Chapter 8: The Fifty Year Night

The Fifty Year Night is the eighth episode of the second season, and the twenty first episode of the Hilda TV series, was released on December 14th, 2020 on Netflix.

Synopsis
Hilda learns all too well that actions have consequences after she discovers a way to travel back in time — and decides to make a few changes.

Plot
Following the previous episode, Hilda is still grounded for lying. Johanna has to leave the house for a moment, and warns her not to try and violate her consequences. As Hilda moans what a boring day this will be, she fails to notice that outside, a second version of her is running down the street, chased by a large worm-like creature.

After Johanna is gone, Hilda hears something outside. When she looks out the window, she sees her neighbor, Mr. Ostenfeld, disappear in a flash of light. But a moment later, he is back. Curious, she decides to investigate. Alfur reminds Hilda she is still grounded, and Johanna made him swear to tell her if she left the building, but Hilda reminds him that Mr. Ostenfeld lives in the same building, so she won’t be violating her consequences. Downstairs, Hilda finds a package. She opens it. It contains multiple copies of a 50-year-old edition of the magazine Trolberg Digest.

When Hilda opens one of the magazines, she is suddenly transported 50 years back into the past. Since they are now in a time before Hilda got grounded, she can leave the building. As she explores old Trolberg, she discovers Mr. Ostenfeld is here too. 7 versions of him to be precise. They all go to a nightclub called Mirage. Hilda also sneaks in. Inside, the Mr. Ostenfelds are spying on a young man, who is reading the Trolberg Digest. Hilda sees how the man meets a girl, and has a wonderful night with her to the point that it’s clear they are meant to be together, but after the evening ends, they say their goodbyes and break up. Something that clearly saddens the seven Ostenfelds.

Then one of the Ostenfelds spots and recognizes Hilda. They chase after her, but Hilda hops onto a tram and escapes. Once back in her building, she uses the magazine to travel back to the future. There, Mr. Ostenfeld awaitens her. When Hilda confronts him, Ostenfeld admits that the young man was him. That night was the most wonderful night of his life, and to this day he regrets that he let the girl go after their dance instead of making a move. He doesn’t even know her name. He has no idea how the time travel works, but ever since he discovered that copies of the magazine he was reading that evening allow him to travel back to that night, he has been buying whole stocks of it to relive that night over and over. Each copy only allows one trip, and each trip introduces another duplicate of Ostenfeld in the past, hence why there are already 7 of him there.

Hilda theorizes that perhaps Mr. Ostenfeld should try and change the past, instead of just looking. Mr. Ostenfeld is reluctant, so Hilda decides to do it herself. She travels back again, and despite Mr. Ostenfeld’s attempts to stop her, she meets up with the young Ostenfeld and encourages him to go after the girl. The two end up together. Then suddenly 2 other Hilda’s (and Alfurs) show up; the one from Hildas first time travel, and a future version of her that warns her to run. It seems changing the past has consequences; a gigantic, wormlike creature shows up and begins to devour the various Hildas and Ostenfelds. The creature can teleport through portals, and when looking into these portals Hilda and Mr. Ostenfeld see glimpses of Mr. Ostenfelds new life with the woman, up until the present day. Hilda thus discovers the woman is Tildy.

As the worm turns on Hilda, Hilda’s future version distracts it and gets eaten instead. Hilda and the last remaining copy of Mr. Ostenfeld use the magazines to travel back to the future. Unfortunately, the worm follows them there. Hilda tries to escape through the worms own portals, but the beast keeps chasing her. After a brief trip to the distant past and the future, she ends up back in her own time around the moment Johanna left the house. Hilda thus gets to see her mom sitting in the car, wondering if she is a good parent, and realizes Johanna is not happy about having to punish Hilda.

As the worm tracks her down again, Hilda flees to Tildy’s house. Tildy is able to temporarily freeze the worm and invites Hilda in. Inside, Hilda finds another Tildy, now married to Mr. Ostenfeld. Tildy explain the worm is a time worm, and it is tasked with cleaning up any remnants of the old timeline now that Hilda created a new one. And that includes Hilda herself, since in this new timeline Mr. Ostenfeld was never her neighbor, so Hilda should haver have learned about time travel. Tildy further reveals she is responsible for the time traveling magazines. 50 years ago, after she tried to find Ostenfeld again but found out he already left the nightclub, she enchanted the magazine he had been reading so it and any copy of it would allow him to travel back to that night. She now regrets her actions. The other Tildy and Ostenfeld volunteer to erase this new timeline so they will be devoured and Hilda is safe. By tearing up the original magazine, all effects of the time traveling are undone.

Tildy takes Hilda home, where she meets Ostenfeld again. He no longer remembers his adventure, and Tildy decides it’s better to keep it this way. Hilda reconciles with her mom. Alfur has lost track of the various timelines, and is still not over the fact that they saw two alternate versions of themselves die.

Humans

 * Hilda
 * Johanna
 * Peter Ostenfeld
 * Matilda Pilqvist
 * Ms. Hallgrim (cameo)

Creatures

 * Time Worm

Elves

 * Alfur

Deer-foxes

 * Twig

Trivia

 * This is the fifth episode where Frida and David do not appear, since Chapter 2: The Draugen and Chapter 3: The Witch respectively.
 * This episode reveals that Ms. Hallgrim's first name is Enid.
 * Originally David was going to appear in this episode. According to Director Andy Coyle and Assistant Director Megan Ferguson. At some point in the early stages when the episode was written, an idea the writers had was that Hilda would travel 15 years in to the future and would meet an adult David, from about 26 years old. It would have been a emotional scence as David reunites with Hilda who was gone for years. He would be telling her what happened over the years and would try to help Hilda escape the time worm. The idea was eventually scrapped because the writers believed the episode would become to over complicated and they wanted to simple it down..
 * Another idea that didn't make the final draft was Hilda meeting her mom as a young girl.

es: Capítulo 8: Cincuenta Años en una Noche