The identity of a mysterious cartoon elf that has been plaguing the internet for years has finally been discovered. Although the person that has led the charge on this mystery is podcaster Will Sloan (The Important Cinema Club and Michael and Us), it started quite a while before he stepped in. The source of the confusion is a family photo from Ottawa resident Emily Charette, in which a television can clearly be seen behind the young Emily and her family, showing a cartoon elf in a red shirt and overalls. She asked her co-workers for help identifying it in 2016, but to no avail. Eventually, a friend of hers made a post that drew the attention of Sloan and his girlfriend, and he took it upon himself to post the photo on his Twitter in 2019, igniting a debate that has reached over 11 million people and is proving as divisive as The Dress in 2015 or whether Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine at the Don't Worry Darling premiere this week.The image, taken in Ontario in the early 1990s is quite clearly of an elf of some type, though whether the character appeared in a Christmas-themed special was unknown. The overall design of the elf caused many to suspect it may be a character from the works of animator Don Bluth, who is best known for The Land Before Time and Anastasia. However, most of his works are well-known enough that nobody needed to check, and even his more obscure works like Rock-A-Doodle failed to turn up results. Attention began to move from Bluth to the Canadian animation studio Nelvana, the company behind popular animated series like The Magic School Bus, Beetlejuice, and Star Wars: Droids. However, the mystery remained persistently unsolved for years.Yesterday, Sloan published an article in The New Yorker tracing the peculiar history of the hunt for the elusivs elf. In the article, he revealed that the mystery has finally been answered, thanks to a new Twitter thread created by Twitter user @blameitonjorge on Saturday. It turns out that the elf is a character from the little-known television special from 1991 called The Soulmates: The Gift of Light. Check out the original image, recently reposted by Sloan, below:
While the title seems to indicate that this special is a continuation of an animated series known as The Soulmates, that doesn't seem to be the case. The standalone special is a profoundly peculiar piece involving Santa's lead reindeer, Comet. In order to prevent the evil Angris McBragg from ruining Christmas, Comet calls upon Orion and Orillia, extraterrestrial "soulmates" who appear to be tiny Marvin the Martian-esque aliens who ride around on hoverboards. The voice cast includes Sheila McCarthy from Die Hard 2 and Al Waxman from the classic cop series Cagney & Lacey.
Now that the identity of the cartoon elf has been revealed, this may be the start of a new renaissance for The Soulmates: The Gift of Light. As of the time of writing, the YouTube page where the entire special was uploaded has now reached nearly 50,000 views. It may soon eclipse the number of people who watched it when it originally aired, if it hasn't already.
Source: The New Yorker