My review of Gravity Falls Deep Woods Episode 2 - Deep-Rooted Misunderstanding

At long last, after over one year of waiting, Gravity Falls Deep Woods episode two has finally arrived. Episode 2 is called Deep-Rooted Misunderstanding and takes place during the same time as episode 1 did. The difference is that it focuses on Stan and Ford while episode 1 focuses on Dipper, Mabel and Pacifica. Like I did last year, I’m going to review this episode and judge how good it is.

Note, there will be spoilers for Deep-Rooted Misunderstanding, so if you have not seen the episode yet, go watch it first.

Watch it here on the DW channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChuVG9N25d5dN8dgdsOf-QA

All art is by the GFDeepWoods team.

And read my review of episode 1 I did last year HERE!

If you’re here then you either watched it already or are alright having it spoiled. So, let’s start. While it is a fan made episode and I’ll refer to it as one, I will be putting it up to the standard of a normal GF episode due to its length and how much time and effort was put into it. But I’ll also be comparing it to the previous episode given it takes place at the same time and because now that we have two episodes, I have a better understanding of how the show works.

The story

The episode, like I said above, takes place during the same time Quest for the Northwest does, which takes place in between the Stanchurian Candidate and the Last Mabelcorn. Call it an episode 14.5 (or 14.25 given it’s a part two in a sense) if you will.

The plot follows Stan and Ford as they try to defat a plant monster Stan accidently brings to life. Along the way the two try to not fight with each other as they round up the plant monsters and scare the townsfolk who still don’t know that Stan has a twin brother.

Like QFTN, this episode was top notch in writing. It really did feel like a real episode of Gravity Falls. I really wanted to see a Ford and Stan centered episode and while story 4 in Lost Legends helped, I really wanted to see it in episode form and in the present rather than past. The goal of Deep Woods is to make episodes that revolved around plots that we never got to see and stories that fans really wanted. Like episode one which was focused on the twins bonding with Pacifica, this one focuses on Stan and Ford’s relationship.

The animation

Like with episode 1, it isn’t animated, it’s an animatic. But like I said over a year ago, it’s not bad. Animated may have been better but that can take a long time. And while there is a great and talented team behind Deep Woods, they have to make do without the massive budget and production team that the main series had. A lot of time was put into this project. This one episode like the first one was in production for over a year. In the end, for me, it’s not about how well animated a show is, it’s about the story. Like I said above, the story is good, so for me, everything else is just cosmetic. Heck this could have been a still comic and it would have been amazing. It goes to show how much work some people will put into a project to see it become reality. And how loved GF still is so long after it’s end.

Voice Acting

Like episode 1, the acting was perfect. You have to first understand, this is not like the show. This isn’t Alex Hirsch and J. K. Simmons playing Stan and Ford. Of course, it won’t be them so you should not be expecting to hear exact clones. But the voice actors that were selected were very good. You can tell that care was taken in finding actors who sounded nearly similar to Stan and Ford (same with Dipper, Mabel and all the rest). Some characters really surprised me. Lazy Susan and Sherriff Blubs voice actors were so good that I swear it felt like they got their actual voice actors to reprise their roles for this episode. Again, like I said in my review of episode one, the actor’s voices are in a way that makes characters sound younger than they actually are, but the fact that they’re doing their best to replicate what the show did shows the dedication of this project’s team and it’s something I highly commend.

Character Development

Being a Stan and Ford focused episode, they ultimately are the centre of this point. It was nice to see Ford get more screen time. I always wished that we could’ve seen more of him. I’ve talked about my issues with him in the past and I really want to like him more than I right now do and find sympathy for him and his reasonings (it all falls back on my anger towards Ford for wanting to split Dipper and Mabel). Maybe if we had one or two more episodes to really get to know him more, I might have had a different opinion. Though journal 3 and Lost Legends have helped mend Ford for me, I still wanted more reasons to like him as much as I do Dipper, Mabel and Stan. Most fans die for him, but I want to see beyond the nerdy genius he is. I want to see his more sympathetic side (which we may get if Deep Woods goes on).

