| 1 | "Jane's a Car and The Witch in the Web" is the third and final episode of ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'''s first season, livestreamed on October 24, 2020, before being released on [=YouTube=] on February 14, 2021. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | As with most ''Nightmare Time'' episodes, it's a DoubleFeature, consisting of two stories: |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder: Jane's a Car]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | !! Jane's a Car |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[quoteright:201:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/janes_a_car.jpg]] |
| 10 | [[caption-width-right:201:''"I've traded in for new, but I come right back to you."'']] |
| 11 | |
| 12 | After a year and a half of repairs, widower Tom Houston is reunited with his newly restored 1986 Foxbody Mustang, only to find that the car now carries a ghostly passenger... |
| 13 | |
| 14 | -->'''Musical sequences:'''\ |
| 15 | "Jane's a Car" performed by Creator/DylanSaunders; directed by Creator/DylanSaunders and Shashona Brooks |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ---- |
| 18 | |
| 19 | * AccidentalAdultery: Tom begins seeing Becky, which Jane is ''not'' happy to hear. But no reasonable person could fault Tom for this, seeing as how Jane ''died'' well over a year ago and he had no way of knowing her soul was still around. Unfortunately, Jane is not a reasonable person, and treats it like Tom was actually having an affair. |
| 20 | * ActOfTrueLove: An ''extremely'' dark example -- Jane refuses to accept that Tom truly loves her unless he's willing to commit ''murder'' for her in order to get her a human body again. |
| 21 | * AdamWesting: The fandom has made a lot of jokes about the portrayal of Tom in the MusicVideo being this for Creator/DylanSaunders, who's owned up to sharing some of Tom's manly tastes -- but he has also pointed out that [[ButIPlayOneOnTV he's not actually that much of a classic car guy]], the car in the video is a rental (which is good because its license plate number is clearly visible in one shot) and his actual car is a much more sensible Nissan. ([[RunningGag Which is not to say he doesn't love it dearly in its own way.]]) |
| 22 | * AmbiguousSituation: This story led to fierce debate over whether Jane was always a callous, abusive person and Emma and Tom just described her after her death through rose-tinted glasses[[note]]It doesn't help that nearly ''everything'' Emma and Tom had previous said about the living Jane can, in retrospect, rather easily be twisted to paint her as someone who lived to torment them[[/note]], whether Jane CameBackWrong due to the evil ritual used to resurrect her or alternatively was DrivenToMadness by her situation of being [[AndIMustScream trapped with an inanimate object for a body]], or whether the spirit possessing the car isn't ''really'' Jane at all but some kind of demonic impersonator sent by the Lords in Black, like Ethan's "Bad Double" in ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. WordOfGod on the matter is vague, but Creator/NickLang generally talks about this episode as though Jane is in fact the "real" Jane but that we shouldn't judge Jane's actions in life by her actions after death. |
| 23 | ** WordOfGod is that this story was ''also'' meant to leave it ambiguous whether the car is really haunted at all or [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Tom is imagining it all and going insane]]; however, most fans found Ethan's near-death experience at the beginning to be evidence enough that Jane is real, even before the WhamLine confirming it in the ending. |
| 24 | * AmbiguouslyBi: A lot of the LGBTFanbase got excited when Jane demanded Tom take her down to the beach to scope out chicks in swimsuits, only for this to turn sour when they realized [[KillAndReplace what Jane's motive actually was]]. (Not that this is evidence she ''isn't'' bi; in fact, it just tees her up for the DepravedBisexual trope.) |
| 25 | * AMFMCharacterization: Tom is described as a ClassicRock fan in the script, and the TitleSequence shows him listening to "Witchy Woman" by Music/TheEagles on Spotify (and the song "Jane's a Car" itself is an {{Homage}} to classic Eagles {{Driving Song}}s like "Take It Easy"). |
| 26 | * AndIMustScream: Some of Jane's behavior can at least theoretically be excused by the fact that, as she points out, she spent 18 months being worked on in Tony's garage, the equivalent of a human being spending all that time trapped in the hospital undergoing surgery, only worse because of her awareness that ''she isn't human anymore''. |
| 27 | * ArcWords: Another ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin TitleDrop -- Jane repeatedly says "I'm a car", including a hilarious instance of ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder ("I'm not ''stupid'', Tom, I'm a car"). |
| 28 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: When Jane gives her litany of (quite understandable) reasons she was upset to wake up in the form of a car, she ends with how humiliated she was that Lex made fun of her for being an older model and called her stereo obsolete. |
| 29 | * ArtisticLicenseCars: In the opening scene, obviously Lex is being [[FrameUp framed]] for Ethan's near-death experience when the car shifted itself from Park to Drive, being haunted -- but it was in fact ''still'' very irresponsible of her to be testing out a car's engine inside the garage without also setting the handbrake. (Indeed, for anyone working on classic cars that frequently only came with manual transmissions that have no "Park" gear, you ''have to'' get in the habit of setting the handbrake to park the car at all.) Yes, Jane is telekinetically controlling the car and could release the handbrake herself -- but her doing so would've been much more noticeable to Lex than just moving the gearshift. |
| 30 | * ArtisticLicenseLaw: It strains credulity that the last scene of the story could've happened the way it's described -- when a single parent like Tom gets arrested, it's a ''very high priority'' that the parent's child be taken care of, either held at the police station or placed in the care of his next of kin (Emma) or of a social worker like Duke Keane (introduced in "The Witch in the Web"). It would be extremely negligent to just leave Tim in bed at home for (Jane-as-)Becky -- who is not in any sense Tim's next of kin or legal guardian -- to come fetch him later on in the evening, although, yes, to be fair the Hatchetfield PD [[PoliceAreUseless hasn't been known for their competence]] in the past. |
| 31 | * AutoErotica: Becky fondly recalls when she and Tom used to get up to this in the back of his Mustang, and muses about doing so again. Tom, already suspecting the car is haunted by Jane's spirit, turns her down. Eventually, the haunted car begs Tom to make love to her, and he does his best, kissing and fondling every bit of the car's interior. In a deliberate parallel to the trope, Tim eventually comes knocking at the fogged-up window of the car and Tom acts sheepish. |
| 32 | * BackFromTheDead: Jane's spirit returns, but not without consequences. |
| 33 | * BackseatDriver: The whole conceit of this story is a StealthPun about Jane being this to Tom. |
| 34 | * TheBadGuyWins: Jane successfully takes over Becky's body and reunites with her son. The only snarl is that she doesn't get Tom back, but she doesn't seem particularly broken up over it. |
| 35 | * BaitAndSwitch: The opening scene of the episode foreshadows ''hard'' that Lex and Ethan are TemptingFate by openly making fun of the haunted car for being old and busted while testing its engine, and that Ethan is about to continue Robert Manion's trend of being a ChronicallyKilledActor by being the SacrificialLamb showing Jane GainingTheWillToKill -- only for the story to relent and allow Lex to save Ethan's life by slamming on the brakes at the last minute. (This was a last-minute writing change made in RealLife, because of the tongue-in-cheek fan petition to stop killing Robert's characters.) |
| 36 | ** The final scene of the episode with Becky waking up in the hospital after being run over tries hard to tease the possibility that the car was never haunted and [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Tom just let his grief drive him mad]], before the ending WhamLine lets us know Jane's ghost really was controlling the car and is now controlling Becky. |
| 37 | * BaitAndSwitchCredits: The lyrics of the ThemeTune, the MusicVideo created for it and the actual story are all only related in BroadStrokes. In particular, the lyrics of the ThemeTune go back and forth as to whether the song takes place in Hatchetfield, Michigan or in Southern California where the creators actually live (the lyrics describe driving along the Pacific Coast Highway), and the description of the car in the lyrics conflicts with the car in the story (it describes a "stick shift" while the car in the story is an automatic, it mentions an "8-track" while the car in the story has a compact cassette tape deck) and with itself (it says "the carburetor groans" and "the fuel injection moans", even though these are mutually exclusive systems that can't be on the same car -- see WordSaladLyrics). |
| 38 | ** Meanwhile, the MusicVideo very clearly does not take place in Hatchetfield and is more a BroadStrokes rendition of a cross between the character Tom Houston and Creator/DylanSaunders in real life. It's a music video of Tom driving a ''modern'' Ford Mustang around Southern California (a black 2020 coupe, as opposed to the story's red 1986 hatchback, which Tom and Shashona rented to make this video) and enjoying all its features while in-character as Tom -- including wearing a custom-made face mask saying "Tim's Daddy", even though the story takes place in 2019 before the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic happened in RealLife. |
| 39 | ** In the more general sense of BaitAndSwitch, the TitleSequence is a very upbeat, PlayedStraight depiction of a man who loves his car "[[CargoShip just a little too much]]", while the circumstances behind Tom's unhealthy fixation on his car in the story proper are far darker and more tragic. |
| 40 | * BetaCouple: A preview on Twitter revealed this episode brings back our favorite teen BetaCouple from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', Lex and Ethan, with the AlphaCouple in this episode being Tom and his dead wife. |
| 41 | * BigEntrance: Tim has good reason to be skeptical about his dad getting a new girlfriend who might try to replace his mom, but when he actually sees what Becky looks like -- even though she's just walking into a dingy SuckECheeses in her casual clothes after work -- all he can manage is StunnedSilence followed by "[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Good job, Dad]]". |
| 42 | * BlackSpeech: The MagicalIncantation enabling Jane's BodySurf is written in ominous-sounding Lovecraftian gibberish. |
| 43 | * BlondeBrunetteRedhead: The three major female characters in this story -- Jane, when she was alive (and as we see her represented by Creator/JaimeLynBeatty as a ghost) was a brunette, the Greenpeace Girl is a blonde and Becky Barnes is a redhead. Lampshaded by Jane, who talks about how much she likes the Greenpeace Girl's hair when considering her as a host, and when she settles on Becky talks about looking forward to seeing what life is like with red hair. |
| 44 | * TheBusCameBack: Some social media waves were made by Mariah Rose Faith jokingly piggybacking on Robert Manion announcing the return of Ethan Green, announcing that she also had a returning character in "Jane's A Car": Her [[BitCharacter unnamed police officer]] from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', whom she'd joked on Instagram was named "Doug" and was non-binary. |
| 45 | ** Mariah's other character from ''TGWDLM'', the Greenpeace Girl, also comes back and plays a major role in the plot (although she technically doesn't have a [[TheVoiceless speaking role]] this time). |
| 46 | * CallBack: Just as in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', Tom and Becky make love while the horrible holiday movie ''[[ShowWithinAShow Santa Claus Is Goin' to High School]]'' is playing, although the circumstances this time are completely different. |
| 47 | ** When TheNarrator describes Tom's TraumaButton related to the car accident he uses the words from "What Tim Wants" and "If I Fail You" from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' -- "Crash! Bang!" |
| 48 | ** When trying to find rationalize Jane's EvilPlan Tom proposes killing "[[PayEvilUntoEvil someone who deserves it]], like... Linda Monroe", the villain of ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. |
| 49 | ** The Greenpeace Girl surprisingly comes back, still doing the same crappy job she was doing in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''. |
| 50 | ** A brief MoodWhiplash joke in the horrifying climax in the Witchwood has Becky consider climbing a tree to try to escape being run over by Jane but deciding against it "[[NoodleIncident after what happened last time]]", alluding to the story Prof. Hidgens told in "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man" about Becky being "stuck up a tree for two days" that was never elaborated on. |
| 51 | ** A throwaway joke in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' ("I don't ''have'' a drill press -- and if I did, how could I fit it in the sedan?!") gets a CallBack in the TitleSequence, with Tom trying and failing to put a drill press (or, rather, a [[NoBudget picnic cooler with a paper label "DRILL PRESS" taped to it]]) into the backseat of his Mustang (which is [[ArtisticLicenseCars actually a coupe]]). |
| 52 | ** Ethan's KnowNothingKnowItAll tendencies where he "corrects" Lex's spelling of "liar" in "[=CaliforMIA=]" in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' comes back in a much harsher form when he starts yelling at her about the difference between a gearshift in "Park" (with a "P") vs. "Drive" (with a "D"). In his defense, he has a right to be upset he was almost crushed and killed by what he thinks is Lex's carelessness. |
