Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rite of Spring #6

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rite of Spring #6

by Patrick Horvath

The series finale of the critically acclaimed cozy-horror smash hit! Samantha Strong has made her choice…and Woodbrook will never be the same. The events of the previous issue are so incredibly wild that we actually can’t type anything else here without it being a major spoiler. But you won’t want to miss the conclusion to Patrick Horvath’s epic follow-up to Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees.

Genres: Horror, Comics, Graphic Novels, Adult, Mystery, Fiction, Thriller

32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 4, 2026

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rite of Spring arc (issue #1-6) of Beneath the Trees. Review for the full arc.
Soft lovely watercolor anthropomorphic animals live small town lives in Woodbrook. Small town, outside of the city, where Samantha joined the family paint business.

The first two issues introduce us to Sam, whose modus operandi is creepy and odd. We get to know what happened to Samantha's parents. There is not a sense of who Samantha is, outside of just pure emptiness. She is not breaking bad, there's nothing to break. What makes Sam tick!? This intrigues me, as I believe Horvath is building to something very interesting with Samantha's psychology.

As things escalate, there is one citizen who can't rest knowing that her brother's murderer is out there somewhere. Samantha offers to help her, as if this is part of her game. Their dynamic is incredibly interesting because for the first time ever, Samantha feels "close" to someone.

The best part of this story is that it evolves. It is not an episodic serial killer series. It escalates and weaves in psychological intrigue. The artist does a fantastic job of representing the echo of trauma, and how it's not just Sam's direct victims who are harmed. It's their families, it's revenge, it's how the revenge is handled.

Then, Sh*t ->Fan -> Hit.

Issues #5 and #6 are cliffhangers.

Sam has had some pretty big back up plans all along. She knew one day she'd be found out and took measures to protect herself. She is so bored with daily life, she's going gray, and she resents all the small town people.

This ends with Sam moving to new a home in the middle of nowhere. She is writing her story for us, in addition to the author's representation. The very last line of this arc indicates that Samantha's fiasco in Woodbrook will not be her last.

[* A Reader Obsessed * · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

Surely, that can’t be the end right??

If you need some diabolical shock value in your life about a small town serial killer disguised as a children’s comic, look no further and start here.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh! OooOooH!
That went tits up fast for Monica, didn't it?



So there's not much to say about this one that wouldn't be a spoiler, but this did not end in the way I expected. At all.
All I will say is that Samantha is a savage and creepy as hell.



As Sam recalls her past, this arc ends with the promise of more to come.
And I am absolutely here for it!
Come on, Horvath, let's see what you've got in store for us next time.



Highly Recommended.

[Stay · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And then he said he’d lick her fur clean instead of taking a shower. Eww! I know!!"

I’ve been chewing my fingernails waiting for this volume. I needed answers to how this was going to end and learn if Sam will drive off into the sunset.

My theories were actually a lot better than how this turned out. The last page of this was so disappointing. There was this huge lead up and I was anxious to know what the hell was going to happen. It let me down, well, just the very last page.

This was a great series and it all came down to that last bit. It wasn’t what I was hoping it would be. Still a phenomenal and twisted tale. One I will definitely reread.

[Elle]

I don't even know what star rating to give, but there had BETTER be more of this series coming because if not, this ending was a huge letdown.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt a little anticlimactic especially after issue #5 and in comparison to the final issue of the original series. Does seem to set up a future series so I’m excited to see what happens with that. But I’m of the opinion that a good series should be able to stand on its own, and this finale ultimately impedes the rest (which was very good) from doing so.

[Mason Eloph · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing 6 issue graphic novel harkening on the theme of you can’t always trust your neighbor. The art was one of a kind, reminding me of childhood shows and themes mixed with a lot of body horror. I can’t say i’ve ever read anything like this, but i’m always open to new and fun ways to write an interesting story, and this was definitely that!

[Kathyj · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was lowkey The Dark Knight and samantha is the joker fr

[Rose Prescott-Voorhees · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

And there it ends! The sequel I didn't expect to like, but actually really did enjoy. Sam went full nuclear mode, and god, I feel so bad for poor Monica. I'm happy for some of it, but... goddammit, she can't keep getting away with it!

