Hilda

A Netflix original series based on an Eisner-winning graphic novel by Luke Pearson, and penned by the man himself.

Hilda follows the eponymous heroine, an adventurer who travels the magical wilderness she lives, being forced to move to the city of Trollberg. Though initially morose about the whole affair, the city may hold magic of its own.

The first thirteen episode season premiered on September 21^st 2018 to critical acclaim with a second released in 2020 followed by an 80 minute film, "Hilda and the Mountain King", released on December 30^th 2021. The third and final eight-episode season was released on December 7^th 2023.

Tropes used in Hilda include:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Auntie Astrid implies this about the Fairy Realm.
• Aborted Arc: Hilda's attempt to find dirt on Erik Ahlberg largely fizzles out across the second season. Whether or not he was corrupt or just incompetent is abandoned by the end of "Hilda and the Mountain King" as he pulls a Heel Face Turn.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The trio ventures into one in Chapter 6.
• Adaptational Heroism: Hilda and her mother are quite a bit more open and agreeable than their comic depictions.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The Wood Man. He was agreeable enough in the graphic novel but he's quite rude and confrontational here.
• Adapted Out: The Great Raven doesn't appear in the adaptation of "The Stone Forest".
• Air Vent Passageway: Averted. This Is Reality and Hilda can't fit inside a vent.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Twig is a deerfox. Half-deer, half-fox but acts like any old dog.
• All Trolls Are Different: All the Trolls are walking boulders with a Pinocchio Nose.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. All the Trolls have had very good reasons to harass the main cast. If anything they're Non-Malicious Monsters. The first Troll that Hilda helps even returns the favour. The Two-Headed Troll's overt antagonism is flagged as an oddity. Trylla even tells Hilda that while there are some evil Trolls, others are good. And, as a race, they're civil enough to engage in diplomatic negotiations.
• Ambiguous Disorder: Some of the attitudes in Chapter 5 suggest that Hilda may have one or it could just be that she's a Fish Out of Water who hasn't yet adapted to city life.
• Ambiguous Situation: Are the Marra teenage girls with magic powers or spirits who look like teenage girls?
• Ambiguously Evil: The House in the Woods. Was it a Lotus Eater Machine or just lonely?
• An Aesop: Chapter 3: Don't judge a place you haven't been to.
• Anger Born of Worry: Johanna's reasoning for ground Hilda in Season 2.
• Ascended Extra: Alfor, David and Frida all have much more to do than their graphic novel depictions.
  • The Vitra in Chapter 4.
  • The Weather Spirits. They only had two cameos in the comic but were the driving force for Chapter 10.
• Back for the Finale: Everyone but the giants returns in "The Fairy Isle".
• Bait and Switch: Much of Season 1 suggests that Hilda is a witch. Season 2 features Frida as the witch. Season 3 reveals that Hilda is a quarter-Fairy.
• Bigger on the Inside: The House in the Woods. Though it has a limit to how much interior mass it can cope with.
• Bloodless Carnage: All of the combat of "The Eternal Warriors".
• Blue and Orange Morality: Most of the magical creatures. Hilda has to opt for a comprise more often than not.
• Broken Pedestal: Hilda all but worshipped Victoria Von Gale. Then she found the woman was torturing a baby Weather Spirit.
• The Bully: Everyone outright says this about the Two-Headed Troll.
• The Bus Came Back: After being the star of Chapter 3, the Raven returns in Chapter 10, seeking shelter from the storm.
• Canon Foreigner: Quite a bit.
  • The Lost Clan of Elves.
  • Miss Hallgrim and Principal Magnusson.
  • The Librarian.
  • The Marra.
  • The Lindworm.
  • Victoria Von Gale
  • The House in the Woods.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Because they make you sign paperwork that waves your right to this.
• Cliffhanger: Season 2 ends with Hilda having swapped places with a baby Troll.
• Cowardly Lion: David.
• Crazy Prepared: Frida. Like any good Sparrow Scout.
• Crossover Cosmology: Most of the magical mythology is Scandinavian but there are some Native American and Scottish creatures.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Black Hound.
• Darker and Edgier: Season 2. It's not full-on Cerebus Syndrome, but it's quite noticeable.
• Disappeared Dad: Hilda's father is conspicuously absent. He finally shows up in Season 3.
• Driving Question: It goes unanswered but much of Season 2 is driven by the worry of what's causing the Trolls to be bolder in encroaching on Trollberg. "Hilda and the Mountain King" reveals that the city was built atop the slumbering form of the Trolls' mother and they're drawn to her call.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The first shot is the Great Raven flying over Trollberg, two episodes before he takes centre stage.
  • A Nisse cameos in Chapter 9 before they become very important in Chapter 12.
• Establishing Character Moment: What better way to show what jerks Trevor and his friends are then by having them throw rocks at innocent birds?
• Fake Ultimate Hero: The Great Raven. It was an utterly Contrived Coincidence that he just happened to show up at a festival that worshipped a raven with a good harvest following that year and that there was a bad harvest the year that he missed the festival.
• Fatal Flaw: Hilda's is her overconfidence. She always assumes she can get out of anything and never bothers to read the full instructions.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Black Hound's name is Jellybean.
• For Want of a Nail: So much of Frida's life was based on the fact that she assumed her room cleaned itself every night.
• Freudian Trio: Hilda is the Id, Frida is the Superego, and David is the Ego.
• Friend to All Living Things: Hilda. The fact that even she hates the Marra says volumes about what vile creatures they are.
• Gag Nose: The Trolls have such a long nose that they can't even reach the end of it.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Tide Mice.