| 53 | * CarFu: Jane didn't seem to have any significant experience with combat or violence while she was alive, but unfortunately the fact that the car ''is her body'' means she's far more skilled while trying to run down Becky in the woods than a typical human driver would be. |
| 54 | * CarSong: The song "Jane's a Car" is very much an AffectionateParody of this genre of ClassicRock music and the tendency to drop {{Double Entendre}}s everywhere making it ambiguous whether the subject of the song is actually a car or a woman. In this regard it's a CallBack to the song "Fancy Machine" from pre-Starkid production ''WebVideo/LittleWhiteLie'', albeit a much more PlayedStraight high-quality example. |
| 55 | * CaughtWithYourPantsDown: Tom's rock-bottom moment in this story is when Tim walks in on him having sex with Jane, i.e. he walks in on his dad having stripped down to his underwear, writhing and moaning in the backseat of his car with the windows fogged up. Tom just barely manages to gather his composure and utter a brief non-excuse that, thankfully, Tim is old enough to know better than to ask follow-up questions about. |
| 56 | * ChronicallyKilledActor: Averted. Robert Manion directly promised fans that Ethan Green would ''not'' die this time, breaking a trend for the fate of featured characters played by Robert in Starkid productions. Ethan is ''almost'' hit by the ghost car in the first scene in the story, but is saved at the last second. Indeed, behind the scenes he was ''meant'' to die in this story, but they decided against making a macabre RunningGag out of Robert getting killed. |
| 57 | * ComicallyMissingThePoint: Tom continues his tendency of doing this from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', only in much direr circumstances. When he tells Becky that Jane is "in my car" and Becky asks, alarmed, if he means he dug up his wife's corpse, he scoffs and says he's not ''crazy'' -- he's referring to the fact that [[YouHaveToBelieveMe his wife's ghost is possessing the car and he's hearing her voice telling him to do awful things]]. |
| 58 | * ContrivedCoincidence: The whole plot of the episode happens because Jane happened to die in a car accident at the ''exact'' moment the car stereo was playing the [[BodySurf soul transfer]] incantation from the Black Book being recited by her patient. (Presumably in every timeline where Jane ''doesn't'' come back as a haunted car, the timing was slightly off and this coincidence just didn't happen.) |
| 59 | * CoolCar: Tom's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_(third_generation) 1986 Fox-Body Mustang]]. (Having a whole half-episode about Tom's CoolCar could be a CallBack to the swipes at Bill's [[TheAllegedCar AMC Pacer]] in "Watcher World".) |
| 60 | * DarkestHour: Creator/NickLang has described this particular story as one designed to bring Tom Houston to the worst possible extreme of despair and dysfunction he could experience, and the scene where he agrees to [[{{Squick}} have sex with Jane as a car]] only to be [[CaughtWithYourPantsDown caught by his son]] as the specific moment he hits rock bottom. |
| 61 | * ADayInTheLimelight: One for ''Theatre/BlackFriday'''s Tom Houston, played by Creator/DylanSaunders, the heretofore UnseenCharacter of his wife Jane Perkins, their son Tim, and Tom's new girlfriend Becky Barnes. Episode Three is one in general for characters who originated in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' rather than ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', with Lex and Ethan also showing up in the opening scene -- and with ''TGWDLM'' characters OutOfFocus, with Paul Matthews only being mentioned in passing and the BitCharacter the Greenpeace Girl showing up later on. |
| 62 | * DiabolusExMachina: The first half of the story takes us through a HopeSpot all the way to the point where Tom actually does have an EpiphanyTherapy moment and makes the decision to move on from Jane's death and get his life back in order -- only to suddenly manifest a [[HearingVoices voice in his head]] determined to ''stop'' him from doing this and make him destroy all the progress he's made for the sake of bringing his dead wife back. |
| 63 | * DiegeticSoundtrackUsage: Moreso than previous ''Nightmare Time'' stories, this story's musical {{Call Back}}s imply that songs we've previously heard diegetically exist in the setting as songs the characters hear on the radio, albeit probably with different lyrics -- "You Tied Up My Heart" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', "[=CaliforMIA=]" from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', and "Jane's a Car", the TitleThemeTune of this story, all turn up as tunes people hear on the radio, and all of them make sense as songs the characters may have heard and [[MusicalWorldHypotheses adapted to their own circumstances]]. |
| 64 | * DistinctionWithoutADifference: Jane tries to argue that what she wants from Tom isn't ''murder'' because the goal isn't to actually kill the other woman's body, just damage it enough to "jar the soul loose" while leaving it in healthy condition for Jane to occupy. When Tom presses her on what exactly happens to the original soul, she admits she doesn't actually care but that it probably ends up in whatever afterlife may or may not exist -- i.e., yes, she absolutely is talking about murder. |
| 65 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Jane's actions toward the women on the boardwalk at the beach at Starry Cove come across a lot like a creepy pervert -- and pushing ''Tom'' to act like a pervert, as he's uncomfortably aware. It arguably gets worse when it turns out she's not making Tom stalk the Greenpeace Girl in order to creep on her or violate her but to ''murder'' her and steal her body, the worst violation of all. |
| 66 | ** It's ambiguous as to whether Jane's creepiness toward the women whose bodies she's considering stealing has any element of [[AmbiguouslyBi prurient interest]], or whether in this situation that's even a meaningful distinction to make. (Stealing someone's body in order to ''become'' them is arguably the highest possible level of sexually violating somebody, and all.) |
| 67 | ** The MusicVideo for "Jane's a Car" does this very deliberately, showing Tom doing things like bringing a bouquet of flowers to the car that he turns out to be ''giving to the car itself'', reaching out his arm as though to caress a passenger's hair only to caress the headrest of the empty passenger seat, slowly unbuttoning and taking off his shirt before going under the car's hood... It's even funnier knowing that this video was shot and directed by Shashona Brooks, [[CreatorCouple Dylan's fiancée]]. |
| 68 | * DomesticAbuse: If the thing possessing the car is indeed Jane [[AmbiguousSituation and not some other malevolent entity]], a lot of her actions towards Tom veers uncomfortably close to emotional abuse, with constant guilt-tripping, condescension, possessiveness, and outright bullying, trying to force him into things he repeatedly expresses he is not comfortable with. Her wanting Tom to prove he loves her also reeks of emotional blackmail. And if it is Jane, it raises some unsettling questions about what their marriage was like -- though, to be fair, it's heavily insinuated that Jane CameBackWrong and that her negative qualities have been ramped up. |
| 69 | * DownerEnding: Especially for fans of Becky, since TheReveal that Jane's KillAndReplace scheme succeeded means poor longsuffering Becky either suffered CessationOfExistence or has her soul [[AndIMustScream trapped in a wrecked car about to go to the junk heap]]. (And Tom's fate, being institutionalized as an attempted murderer for the foreseeable future, isn't great either.) |
| 70 | * DramaticIrony: Lex, Ethan and Tony all make comments about not being able to imagine dealing with the grief Tom is feeling over losing his wife, none of them knowing that in the AlternateTimeline of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' Ethan dies tragically -- as he very nearly does in the opening scene of this story -- forcing Lex and Tony to go through the same TheMourningAfter Tom did. (With Ethan himself, ironically, having argued that to do so is irrational and one should try to move on as quickly as possible.) |
| 71 | * EasilyForgiven: Ethan cements his NiceGuy status by being the one to comfort ''Lex'' after ''he'' has a near-death experience that, by all appearances, Lex caused through carelessness. |
| 72 | * EndearinglyDorky: Becky definitely has her moments, including when she's poking fun at her reputation as an AllLovingHero by protesting she's bad at ''Zombie House'' because she'd rather help the zombies than shoot them. |
| 73 | * EpiphanyTherapy: The moment when Tom suddenly realizes he has to move on from Jane and commit to his new relationship with Becky rather than keeping one foot in the past, for his son's sake if no one else's. (Just before a DiabolusExMachina forces him off this path.) |
| 74 | -->''(Tom pulls back into the garage. He sits behind the wheel, thinking. He cooks dinner for Tim. Helps him with his homework. He lies awake in bed for hours. He remembers Becky’s face. Pizza Pete’s. Tim’s laugh. That night... Jane. He can’t go on like this. He gets out of bed. Looks in the mirror.)'' |
| 75 | -->'''Tom''': Tom. What're you doing? What the hell are you doing? |
| 76 | * ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Most fans expected it, but a few were still taken off guard by the fact that the title is completely literal -- Jane, Tom's dead wife, really does come back as a car. |
| 77 | * FantasticArousal: The extended version of the Tom/Jane sex scene from [[DeletedScene the original script]]. |
| 78 | -->'''Jane''': Careful with my cupholders, Tom... they're sensitive... Yes, Tom, yes! |
| 79 | * ForcedIntoEvil: Jane basically drags Tom kicking and screaming every ''inch'' of the way into complicity with her murderous EvilPlan, having to repeatedly slam Tom's TraumaButton about his guilt over her death and his feelings of inadequacy as a husband until he succumbs. |
| 80 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: The tape recording left by Jane's mysterious psychiatric patient primarily serves the function of reciting the soul transferrence ritual, but also features the utterance of five eldritch names: Pokotho, Bliklotep, T'Noy Karaxis, Nibblenephim, and Wiggog Y'wrath -- the Lords in Black. The previous episode briefly used the name T'Noy Karaxis to refer to Tinky, and the second story in this episode confirms that Wiggog Y'wrath refers to Wiggly. This recording's mention of the Lords' names, as well as the name of their group and their exact numbers, thus comes one story ''before'' the story that fully reveals this information. |
| 81 | ** Tom reveals to Becky that part of Jane's PassiveAggressiveKombat with him while they were married was trying to manipulate him into doing things for her that she was perfectly capable of doing herself, and that he's worried her forcing him to drive her around may be a manifestation of the same behavior. Sure enough, when he flat-out refuses to run over Becky Barnes, Jane reveals she's gained the ability to control ''all'' of the car's systems -- accelerator and steering wheel included -- and leaves Tom a helpless passenger in the driver's seat with a front-row view of his girlfriend's murder. |
| 82 | ** The TitleSequence has a very minor bit of foreshadowing with the specific song by Music/TheEagles Tom chooses to listen to -- "Witchy Woman", setting up the next story "The Witch in the Web". |
| 83 | * FrameUp: Part of the inherent NightmareFuel of a haunted car situation is that Jane can blame all her crimes on whoever was in the driver's seat when she committed them -- first Lex in her attempted murder of Ethan, then Tom in her successful murder of Becky. |
| 84 | * TheGhost: Linda Monroe from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' is mentioned briefly as a possible new body for Jane, but, [[FanficFuel to many fans' frustration]], nothing comes of it. |
| 85 | * GhostInTheMachine: Both literally describes Jane's situation and is the trope for how she's non-diegetically portrayed in this story — with Creator/JaimeLynBeatty dressed as Jane appeared in life, standing in front of a Zoom background depicting the car, but with no one in the story actually able to see her this way and Tom only hearing her as a voice. |
| 86 | * HarmfulToMinors: Jane tells Tom not to tell Tim his mom has returned to life as a car, saying it will "scar him for life". |
| 87 | * HauntedTechnology: The car is haunted by Jane's soul. Or is it? (Yes, it is. Probably.) |
| 88 | * HearingVoices: Although ''we'' can see Jane's ghost being played by Creator/JaimeLynBeatty, Tom can't, and only experiences her presence as a voice in his ear telling him it's her ghost inside his car, which is a major reason he suspects she isn't real and he may be hallucinating. (TruthInTelevision -- visual hallucinations are incredibly rare compared to auditory ones.) |
| 89 | * HeroicBSOD: Doug's final monologue describes Tom as having "a complete mental breakdown" after having to helplessly watch the woman he loves get hit by a car in a situation he's responsible for ''the second time''. The story ends with him [[BedlamHouse locked up in the psych ward at St. Damien's]] for the foreseeable future. |
| 90 | * HerosClassicCar: Like the original ''Film/{{Christine}}'', this story ends up becoming a harsh {{Deconstruction}} of the trope. |
| 91 | * HopeSpot: The first half of this episode is a long SliceOfLife examination of Tom slowly but surely overcoming his grief and PTSD in order to build a new life and family with Tim and Becky. It contains tons of minor SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments that are pure FanficFuel for Barneston shippers... which is why, given that this is a ''Nightmare Time'' story following Creator/SamRaimi's rules of horror, a [[BackFromTheDead supernatural event occurs]] that blows all of Tom's hopes for a happy ending to smithereens. |
