Chapter 13: The Stone Forest

The Stone Forest is the thirteenth and final episode of the second season, and the twenty-sixth episode of the Hilda TV series, was released on December 14th, 2020 on Netflix.

The episode is adapted from "Hilda and the Stone Forest".

Synopsis
Hilda, her mum, and Twig look for a way out of a mysterious forest full of trolls, while a worried David and Frida journey out of Trolberg to find them.

Start
Hilda and David are helping Frida with her witch-homework, though Hilda would rather perform magic than study it. Frida is currently practicing an invisibility spell, but her attempt to make a Jort invisible ends up turning the Jort into a pair of elf-sized shorts. The next spell requires dust from the Trolberg Castle Ruins, which Frida doesn’t have. Hilda, eager to get out, volunteers to get some. She manages to get to the ruins and make it back into the city before night, and plans to give Frida the dust after dinner.

Hilda and Johanna’s subplot
Johanna however has other plans. She bought a new board game and hopes to have a nice evening with Hilda. Before Hilda comes home, Johanna sees a news report about more and more Troll bonfires appearing on the mountainside each night. According to Erik Ahlberg, the Trolls are plotting something. When Hilda comes home and insists on going back to Frida’s, she and Johanna get into an fierce argument which ends with Hilda getting send to her room. Hilda angrily wishes she was a troll so she could live free in the wild.

Hilda is determined to go to Frida’s, and blackmails Tontu into helping her (by threatening to reveal to Johanna Tontu broke her favorite bowl). Johanna catches them in the act as they enter Nowhere Space, and tries to pull Hilda back out. This results in all of them getting sucked into the outside world’s Nowhere Space. Hilda, Johanna and Twig thus end up in the Stone Forest; a large cave with hundreds of tree-like pillars. Since it’s unlikely Tontu will find them (he could be halfway around the world now), they have to find their own way out.

The three of them spend the night in the forest. As they try to find their way out the next day, they follow the sound of running water and thus discover a large chamber full of Trolls, including a female troll who is leading a goat packed with food and other stuff. The troll has a child with her, who spots the humans. Johanna and Hilda are able to escape her by hiding among the stuff carried by the goat. They are in luck; the Troll was on her way to a campfire on the mountain side, and thus unknowingly takes Hilda, Johanna and Twig out of the Forest.

The troll joins some other trolls around the campfire. When the Two-Headed troll shows up and violently disturbs the camping, Hilda and Johanna make a run for it. Twig however is stuck between the cargo, and is taken back into the Stone Forest when the Two-Headed troll steals the goat. Johanna orders Hilda to stay behind a rock while she will try to save Twig. She follows the Troll to his home, and finds Twig, but the Two-headed troll closes the door and falls asleep in front of it, thus blocking their way out. As Johanna searches for another way out, Hilda gets impatient and follows her mom into the Stone Forest. The entrance closes behind her.

Hilda is able to find the troll’s lair, but can’t enter because the door is blocked. She searches for another way in, which brings her to a hatch closed by a padlock. Hilda tricks a rock-chewing slug to bit through the padlock for her. In the lair, The Two-Headed Troll wakes up and finds Johanna, but at that moment Hilda opens the hatch and givers Johanna and Twig a way out. They escaped, but now they are lost again.

After wandering around for a while, they run into the female troll and her child again. When the Two-Headed troll approaches, the female Troll surprisingly saves Hilda and Johanna by taking them to her home, she offers them a drink and blankets. Hillda and the child even play together, like making stone figures of themselves. The following morning, the Troll draws a map for Johanna and Hilda, and even uses magic to make a small, woff-shaped guide to help them reach the exit.

They don’t get too far since they run into the Two-Headed troll again. He crushes the guide and captures Johanna and Hilda. Twig tries to fight back, and while he is no match for the troll, he inspires other trolls to gang up against their tormentor. By the time the Two-Headed Troll has defeated the others, Hilda and Johanna have fled into a tunnel full of rock-chewing slugs. The troll is afraid to follow them in there. Just when it seems they are safe, the tunnel turns out to be the home to a gigantic slug. Hilda and Johanna are barely able to escape as the beast leaves it’s hole and causes a cave-in.

With seemingly no way to continue since the cave has collapsed on both sides, Johanna breaks down. Hilda, not used to seeing her mother like this, admits she broke her promise to stay out because she was worried. Mother and daughter finally come to an understanding. Then Twig smells something. He begins to dig, and when Johanna and Hilda help him, they end up finding way out of the Stone Forest.

