The Grand Finale of an adventurer.
Hilda journeys into the Fairy Mound to find her long lost father. Only she finds herself discovering more than she ever imagined about her family and about where she really comes from. However, all discoveries will come with a heavy price to be paid.
Tropes:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: When Hilda and Johanna attempt to jump over the chasm the Fairy Entity has created, only for the ground to crumble under their weight, Johanna manages to obtain the fairies' ability to fly, allowing her and Hilda to cross the gap. Unfortunately, Hilda does not, as she discovers when she lets go of Johanna's hand and drops like a stone. Johanna's parents swoop in to grab her.
- Alien Sky: Fairy Isle has a broken moon visible in the sky.
- Back for the Finale: A lot of the one-shot and side characters come back for the final scene, minus the ones that couldn't be reasonably expected to participate in the celebration.
- Batman Gambit: Seeing the Fairy Entity loving to make deals on people's lives, Victoria van Gale offers it to stay in the Fairy Country in Astrid's place so she can return to her family, which the Entity accepts without knowing that Victoria is more than willing to remain there.
- Big Damn Heroes: Twig (with a little help from Frida) summoning his herd to provide Hilda and Johanna means of escaping from the Fairy Country.
- Bittersweet Ending: Hilda, Johanna, Anders and Astrid escape from the Fairy Country and the claim on Johanna's life has been released for good. However, Johanna's parents are unable to escape with them as well and will probably never directly interact with her again. That said, their presence will still be felt by their family forever, now that they know they're watching them.
- Body Horror: Hilda and teen Johanna's nightmare in the Fairy Country includes morphing mushrooms uncontrollably growing from them.
- Bookends:
- The first season introduced the Bird Parade, which appears for the last time this season.
- The series began with the Great Raven flying over Trolberg. Now the series ends with him flying over Trolberg again, this time with Hilda on his back and both of them showing up for the Bird Parade.
- Broken Tears:
- Johanna as kid has several of this, whenever her parents’ disappearance is brought up.
- Hilda has this when her mother collapses from her returned sickness since Hilda bringing her back to the human world broke the bargain.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Astrid fearlessly calls the Fairy Entity out for stubbornly bargaining with people’s lives and holding onto them, in spite of receiving no benefit. The Entity does not take that kindly.
- The Cameo: A lot of characters from past episodes show up in the final minutes, among them Wood Man, the Lost Clan, the Marra, Tildy, Peter Ostenfeld, the Rat King, Gil Jones, Trevor and his friends, Kaisa, Gerda Gustav, Ms. Hallgrim, Baba and Trylla, the Bellkeeper, Frida’s parents, David’s parents, Louise and Raven Leader.
- The Cavalry: Twig is able to summon his herd and have them open a path to the Fairy Isle so Johanna and Hilda can escape. When the Fairy Entity tries to stop them with The Eyes, the deerfoxes mobilize and fight off The Eyes.
- Cave Behind the Falls: Hilda and Johanna follow Lydia into one. In this cave is a replica of Hilda's old house.
- Chekhov's Gun: Frida's mind connection helps her realize what Twig is trying to do, thus giving her the idea to use her magic to amplify his howl.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Phinium and Lydia both started out as close friends as kids, but as young adults slowly fell in love with one another and eventually married.
- Comical Angry Face: Astrid as a kid made one when Phinium exposed himself to Lydia.
- Continuity Nod: Once again, Frida connecting minds helps Hilda.
- The Corruption: The Fairy Entity is dying and it reflects on the Fairy Isle in form of the rot that spreads from its den.
- Creative Closing Credits: The credits for the final episode show the main cast and several other characters throughout the series presented as light projections from the watchtower crystal.
- Deal with the Devil: With no success at curing their daughter, Phinium and Lydia summoned the Fairy Entity and asked for its help. It agreed, but demanded Johanna to be given up to it in ten years. When the time came, Phinium and Lydia took their daughter's place instead. When that bargain is broken, Astrid tries to offer her own life in exchange, only for Victoria to offer herself and spare Astrid. Hilda, knowing Victoria, lampshades that the Fairy Entity likely got the raw end of that deal.