| 92 | * ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies: Tom's final YouHaveToBelieveMe rant to Becky has him frantically warning her to stay away from him because if she doesn't, Jane will eventually force him to kill her. |
| 93 | * LaughingMad: Jane lets out an exultant EvilLaugh once she finally gets her chance to run down Becky and begins chasing her through the Witchwood. |
| 94 | * {{Leitmotif}}: Matt Dahan said this episode was his favorite one to underscore, because it gave him the opportunity to do several {{Call Back}}s to ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' for the first time: |
| 95 | ** The opening scene with Lex and Ethan has a "smooth tune" playing on the radio, which is the tune of "[=CaliforMIA=]" from ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. |
| 96 | ** An EtherealChoir plays under the mad professor's incantation on the audio tape whenever it plays. |
| 97 | ** The peppy tune playing over the scene at Pizza Pete's is "The Blinky Song" from "[[Recap/NightmareTimeS1E1TheHatchetfieldApeManAndWatcherWorld Watcher World]]". |
| 98 | ** Tom and Becky's LoveTheme is "Take Me Back" from ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. It plays under Becky's initial BigEntrance at Pizza Pete's, and under the parallel scene to Tom and Becky's first kiss in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' where they make love in the living room while ''Santa Claus Is Goin' to High School'' plays on TV. |
| 99 | ** They also have a secondary cutesy, upbeat LoveTheme for their interactions in public, which is "What Do You Say?" from ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. "What Do You Say?" gets a DarkReprise when Jane reveals that she's witnessed Tom and Becky hanging out and is plotting to kill her out of jealousy, and plays under Jane forcing him to drive to Becky's house to break it off with her. |
| 100 | ** When we see a glimpse of the ShowWithinAShow ''Santa Claus Is Goin' to High School'' we get a brief reprise of "Deck the Halls (of Northville High)". |
| 101 | ** Tim's {{Leitmotif}} is "What Tim Wants", which plays, appropriately, whenever Tom and Tim have a heart-to-heart about how Tim is feeling and if he's okay with Tom and Becky's relationship. The opening bars of this song also play when Tom is thinking about his memories of his wife and the accident. |
| 102 | ** Tony Green's motif is a reprise of Ethan's theme from his monologue to Hannah in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' (where he's giving a similar comforting speech to the one Tony gives Tom in this story), which is the tune to the CutSong "Somehow". |
| 103 | ** The gag with Tom and Jane fighting over the radio dial has the pop song Jane prefers be the tune of "You Tied Up My Heart" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', while the ClassicRock song Tom likes is the TitleThemeTune "Jane's a Car" itself. |
| 104 | ** Tom's EpiphanyTherapy moment when he finally makes the decision to move on and get rid of the Mustang and Jane's old possessions is set to the tune of "If I Fail You", the song where he had a similar moment of realization in ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. Unfortunately, this time the epiphany is forcibly cut off by [[DiabolusExMachina Jane's miraculous return]]. |
| 105 | ** "Jane's a Car" gets a minor-key DarkReprise when Jane first forces Tom to drive her around town looking for women to murder. |
| 106 | ** When the Greenpeace Girl reappears, her theme tune is "La Dee Dah Dah Day" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''. |
| 107 | ** Matt transitions into a "spooky" theme, a.k.a. "Jane's Theme" -- an original composition for this episode -- whenever the car does something sinister, which in Jane's big climactic monologue where she reveals herself transitions into the "Witchwood theme" that's been following us throughout all of Season One. |
| 108 | ** When Tom briefly floats the idea of killing "someone who deserves it, like Linda Monroe", Linda's theme from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', "Adore Me", briefly plays. |
| 109 | ** Tom's climactic YouHaveToBelieveMe rant to Becky warning her to stay away from him is a DarkReprise mash-up of "What Tim Wants" and "Take Me Back", i.e. his two {{Love Theme}}s for the two women in his life. |
| 110 | ** There's a "dramatic theme" that plays whenever violence breaks out -- when Jane tries to kill Ethan, when Tom barely stops her from killing the Greenpeace Girl, when Tom confesses what's been going on to Becky, and in the final climactic scene when Jane finally hits Becky. |
| 111 | ** Doug's closing monologue is introduced with a somber DarkReprise of "Show Me Your Hands" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', transitioning into a final somber DarkReprise of "Take Me Back". |
| 112 | ** The very last moments of the story are underscored with an epic piano rendition of "What Tim Wants" that is both a DarkReprise and TriumphantReprise, representing Jane's final victory. |
| 113 | * MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: A large part of the episode's tension is wondering whether Jane is truly possessing the car, or if we're seeing this ThroughTheEyesOfMadness, with the near-miss with Ethan at the start of the episode just being an accident and a coincidence. Tom's certainly unstable enough for it to be eerily plausible we can't trust his judgement, and even he begins to wonder. The final scene, however, confirms it really was Jane all along. |
| 114 | * TheMourningAfter: Tom starts the story in the throes of this, just as he was in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', and just beginning to pull himself out of it before his encounter with Jane's ghost yanks him back in. |
| 115 | * MrFanservice: The "Jane's a Car" MusicVideo has some mild fanservice with Creator/DylanSaunders slowly unbuttoning and removing his shirt while SpikingTheCamera with a soulful, tender look in his eye. The circumstances make this slightly twisted, though, given that he's looking at ''his car'' (which he's about to go [[DoubleEntendre under the hood of]]). For extra hilarity, the FemaleGaze in this shot was provided by Shashona Brooks, Dylan's RealLife fiancée who directed this video and was holding the camera. |
| 116 | ** We get to see Dylan take off his shirt again in the original, uncut version of the AutoErotica sex scene in the story proper, only this time the situation is uncomfortable enough that it's hard to imagine anyone getting actual {{Fanservice}} from it. |
| 117 | * MurderIntoMalevolence: Tom thinks Jane isn't "acting like herself" and that possibly she CameBackWrong, although whether her actions make sense for someone truly desperate to become a human again is debatable (and hotly debated by the fandom). What's pretty clear though is that seeing a version of Jane ''this'' [[LackOfEmpathy utterly unconcerned with anyone else's welfare but her own]] is a deeply chilling contrast to how highly Emma and Tom spoke of her when she was TheGhost in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' and ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. |
| 118 | * MysteriousWatcher: The final scene with Tom's YouHaveToBelieveMe rant to Becky is, in the final [=YouTube=] release of the episode, played with TheNarrator Creator/NickLang and Creator/JaimeLynBeatty as Jane onscreen along with Creator/DylanSaunders as Tom and Kim Whalen as Becky. Jane is a silent presence in this scene -- presumably she can't actually see or hear Tom and Becky inside the house, but we get to watch her ghost stare intently at the house, wheels turning inside her head, as Tom talks -- {{Foreshadowing}} for her EvilPlan springing into action as soon as Tom gets back inside her. |
| 119 | * NotSoImaginaryFriend: No one can hear Jane's voice except Tom, and Jane's actions involving controlling the Mustang's systems only occur with Tom in the driver's seat (minus the prologue with Lex and Ethan, which Tom didn't witness), making it seem awfully likely that [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness the whole thing is just Tom's hallucination]]. |
| 120 | * ObliviouslyEvil: Jane's perspective is so warped -- whether because she CameBackWrong or because she was DrivenToMadness by being [[AndIMustScream trapped in a car's body for 18 months]] -- that she actually ''doesn't seem to realize'' her actions are morally questionable. For all her TheChessmaster traits this is a detriment to her EvilPlan, with her obliviously prattling on to Tom about picking a woman to ''murder'' and [[GrandTheftMe steal the body of]] without any awareness this might shock or upset him. |
| 121 | * OminousCrack: When Tim accidentally reveals Tom and Becky are dating with Jane in the garage, her rearview mirror suddenly cracks. |
| 122 | * OneDialogueTwoConversations: Tom seems to repeatedly refuse to take the hint from Jane that the reason she's making him choose the girl he finds most attractive at the beach is she's looking for a new body to KillAndReplace -- possibly because he's [[SelectiveObliviousness intentionally in denial about how evil she's become]]. Unfortunately, this means he lets her talk him into stalking the Greenpeace Girl all the way up to the point of ''almost'' running her over before he balks (which, predictably, leads to her [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome calling the cops]] and turning him into a suspect for attempted murder). |
| 123 | * OrgasmicCombat: Jane's ghost has a look of ''pure bliss'' on her face when the car finally hits Becky. |
| 124 | * OutOfFocus: Episode Three puts the characters from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' (who've dominated the {{Call Back}}s in the first two episodes of ''Nightmare Time'') OutOfFocus -- the only one who appears is former BitCharacter the Greenpeace Girl. Notably, "Uncle Paul" is only mentioned in passing, and Paul's girlfriend Emma -- Jane's sister -- is never mentioned nor appears at all. (This is regarded by some fans as a PlotHole, since Emma is Tim's actual next of kin after Tom and the scenario at the end of the episode should logically involve her in some way.) |
| 125 | * ParentWithNewParamour: Tom, after mourning his wife Jane for over a year, begins to date Becky Barnes, who he's introduced to his son. In a twist on the usual trope usage, Tim doesn't mind at all that his dad is moving on, and actually likes Becky a lot. It's Tom's ''dead wife'' that has objections. |
| 126 | * ParodiesForDummies: Tom goes to the bookstore to buy a "Neurology for Dummies" book to try to figure out if it's possible Jane's voice is a {{Hallucination|s}} caused by PTSD or brain damage. He lampshades that even the "for Dummies" version of this subject is a bit beyond his usual reading level and that self-diagnosis from a book isn't really a great idea -- unfortunately, [[{{Irony}} ironically]], the person he'd normally ask about this kind of thing is the person he's hallucinating about (his dead wife Jane). |
| 127 | * PayEvilUntoEvil: Tom desperately suggests doing this when he finds himself [[ForcedIntoEvil forced]] into Jane's EvilPlan, asking if she can't KillAndReplace "someone who deserves it, like Linda Monroe?" Jane, who [[ObliviouslyEvil seems to be having a hard time grasping Tom's moral objections to this plan]], takes this as evidence that Tom has [[ClingyJealousGirl always had a crush on Linda]]. (Note that this is still BlackComedy, since, given that this is an AlternateTimeline from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', as far as Tom knows Linda is a RichBitch but hasn't done anything deserving of ''death''.) |
| 128 | * PoliceAreUseless: For once ''averted'' with the Hatchetfield PD, who actually do listen when Greenpeace Girl calls them about Tom's attempted vehicular homicide on her and show up to arrest him shortly after his car runs over Becky Barnes. It helps that this time they're represented by Mariah Rose Faith's character of [[ByTheBookCop Doug]] rather than Charlotte's awful husband [[CowboyCop Sam]]. |
| 129 | * TheProfessor: One of Jane's patients at St. Damien's is a former literature professor (played with aplomb by Creator/JeffBlim) who claims to have been studying the {{Magical Incantation}}s of the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Black Book]] when he [[GoMadFromTheRevelation went mad]] and was [[BedlamHouse institutionalized]]. Her obsession with his case leading her to listen to the audio tape he made of one of these incantations is the ContrivedCoincidence that causes this story to happen. |
| 130 | * PsychoExGirlfriend: Jane, after having her soul put inside a car becomes this when getting murderous around women Tom might like, having the goal to escape her automobile prison and possess their bodies at every opportunity. And at the end, she succeeds in doing so with Becky, even if Tom isn't around to see it. |
| 131 | * PsychoPsychologist: This story reveals that Jane's profession in life was as a psychiatrist at St. Damien's, and the version of Jane we meet seems perfectly willing to use her general analytical skills re: the human psyche and her specific knowledge of Tom's inner demons to get herself back in a human body, regardless of the cost. |
| 132 | * ReactionShot: The [=YouTube=] release has a brief but blatant cut back to Zoom's full gallery view immediately after Tom and Jane's sex scene so we can see the whole cast's reaction to it. |
| 133 | * SanitySlippage: Tom fears he's going insane when he first hears the car talk, and later, her actions and what she asks him to do drive him off the deep end for real... though not enough to actually try and harm Becky, as everyone assumes. |