• Hidden Elf Village: Because they're Invisible to Normals until you sign the paperwork required to make you see and touch them.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Averted for a fantasy series. The monsters are the real monsters. Humans are presented as quite sympathetic and rational. Even at their worst, humanity is presented as just ignorant about magical creatures' Blue and Orange Morality.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of "The Deerfox", Twig chooses to stay with Hilda rather than rejoin his kind.
• In a Single Bound: How the Old Giants left the planet.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Either Played for Laughs or a Take That at the school system but students are encouraged to not ask any questions and simply do exactly what the teacher says.
• Insane Troll Logic: Deliberately bringing a Troll into Trollberg is a fifty year prison sentence. Accidentally doing it is worth a hundred years. Even if that person was a minor.
• Jerkass Ball: Frida firmly grabs it in Chapter 9. It's not until Chapter 12 that she has a Jerkass Realization.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Trolls.
• Last of His Kind: Jorgen and Valfreyja were the last two of their kind on Earth.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: The Wood Man sets up losing Hilda to the forest giant so he'll take her back to his stash where the Wood Man can steal back his lost possessions.
• Magic Feather: The Great Raven to the people of Trollberg. Their successes are their own. He just shows up because it makes them happy and gives them the confidence to push forward.
• The Magic Goes Away: It's not outright going away but magical creatures, such as the giants, are having their lands threatened by human urbanization and colonization, forcing them to seek out new homes.
• Mama Bear:
  • The mother Troll in Chapter 5. As in digging under the wall with her bare hands and ready to bring down the whole school.
  • Amma, the mother of all Trolls. Trundle's Xanatos Gambit is entirely based on putting the Trolls in enough danger so that Amma will sit up, tearing Trollberg apart in the process and protect them
• Medieval Stasis: The Lost Elf Clan compared to Alfor's more modern society.
• Monster of the Week
• Monster Progenitor:
  • The Old Giants. They were ecosystems unto themselves and seeded life across the planet.
  • Amma. She was the mother and grandmother of all Trolls. She's so large that Trollberg was built atop her sleeping form.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
  • Alfor is not onboard with forcibly evicting Hilda and Johanna.
  • Every Nisse thinks this about their species, viewing themselves as the only trustworthy specimen.
• Named by the Adaptation: Hilda's mother receives the first name of Johanna.
• Nice Hat: Hilda always sports a beret.
• Planet of Steves: Every Nisse is named "Tontu."
• Reality Ensues:
  • In "The Ghost", Hilda is laid flat when she tries to wrestle a much larger being.
  • Bravery does not equal strength. Just because "The Eternal Warriors" gives David a medallion that enhances his bravery, it doesn't mean he can stand up to hardened Viking warriors.
  • The group tries to sabotage the Troll bells in "The Old Bells of Trollberg". The backup system kicks in right away.
  • "The Deerfox":
    • Twig has no hunting instincts. Wild animal he may have started out as, he's been domesticated.
    • Though the B-plot involves the trio trying to get David's shoes back from a ghost, his parents simply bought him new ones. No parent is going to let their kid walk around shoeless.
  • At the end of "Hilda and the Mountain King", it's mentioned that while many people are willing to let go of old prejudices and negotiate, there sadly remain some who refuse to let go of their hatred.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: David gives Frida one in Chapter 12. If she doesn't want to hang out with him that's fine. But why hang out with the bullies?
• Running Gag:
  • There's a bug on David.
  • Hilda not winning any badges.
• Our Elves Are Better: Because they have an extremely efficient paperwork system.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: They're transparent beings whose glowing skeletal remains are visible through their form.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The Old Giants are the size of mountains. The Forest Giants are the size of forest pines.
• Science Fantasy: While the series is full of magical creatures, the Muggles know about all of it and have developed technology to be on equal footing with the arcane.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jorgen takes more than a few cues from the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus.
  • In the opening scenes of Season 2, Hilda and Twig pass Edward the Blue Engine.
• Sizeshifter: The Great Raven.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Nisse in Frida's room. He stole Frida's book which led to her becoming more of a jerk and set up the final arc of Season 1.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Victoria's study of the weather spirits.
• Stealthy Colossus: Jorgen is very light on his feet for a being taller than mountains.
• Strongly Worded Letter: Hilda writes a few to the Elves.
• Taken for Granite: Trolls become inanimate stones in the sunlight.
• Time Travel Episode: "The Fifty Year Night".
• Took a Level In Jerkass: Hilda is a lot more short-tempered and abrasive in the second season.
• Toxic Friend Influence: The Marra to Frida. They're a clear analogue of toxic teen culture and seek to turn Frida, who's a straight-A student with a promising future, into one of them.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Past: It's not clear when the series takes place, but the lack of computers makes clear that it's not 2018, possibly being in the closing days of the twentieth century.
• Urban Fantasy
• Unknown Rival: The Elves to Hilda's family. Helps that the humans hadn't signed the forms needed to actually be aware of the Elves' existence.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The Lindworm is so sick of people coming to her to get out of Elf contracts that she's willing to eat Hilda and Frieda to Make an Example of Them.
  • Victoria tortures a baby Weather Spirit For Science!
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Hilda. Season 3 reveals that this is due to her fairy heritage.
• Your Worst Nightmare: The Marra torture Hilda with the fact that she can't ride a bike.