Chapter 4: The Laughing Merman

General
**Gallery**

This article is about one of the episodes from the Netflix-exclusive television series.
You may be looking for the graphic novel series of the same name.

## Credits

### Writer

Ben Joseph
Che Grayson

### Head Writer

Stephanie Simpson

***The Laughing Merman*** is the fourth episode of the third season, and the thirtieth episode overall, of the Hilda TV series. It was released on December 7th, 2023 on **Netflix**.

## Synopsis

After their fellow Sparrow Scouts dub them "The Freaky Friends," Hilda, Frida and David resolve to have the most ordinary river trip imaginable.

## Summary

 This section contains spoilers of an episode, movie, or book.

Hilda, Frida and David are in the woods with their fellow Sparrow Scouts to go rafting and photograph as many different fishes as possible for the Fish Finder River Badge. Raven Leader tells the scouts to split up in groups of four. This proves troublesome for Hilda and friends as they are always hanging out as a trio. They ask around, but none of the other Sparrow Scouts want to join them, with two scouts in particular pointing out how Hilda, Frida and David always end up getting into weird adventures. They even dub the three “The Freaky Friends”. Ultimately, an introvert girl named Louise is assigned to them by Raven Leader.

In order to not frighten Louise, and to counter their bad reputation, Hilda and friends decide to not have any adventures and make this trip as normal as possible. However, things go south when David loses the map of the river, and subsequently the four kids end up paddling up a wrong riverway.

On this riverway, the four kids meet a talking merman named Eugene, who is being chased by a sea serpent and asks the kids for help. They manage to escape the serpent by paddling onto a section of the river with rapid currents, which unfortunately leads straight to a waterfall. They survive the plunge, but are now even more lost than before. Eugene claims he knows a way back to the main river and instructs the kids to enter a cave behind a waterfall. Hilda doesn’t trust it, but the kids decide that they don’t have much of a choice and thus agree.

However, Hilda’s feeling was right and it is a trap. The cave is Eugene’s home. Eugene, who considers himself a great entertainer but is starving for attention, reveals through a song that he used to live in the ocean where he used to sing for crowds until a fisherman caught him and eventually dumped him in the river with no apparent way home. The sea serpent they encountered earlier was just a trick by him to lure the kids to his cave and now he plans to keep them as his audience forever.

In an attempt to escape, David makes a deal with Eugene that he will let them go if he cannot get them to like his performance in the next five minutes. Eugene tells jokes, creates illusion and even warps the kids bodies into more comedic forms. Ultimately, only Louise manages to hold out till the end. Eugene thus allows her to leave, but the others have to stay. Louise, not wanting to abandon her new friends, convinces Eugene to give the others another chance. At the cost of her own freedom if they fail.

The second challenge involves the kids having to decide which of 9 potential exits out of the cave is the real one. There’s no apparent way to tell which exit is real. Louise however has been observing Eugene and figured out that he tends to laugh anytime the kids are about to do something foolish or fall for his traps. Thus, at her request, the kids examine each exit and observe Eugene’s behavior. They are able to eliminate most fake exits this way, until there’s only two left. Eugene however catches on to their plot and creates an illusion of himself with a stoic expression to sabotage them. The kids come close to picking the wrong exit, but Louise sees through Eugene’s trick at the last moment because his illusions don’t work on her photographs, and they beat the challenge.

Once out of the cave, Eugene honors his end of the bargain and lets the kids go, but is saddened that he won’t have an audience anymore. Louise tells him he could have gone back to the ocean anytime as the river flows there. She also reveals that David never lost the map; she hid it in her camera case because she knew of the Freaky Friends’ reputation and wanted to have an adventure with them. Hilda is glad to have met someone that likes their freakiness. As the kids continue their rafting trip, Eugene, at Louise’ request, pulls a prank on the Sparrow Scouts that insulted Hilda and friends earlier, scaring them with his sea serpent illusion. He then makes his way downstream, back to the sea.

## Featured Characters

### Humans

* Sparrow Scouts:
	+ Hilda
	+ David
	+ Frida
	+ Jacob (unnamed in this episode)
	+ Harry (unnamed in this episode)
	+ Louise
	+ Raven Leader
	+ Willy

### Creatures

* Eugene
* Sea Serpent (illusion only)

## Trivia

* The song sung by Eugene in this episode is "Bottom of the Sea".
* The song played during the end credits is "Freequent Letdown" by Illuminatie Hotties.
* Despite being inducted as the 4th member of the group, Louise does not accompany Hilda, David, and Frida on any of their adventures for the remainder of the series. She is only seen in the foreground aboard a bus in *Chapter 6: The Forgotten Lake,* and on the Sparrow Scout's float in the epilogue of *Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle,* where she takes a photo of Hilda riding the Great Raven. She does not have a speaking role ever again after this episode.

### Cultural References

* The Merman smiles like the Grinch in one scene.