Wanting to prove to her daughter that she's not an overprotective complete worrywort, Johanna opts for a mother-daughter camping trip in the wilderness. But she has a strange feeling of being here before, especially after an encounter with a creature that claims to know her.
Tropes:
- The Alleged Car: As the saying goes, "you get what you pay for". The used car Johanna has bought to replace her crushed one may have been super cheap, but the engine stalls almost every five minutes, which needless to say, doesn't make it the best get away vehicle from a giant spider-frog monster.
- Animalistic Abomination: The Spider-Frog is this: it is a giant monstrous frog with spider-like legs, runs very fast and can swallow a whole human.
- Call-Back: Hilda is hoping her mum will let her drive now that they're out of the city like her father did in the previous episode... Johanna initially won't hear of such, but eventually has to let her daughter take the wheel to ward off the Spider-Frog.
- Chekhov's Gun: Johanna's rotating saw is first seen when she needs to repair the car, then later used to rescue Hilda from the Spider-Frog.
- Clothing Damage: Johanna suffers from this when running away from Spider-Frog, resulting in the loss of her jacket.
- Déjà Vu: As Hilda convinces her mom to venture into the forest, Johanna start feeling something familiar about it, especially after checking back at her old drawings. After their encounter with the Spider-Frog, she learns that her parents took her there years ago where they set the charmed net after the creature tried to eat her then.
- Disney Death: After many attempts to evade it, Hilda and Johanna are swallowed by the Spider-Frog… only to be quickly spit out by the creature, because humans upset its stomach.
- Dreadful Musician: Hilda has no talent for playing pan pipes. When she is about to try them, Alfur puts on headphones and Twig seeks shelter under the bed, and she only gets a few notes out before Johanna enters her room to check what that noise is.
- Foreshadowing:
- The forest Johanna and Hilda visit during their camping trip has a variety of locations identical to Johanna's artworks that she thought just came from her mind... like if there's a magical barrier in her mind that blocks memories about this place?
- When the Spider-Frog states he is the only one of what he is, he points out that Hilda and Johanna would know what that's like, hinting at the reveal that the two of them are human-fairy hybrids, the only ones in existence.
- Heel–Face Turn: After discovering that Hilda and Johanna are too human for him to eat, the Spider-Frog decides to make peace with them, though the latter is not as forgiving as the former.
- Heroic Suicide: Realizing she can't hold on to Hilda when the Spider-Frog grabs her, Johanna lets go of her car and allows herself to be eaten as well, choosing to die with her daughter rather than survive on her own.
- Hope Spot: After many close calls, it seems that Hilda and Johanna have escaped from the Spider-Frog in their car, but it catches and eats them anyway. Fortunately, it spits them back out because it doesn't like how humans taste.
- I Don't Know Mortal Kombat: Johanna, despite playing the pan pipes for the first time like Hilda, did it much better than she did (again, it presumably has something to do with the memory spell).
- Kids Driving Cars: Hilda asks Johanna if she can drive their new car for a moment, but Johanna refuses. She allows it though when they are being chased by the Spider Frog so she herself has her hands free to throw the charms at the beast.
- Mood Whiplash: In a pretty tense moment, the Spider-Frog latches onto Hilda with its tongue while Johanna struggles to hold onto her daughter. When she realizes she doesn’t have the strength to free Hilda, she lets go and allows herself and her daughter to get pulled into the creature’s mouth… and the creature quickly spits them out in disgust, because humans upset its stomach.
- Mythology Gag: Johanna's sketch of Hilda resembles her appearance in the original graphic novels. The sketch also gives her Youthful Freckles like her depiction in Hilda and the Midnight Giant.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Spider-Frog is freed after Hilda removes a net full of bug-shaped charms, and the creature later claims that Johanna's parents imprisoned him.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: When the Spider-Frog finally eats Hilda and Johanna, he discovers that he doesn't like how they taste.
- Took a Level in Badass: Hilda once again cites her mother as a non-action worrywort. But once the Spider-Frog captures Hilda, Johanna frees her daughter, distracts the creature with her rotating chainsaw and uses magical charms Hilda has discovered earlier to make the creature let go of her car. Hilda is completely astonished at being proven wrong that her mother can't be cool.