I guess they perhaps wanted to leave it open for maybe yet another, but, was pretty satisfying, as much as I desperately wanted Sam to get her goddamn comeuppance.

[kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this wrap up to samantha’s crazy murder escapades!! things were ultimately wrapped up for the good or the bad

i wasn’t really rooting for samantha at all and the way she did monica kinda made me feel like she is a straight up poison. not only is she a vicious murderer but she will bring you to your lowest point before she kills you.

i may have waited a bit too long between reading the 5th one and this one because i forgot some details for a second, but that’s on me

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow what a finale!
I stand by me saying “good for her” with Sam. This felt nice and final but I would love to see more!

[Claire Giannino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samantha, you're a really bad bear.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow this was both crazy & not crazy enough. I loved this series, but I’m left wanting a little more from how abruptly this last installment ended. I was waiting for a bigger payout at the end!!

[Cybernex007 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is so genius, what a brilliant ending and tease for what’s to come. But I just need to take a moment to express how much a depraved, despicable, disgusting, and every other d word that could be used to describe the psychopathic tendencies of Samantha Strong. The first series she maintained the rule that she never crossed her business into the life of Woodbrook, that line was crossed by another but now we truly get to see the scale of Samantha Strong when she is ready to burn her bridges and leave. After killing the sheriff and his deputies, a stray bullet hitting chip right in front of Lewis, and knocking Monica out…Sam activated a switch in her store to set it on fire. Turns out she has a few of these setup throughout the entire town, allowing her to create a literal smokescreen to mask her escape. But she isn’t quite done with Monica yet as she ties her up inside of the burning hardware store. Monica triggers a third incendiary as the fire crew leaves the station…this one, to their horror, setting their own station on fire. But the final switch went right to the laundry room of the Woodbrook county hospital. Samantha has single handily caused a stoppage to all emergency services that could help in this situation. And at the moment no one in the hospital is the wiser. We find that the koala Monica scuffled with and took a fall down the stairs is in a coma, and right down the hall from Pauline as a social worker sets her up with a recovery program or her son, who is still a minor, will be removed from her home. Pauline is at such rock bottom that she isn’t sure that would be such a bad idea. But the flames are spreading fast and as the fire alarm on the spiral goes off we find officials speeding through the neighborhoods telling everyone to leave the area immediately. Bertie doesn’t want to leave the safety of his home, but his dog, Anchovy, barks enough to convince him to go. This leads to Bertie finding the senior living facility abandoned by the staff as he rushes back to help them.

A firefighter team has arrived to the hardware store, the paramedics arrive just too late as Chip dies in Lewis’ arms. Word is spreading fast of Samantha being the cause of all this, all while she is hanging out inside the burning building as Monica curses her out and swears that one day her luck will run out. Sam points out that Monica killed a man yesterday, and even confides that this is the closest she has ever had to having a connection with anyone. Sam asks why knowing her brother was dead wasn’t enough for Monica. She claims she needed to know what happened, so Sam tells her…she was just waiting for someone to walk by, it could have been anyone, and there he was. There was the cost of knowing, as Monica walks out the door to leave Monica in the building to burn to death. But as she walks outside she finds her car moved, an Lewis is in the drivers seat down the alley as he yells and demands to know why she is doing this and how she could pretend to care. Sam tries to appeal to his emotions, but when he realizes that she killed everyone and blamed it on Nigel…Sam pulls her gun and fires at him. Lewis is fast enough to drive away before Sam can get a clear shot. As if fate determined it, another car driven, by an owl, pulls up to ask Sam what’s happening. Sam innocently asks for help, and as the owl can hearing screaming from Monica inside the shop…Sam is able to slip right up from behind to slit his throat.

“I often wondered, if God’s hand was in any of this…why wasn’t I ever stopped? For every time the path was blocked…the answer was always right around the corner…like it was inevitable. Like the river bends around the rock…to make its trip out to sea.”