| 134 | * SelfPunishmentOverFailure: ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' revealed that Tom thinks of Jane's death as the result of his own incompetence and hates himself over it as deeply as if he were a murderer; in this story, Jane seems aware of this guilt and ''exploits'' it in order to make Tom feel like he has no choice but to go along with her plan to undo it and bring her back, no matter the cost to himself or to others. Doug harshly sums up what looks from the outside like a purely irrational decision to throw away the life he'd been building before Jane came back: |
| 135 | -->Maybe the guy just didn't want to be happy. |
| 136 | * SentientVehicle: Tom's CoolCar comes back from the shop with a mind of its own and the ability to talk, because Jane's soul is possessing it. |
| 137 | * ShoutOut: Hatchetfield's local SuckECheeses, Pizza Pete's, shows up again in this story, as does Tim's favorite game at Pizza Pete's, ''Zombie House'' (an obvious BlandNameProduct for ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDead''). |
| 138 | ** TheNarrator spends a lot of time emphasizing the make and model of Tom's CoolCar (a 1986 Ford Fox-body Mustang), to the point where we can safely conclude there's some AuthorAppeal going on -- and the TitleSequence MusicVideo could easily serve as an actual Ford Mustang commercial (if an [[CargoShip unusually unsubtle]] one). |
| 139 | ** The TitleSequence gives a quick double plug by showing Tom listening to Music/TheEagles' ''The Very Best Of (2003)'' on Spotify. |
| 140 | * SignificantDoubleCasting: In both this story and "The Witch in the Web" Creator/JaimeLynBeatty plays an EvilMatriarch, although Pamela Foster is almost the exact opposite archetype of a "bad mom" as the ghost of Jane Perkins. (And unlike Pamela, Jane doesn't ever display any direct malice toward Tim himself, even if she puts him in an incredibly fucked up situation by the end of the story.) |
| 141 | * SpeakInUnison: Creator/JaimeLynBeatty and Kim Whalen do this for the final WhamLine to demonstrate to the audience that Jane is indeed possessing Becky's body. Since they're videoconferencing with each other, which makes successfully speaking in unison virtually impossible, they pull it off by drawing out the line as slowly as they possibly can. |
| 142 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: Robert Manion plays both Ethan Green and his father Tony. |
| 143 | * SuddenSequelHeelSyndrome: Jane, although if you look back at certain elements of her description in hindsight (like Emma calling her a ControlFreak or Tom describing her incessant need to poke at his {{Trauma Button}}s) it's arguably not ''that'' sudden. |
| 144 | * ThereAreNoTherapists: There ''are'' mental health professionals in this world, as Tom is well aware, since he was married to one; Becky urges him to contact a friend of hers who works in the psych wing at St. Damien's, but unfortunately he won't hear of it because Jane has browbeaten him into accepting that she's real and her secret must be kept. |
| 145 | ** Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of Tom's issues ''come from'' the fact that he was married to a psychiatrist and was used to leaning on her for all his mental health support, which means when she was gone he was unable to open himself up that intimately to anyone else -- and meant that when her ghost came back as a PsychoPsychologist he was completely open to all her manipulations. (This is TruthInTelevision, except for the ghost part -- mental health professionals will generally tell you that this is why treating a loved one you have a personal relationship with as a therapist is a bad idea, and a healthy therapeutic relationship requires a certain professional distance.) |
| 146 | * TomeOfEldritchLore: This story introduces the Hatchetfield universe's version of the [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Necronomicon]], known simply as "The Black Book". |
| 147 | * TragicKeepsake: Tom's Mustang -- the car Jane died in -- has become this for him. Lex and Ethan have an animated conversation about whether his quixotic -- and very expensive -- quest to restore it to exactly as it was before the accident is an understandable decision or not, and whether it's healthy to indulge the romantic impulse to hang onto a loss from your past and never fully let it go. This story ends up literalizing the metaphor about how a reminder of grief like this can keep you from moving on, in a disturbingly visceral way. |
| 148 | * TraumaButton: Tom and Tim's first scene reveals that Tom still feels significant discomfort after the accident from looking at video games involving car crashes -- on top of his ''existing'' PTSD from Iraq over games that involve gun violence. Later on, Jane reveals her awareness of Tom's more specific TraumaButton of being blamed for her death in the accident and accused of not really caring about her enough to prevent her death, and uses it shamelessly to guilt him into obeying her orders. |
| 149 | * TraumaCongaLine: Tom already had a hell of one before this story began and the events of "Jane's a Car" push him all the way to his breaking point -- [[HeroicBSOD and beyond]]. Jane ''intentionally doing this'', knowing how fragile Tom's psyche is and where all his weak points are, makes her very very difficult to forgive. |
| 150 | * UnseenNoMore: This story finally brings PosthumousCharacter Jane Perkins -- about whom we've [[SmallRoleBigImpact heard a lot but never seen]] -- onstage, and has her played by fan favorite actress who's been relatively OutOfFocus in Hatchetfield, Creator/JaimeLynBeatty. |
| 151 | * VerbalBackspace: Becky never confessed to killing her ex-husband Stanley in this timeline, and when she ''almost'' does so she quickly walks it back. |
| 152 | -->'''Becky''': I was with my ex-husband for fifteen miserable years. I thank God every day that he's dead... to me. Dead to me. I don't know where he is. |
| 153 | * VisibleInvisibility: Jane's human self is visible to the audience (superimposed on a [[GreenScreen Zoom backdrop]] of the Mustang her soul is inhabiting) but not anyone else -- even she doesn't actually experience her own body as anything but a car, which is a big part of what's [[AndIMustScream driving her to extreme measures]] to get her body back ([[{{Pun}} so to speak]]). |
| 154 | * WatchOutForThatTree: The Witchwood is somewhat thickly planted and not a safe place to drive, and unfortunately for all of Jane's CarFu she isn't able to avoid hitting the tree directly behind Becky after running her over, setting up the (initially) ambiguous ending. |
| 155 | * WhamLine: "Mommy's home." |
| 156 | * WholePlotReference: A very obvious one for Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/{{Christine}}'', although Christine was ''just'' a SinisterCar with no real explanation for why she was sentient and evil. A car that's specifically haunted by the ghost of a woman who died in it is the subject of Creator/RLStine's ''[[Literature/{{Goosebumps}} The Haunted Car]]'', and a benevolent version of the [[HauntedTechnology "haunted car"]] trope is the premise of ''Series/MyMotherTheCar''. |
| 157 | ** The macabre situation of going "shopping" for new bodies to put his dead wife's consciousness in has been done before in ''Film/TheBrainThatWouldntDie'' and ''Film/TheManWithTwoBrains'', although Tom is a lot less enthusiastic and proactive about the process than the MadScientist protagonists of those movies were. |
| 158 | * WordSaladLyrics: The lyrics of "Jane's a Car" don't really make sense when talking about an actual car, just tossing off names of car parts at random -- including the ''immediate'' contradiction of saying the car both has a "carburetor" and "fuel injection". It makes it very clear very quickly that [[DoubleEntendre the lyrics aren't really about a car]], especially the lyrics saying "I've traded in for new.../I come right back to you..." (It's ''possible'' to keep on trading in a used car and then tracking it down and re-purchasing it, but much more logistically difficult than if he's really talking about a RelationshipRevolvingDoor with a person.) |
| 159 | * YouHaveToBelieveMe: Tom doesn't do a very good job of explaining to Becky what's going on in a way that doesn't make him sound crazy -- and, in fact, his confession that he's a danger to himself or others, i.e. "Sooner or later Jane's gonna make me run someone over", is a major tactical error in that it obligates her as a medical professional to call the police. But it's hard to really chide someone in his circumstances for not being in the clearest state of mind. |
| 160 | |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder: The Witch in the Web]] |
| 164 | |
| 165 | !! The Witch in the Web |
| 166 | |
| 167 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_witch_in_the_web.jpg]] |
| 168 | [[caption-width-right:225:''"A witch is a witch for a reason."'']] |
| 169 | |
| 170 | When Hannah Foster's dreams are haunted by an evil witch, and her friend, Webby, goes missing, she'll need the help of a mysterious woman with strange powers to escape her own nightmare time... |
| 171 | |
| 172 | -->'''Musical sequences:'''\ |
| 173 | "The Witch in the Web" performed by Kendall Nicole\ |
| 174 | "The Web I Spin For You" performed by Mariah Rose Faith |
| 175 | |
| 176 | ---- |
| 177 | |
| 178 | * TheEighties: This decade comes up multiple times in the story -- Miss Holloway is a DiscoDan whose fashion senes and lifestyle seem stuck in the 1980s, and the first Tree-Person from an earlier time period we meet in the Witchwood is Casey, a teenage girl who was "planted" in 1986. |
| 179 | * AbsurdlySharpClaws: Willabella's OneWingedAngel form has long, jagged fingernails as sharp and hard as knives. |
| 180 | * AbusiveParents: Pamela Foster, to extremes, although it's abuse born of general negligence (tied to her depression and drug addiction) rather than concentrated malice. She makes it very clear she doesn't see her kids as much more than an annoyance she'd be happy to be rid of, though. |
| 181 | * ActorAllusion: |
| 182 | ** The Three-Girl Creature is played by Creator/JaimeLynBeatty, Mariah Rose Faith and Creator/LaurenLopez -- the three female members of the ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' cast, a show that centered on the Starlight Theatre, the venue where Miss Holloway apparently confronted the Creature in her memory. (The three of them played teenage girls pulling a similar SpeakInUnison gag to the Creature during the "Not Your Seed" scene, a broadly similar situation where Alice, Deb and the unnamed third girl had become part of a supernatural HiveMind.) |
| 183 | ** For once, a Starkid CreatorCouple play a couple onscreen in a show, if only an {{implied| love interest}} one in this case -- Curt Mega and Kim Whalen are married in RealLife and play Duke and Miss Holloway here. |
| 184 | ** Hannah's ukulele is represented as the ukulele Creator/TeamStarkid actually gave Kendall Nicole as a gift after a performance of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' that fell on her birthday. In a twist on the usual version of this trope, Kendall's real ukulele, which is black, represents the ''false'' ukulele Willabella swaps out for her real one to take her power away. Hannah's real ukulele, which is a shining, pristine white, is never physically seen during the show -- it's represented by the black ukulele held so we can't clearly see its body. |
| 185 | * AllThereInTheScript: The script and the end credits confirm the hints in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' that Uncle Wiley used to be Colonel Wilbur Cross, though this is never brought up in the actual story. |
| 186 | * ApocalypseMaiden: Hannah turns out to be a classic example of this trope -- she's TheChosenOne, with inborn PsychicPowers so immense that if her evil ancestor's EvilPlan to [[RaisedAsAHost possess and replace her]] succeeds, she will effectively become TheAntichrist. |
| 187 | * ArtisticLicense: File this as possibly ArtisticLicenseBiology or ArtisticLicenseGeography -- Donna says that there's only "a few short months until Hatchetfield's Honey Festival", but also says this is "as the leaves fall and the jack-o-lanterns light up", i.e. this is October and the Honey Festival is in the ''dead of winter''. In RealLife, a "honey festival" is almost always at the height of summer, around August, which is when the peak honey harvest from beehives is -- whereas bees don't give any honey in winter, when all the flowers are dead, and when it's a terrible time to hold a festival in general (''especially'' winter in a lakeside community in Michigan). After ''Nightmare Time 2'', which revolved around the Honey Festival, Nick Lang confirmed that the festival does indeed happen in midsummer and the intended joke here was that Hatchetfield is eagerly looking forward to the next one ten months in advance. |
| 188 | * BadLiar: Hannah isn't particularly good at lying to adults. |
| 189 | -->'''Duke''': She inside? |
| 190 | -->'''Hannah''': No. |
| 191 | -->'''Duke''': She tell you to say that? |
| 192 | -->'''Hannah''': Uh-huh. |
| 193 | * BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: We get a one-two punch of these -- Miss Holloway has a "rematch" with a LivingMemory of her ArchNemesis Uncle Wiley, which serves to awaken Hannah's PsychicPowers and serve as a prelude for Hannah's FinalBattle against Willabella Muckwab in her own mind. |
| 194 | * BestServedCold: There's a lot of this going around in the Hatchetfield setting, but this story reveals that in particular Willabella Muckwab has been waiting ''two hundred years'' to return to Earth and take her revenge against the town of Hatchetfield and the rest of humanity for her first death. The last remnants of Uncle Wiley have likewise been waiting for the opportunity to do the same to Miss Holloway for killing him several years ago. And Webby herself, according to the lyrics of "The Web I Spin for You", has been waiting untold eons of time as TheChessmaster to finish her plan to finally get Wiggly back for betraying her long ago. |