- Dem Bones: Despite having been reduced to a skull, Victoria van Gale's Nisse is still alive.
- Disney Death: Johanna has one when the deadly illness from her childhood returns due to her parents "going back on the bargain". Thankfully, Astrid is able to bargain her own life in exchange, and in turn is saved from that bargain by Victoria.
- Earn Your Happy Ending:
- After spending the entire series going through a lot of physiological trauma and having a few near-death experiences, Johanna is finally reunited with her long-lost parents, has regained her erased childhood memories, and discovers they actually had to leave her for her own good rather than malice. Even when separated from them again, Johanna at least knows they're alive and watching her.
- After two attempts to improve the human world that only led to a near-disaster, Victoria van Gale finally finds her happiness in a world that's almost as bonkers as she is in the Fairy Country and even traded her chance to visit the human world without hesitation.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Frida connects with Twig, she realizes that the deerfoxes may be able to help rescue Hilda, using her magic to amplify his howl so he can reach the others.
- Extra-Long Episode: At 77 minutes this is by far the longest episode of the whole series.note
- The Fair Folk: The Fairy Entity is a towering but hunched figure in a dark blue cloak with a glowing circle for a face, black skeletal hands, and a disorienting voice, which arranges inviolable bargains in accordance with its own inscrutable traditions. (Astrid accuses it of not even getting anything it really wants out of them, simply doing it because it's stuck in a routine.) It is also the Fairy Isle's Fisher King, and the ailments of its age manifest in the rot and decay that spreads from its home cave.
- Fountain of Youth: According to Astrid, one of the Fairy Country’s properties is that it shows a person what they seek the most, but nothing is meant to change. This explains why Johanna first arrived as a kid and has temporarily lost her adult memories, while her parents still look young despite being around Astrid’s age.
- Grand Finale: The final episode of the entire series.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted. Astrid was planning to sacrifice her life to save Johanna's. However, she ends up switching places with Victoria Van Gale instead, who gladly takes up the bargain to stay in Fairy Country forever.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Johanna's father is revealed to be a fairy, while her mother is a human, making Johanna half-fairy, and Hilda a quarter-fairy.
- How Dad Met Mom: Phinium uses fairy magic to show Johanna and Hilda how he and Astrid met Lydia.
- I Choose to Stay:
- Before the ill-fated deal, Phinium decided to stay in the human world permanently, after it began getting difficult for him and Astrid to travel between it and the Fairy Country, realizing it's his home now. Astrid decided to stay there as well to be with her brother.
- Johanna almost does this when Hilda wants to leave the Fairy Country, not wanting to lose her parents again, but almost immediately realizes she could never make her daughter experience the same pain of being abandoned.
- Victoria enjoys having a new world to explore and cuts a deal with the Fairy Entity to stay permanently in exchange for allowing Astrid to return to the human world as well.
- I Don't Know Mortal Kombat: Despite being in the Fairy Country for the first time, the now-teen Johanna managed to navigate through there pretty well.
- Ill Girl: It’s revealed that not long after her birth, Johanna fell terribly ill by an unknown disease (with implication it might result of her hybrid heritage, that gave her weak body constitution), that would kill her if not for her parents making a Deal with the Devil with the Fairy Entity. After managing to escape from the Fairy Isle in the climax, her childhood sickness returns due to the deal being broken, but she’s saved by Astrid and Victoria.
- Immediate Sequel: This episode happens immediately after the previous one.
- It's All My Fault: Hilda says it when she assumes her mother has died from her childhood sickness, because Hilda convinced her to return to the human world… and Johanna rises up and assures her it’s only a little bit of her fault, though lampshades that it’s also mostly her dad’s.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When Johanna first arrives at the Fairy Isle, she not only temporarily transforms into her ten-year-old self, but also has lost all of her memories after the night her parents left. Thus, she believes she’s searching for them instead of Hilda, while neither of the girls recognize each other when they do reunite.
- Logo Joke: The Silvergate Media logo at the end of the episode is shown wearing a light projection of Hilda's beret.
- Magitek: The watchtowers in Fairy Country. They are described as ancient technology, and Victoria van Gale is able to analyze and modify one, but they work using crystals and can magically allow you to spy on the human world.
