he is great at his job, so he retains his position. The Stone Forest is a long and epic finale that concludes with a creepy cliffhanger. It’s not a great episode as some other installments were better here, but it was a strong finale nonetheless.

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This season was on par with its predecessor as it had its fair share of smaller and less interesting episodes that were too unimportant in the bigger scope of things. The show would have been much better with a ten instead of thirteen-episode format. But the animation is still dazzling, the score wonderful and the voice acting superb. Hilda’s relationship with her mom is so well explored here while David and Frida continued to be great friends. Wood Man is very memorable, Twig adorable and Alfur just as funny as ever.