I’ve never seen The Addams Family in any form other than their Scooby-Doo crossover from the 70s, that I saw on Boomerang as a kid. So I have no basis of comparison for Wednesday, but after years of people telling me that I should watch it, I finally decided to give it another try. Yes, another. I did load it up once on my Netflix app to try it out when it first released, but when Enid gave Wednesday the same tour you see in every “new student at a high school” movie, I immediately bounced off it (after getting halfway through Do Revenge, I was more than teenaged out). You know the scene. Plucky established student shows the new kid around and gives a quick and reductive rundown of the social cliques, who are very conveniently standing in their respective groups all in the same place so the exposition can get out of the way in one scene. I rolled my eyes so hard (having seen the exact same scene in Do Revenge just prior) that I almost fell over.
But hearing the fervor about the second season (a scant three years after the first was released), I decided to give it an honest try. Once I had clenched my teeth through said cliched scene, I found myself starting to really enjoy it. So let’s get into it.
Wednesday is an “outcast”, one of any number of people with magical powers—psychics, vampires, werewolves, gorgons, sirens, etc. Your basic motley crew of mythical creatures in teenager form, which in itself sounds nightmarish even before you add the powers into it. At the start of the show, Wednesday drops a bunch of piranhas into her old high school’s pool to get revenge on the kids bullying her brother, necessitating her change to Nevermore Academy, a kind of Hogwarts for outcasts (the difference here being that it’s not written by she who shall not be named) where Wednesday can be herself, or at least closer to it. She’s got a very Buffy-like reputation, which was a fun sort of callback to one of my favorite and formative TV shows.
At this point, you’d be excused for thinking that the rest of it is going to be teen drama and dances and in-group in-fighting, and while there is plenty of all that, it all sort of changes once the bodies start dropping, which happens almost immediately. Wednesday takes it upon herself to investigate, which seems to get under the skin of just about every authority figure around. The school’s principal Larissa Weems, played by Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones, Severance), has a political agenda to serve over something as simple as people being murdered by a monster in the woods. You see, in this world, the surrounding town knows about the outcasts and what they’re capable of doing. This was a surprise to me and it raised all sorts of questions. Does the whole world know about these outcasts or is it just a proximity thing? Wednesday is no slayer, it’s not a secret who she is or what she and her family or the other outcasts can do, and it seems everyone is just cool with it. Well, not cool—the outcasts aren’t called outcasts because they’re warmly embraced by the so-called “normies” who don’t have powers, after all. But while they haven’t quite pulled out the torches and pitchforks, Weems is conscious of the fact that they are never that far away from that moment. So she wants to keep things quiet, kind of understandably. Sheriff Galpin (Jamie McShane; The Lincoln Lawyer), however, is quite happy to get into the murders (the ones he believes happened, that is), but wants Wednesday to stay the hell out of it because he believes Gomez Addams, her father, is guilty of murder. Probably not a big stretch based on what little I learned from the show about the Addams family, murder seems very much in their wheelhouse.
So we’ve got a girl with powers exiled to a new school (Buffy vibes, very good for me), which happens to be a special school for societal rejects like her, and murders that she seems to be the only gumshoe willing to solve, which gives me huge Veronica Mars vibes, another great show. And Wednesday draws on these influences to great effect, leading to a highly entertaining show with a compelling mystery that leaves you satisfied when it’s concluded. Like the first season of Veronica Mars, the reveal is handled very well; all too often, the idea of a mystery needing to be a surprise in the post-Lost, terminally-online, constant discussion era results in nonsensical twists that serve to surprise rather than make narrative sense. When the killer is revealed at the end of Veronica Mars season one, there’s a head smacking moment where you think to yourself “How did I not see that? The evidence was there the whole time!” As someone who really likes to play along and solve the mysteries in the many whodunnits I’ve seen over the years, I appreciate this construction so much more than just the surprise for the sake of surprise, which can leave you feeling duped by the story and wondering why you wasted so much time on the show. Wednesday may not be the perfectly crafted mystery that Veronica Mars was, but it’s not that far off. And that’s one of the things I really liked about this show; it’s a proper mystery set in this fantastical world.