| 195 | * BlackAndGrayMorality: Miss Holloway gestures to this concept when talking to Hannah; we never see her do anything actually ethically questionable onscreen, but she tells us that she's "mostly" a good witch and that, even though she knows using the Black Book "has a price", she willingly pays it because "sometimes we have to use something bad to do something good". Similarly, Webby, the BigGood of the setting, comes off very much as GoodIsNotNice, taking visible satisfaction in finally killing the Witch (and being ambiguously involved in the creation of the Witchwood, which at some points required actual murder of those with a "touch of the Gift" who weren't willing to be {{Human Sacrifice}}s). |
| 196 | * BlatantLies: Pamela does this whenever cornered about her abominable neglect of Hannah, and Duke obviously sees through it but the rules governing his job mean he has to accept it. |
| 197 | -->'''Pamela''': I cannot believe Hannah would just steal one of my beers! I taught you better 'n that, young lady! |
| 198 | -->''(later)'' |
| 199 | -->'''Duke''': She needs to be engaged with something! Where is her ukulele? |
| 200 | -->'''Pamela''': What? |
| 201 | -->'''Duke''': The instrument you took from her? |
| 202 | -->'''Pamela''': ''Me?'' ''Take'' from my own child? |
| 203 | -->'''Duke''': That's what she said. |
| 204 | -->'''Pamela''': Well, [[{{Hypocrite}} we've already established she's a lying little turd]]. |
| 205 | * BodyHorror: The Three-Girl Creature is one of the most shocking examples in a Hatchetfield story thus far. "Lex's" transformation into Willabella Muckwab's [[OneWingedAngel final form]] also qualifies, especially the detail that she does so by ''[[TearOffYourFace literally ripping off Lex's face]]''. |
| 206 | * BodySurf: Willabella Muckwab's grand EvilPlan is to invade the body of her descendant, Hannah Foster, and use her PsychicPowers to TakeOverTheWorld. Uncle Wiley claims to be inspired by this plan and comes up with a similar one on the fly, to escape his status as a LivingMemory of Miss Holloway by jumping into the unconscious body of the nearby Pamela Foster. Luckily, Hannah foils them both. |
| 207 | * BurnTheWitch: The 1824 {{Flashback}} sequence plays out very much like this, although in this case the Witch was very much guilty of using dark magic fueled by [[WouldHurtAChild murdering the town's children]], and the Judge's KnightTemplar attitude is therefore justified. |
| 208 | * TheBusCameBack: After Lex was PutOnABus offstage by being taken to prison before the beginning of the story, we suddenly find out Pamela confessed to her crimes and got Lex and Ethan released with time served, and [[HopeSpot Lex has come back to be Hannah's legal guardian while Pamela serves her sentence]]. This is, of course, [[SchmuckBait all a very obvious trick]] by the Witch in the Web, but after Hannah awakens for real, Miss Holloway reveals she was able to leave a post-hypnotic suggestion in Pamela's mind to make this happen for real too. |
| 209 | * CallBack: We get one to the "magic hat" scene in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', revealing Ethan Green is one of the children Miss Holloway helped back in the day and the baseball cap is a typical MagicFeather Miss Holloway leaves with kids to "remind them that they're warriors". |
| 210 | ** Willabella Muckwab was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit of {{Foreshadowing}} in "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man", where she was briefly mentioned as one of the other folk legends associated with the Witchwood alongside Wooly-Foot the Ape-Man. |
| 211 | ** Wiggly and Uncle Wiley's unexpected appearance was a major SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome for fans of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', as was the [[NoodleIncident vaguely hinted-at backstory]] about how, in this timeline, Miss Holloway essentially intervened in the plot of ''Black Friday'' before it began and prevented it. |
| 212 | ** Wiggly's "We just keep running into each other, don't we, Hannah?" is a CallBack to the HiveMind (speaking through Alice, Deb and the Hatchetfield Bee)'s "We just keep running into each other, don't we, Paul?" in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''. |
| 213 | ** TheReveal of the five dolls representing the five brothers who make up the Lords in Black: in order (the exact same order in which the mysterious voice listed their names in "Jane's a Car" and in which they are shown during the end credits): an unfamiliar blue one with a stone face, suggestive of the meteor and its "blue shit" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''; the two we've seen previously in "Watcher World" and "Time Bastard"; a totally new one for a story yet untold; and finally, Wiggly himself. |
| 214 | ** The version of "Lex" Hannah meets inside the LotusEaterMachine reveals she's an impostor in a horrible moment where she quotes Hannah's abusive mom from earlier in the episode. |
| 215 | -->'''Hannah''': Those are... her brothers. They're ''bad''. |
| 216 | -->'''Lex''': Who told you that? The nasty little spider you think is your friend? |
| 217 | -->'''Hannah''': ...Uh-huh. |
| 218 | -->'''Lex''': Well. We've already established she's a ''lying little turd''. |
| 219 | ** Miss Holloway's "Nightmare Time" memory is one of some kind of [[FinalBattle final confrontation]] with Uncle Wiley at the Starlight Theater, the same place Paul Matthews had his confrontation with the Meteor's HiveMind in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''. For bonus synchronicity, Miss Holloway initially came to the theater to investigate the Three-Girl Creature, the result of a botched FusionDance combining three humans into one -- played by the same three actresses who played the three teen girls who SpeakInUnison as the representatives of the HiveMind during "Not Your Seed" in that same show. |
| 220 | ** One of the [[HearingVoices voices]] that calls out to Hannah from the void beyond the Starlight Theater in Miss Holloway's Nightmare Time is played by Robert Manion, greeting Hannah with the same words Ethan Green (and Ethan's Bad Double) did in ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. |
| 221 | * CerebusSyndrome: There are very few actual jokes in this episode, and what few there are are heavily tinged with BlackComedy -- this GrandFinale is one for the fans who came for the MythArc and see the comedy as secondary. |
| 222 | * CharacterDevelopment: Hannah has become a lot more lucid at 14 than she appeared to be a year ago during ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', though it helps that she's talking to Miss Holloway most of the time, who both understands and believes what she says about the supernatural and is willing to meet her halfway in a way Lex and Ethan weren't. |
| 223 | * TheChosenOne: Hannah turns out to be this -- the long-prophesied descendant of Willabella Muckwab, born as the "most powerful psychic mind ever to exist", the only human aware of TheMultiverse and the only one with the power to eventually save or damn Hatchetfield's different timelines as a whole. |
| 224 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: According to "The Web I Spin for You", this will be the Lords in Black's eventual downfall; they created their greatest enemy, Webby, when Wiggly betrayed his sister in some unspecified way long ago, and the "witches he summons" always betray or are betrayed by him in the long run (because [[NoHonorAmongThieves such is the nature of evil]]). |
| 225 | * CoconutSuperpowers: Angela Giarratana "transforms" from Lex into the Witch just by turning on a purple filter on her Zoom window, and "[[TearOffYourFace pulling off]]" her face and leaving it [[NarmCharm stretched out and distorted]] for the rest of the scene. |
| 226 | * CollapsingLair: Hannah seizing control of her mind back from Willabella is represented by her smashing the walls of the setting Willabella built in her dreams -- originally the idealized version of the Foster family trailer, transformed into her 1824 witch's hut when she reveals herself. Once the witch's hut completely crumbles, there's nothing left but a BlankWhiteVoid, with no walls left to protect the Witch from the gaze of Webby, her cosmic enemy. |
| 227 | * ColorMotifs: The "Black and White" is represented by Hannah's ukulele shifting from white to black depending on whether it's the real one or Willabella's substitute. There's also Willabella herself having a purple filter when she reveals her true form, the Lords in Black being represented by their ColorCodedForYourConvenience doll forms, and Webby showing up in her [[LightIsGood white dress with white hair]]. |
| 228 | * CompellingVoice: Miss Holloway has one of these (represented by reverb on the soundtrack), allowing her to perform something like hypnosis on Pamela to put her into ForcedSleep and to use on Hannah and herself to go into a trance for a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind, only taking effect far, far faster than anything RealLife hypnotists can do. |
| 229 | * TheConstant: Miss Holloway's 1980s aesthetic remains constant even as everything around Hannah changes to match the Witch's PastLifeMemories, serving as Hannah's one reality check as Willabella tries to impose LossOfIdentity on her. |
| 230 | * CoolSword: The "Black Blade" Miss Holloway used to kill Uncle Wiley. We learn very little about it, but apparently the blade had to be left stabbed through Uncle Wiley's corpse to [[SealedEvilInACan keep him from coming back]]. |
| 231 | * CreepyHighPitchedVoice: Once the Witch reveals her true self, her voice turns into a constant ear-splitting shriek, literally like nails on a chalkboard. |
| 232 | * CurbStompBattle: Hannah's TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening allows her to blast Uncle Wiley's LivingMemory into atoms with a single shriek of rage. When she fully gains control of her powers inside her own mind, she's able to smash Willabella Muckwab's SupervillainLair she built in her mind to pieces with the Witch powerless to stop her -- and then Webby reappears and [[ReducedToDust turns the Witch herself to dust]] with a flick of a finger. |
| 233 | * ADayInTheLimelight: A long-awaited one for ''Theatre/BlackFriday'''s WaifProphet Hannah Foster, giving some clarity on the mysterious nature of her powers and her ImaginaryFriend, the GiantSpider Webby. |
| 234 | * DejaVu: Hannah doesn't ''consciously'' recognize the Wiggly doll or Uncle Wiley from the AlternateTimeline of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' (notably, she didn't actually meet Uncle Wiley onstage in ''Black Friday'' either) but when the two of them act like they know her, she gets a horrible sinking feeling they're telling the truth. |
| 235 | * DemBones: The reanimated LivingMemory of Uncle Wiley starts off as just his animated skeleton, before a "flash of green light" regenerates his flesh and clothing. |
| 236 | * DreamEmergencyExit: Miss Holloway is unable to awaken from her Nightmare Time and escape Uncle Wiley strangling her until Hannah destroys Wiley -- and the entire dream-version of the Starlight Theater -- with one great psychic blast. Similarly, Hannah is only able to escape from her own Nightmare Time after she smashes the setting around her (her family's trailer, transformed into Willabella's witch's hut) with her ukulele, and Webby comes back to kill the Witch. |
| 237 | * DreamTellsYouToWakeUp: Hannah finally escapes Nightmare Time when Webby directly tells her that it's time to wake up. |
| 238 | * DreamWalker: The Witch in the Web confronts Hannah in her dreams. |
| 239 | * DreamWithinADream: The Witch's final tactic to try to ensnare Hannah is to let her "wake up" in her bed in her room, only to find that it's a much cleaner, nicer, brighter version of her room and that her beloved sister Lex is there with her, having been mysteriously and suddenly let out of prison. [[SchmuckBait The audience obviously didn't buy it one bit]], but you can't fault Hannah for at least briefly wanting to believe. |
| 240 | * EarnYourHappyEnding: It's a SurprisinglyHappyEnding for a Hatchetfield story, but after the long TraumaCongaLine of Hannah's "Nightmare Time" -- leaving her paralyzed with terror for most of the story before its climactic FinalBattle -- you can't say she didn't earn it. |
| 241 | * EvilOldFolks: Willabella Muckwab was already quite old -- and quite evil -- when she died the first time, but apparently two hundred years as the evil spirit haunting the Witchwood has turned her into a horrifyingly twisted hag with literally rotting, stinking flesh barely clinging to a warped and twisted skeleton. It probably doesn't help that "Nightmare Time" is a SpiritWorld where [[EvilMakesYouUgly your appearance reflects your personality]]. |
| 242 | ** The Puritan Judge in the {{Flashback}} to 1824 may be more KnightTemplar than genuinely evil, but he's terrifying nonetheless, and all the more terrifying for being a decrepit, wrinkled old man determined to see Hannah-as-Willabella hanged. |
| 243 | * FamilialBodySnatcher: Willabella Muckwab has been waiting for almost 200 years for the ChosenOne to be born into her matrilineal bloodline ("the daughter of my daughter's daughter, and her daughter's daughter...") so that she can [[GrandTheftMe steal her body and harness her powers]] to finish her EvilPlan from long ago. |
| 244 | * FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: The Witch being ReducedToDust isn't ''too'' bad, but Webby still makes Hannah close her eyes to avoid seeing it. Uncle Wiley gives a gleeful, gruesome description of the mutilations he enacted on Miss Holloway's body in the AlternateTimeline where he won his duel against her. |
| 245 | * {{Flashback}}: Hannah and Miss Holloway's "Nightmare Time" is a DreamLand cobbled together from their own traumatic memories -- although unlike a typical flashback, just because these worlds are ''based on'' the past doesn't mean [[YourMindMakesItReal their imagination can't twist them into new events that threaten their lives]]. Also, part of what's going on with Nightmare Time is that the Witch has been invading Hannah's mind and replacing her bad memories with the Witch's own PastLifeMemories. |
| 246 | * FriendToAllChildren: Both Duke and Miss Holloway have dedicated their lives to helping kids, albeit in very different ways. |
