The logline for Netflix’s “Wednesday” is, fitting to its IP, strange, but not wholly without merit: Take one of pop culture’s more endearingly spooky family units, previously adapted from the Charles Addams comic strips into a popular ’60s sitcom and a couple of solid Barry Sonnenfeld movies (and one 2019 animated effort that, well, we often forget about) and slot its most meme-able member, Wednesday, into a suitably supernatural coming-of-age murder mystery. Think a macabre blend of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” and “Veronica Mars.” As lukewarm as I was on season one, the results speak for themselves: “Wednesday” became Netflix’s most-watched English-language series in its history, and catapulted Wednesday back into the cultural consciousness with dance crazes, TikToks, the whole shebang.
A second season was inevitable, and here it is, albeit split into two chunks to fit the vagaries of the Netflix algorithm. (They don’t want anybody signing up, binging the whole season, then canceling again.) And while I still have my hangups about how well the Addams Family fits into this kind of murder-mystery milieu, season 2 seems to have righted the ship and given Netflix’s latest mascot a more delicious meal to chew on…. so far.
One of the smartest moves by showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (alongside director Tim Burton, who’s back to direct the bulk of the season) was to find new ways to complicate Wednesday Addams’ (Jenna Ortega) outsiderdom in Nevermore Academy, a place already build for literal “Outcasts” (gorgons, sirens, werewolves, and other beasties). Her role in solving the crisis she faced her freshman year has made her a bit of a celebrity among the Nevermore faithful; what’s more, she’s been bit by the murder-solving bug, and has been spending her summer vacation tracking down serial killers with the help of the psychic abilities gifted to her by her ancestor, Moody (also Ortega), last season. But those abilities seem to be overloading her, and the more she uses them, the more psychic damage she takes.
Now she’s back at Nevermore for her sophomore year, and the school (as well as its nearby town of “normies,” Jericho) is still trying to rebuild and reinvent itself. Bubbly werewolf roomie Enid (Emma Myers) has found a new confidence; there’s a conniving new principal (Steve Buscemi) with a keen eye on fundraising for the flagging school; and what’s worse, the younger Addams child, young Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), is finally enrolled at Nevermore. Wednesday, never one to conform, bristles against her newfound notoriety, especially as it draws her leagues of fans and stalkers eager to either help or be killed by her. And on top of all that, there’s a new mystery to solve: mysterious deaths seemingly caused by a literal murder of crows, led by a one-eyed bird that Wednesday sees in her visions.
Even in its first four episodes, “Wednesday” season 2 feels a little overstuffed, even as Burton and gang find some fiendish ways to keep the game cast occupied. In addition to the names I listed before, the rest of the Addams Family gets more screentime this season: Catherine Zeta-Jones‘ Morticia becomes a gala chair, Luis Guzman‘s Gomez pals around with the kids as a parental chaperone on field outings, and Thing remains the Watson to Wednesday’s Sherlock. (Fred Armisen also gets a lot of focus as Fester in the season’s fourth episode set in Willow Hill, the local funny farm—which, depending on how you feel about that performance, can be grating.) Lots of other big names pop up for some pleasantly consistent Netflix cash, like Joanna Lumley as Wednesday’s grandmother, Thandiwe Newton and Heather Matarazzo as doctors and therapists at Willow Hill, and Billie Piper even pops up as the crooning music teacher who will surely have a more significant role to play in Part 2.
Sometimes, the robust supporting cast threatens to overshadow the show’s focus on Wednesday herself, but blissfully, Ortega’s laser-focused command of the character wins out. Much ballyhoo has been made of Ortega’s protectiveness of Wednesday, right down to making script and direction changes on set while shooting, and I can’t help but feel it pays off in spades, especially in season two. Her Wednesday is more expertly calibrated between menacing and inquisitive, letting just enough peeks of empathy through to make her believably invested in stopping murder without letting her lose her mean streak. She stands out among other TV gumshoes in that she solves mysteries almost out of spite, or ego; it’s not about saving lives, but about solving her own personal riddles, or proving someone wrong. That’s a novel twist that helps to complicate the relationships with the characters around her.
Of course, the show’s macabre sense of humor remains intact, even as its pace suffers somewhat under the strain of the too-familiar Netflix hour-long runtime. A lot of wheels spin among a lot of different cars, whether it’s Enid’s love triangle between hunky fellow lycanthrope Bruno (Noah Taylor) and forlorn gorgon Ajax (Georgie Farmer), or Buscemi’s Principal Dort recruiting siren Bianca (Joy Sunday) to bamboozle Morticia into helping them raise money to keep the school going. (If I could cut one subplot, it’d be Pugsley’s attempts to raise a clockwork zombie from the dead; I mean, Slurp’s fun and all, but he kills the momentum brain-dead, and Ordonez feels a bit stiffer than the other young castmates.)
But at least unlike most Netflix seasons, each episode feels centered around a central premise: A trip to Camp Jericho to compete with a normie scout troupe (led by a sanctimonious Anthony Michael Hall channeling R. Lee Ermey in “Full Metal Jacket“), a jaunt inside Willow Hill to find more clues, a “Prank Day” that allows the kids to experience all kinds of dangers of dubious reality.
The problems that remain with “Wednesday” are part and parcel of the Netflix formula, more than anything specific to the premise or the excellent cast. The show’s still finding its way towards porting a horror sitcom family into the more procedural structure of a murder mystery, and some of the Gothic gags get a little one-note by the time each episode’s punishing length draws to a close. That said, perhaps it’s fitting that Wednesday wants our pleasure to be doused with a little bit of pain. That’d probably make her smirk in at least some delight. And Part I sets up the show gamely for a Part II that should, in a perfect world, stick the landing.
All four episodes of Part I screened for review. Part 1 is currently streaming on Netflix.