Back to the episode, while at the end I still felt that the two were not 100% on good , it did let us have an adventure with the Stan bros and if anything, this episode showed how damaged their sibling bond was. They had a hard time working together and struggled to find common ground to fight the plant monsters on. In the end it was Stan who saved Ford from the monster after he got knocked out. It really showed how much Stan cares for Ford even though Ford doesn’t show it back.

I side with Stan a lot given in my eyes, it was only after Weirdmageddon Ford saw him for more then what he had perceived him as. It’s why I’m so against the idea of Dipper staying in GF or him being the alpha twin. I know I’m angering may Ford fans by saying this but hear me out, I’ll side with the Stan I got to know since episode one over the Stan I met in episode 32 any day. I don’t hate Ford, I want to like him more and I want to see him for more than what he was perceived as being. And while I wish Ford had more to do in the ultimate defeat of the plant monsters, I’m glad Stan was the one who did it because it just shows how caring and how selfless he really is (kind of like this sweater wearing, pig owning character who also is in Gravity Falls and gets more hate then she actually deserves, hint, hint! Wink, wink).

Place canonically/continuity

The whole Deep Woods project is of course, fan made, so it’s not canon to Gravity Falls at all. It's more of an animated fanfic. But that doesn’t matter, because this episode works so well, that it feels canon. This episode does a great job in playing on the show’s canon, from Wendy telling her father about Ford, Ford ing Manly Dan from when he was new in GF and building the shack, the townsfolk all getting shocked at seeing Ford and thinking they’re seeing two Stans, even a throwback to the previous episode with this...

But my favourite continuity with GF came at the end when during the credits, Ford wakes up and recites the same lines he said at the start of the Last Mabelcorn, “I have to warn them. He’s coming!” And thus episode 15 begins the following day.

Final thoughts

Once again, the Deep Woods team has out done themselves. This episode is not only good, it takes what the first episode established and improved on it. I rate it a firm 9/10. They nailed it. The music worked well with the moments, Stan and Ford were very much in character and also Wendy and Stan had some discussions, what could be better.

Plus, Alex Hirsch and Disney got called out for not making Journal 1 and 2. A nice little joke about both the fandom, Alex not being able to write stories for those two journals and Disney’s refusal/stubbornness to make anything for its cartoons unless they’re Marvel or Star Wars.

My only concern may be the lag in the animation as some parts were so slow that it was hard to tell what was going on but of course, this is an animatic and the fact that it’s as long as it is, is something in its own to be amazed and be grateful for on its own.

As for the future of Deep Woods, I’m very optimistic. They have a very ambitious goal of 2 seasons with 11 episodes each. Their next plan is a 2 part Weirdmageddon set episode telling tales we never got to see. Followed by that the show is going to become a sort of season 3 following a story taking place next summer (Bill may return). There’s even plans to have animated episodes.

But at the same time, with the rate at which episodes are produced, I’m skeptical of course of the project. With 20 more episodes to go and with a rate of one per year, I think doing the maths you can tell how long it may actually take to complete this project. The whole project is done during the free time of the people involved. And given not everyone is free at the same time, that’s where the long production time comes from. Of course, as the project grows and new people , they might be able to work it out and make episode production a much faster job. But I’m not pressuring them, I’ll take waiting a year for a golden episode than wait less than a year for a rushed episode. Quality over Quantity.

And there we are. Who knows when the next Deep Woods episode will come out (and even if I’ll be here on Amino when it does), but rest assured, this isn’t the last we’ll see of Gravity Falls Deep Woods. Jason Ritter said that Gravity falls is real and it will never die,

And as the fandom has shown, his words haven’t fallen on deaf ears.

Thanks for reading my review. And if you want to keep up with the Deep Woods project you can follow them on Tumblr. Right now, there looking for artists. The more help the get, the quicker episodes may come out.

DW Tumblr: https://gfdeepwoods.tumblr.com

Gifs of DWE2:

Also, be sure to decipher the code. There's a key hidden in the episode somewhere ;)

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