| 247 | * GodsHandsAreTied: The BigGood Webby, for whatever reason, cannot act on the world directly and must act through proxies -- the Hatchetmen who initially created [[SealedEvilInACan the web in the Witchwood]] implicitly being one of them. Webby teaches Hannah songs that are meant to keep the Witch's ghost at bay, which only work as long as Hannah can remember the lyrics and the tune and doesn't lose her memory of Webby herself; as soon as she does so, the Witch starts gaining in power and taking over her mind. It's only by reclaiming her memories of Webby that she gains control of her powers, and it's implied that only by doing so can she [[WillingChanneler channel Webby's presence]] and allow Webby to finally kill the Witch directly. |
| 248 | * GoodOldBoy: Duke, Miss Holloway and Pamela Foster all speak with some degree of a Southern drawl and exhibit laid-back, working-class mannerisms. Duke and Miss Holloway do so as completely sympathetic good-guy characters, to counterbalance the LowerClassLout stereotype Pamela falls into. Later on, Uncle Wiley from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' reappears, who talks much the same way. |
| 249 | * GrandFinale: This is the grand finale for Season 1, uniting the entire combined cast of the Hatchetfield series. |
| 250 | * GreaterScopeVillain: Willabella Muckwab the Muck-Witch turns out to have been one for the whole Hatchetfield series, possibly the biggest human BigBad in the setting -- she's the first human to discover and worship the Lords in Black, the author of the Black Book and the evil spirit the Witchwood and the town of Hatchetfield were [[SealedEvilInACan built to contain]]. All of the horror and misery of the Hatchetfield series is at least indirectly her fault, and this timeline's version of Uncle Wiley -- the previous human(-ish) BigBad from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' -- graciously cedes the BigBad title to her and now claims to only be her [[TheDragon dragon]]. |
| 251 | * HalloweenEpisode: This episode went up a week before Halloween in RealLife. In-universe, it doesn't take place ''on'' Halloween, but sometime shortly before it -- Donna on the news mentions that there's "jack-o-lanterns going up" around town. |
| 252 | * HarmfulToMinors: [[TheCavalry Webby reappears at the last minute]] to spare Hannah from having to kill the Witch herself, and tells Hannah to close her eyes so she won't have to see Webby do it for her. |
| 253 | * HearingVoices: Hannah is bombarded by voices when she enters Miss Holloway's mind -- some of them cajoling and tempting, some cruel and threatening -- and one of which is the very familiar voice of Jon Matteson as Wiggly. |
| 254 | * HeroOfAnotherStory: Miss Holloway, and it's a ''hell'' of a story -- it turns out she ''killed Uncle Wiley'' (who came off as TheOmnipotent Satan figure in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'') in half of all known timelines and ''personally prevented the apocalypse and saved the world''. Unfortunately, there are still future apocalypses coming down the pike, and EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce... |
| 255 | * HumanSacrifice: It's revealed that the Witchwood was created by this, by a mysterious AncientConspiracy known as the Hatchetmen. |
| 256 | * IWillOnlySlowYouDown: Miss Holloway demands that Hannah run for the exit to the Starlight Theater and let her deal with Uncle Wiley; luckily for her, Hannah turns back at the last minute and [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening gets enough of a grip on her power]] to save her life and annihilate Uncle Wiley just before she dies. |
| 257 | * IconicOutfit: Miss Holloway has a very [[DiscoDan '80s]] outfit consisting of beat-up sneakers, teased and blow-dried EightiesHair, and an iconic oversized denim jacket. Turns out that jacket is also the centerpiece of a different character's IconicOutfit -- Uncle Wiley took it as a BattleTrophy from her in the set of timelines where he won their duel and killed her, and it forms part of his all-denim outfit in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' (retroactively letting us know ''Black Friday'' was one of those timelines). |
| 258 | * IdenticalGrandson: Played with; Willabella Muckwab and her distant descendant Lex Foster are both played by Angela Giarratana, but of course, this connection exists between [[ActingForTwo a ton of other characters in the franchise as well]]. Instead, Willabella sharing Lex's actress serves the function of making it emotionally impactful when Lex, in her only appearance in the story, is revealed to actually be Willabella in disguise and we witness the transformation onscreen. TheNarrator's description and the way Angela [[EvilIsHammy puts her all into contorting her face]] suggests that Willabella, in fact, does not much resemble Lex. |
| 259 | * ImpliedLoveInterest: Duke and Miss Holloway have a lot of flirtatious banter with each other, but nothing that confirms that they're actually dating (and a few lines that imply that Duke would ''like'' their relationship to be romantic but Miss Holloway is resisting). |
| 260 | * ImprobableWeaponUser: Once Hannah reclaims her white ukulele, the symbol of her power, she gets busy smashing the Witch's hut to pieces with it -- and since Nightmare Time is "a world of dreams and symbols", it's just as destructive a weapon as a sledgehammer or a machete would be. |
| 261 | * {{Infodump}}: The device of Miss Holloway's LectureAsExposition when explaining the Black Book's workings to Hannah, the JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind mechanic allowing us a series of {{Flashback}}s, and both Uncle Wiley and Willabella herself's EvilGloating means we get through a ''lot'' of {{Exposition}} about the Hatchetfield setting by the end of the story -- although there are still quite a few {{Sequel Hook}}s and [[RiddleForTheAges riddles for the ages]] left at the end, not least of which is [[ShroudedInMyth Miss Holloway herself]]. |
| 262 | * InterfaceSpoiler: Jon Matteson showed up for this episode wearing a Renaissance Faire-style BadassCape, leading people to speculate over his costume's significance. Subverted, in that, hilariously, Jon has no significant role in this episode at all and the cape was just for flavor during his brief appearance as a [[BitCharacter random member]] of [[TorchesAndPitchforks the angry mob in 1824]], with him wearing it the whole time just an example of Jon being "extra". |
| 263 | * ItWasWithYouAllAlong: [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening Just when the Witch seems like she's about to win her final victory]], Hannah remembers Miss Holloway's reminder that Nightmare Time takes place ''in her own mind'' and she has final authority over what happens there -- and that the Witch ''cannot'' keep the white ukulele that symbolizes her creativity and power from her, and that, sure enough, as soon as she remembers its existence it's right there next to her hand. |
| 264 | * JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: The latter half of this story takes place inside Hannah's personal "Nightmare Time", i.e. the DreamLand composed of her most traumatic memories that connects to the SpiritWorld (through which Willabella Muckwab is trying to attack and possess her), with a brief detour into that of her newfound {{mentor| archetype}} Miss Holloway. Culminates in a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind for both of them. |
| 265 | * JumpScare: It's hard to do a proper one of these with a low-budget Zoom script reading, but Starkid came close to pulling one off anyway by having Jon Matteson's window suddenly appear with Wiggly's face filling the camera when Wiggly speaks to Hannah for the first time. |
| 266 | * KentBrockmanNews: Dan and Donna are on the news again in this episode and, as usual, are broadcasting about a pointless HumanInterestStory containing no useful information. Pamela is only watching it because she considers watching Dan talk about anything to be EatingTheEyeCandy. |
| 267 | * KnightTemplar: The terrifying Judge ordering Willabella Muckwab's execution -- which, in this [[FakeMemories false memory]] planted by the Witch, is ''Hannah's'' execution -- is a pitch-perfect embodiment of this archetype. |
| 268 | * LaserGuidedAmnesia: The Witch's psychic attacks on Hannah's mind during her nightmares are specifically geared to wiping away her memories of her NotSoImaginaryFriend Webby, especially the songs Webby taught her to sing to keep the Witch's spirit at bay. It turns out this is just the first step toward manipulating Hannah's memories and replacing her own past with Willabella's PastLifeMemories, {{Gaslighting}} her until she [[LossOfIdentity believes she is the Witch]] and Willabella is able to [[GrandTheftMe possess her completely]]. |
| 269 | * LastEpisodeNewCharacter: Miss Holloway was unveiled on social media shortly before the episode premiered. She and Duke, as social workers who care deeply for Hannah and help her with her problems both mundane and supernatural, would seem to be the most significant Hatchetfield characters to debut in ''Nightmare Time'', and were never seen or mentioned until now, in the final story of the season. |
| 270 | * LeakingCanOfEvil: This story functions as a {{reveal}} that the Witchwood has always been this -- a "web" created to trap the witch's ghost all the way back in 1824, against which she's been struggling all that time and putting what mischief into the world she can through the holes in the barrier. |
| 271 | * {{Leitmotif}}: Once more some elaborate work done in this department by the inimitable Matt Dahan: |
| 272 | ** We get a CallForward to "The Web I Spin for You" as the opening to the episode, so that the SolemnEndingTheme can serve as BookEnds. |
| 273 | ** The "Nightmare Time" riff shows up ''during'' a story for the first time (as opposed to BookEnds opening and closing the story), playing at dramatic moments like whenever Hannah actually falls asleep and enters "Nightmare Time", or when the dolls of the Lords in Black appear, and one last time to announce the return of Ethan's magic hat "imbued with the power of Grayskull". |
| 274 | ** "Peanuts!" gets a reprise under Dan and Donna's morning news report. |
| 275 | ** There's a new, wistful theme associated with the Witchwood and the Tree-People, which translates into the familiar "spooky" Witchwood theme at the moment Hannah gets sucked into the center of the Witchwood and wakes up in 1824. |
| 276 | ** The theme associated with Hannah's visions in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' -- which became part of the tune of "Do You Want To Play?" -- comes back here when Hannah has particularly insightful moments. |
| 277 | ** Duke's theme is a jazzy, upbeat version of the theme from "Show Me Your Hands?" (the Hatchetfield PD's motif), as a ReasonableAuthorityFigure in contrast to the cops. |
| 278 | ** The tune from the verses of "[=CaliforMIA=]" ("My mom's a bitch!") comes back whenever people are discussing Lex and Hannah's home life with their mother. |
| 279 | ** Matt composes a new theme -- vaguely dissonant and meandering -- as "Miss Holloway's theme" that follows her around when she uses her powers or questions are raised about her past. When Duke and Miss Holloway are alone together, his theme and hers get mashed up. |
| 280 | ** There's a second new theme, a leitmotif for the Lords in Black, that plays when the Black Book is first revealed, when the false Lex starts pulling out the Lords in Black dolls, and when she transforms into her true form as the Witch in the Web. |
| 281 | ** A particularly shocking moment for the audience is when the ''Nightmare Time'' ThemeTune proper [[TitleThemeDrop shows up itself as a leitmotif]] when Hannah first sees her ukulele has been replaced with the Witch's fake one in the waking world. |
| 282 | ** The TitleTrack of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', which played when Lex thought she was going to die in that show, plays again when the Judge pronounces sentence on Hannah and is about to execute her. |
| 283 | ** The tune of "Let It Out", which accompanied a FinalBattle at the Starlight Theater in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', plays again at the introduction of the Starlight Theater nightmare in Miss Holloway's mind. |
| 284 | ** Wiggly's surprise appearance comes with the reprise of his leitmotif from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' (which became part of the chorus of "Wiggle"), which underscores the resurrection of Uncle Wiley. |
| 285 | ** Once Wiley returns to life, his jazzy bass theme from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' comes back with him. |
| 286 | ** The opening verse of "What If Tomorrow Comes?" ("Tomorrow will come/Tomorrow won't come/Will tomorrow come today?") starts playing when Uncle Wiley brings up the concept of TheMultiverse. It plays again as a TriumphantReprise when Hannah wins her FinalBattle and destroys the Witch's hut. |
| 287 | ** The bridge of "Black Friday" ("At first I didn't know what she was to me..."), representing Lex and Hannah's relationship, plays when the false Lex first appears in Hannah's dream. It cuts off when Hannah starts to realize who "Lex" really is, and then comes back in earnest when she finds Lex's ukulele. |
| 288 | ** The chorus of "What If Tomorrow Comes?" is a leitmotif for Hannah eventually finding peace -- her TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening is accompanied by a major-key TriumphantReprise of the first line of this theme, repeated over and over, and the ending scene after Hannah wakes up is a quiet piano reprise of this tune, which notably ends the story ''without'' transitioning to the "Nightmare Time riff" at the FadeToBlack. |