Of course, at the heart of Wednesday is Jenna Ortega’s performance as Wednesday herself. Ortega (Scream, Death of a Unicorn) is so savagely deadpan, her one-liners, insults, and bon mots often left me laughing out loud (her quip about the black dahlia especially springs to mind). She expertly delivers them and really gets into the character. I thought it would be difficult to make a character like Wednesday, a particularly goth kid in a world of dark and goth kids, charismatic and fun to watch, but she is fantastic in the role. Every moment that you get with her feels well done and properly characterized—she feels like a real person. The writing, of course, shoulders a great deal of that responsibility, but the moments where Wednesday’s sense of justice shines through and her shameful feelings of compassion and empathy take center stage are some of the most satisfying in the show. Ortega has already been in some big films and TV shows, but after seeing Wednesday, I am genuinely excited to see what roles she sinks her teeth into in the future, because she looks like the real deal. She is able to do so much with a character that could easily feel like a one-note in the wrong hands and yet you find yourself constantly on her side and rooting for her (which is a pleasant change from characters like Sabrina Spellman in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, who often felt very foot-stampy and gratingly indignant, though for good reason, to ill effect). Wednesday is very intelligent, very quick, and physically capable, though she prefers to use her intellect to solve problems rather than physical prowess or even magic. But then again, she’s not exactly afraid to use either, and she does so regularly.
Wednesday’s foil is Enid Sinclair, the bubbly, plucky established student who is also Wednesday’s new roommate. As you can imagine, they don’t get along very well at the beginning, and not just because Wednesday isn’t the getting along type. Enid is everything that Wednesday isn’t, her complete opposite in just about every way. Wednesday is clothed head to toe in black at all times, she’s uninterested in anything typical teens are interested in, she’s got nothing but contempt, seemingly so, for everyone around her. Enid, on other hand, is effervescent, an optimist, draped in bright colors and fuzzy sweaters when she’s not in her school uniform. If this were a buddy cop comedy, Enid would be the side character that both the main characters don’t like because she’s just too positive and cheery all the time. But again, thanks in part to Emma Myers (A Minecraft Movie, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder) and the writing, despite being the absolute antithesis to our protagonist, she’s just as fun and likable to be around. And the interactions between the two characters as they reluctantly become friends through the shared hardship that is high school are often comedy gold. Enid also develops a soft spot and strong friendship with Thing, the disembodied and reanimated hand that Wednesday’s mother Morticia sent to spy on her, which makes the character all the more endearing. That she can not only converse with, but also empathize with and befriend a hand is surprisingly sweet to watch. She’s also got a lot going on—Enid is a werewolf who has yet to make her first change, which causes a lot of tension in her family.
And even with all these great performances (including the supporting cast of Luis Guzman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the feature film version of Wednesday herself, Christina Ricci), there’s more to love about this show than just all the fun and murders. Wednesday is a show with a point of view and something to say. It’s got the obvious allegory to other marginalized groups, and the kids at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—I’m sorry, Nevermore Academy—can stand in for racial and religious minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, or just about anyone else whom society at large has decided is outside of their norms and therefore ripe for persecution and hatred. The outcasts, plainly and aptly named, are great signifiers for that. In addition, the show speaks to the colonialism, puritanical terror, and legacies of hate. Much like the Fear Street films, there is a long, deep story that binds the narrative of Wednesday together and gives meaning to the show greater than itself. There is something very powerful about allegorical storytelling and I think Wednesday does a great job of utilizing this method to tell these stories. With a surprising level of depth in what seemed like a fluffy teen show, it won me over pretty squarely. In addition to that, there’s also a lovely soundtrack of orchestral versions of classic songs, including a rousing rendition of “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones done on Wednesday’s cello. It is a fantastic choice for the score and I adore it.
With the second season wrapping up on Netflix with its midseason drop on September 3rd, there’s still enough time to binge your way to the conclusion before it gets spoiled on social media (clearly the worst thing about the binge model, but that’s a discussion for another day). And I would definitely recommend giving it a try because a genuine surprise is hard to find in entertainment and this was genuinely a surprisingly good time.