Frida, David and Alfur’s subplot
While all of this goes on in the Stone Forest, David, Frida and Alfur discover Hilda and Johanna are gone. Frida decides to retrace Hilda’s steps to the castle ruins, but she and David end up getting lost on the way there. Not far from them, Erik Ahlberg and Gerda Gustav are on patrol with their zeppelin. They spot Frida and David. Frida notices some sleeping woff, including a rare white one. Which means good luck for witches. She approaches them, but ends up startling them. The fleeing Woffs collide with the zeppelin, and cause it to crash. Erik and Gerda get out in time before the zeppelin explodes. They are now stranded in the woods, and Frida has hurt her ankle.

Erik and Gerda are able to salvage the emergency blimp kit from the wreckage, but it will take a few hours to build, forcing the group to spend the night in the woods. When a group of Trolls finds them, and Erik foolishly angers them with his bell, Frida tries to make Erik invisible as protection, but ends up turning him into a bug instead. At least it frightens the trolls. Gerda puts him in a jar for the moment, after which she and the kids seek shelter. They build a small campfire. Frida admits to Gerda that they were looking for Hilda, but didn’t go to the Safety Patrol because they haven’t been that helpful lately. Gerda can understand why, considering how Erik Ahlberg is.

As the three of them make the most of their situation, another troll (the one that stole Gerda’s camera in "Chapter 1: The Troll Circle") shows up. But when David offers him his bag of Jorts, the Troll gladly leaves them alone and even joins them at the campfire, much to Gerda’s surprise.

Back at home, Tontu finally returns after some unpleasant adventures. He is able to tell Alfur where Hilda and Johanna ended up. Alfur borrows the pigeon Cedric from the Lost Clan to go find them. In the woods, Gerda, Frida and David have made it through the night. The troll that spend the night with them petrifies. Alfur spots the group and flies down to meet them. While Gerda can’t see him, she recognizes his voice. Alfur tells them Hilda and Johanna are nearby.

Climax
As Hilda and Johanna dig their way out, Alfur finds them. The Two-Headed Troll breaks through the cave-in to make one last attempt at capturing the humans. Hilda and Johanna make it out of the caves just in time, and when the troll also breaks out, he petrifies. His petrified body rolls off the mountain and threatens to crush Johanna and Hilda. Johanna is rescued by Frida, David and Gerda, who have finished the emergency blimp, while Hilda and Twig jump off a cliff and are caught by the white woff.

Everybody safely returns to Trolberg. Gerda drops off Hilda and Johanna at their home, where Hilda finally gets to give Frida the dust from the ruins. Then Gerda takes Frida and David to Safety Patrol HQ, where Frida uses the dust to transform Erik Ahlberg back to a human. Ahlberg hasn’t even noticed he was a bug. He immediately wants to get the press involved, and make himself look like the hero who saved David and Frida. Gerda has enough of his attitude however, and escorts David and Frida out of the room, leaving an angry Ahlberg behind.

As Hilda and Johanna settle for the night, the female Troll switches the heads of the stone figures Hilda and her daughter made earlier. The following day, Hilda has suddenly been replaced by a human version of the Troll child, while Hilda wakes up in the home of the female troll, and discovers she herself is a troll now.

To be continued in Hilda and the Moutain King.

Humans

 * Hilda
 * Johanna
 * Frida
 * David
 * Erik Ahlberg
 * Gerda Gustav
 * News Anchor

Matilda Pilqvist is mentioned but does not appear.

Creatures

 * Woffs
 * White Woff
 * Rock-Chewing Slug (regular and giant-sized)
 * Salt-Lions (cameo)
 * Ghosts (cameo)
 * Cedric

Nisse

 * Tontu (alpha)

Elves

 * Alfur
 * Bragga Family
 * Bartell Bragga

Trolls

 * Baba
 * Baba's mom
 * Two-Headed Troll
 * Various unnamed Trolls

Deer-foxes

 * Twig

Trivia

 * This is the longest episode to date, being 46 minutes long, making Chapter 9: The Deerfox the second longest episode at 34 minutes.
 * This is the episode third where Johanna plays a major role; The previous being The Bird Parade and The Black Hound.
 * The scene where Tontu encounters an adult and a baby Salt-Lion looks identical to the scene from "Hilda and the Bird Parade" when Hilda and the Great Raven met an adult and a baby Salt-Lion.
 * The song heard during the end credits is The End by Frankie Cosmos.

es: Capítulo 13: El bosque de piedra