| 289 | * LivingMemory: In this timeline, Miss Holloway killed the ''real'' Uncle Wiley years ago, and all we're seeing is her repressed traumatic memory of the event. Unfortunately, Hannah's PsychicPowers are vast enough that a single errant spark of them is enough to reawaken this memory into a fully-aware psychic construct that's clever and powerful enough to outwit Miss Holloway -- the mind he's parasitically dependent on for existence -- and ''almost'' leap into Pamela's body and resurrect himself. |
| 290 | * LotusEaterMachine: Willabella Muckwab's final gambit after Hannah saves Miss Holloway by destroying her Nightmare Time and returning to her own mind is to present her with an idealized, utopian version of her room at home and disguise herself as her sister Lex, telling her that if she "[[CallBack stays in Drowsy-Town]]" with her (and lets Willabella pilot her body and mind up in the real world) then she never need be unhappy again. Hannah is perilously close to accepting, but she won't stop asking about the ukulele the real Lex gave her that serves as her connection to Webby, [[BerserkButton which starts pissing "Lex" off]]. |
| 291 | * LowerClassLout: Pamela Foster is the classic "trailer trash" stereotype, which Lex has been desperately trying to rise above and to take Hannah away from. |
| 292 | * MagicFeather: Hannah needs her white ukulele -- a gift she got from Lex and the only object of value she owns -- to keep playing the songs Webby taught her to keep Willabella's spirit away, and when Willabella uses her own powers to swap out the white ukulele for a black one it renders her helpless against Willabella's [[DreamWalker attacks on her mind in her dreams]]. The climax reveals, however, that the ukulele's power was only symbolic and that the power was inside herself all along -- and once she realizes this inside her [[DreamLand dreamscape]] it turns out the ukulele [[ItWasWithYouAllAlong was with her all along]]. |
| 293 | ** This story also gives us a CallBack to Ethan's "magic" baseball cap in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' and reveals that it's probably also this -- the baseball cap is one of the tokens Miss Holloway gives to kids she helps "to remind them that they're warriors", but the actual power always comes from the person themselves. |
| 294 | * MagicMusic: Lex bought Hannah a ukulele as a gift a long time ago, and Webby has been singing songs in her mind, which help her retain her psychic connection to her and keep the Witch's soul at bay. Pamela confiscating the ukulele from her so she can get some sleep at night -- giving her no remaining tools to keep the Witch from taking over her dreams -- is the inciting incident that begins the story. |
| 295 | * MakeThemRot: This time, when Uncle Wiley tosses his half-eaten apple to Hannah, it instantly dissolves into maggots and mush in her hand -- possibly a side effect of the general atmosphere of decay permeating Miss Holloway's nightmare version of the Starlight Theater. |
| 296 | * MeaningfulName: We find out Willabella Muckwab being called "[[ThePigpen the Muck-witch]]" wasn't ''just'' a riff on her last name when Lex's trailer transforms into her witch's hut and "dark muck drips down the walls". |
| 297 | * MeatPuppet: Uncle Wiley demonstrates a previously-unseen ability to do this, manipulating the unconscious Pamela's body to strangle Miss Holloway's body while she's helplessly trancing in Nightmare Time. |
| 298 | * MentorArchetype: Miss Holloway becomes a classic one for Hannah, becoming the Virgil figure leading Hannah-as-Dante through the metaphysical Hell of Nightmare Time. |
| 299 | * MrExposition: A lot of what we learn about [[TheMultiverse the Hatchetfield multiverse]] in this story is the result of Uncle Wiley giving a lengthy EvilGloating MotiveRant about how close Willabella Muckwab's EvilPlan is to fruition. |
| 300 | * MsFanservice: Mariah Rose Faith wears a revealing white dress to play Webby in "The Web I Spin for You". |
| 301 | * TheMultiverse: This story confirms that {{Alternate Timeline}}s exist, that beings like Uncle Wiley and his masters are aware of them, and that the ChosenOne Hannah is the only human to be vaguely aware of them and somehow her own nature is intimately tied to them. (Wiley tells us that "Everything shattered when she came!", and WordOfGod has dropped hints that her birth in 2005 is what allowed observably branching timelines to occur afterwards.) |
| 302 | * MusicalWorldHypotheses: We're told one of the ways Webby communicates to Hannah is [[MagicMusic "singing songs to her"]], and after seeing this show it's really obvious the MusicVideo of "The Witch in the Web" is Hannah literally singing a song Webby taught her to try to keep the nightmares away -- as, despite being performed by Hannah, a [[RewatchBonus second listen]] makes it clear that the lyrics depict a message from Webby to Hannah. "The Web I Spin for You" is also obviously one of Webby's songs, although it's unclear whether she's ever taught it to Hannah (since it seems to be about personal secrets about her relationship with her brothers Hannah may not be ready for). |
| 303 | ** That said, the actual version of "The Witch in the Web" we hear can't be diegetic -- in the waking world, anyway -- because it's played on a full-sized guitar, not a ukulele, and adds extra instrumentation from a strings section in the final verse. ([[WildMassGuessing Perhaps this is how the song originally sounded to Hannah when Webby taught it to her in her dreams.]]) |
| 304 | * MythArc: This story finally reveals the basic outline of the Hatchetfield series' MythArc -- the timelines that make up Hatchetfield's "multiverse" were split as a result of the supernatural event that also led to Hannah Foster being born as the ChosenOne, and Hannah's power is the only thing that can finally end the terror of the Lords in Black and bring about a true happy ending for all the timelines as a whole. |
| 305 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: Miss Holloway's desperation move of dragging Hannah out of the "Nightmare Time" Willabella arranged in Hannah's mind into her own "Nightmare Time" nearly proves disastrous -- Miss Holloway has the residual memories of some very powerful, malignant entities lurking in her own consciousness, and letting Hannah into those memories -- whose powers are to [[YourMindMakesItReal make nightmares real]] -- almost brings Uncle Wiley back into the world. |
| 306 | * NoodleIncident: The story of what happened when Miss Holloway tried to help the teenage girls who became the Three-Girl Creature and how it ended in a duel to the death with Uncle Wiley. |
| 307 | * NotSoImaginaryFriend: Hannah's original ImaginaryFriend, Webby -- who turns out to be a very real SpiritAdvisor -- has vanished from her mind since "Nightmare Time" began, forcing her to resort to talking to the Tree-People of the Witchwood (which from Duke's perspective just looks like "talking to a tree"). |
| 308 | * OneWingedAngel: The Witch's final transformation from her disguise as Lex into a gigantic, shrieking, rotting hag with razor-sharp claws. (Presumably she never looked like this in life, given that a lynch mob of mundane villagers was able to overpower and execute her.) |
| 309 | * OnlyOneName: Miss Holloway never gets a first name -- and even her enemies always call her "[[TheyCallMeMisterTibbs Miss]]". |
| 310 | * OpeningShoutOut: The TitleSequence for this story intersperses a simple shot of Hannah playing the ukulele with the same StockFootage of creepy-looking woods from the ''Nightmare Time'' main theme; it turns out this is supposed to be footage of the Witchwood Forest, whose origin story takes center stage in this story. |
| 311 | * OurGhostsAreDifferent: Somehow the [[TorchesAndPitchforks angry mob]] that killed Willabella Muckwab in 1824 knew that as a powerful witch her ghost would inevitably come back and find a way to resurrect or reincarnate herself if they didn't use magic to prevent it. It's implied something similar is true of the [[WasOnceAMan not-quite-human-anymore]] Wilbur Cross/Uncle Wiley, which is why Miss Holloway left the Black Blade pinning his corpse to a [[GeometricMagic magic circle]] in the real world after killing him, and why his LivingMemory inside her mind becomes fully sapient once activated by Hannah's power and capable of telling her things she didn't know. |
| 312 | * OutOfFocus: No ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' characters appear in this story except for a brief appearance from Dan and Donna on the Hatchetfield news. The rest of the cast of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' is also mostly offstage, with Lex and Ethan having been PutOnABus (to prison) and Tom Houston and his family, the subject of the previous story, being entirely disconnected from this one. We don't get any returning characters other than Hannah, until Wiggly and Uncle Wiley make their surprise reappearance midway through, and until the appearance of Lex in the ending (who very quickly turns out to be an illusion cast by the Witch). |
| 313 | ** People who were waiting for the stakes to get apocalyptic enough for General [=MacNamara=] and PEIP to show up in a ''Nightmare Time'' story... are still waiting. Notable because Uncle Wiley's backstory is intimately related to PEIP and [=MacNamara=] was presented as his ArchNemesis originally -- and yet neither is so much as mentioned here (possibly because this Uncle Wiley is only a LivingMemory of Miss Holloway's). |
| 314 | * PastLifeMemories: At the heart of Hannah's Nightmare Time is a memory planted in her mind by the Witch -- Willabella Muckwab's memory of her own execution -- in hopes that the trauma of reliving it will accelerate Hannah's LossOfIdentity so the Witch can take over. |
| 315 | * PointOfDivergence: According to Uncle Wiley, his duel with Miss Holloway at the Starlight Theater is a major one -- it was a 50/50 chance which one of them would win, and "his half" of the resulting timelines are the ones that lead directly to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt (as seen in the endings of both Hatchetfield stage shows that existed at the time), while "her half" is the half where the apocalypse was prevented (leading to the assorted timelines seen across ''Nightmare Time''). |
| 316 | * PowerEchoes: Miss Holloway's voice gets some reverb on it when she uses her CompellingVoice to hypnotize Pamela -- once she and Hannah embark on their JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind, ''everyone'' gets some psychic reverb to indicate they're not in the real world. |
| 317 | * PowerIncontinence: It turns out one reason Hannah is such a WeirdnessMagnet is that she's an incredibly potent psychic power source and ''she can't control it'', meaning that malign spiritual entities that get close to her can easily feed on her to empower themselves. Her accidental resurrection of Uncle Wiley inside Miss Holloway's mind as a LivingMemory is a major OhCrap moment. |
| 318 | * PreciousPuppy: "Lex" throws in one of these just to try to sweeten the deal for her LotusEaterMachine trap to keep Hannah asleep in "Drowsy-Town". |
| 319 | * PretendingToBeOnesOwnRelative: The ghost of Willabella Muckwab poses as her own distant descendant Lex Foster in the DreamLand known as Nightmare Time, as part of her gambit to take over her sister Hannah Foster's body and pose as her in the waking world. |
| 320 | * PsychicPowers: We get direct confirmation that these exist in this setting, and that having them is linked to the ability to perform more blatant forms of magic. Hannah, as the "most powerful psychic mind to ever exist", has been [[RaisedAsAHost groomed from birth]] to be the Witch's reincarnation for this reason; we're told that all of the souls who were killed by HumanSacrifice to form the web in the Witchwood were chosen because they had a "touch of the Gift". |
| 321 | * PutOnABus: The story begins with the surprising InMediasRes {{Reveal}} that Lex is nowhere to be seen and Hannah is living alone with Pamela -- exactly the scenario that Lex spent all of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' desperately trying to prevent. We're given a bit of a sickening BaitAndSwitch that this timeline's version of Lex and Ethan may have selfishly abandoned Hannah to go to California themselves -- only to get the painful {{reveal}} from Duke that Lex and Ethan aren't gone by choice but were ''arrested and sentenced to prison''. |
| 322 | * RealityBleed: Miss Holloway has repeatedly been lecturing Hannah that Nightmare Time takes place in your own mind, which means YourMindMakesItReal and [[BeYourself as long as you remain aware of this and don't get tricked into surrendering your power to someone else]] nothing in the dream can hurt you. Uncle Wiley, unfortunately, finds a loophole -- when he starts strangling Miss Holloway she finds that she can't do anything to stop her throat closing up no matter how hard she concentrates to [[RealityWarper warp reality]] -- because he's using Pamela's body to ''actually physically strangle her in real life'', where she has no power while her body is asleep. |
| 323 | * RealityWarper: Uncle Wiley and Miss Holloway both show off their ability to do this inside Miss Holloway's Nightmare Time, including having fun with cheap tricks like OffscreenTeleportation to JumpScare Hannah and [[SummonToHand summoning objects]] back and forth between camera cuts ([[TakeOurWordForIt if this story had actually been filmed]]). Wiley, of course, ends up conceding his ability to do this is always going to lose to Miss Holloway's given that they're in her mind and not his, which is why he "cheats" and starts using Pamela's body to strangle her in the real world. |
| 324 | * TheReveal: There's a number of {{Wham Line}}s and {{Wham Shot}}s in this story, but the big ones are TheReveal of Wiggly and Uncle Wiley inside Miss Holloway's memories, the five dolls representing the Lords in Black in "Lex's" backpack, "Lex" revealing her true identity as Willabella Muckwab, and the final surprise of Webby actually appearing onscreen as Mariah Rose Faith in the ending. |
| 325 | * ReducedToDust: Both Uncle Wiley and the Witch go out this way -- Wiley is atomized by a telekinetic blast, while the Witch [[FamilyUnfriendlyDeath horribly crumbles Thanos-Snap-style]] after Webby touches her on the forehead and wishes her gone. |