In the hospital, Pauline finds herself at the front of a crowd as everyone pushes to get away from the fire. The koala sits in his bed deep in a coma as his wife begs for someone to help him get out. Pauline makes it out to find Lewis pulling up in Sam’s car as he embraces her and is overcome with emotions to see her okay alongside everyone else that has happened. Meanwhile Bertie is making his way into the senior living facility, watching as the embers fall down like deadly snow ready to catch another building in fire. He gets inside to find many of the residents in the front lobby, but the woman he has been talking to, Agatha, is no where to be seen as they explain she went upstairs. Bertie goes to look as he tells everyone to get out, ordering more on the second floor to close the doors to the balcony before embers get in. Bertie finally finds Agatha down the hall, this time she is the one that needs help getting up…but the smoke is filling the facility embers catch on the roof. It’s hard to see where the exit is, but then the barking of Bertie’s dog guides the way to the stairs as they make it down to the facility bus. Agatha swiped a spare key when she stopped trusting the staff a few months ago, and now Bertie, who has never driven a bus, is there to take them to safety.

The news has caught wind of what’s happening in Woodbrook as Lewis’ sister in college huddles around a TV and runs out in tears worried about her family. Sam is now driving out of the town completely undetected in the chaos. She didn’t expect the fire to get so big and it turned into an old and surprise. Sure there was a lot of screaming and crying, but she doesn’t think it was all bad for everyone. Moments like this put things into perspective for people, like Bertie who found out what really matters to him, the people around him, vs the things that don’t and burned down with his house. It’s a good way to free yourself from the past and look towards the future. A future that is coming to every sleepy town in the country. Sam drives until she gets to a gas station at the edge of the “middle of fucking nowhere” as the attendant describes it. A place with people who keep to themselves and don’t like visitors…the exact place San was looking for. The years pass and the world found out about almost everything Sam did, she knew she couldn’t keep it a secret forever…but what did surprise her is just how many fans popped up because of it. OMG. What a phenomenal series and a perfect tease. This is the best series to take on the glorification of serial killers. Sam is a character with this storybook lens where it’s so easy to gloss over how much of a monster she really is, that is such a sick perfect idea to explore.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ending!!!! 😯

[Megan (ReadingRover) · Rating 2 out of 5]

For such a suspenseful, climactic series this ending was a total let down. It wasn’t even unsatisfying in a way that a cliffhanger is because at least with a cliffhanger there is a buildup and you have something to look forward to. This was just bland. It wasn’t even unsatisfying like no effort went into it. Fail. I’m sure there will be a new story arc but it can’t have the same umph as this one especially after that weak ending. 2 stars

[Raaven💖 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yay im the first review! I’m only giving this a 4 star because the ending made me mad. But what a trip. This series is so sad and frustrating and I loved it. I really wish there could be more. Samantha is the biggest sociopath/psychopath and the perfect example of someone just purely evil. And Monica. Not knowing is sometimes better. This series was so much fun and I’m kind of sad it’s over. But another part of it could pop up again. It was sort of an open ending. But all in all, fuck you Samantha Strong.

[Lizzy DeMarco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic ending to this series!

[TAJ ALGADDAFI | تاج القذافي · Rating 2 out of 5]

واخيرا النهاية...كنت متوقعه العداله بس الكاتب غير كل توقعاتي..
هذا الجزء ذكرني بحرائق كاليفورنيا

[Steven Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a finale. Not what I was expecting or hoping for, but fitting.

[itchy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scorched fucking earth.

[Rebs ✿ · Rating 5 out of 5]

already looking forward to vol. 3 of this series, absolutely fantastic.

[Reading by Mothlight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit

[lula · Rating 3 out of 5]

i know theyre setting up a sequel, but damn, could u at least have tried a bit harder to tie up the finale to feel less anticlimactic? maybe a few high speed chases out of the city or something? its been a solid 5/5 for the rest of the comic but the ending felt super rushed 😔

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I really enjoyed this follow up to the original series. It was a little less cozy feeling than the first series...not quite as compulsive a read...but still a good time and i would definitely read it again.

[Shellz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Her plot amor was too fucking thick it pissed me off. Also how OBVIOUSLY its baiting a third entry I DO NOT WANT NOW. Did she do fucking become an internet troll basically and did this for the "lawlz"?

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dang, a good but frustrating ending!

