by Burkely Hermann

On December 14, 2020, the second season of Hilda, the beloved British-Canadian animation, premiered on Netflix. The show’s first season introduced one of the most intriguing librarian characters in recent TV memory, and this newest batch of episodes brings even more screen time to the fan-favorite role. Hilda continues to show the value of libraries and librarians, remaining one of the best animated depictions of the profession, alongside all-ages shows Cleopatra in Space and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

In the new season of Hilda, the characters spend longer in their city’s public library than in the previous season, and the value of libraries is again emphasized. In the third episode of this season, protagonists Hilda and Frida look for the librarian, who isn’t at the information desk, and comment on how she has been supportive in the past. They enter the hidden special collections room, find a book slip, and travel through secret rooms before coming upon a hallway. They see the librarian chanting and follow her through a magic passageway she created. Once inside, they enter the Witches Tower, its walls covered with shelves of books. The librarian comes before three witches who govern the tower; they tell her that she must return a book missing from the library for almost 30 years. She says that the person who borrowed the book is responsible for it and the witches threaten to cast her into a void if she cannot locate the lost item.

Just in time, Frida and Hilda come out of hiding to help the librarian. Later, they all enter a labyrinth to reach the person who borrowed the book. Along the way, the librarian talks about the value of witchcraft, saying it is about knowledge and “knowing the true shape of things” than about powers and spells. The same could be said about librarianship, which is about sorting books, organization, recognizing what is within collections, and addressing the needs of patrons.

The librarian eventually admits to the protagonists, and the old woman who borrowed the book, why she had not tried to locate the missing book until now: she was embarrassed that she could not use the right spell to find it. After their return before the witches, a magical mishap inadvertently opens the void of no return, trapping the librarian, Hilda, and Frida. With Hilda and Frida’s assistance, the librarian is finally able to cast the correct spell, restoring the book to its library shelf at last. In the end, the episode shows the value of libraries, proper organization, and knowledge itself. The episode also reveals the librarian’s name for the first time: Kaisa, possibly an homage to the character’s voice actor, Kaisa Hammarlund.

The next episode that the librarian appears in is markedly different. It begins with Hilda accidentally releasing a group of magical “tide mice” which take over the headquarters of a local company and give one man good fortune. As we learned in season one, tide mice initially bring people fantastic luck but then eventually claim their souls. Meanwhile, Hilda and her friends David and Frida, read books in the local library, as part of Frida’s quest to improve her witchcraft abilities through research. The three witches who inhabit the hidden chambers of the library confront the group and accuse Hilda of releasing the tide mice.

Later that night, the protagonists, and Hilda’s animal companion, sneak into the library on a mission to fix the tide mice problem. Kaisa catches them but decides to help them with their quest. She joins them, leading to sequence reminiscent of Ghostbusters, as each of them attempt to eliminate the tide mice in the office building, who are attracted to people’s greed. In one particularly delightful moment, she uses her magic powers to ride a vacuum cleaner like a skateboard. Coincidentally, Ghostbusters begins with a famous scene in the New York Public Library, which is regarded as one of the best library scenes in film. The enchantment of the tide mice is reversed, and the day is saved just in time. In the end, Kaisa goes beyond her normal responsibilities to aid her patrons, making clear the importance of librarians and libraries.

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Two years ago, the animated series Hilda premiered on Netflix, and a minor character called “The Librarian” (voiced by Kaisa Hammurlund) quickly became a fan sensation. Although she only appears in about three minutes of the show’s first season, this feisty librarian has been mentioned in 20 fanfiction stories on Archive of Our Own and has a Tumblr blog dedicated to her. She has also been a subject of a lot of chatter among the fanbase, from Twitter to Reddit. The official Hilda Twitter account has described her as a mysterious librarian who has an unmatched, and extensive, “knowledge of cemetery records and mystical items.” Overall, this character is among the most positive pop culture depictions of librarians, along with fellow animated shows Cleopatra in Space and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

During the show’s first season, the characters spend only nine minutes at the Trolberg public library, but those scenes make a strong impression. In the show’s sixth episode, protagonists Hilda, David, and Frida travel to the library, searching for information to cure David’s awful nightmares. Before they can think of the right text, the librarian drops a book on a nearby table, telling them they will find it of interest, and slides away on a rolling ladder across the stacks. Once the group starts reading, they realize the book indeed contains the information they need. When Frida expresses her confusion with the librarian’s prescient actions, David tells her that it is her job to find what they need.

In the next episode, the protagonists journey to the library to learn about dragons. While Hilda laments that she would rather be in a “deep, dark forest,” her elf friend, Alfie, calls the library a “forest for the imagination”; Frida adds that research is the “greatest adventure of them all.” After Alfie locates the right book using the card catalog, he expresses his love of “a good subject-based classification system,” in keeping with the show’s portrayal of elves as comically fixated on paperwork and organization. This scene reinforces the impression from the previous episode that libraries are wonderous places of valuable information.

Much of the library’s screen time for the season takes place in the eighth episode. In the first scene, Hilda looks for a “cozy place” to read. Thanks to the instincts of her pet, Twig, she stumbles upon a hidden special collections room in the library, a space that comics writer Matthew Garcia calls “the real wonder” of the episode. Among the stacks, Hilda finds a spell book whose contents spur the plot of the episode. Afterward, she is reminded by the librarian that the reference books, like the spell book, cannot be circulated. Filled with enchantments, the books become, in Garcia’s words, a “creature of their own.” Alfie has several wonderful lines in this episode, calling libraries “thrilling temples of the unexpected.” Thanks to the information Hilda learned during her time in the library, she lifts the enchantment on her friend and mother just in time.

In the episode that follows, the protagonists visit the library again, searching for information following a possible encounter with a ghost. Before Hilda has a chance to ask for help, the librarian anticipates her question. After some hesitation, the librarian draws upon her extensive expertise about everything from local gravesite locations to ghost summoning rituals in order to assist the group. She gives Hilda the necessary materials to raise the dead, while warning her that she will be “piercing the veil” between the human world and the world of the dead. While she later calls this activity “fun,” she does so in order to help Hilda, a patron, with something important. The librarian’s actions in this episode highlight the responsibility of librarians to serve patrons to the best of their ability.

In the show’s final episode, we see the librarian walking across the streets of Trolberg. Whether she is goth, a witch, a vampire, a queer-coded character, or a version of Hilda from the future—all of which are popular theories among fans—there is no doubt she will have an important role in the show’s upcoming season, which will likely begin streaming on Netflix in either October or November of this year. In the end, the librarian in Hilda serves as a positive depiction of librarians in animation which eschews stereotypes, hopefully making clear the importance of librarians and libraries for years to come.

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