| 326 | * RememberTheNewGuy: Miss Holloway [[LastEpisodeNewCharacter genuinely is a new character]] who's never interacted with Hannah before, but Duke has apparently been the Fosters' social worker for many years without having gotten a single mention in ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. (As much of a NiceGuy as he is, it's pretty understandable Lex wouldn't put much stock in the system or care much about how he'd react to her technically-illegal plan to kidnap Hannah to California.) |
| 327 | * RemoteYetVulnerable: Uncle Wiley shows off his CombatPragmatist traits while squaring off against Miss Holloway in their BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind. Smirking that he knows he's only a LivingMemory of Miss Holloway's and can't hope to defeat her in psychic combat when it's her own mind and she controls the playing field, he declares "I'm gonna cheat!" and then PeoplePuppets Pamela's body ''in the real world'' to strangle Miss Holloway's body while she's caught in a helpless trance in Nightmare Time, a tactic she has no defense against. |
| 328 | * RippleEffectProofMemory: Hannah is the only living human who's able to see and hear into different {{Alternate Timeline}}s, although her awareness of them is vague and fleeting and as of yet only shows up as DejaVu. (This was hinted at with the song "What If Tomorrow Comes?" at the end of ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', and a CallBack to that tune plays in the underscoring when she has a flash of DejaVu in this story.) Uncle Wiley, being an only AmbiguouslyHuman servitor of the Lords in Black -- and who, in this timeline, has already died and come back as a ghost -- is fully aware of TheMultiverse, and gives a [[EvilGloating taunting, gnomic speech about it]] to Hannah and Miss Holloway just before attacking them. |
| 329 | * ScareChord: One plays when Miss Holloway first reveals the Black Book. |
| 330 | * ScreamingWoman: Kendall Nicole takes on more of the classic "scream queen" role than any past Hatchetfield character, spending pretty much the whole story terrified out of her mind and constantly screaming or recoiling from various horrors that assault her. (And for a 14-year-old child actor she does a ''really'' [[SugarWiki/SheReallyCanAct good job]].) |
| 331 | * ShoutOut: The Judge at Willabella's trial gives a [[RuleOfThree series of three aphorisms]] before executing her, which are Creator/NickLang quoting Creator/SamRaimi's "Three Rules of Horror" he named in a famous interview with Creator/StephenKing. These rules have, according to WordOfGod, served as the Creator/LangBrothers' guiding principle when writing the Hatchetfield series, and in-universe form a decent summary of the Judge's harsh BlackAndGrayMorality worldview: |
| 332 | -->'''Judge''': [[SecretTestOfCharacter The innocent must suffer...]] [[PayEvilUntoEvil The guilty must be punished...]] ''[[InnocenceLost YOU MUST TASTE BLOOD TO BE A MAN!]]'' |
| 333 | ** The hanging scene is also pretty obviously a ShoutOut to the similar scene at the beginning of ''Film/HocusPocus''; Starkid's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrzZR3YiXRg livestream reading of this movie]] is part of the series that inspired the creation of ''Nightmare Time'' as a Zoom-based AudioDrama show. |
| 334 | ** Angela Giarratana's performance of the Witch being ReducedToDust is a clear reference to the Wicked Witch's "I'm MEEELTING" death scene in ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. |
| 335 | ** Once more, we hear about the magic baseball cap that's "[[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse imbued with the power of Grayskull]]"; since it turns out Miss Holloway is the origin of this reference and she's [[DiscoDan obsessed with '80s culture]], this seems like it's a pop-culture reference in-universe and not an actual reference to the supernatural. |
| 336 | * ShroudedInMyth: Miss Holloway is intentionally presented as a huge mystery to the audience when she appears, and the story ends with us still having more questions than answers about her. The same is true about the overall history of Hatchetfield and the Witchwood, what Willabella Muckwab got up to exactly before her execution, Uncle Wiley's own origin story and how he came to tangle with Miss Holloway, etc. |
| 337 | * SicklyGreenGlow: As a CallBack to Wiggly's powers being associated with green light in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', Uncle Wiley's resurrection is announced with a "flash of green light". |
| 338 | * SignificantDoubleCasting: In both this story and "Jane's a Car" Creator/JaimeLynBeatty plays an EvilMatriarch, although Pamela Foster is almost the exact opposite archetype of a "bad mom" as the ghost of Jane Perkins. |
| 339 | * SirSwearsALot: As with most Hatchetfield villains, the Witch gets pretty crude when she finally reveals herself, memorably gloating to Hannah that once she possesses her... |
| 340 | -->'''Witch''': Your bones will be mine! Your blood will be mine! Your pretty hair and your little mouth! And I’ll SHIT OUT YOUR ASS!!! |
| 341 | * SolemnEndingTheme: "The Web I Spin for You", a very surreal song from Webby's perspective dropping very vague hints about the true nature of the Hatchetfield MythArc. |
| 342 | * SuddenSoundtrackStop: This story in particular has Matt Dahan suddenly stop playing the keyboard at particularly tense moments during conversations, most notably having Lex's leitmotif suddenly stop when Hannah starts to catch on and [[PullingTheThread ask where the ukulele Lex gave her is]]. |
| 343 | * SurprisinglyHappyEnding: The story ends unambiguously happily, with both Uncle Wiley and the Witch destroyed for good, Webby returned, and Pamela set up to go to prison in Lex and Ethan's place. Hannah now has three mentors in her life to watch over her and protect her -- Webby, Miss Holloway and her sister -- and is well poised to take up the mantle of TheChosenOne and finish the fight with the Lords in Black once and for all. |
| 344 | * SurrealMusicVideo: The TitleThemeTune "The Witch in the Web" is a fairly mundane sequence interspersing shots of Hannah singing with StockFootage of the Witchwood, but the SolemnEndingTheme "The Web I Spin for You" is far more surreal, with DeliberatelyMonochrome shots of spiderwebs and shattering glass juxtaposed with shots of Mariah Rose Faith as Webby SpikingTheCamera and making ambiguous, dramatic gestures. |
| 345 | * SurrealThemeTune: "The Witch in the Web" initially seems really hard to discern the meaning of, but [[RewatchBonus in hindsight]], after having seen the story and knowing it's a song from Webby's POV describing her view of Willabella Muckwab, it's pretty decipherable. The biggest revelation about the lyrics in hindsight is the final verse, revealing that Webby made the Witch's trap escapable ''on purpose'', so that Hannah could have a final confrontation with her leading to her defeat: |
| 346 | -->''I could throw away the keys now \ |
| 347 | But that’s not me, oh no\ |
| 348 | You see, a witch is a witch for a reason\ |
| 349 | Until you let her go'' |
| 350 | ** The SolemnEndingTheme "The Web I Spin for You" is just as surreal, and its meaning still isn't completely clear -- it paints an AmbiguousSituation that raises troubling questions about Webby's relationship to the Lords in Black and her [[BlueAndOrangeMorality true motivations]]. Notably, this song isn't at all what you'd expect from a BigGood talking about a BigBad -- it's a BrokenPedestal song as though from a jilted lover about how she feels ''[[ItsPersonal personally betrayed]]'' by whoever the song is about and wants [[BestServedCold long-delayed revenge]]. |
| 351 | * TakeOurWordForIt: As always, the story is chock full of surreal settings and situations it would be absurdly expensive to actually stage or film. Special mention goes to the Three-Girl Creature (who'd have to be a quite elaborate CGI animation to be portrayed at all convincingly), the endless hordes of Tree-People, and the surreal FinalBattle between Hannah and the Witch with the Witch's horrifying grotesque transformation from her Lex form to a monstrous hag. |
| 352 | * TapOnTheHead: A possessed Pamela knocks out a distracted Duke with a frying pan while Miss Holloway and Hannah are lost in their trance in Nightmare Time. |
| 353 | * ThereAreNoTherapists: We find out that Duke has tried to get Pamela to take Hannah to "specialists" in the past, but she refuses, thinking that she'd be blamed for Hannah's ambiguous disorder, meaning Hannah has made it to the age of 14 without any diagnosis or treatment. Pamela is just as stubborn about Miss Holloway -- a [[HotWitch very different kind of "specialist"]] -- but unlike the others, [[CompellingVoice Miss Holloway doesn't take no for an answer]]. |
| 354 | * TitleDrop: It turns out that "Nightmare Time" is a real term in Hannah's PersonalDictionary for the in-universe phenomenon of the SpiritWorld invading your mind in your dreams and assaulting you with your own worst fears and traumas to make you vulnerable to spiritual attack. The biggest "Nightmare Time" going on right now is the Witch in the Web trying to take over Hannah's dreams, but it turns out ''everyone'' has a "Nightmare Time" of their own, or at least the potential for one. (Cue WildMassGuessing over whether the ''Nightmare Time'' series itself is 100% things that "really" happened or if some of the stories are just characters' personal nightmares.) |
| 355 | * TheTreesHaveFaces: In the DarkWorld version of the Witchwood as seen in Hannah's Nightmare Time, the trees are replaced with ''people'' who were "planted" by the Hatchetmen so their souls could [[SealedEvilInACan serve as a web to trap the Witch's soul]]. |
| 356 | * TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening: Hannah ends up vividly demonstrating the Judge's (and Creator/SamRaimi's) maxim that "[[InnocenceLost You must taste blood to be a man]]" (or woman). Her PowerIncontinence has been a curse for her whole life, but it isn't until she almost sees Miss Holloway killed by Uncle Wiley -- the nightmare she accidentally reanimated -- that in a burst of guilt and desperation she finally uses her powers ''on purpose'', enabling her to blast Uncle Wiley back into oblivion with a [[CurbStompBattle single burst of energy]]. Following that, her direct confrontation with Willabella Muckwab's spirit is what enables her to discover and control the source of her own power inside her -- as symbolized by [[ArtifactOfPower the white ukulele]] -- and not just destroy the Witch in the Web once and for all, but set her up as the ChosenOne to finally defeat the Lords in Black and resolve Hatchetfield's shattered timelines personally. |
| 357 | * UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: As selfish and shortsighted a bitch as Pamela Foster is, even she'd probably be taken aback to find out that stealing Hannah's ukulele so she could get her "beauty sleep" almost allowed the ghost of her ancestor Willabella Muckwab to gain a foothold in Hannah's mind, allowing her reincarnation into the waking world with Hannah's full ChosenOne powers enabling her to finally TakeOverTheWorld. It's some cold comfort, perhaps, to know that in the scenario where she won, Pamela would've been one of her first victims and likely suffered a truly horrible death. |
| 358 | * VillainousLegacy: We get a payoff for the long-ago ChekhovsGun from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' that there's something special about the Foster bloodline that led to Lex and Hannah having PsychicPowers... and it turns out to be a pretty negative revelation, that they're descended from one of the most powerful and evil monsters to have ever lived. |
| 359 | * WhamShot: When Hannah and Miss Holloway reach the Starlight Theatre, we get Joey Richter sauntering into the frame with his Ted mustache shaved off, his hair slicked back, and in-character as Uncle Wiley. Cue the audience ''losing their collective shit''. He's also noticeably without his denim jacket from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', indicating that it's the one Miss Holloway is currently wearing. |
| 360 | * WitchClassic: The Witch in the Web is a very PlayedStraight version of a WickedWitch, while Miss Holloway tries to buck the stereotype as a HotWitch who's "mostly" a [[GoodWitchVersusBadWitch good witch]]. But Uncle Wiley dismissively sneers at her trying to claim this title, saying that Willabella was the only magic-user in Hatchetfield powerful enough to count as a ''real'' witch, and Miss Holloway doesn't try to argue. |
| 361 | * WorkoutFanservice: Miss Holloway's EstablishingCharacterMoment clearly ''would'' be this if this were a fully produced short film, with her working out to a classic '80s aerobics video, but since it's only a staged reading this is mostly TakeOurWordForIt. |
| 362 | * YourMindMakesItReal: Miss Holloway gives some advice to Hannah that seems useless -- "I got scared!" "Well... don't next time" -- but is more significant than it initially seems. The SpiritWorld of "Nightmare Time" is one empowered by the minds of those who perceive it, and Hannah's mind is ''much'' more powerful than that of any other human -- which means that nightmares that would normally be powerless gain the power to kill just from her being around them. Uncle Wiley himself respawns from being just one of Miss Holloway's bad dreams into a [[LivingMemory fully sentient and malevolent spirit]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero just from Hannah being nearby]], and comes very close to stealing Pamela's body and becoming an active force in the world again. [[PowerIncontinence Unless Hannah can somehow get conscious control over her fears]], they ''will'', inevitably, be the doorway through Willabella Muckwab and countless other horrors manifest and destroy the world. |
| 363 | [[/folder]] |
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FollowingContext Recap / NightmareTimeS1E3JanesACarAndTheWitchInTheWeb
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