- Mood Whiplash: Happens twice: the first time is when Johanna wakes up after being thought dead by everyone, and the second time everybody sadly returns to Astrid’s house, only for her to reappear there.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hilda's remorseful reaction to Johanna's childhood illness returning, since she convinced her to escape from the Fairy Country and this essentially broke the bargain Johanna's parents made in the past.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Hilda's reason to escape from the Fairy Country is because it's static: there's nothing to do that hasn't been done, and that isn't living. Hilda feels so strongly about this that, even when it appears Johanna is willing to stay, she refuses to, despite how much it hurts.
- Pensieve Flashback: Phinium uses fairy magic to show how he and Astrid met Lydia and what led to Johanna being abandoned by her parents. All the flashbacks happen while he, Lydia, Astrid, Johanna and Hilda watch them from nearby.
- The Reveal:
- The cloaked figures that were stalking Hilda throughout the season are revealed to be her maternal grandparents, who were using a watchtower on Fairy Isle to observe her after her first encounter with the fairy mound in Tofoten. This is also how they’ve abducted Anders to save him from a troll.
- The reason why Johanna can’t properly recall her childhood is because most of those memories were suppressed by Astrid with fairy magic, after she witnessed her parents’ disappearance. And the reason for that is because the Fairy Entity demanded Johanna in exchange for healing her, and they went in her place so she could have a normal life.
- The incident with fairy mound Johanna mentioned in "The Fairy Mound" turned out be the night her parents left her.
- Hilda’s unordinary blue hair is revealed to come from her maternal grandfather, who also has this, but he’s a fairy, making Hilda part-fairy.
- Sadistic Choice: Whenever people try to bargain with the Fairy Entity, it usually doesn’t go well: when Phinium and Lydia asked it to cure Johanna, it demanded the girl’s custody, with the couple later trading places with her. In the present, it returned to Johanna her childhood sickness once her reunion with her parents broke it, with Astrid nearly trading her life instead.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Johanna refuses to allow Tontu and Alfur to accompany her to rescue Hilda from the Fairy Country for letting her escape in the first place. Being possibly the most emotional and dramatic Hilda episode ever, their comedic antics would not have fit at all anyway.
- Silence Is Golden: In the final minutes of the episode, where the characters gather for the bird parade, apart from laughs and cheers, the only dialogue spoken in this scene are from David calling Hilda, the Great Raven asking Hilda what he has missed, Frida calling Hilda over, and the Raven telling Hilda that the place where Johanna and her friends are sitting is her stop. The rest of the scene is mostly just music indicating that this is a happy moment and also the end of the series.
- Special Edition Title: The title is animated unlike the previous episodes, which were static, signifying that this is the final episode of the series.
- Take Me Instead:
- The Fairy Entity demanded Johanna to be handed over to it in ten years. But Phinium and Lydia later offered themselves instead, so their daughter would have a normal life.
- Astrid tries to make a similar deal so Johanna and Hilda can leave the Fairy Country. Once the Fairy Entity rejects it, deeming it an unfair trade, Astrid then tries to offer her life, which it nearly accepts.
- Astrid's sacrifice is then preempted by Victoria, who voluntarily offers to stay in the Fairy Country, something the Fairy Entity accepts.
- Time-Passage Beard: Anders has grown up one during his stay in the Fairy Country, indicating he was here for a long time.
- Uneven Hybrid: With Johanna revealed to be half-fairy, Hilda is essentially a one-quarter fairy, something she’s amazed about. This also explains her unordinary blue hair color she inherited from her grandfather.
- You Can't Go Home Again: While the Fairy Entity spared Johanna and Astrid after Victoria offered to stay in the Fairy Country, it banished Astrid for her rudeness. Although, she doesn’t mind, as she has a place to call home and a family to take care of, while knowing her brother and sister-in-law will keep watching them.
- You Shall Not Pass!: When Johanna arrives at the Fairy Mound, David and Frida try to keep her from entering, or digging out Hilda too soon. They defiantly stand between her and the mound, shovels crossed. They fail though as we learn later Johanna entered the Fairy Mound after all.