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I didn’t care much for the ending, I still do like Sam as a character. I wrote a very long post on my Tumblr about how female villains are so lackluster compared to male villains because writers always restrict the way they write women to how women are systematically and culturally restricted to be in society: Sexy, cute, in pursuit of romance, or in pursuit of motherhood. Thus female villains always fall into one of four tropes: femme fatale seductress (usually compounded with gold digger), evil little darling (usually a child or a child-like entity), spurned lover, or grieving/longing mother. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with those tropes, when an entire demographic of people are only allowed to be one of four things in stories, that’s when it becomes a problem. Sam doesn’t fit into any of these tropes, thus she’s allowed to exist as a villain and a character beyond her gender. It’s too bad her story had such a lukewarm unsatisfying ending, but I still appreciate it for being more creative with its female villain way more than the majority of horror stories.

One question I had though is why didn’t Sam ever kill homeless people? If her only reason for killing is because she enjoys it no matter who it is, then why didn’t she target the only demographic of people that the police wouldn’t care about nor would run the risk of her getting caught? She’s presented as a genius killer, so it makes even more sense for her to target people that she knows for sure have no connections and one who’d miss them. I guess the logic is she wants to keep her kills as random as possible so the police never catch one, and since she’s been killing for decades without being caught, she had no reason to change that pattern. However, I still think it would’ve been so much more tragic if part of the reason why the police were apathetic to Monica’s brother’s missing person case was because he was homeless. If Daniel was homeless, then he wouldn’t have had any traceable documents such as job time cards, dental records, or medical files, thus further demotivating the police to investigate his case and made Monica’s pursuit for justice even more tragically hopeless. It also could’ve compounded as extra commentary to how abandoned and unprotected homeless people are by society, and how that leaves them vulnerable to violent acts without reproduction on the offender’s end. Not to say this would’ve made the series better. I just think it would’ve an interesting aspect to explore.

[Daniel Freer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hope this isnt the end but still loved every second of this run!!!

This is the 2nd run if Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. The 1st was just called that and was one of the best written and coolest art styles id ever seen. A little more cat and mouse as the plot/point of the 1st run was a little different. Sometimes 2nd runs of such amazing stories can be lame and done just for the sake of doing it to make money and capitalize on the 1st runs success. Honestly was a little hesitant to jump into this one knowing that. BUT IT TOTALLY DELIVERS AND HAS A GREAT STORY AS WELL. Wasn't done just to do it and you can tell it was ment to move the story along and was done in an excellent way while still being amazingly brutal and likeable at the same time. Not knowing whats gonna happen and that feeling of loosing someone, not knowing what happened and needing to find out. But also being careful what you wish for. To see the destruction Samantha caused in the 1st run while creating a whole new story from some of that but also making it new and also showing how different people deal with and handle loosing the people we love. Just an amazing piece of writing and artwork, storytelling and character building. Can't wait to see where they go with the series and hope they do continue to build on it. Definitely a must read for fans of comics/manga/graphic novels but also anyone who loves good stories and great writing. This things gonna come to a head and I cant wait to see how it turns out!!!

[Henry Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection isn't published yet so I'm gonna put my thoughts on this whole sequel here.
What's weird is that I think I like the concept of this one more than I like the concept of the original. I do have a soft spot for legacy sequels or stories with time jumps in them. But I think this one is lacking in some execution (no pun intended).

SPOILERS BELOW

Oddly enough, I really enjoyed the back story portions and would've liked more of that. Our killer is very methodical in her ways, and I would have loved some more info on that or looks into why she started killing. I enjoy the trope of a killer in your own backyard, but for a sequel I'd like some more developments about her and who she is.
The ending was...interesting. I certainly get the spectacle but some of the specifics kind of lost me. Of course, I know a story like this isn't realistic but some stuff was too much to believe.
I liked the wild animals coming into town a lot. That reoccurring image is great.
And the implication that she's actually writing this all? From prison or something? Or online while living in secret? Idk I like ambiguous endings usually but this one left a sore taste on my tongue.
Art is still great and I love the little details. I'd probably still give this a 3.5? But considering it's leaning towards a 3 this time I've marked it as such.