Netflix’s smash-hit dark comedy “Wednesday” will release its second season this fall, following a two-part release schedule. The first episode debuted on Aug. 6 and the second four are scheduled for Sept. 3. The first season was released in November of 2022, immediately accumulating millions of viewers.
Starring up-and-coming horror actress Jenna Ortega, the show follows a teenage Wednesday Addams as she navigates life at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for outcasts with strange powers, whose name commemorates Edgar Allan Poe. In the first season, Wednesday found herself trying to manage psychic powers and teenage angst while investigating a violent mystery in the town.
Season two finds Wednesday arriving for her second year at Nevermore Academy with the same charmingly unemotional manner and morbid interests. Seemingly gaining complete control over her powers over the summer, viewers are led to expect another psychic-based murder mystery.
Closely following the plot of Season one, we watch Wednesday’s continuing investigation of the Hyde, which turns out to be one of her previous love interests, and the slew of mysteries that unfold as she digs deeper. Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the 1990s movies and a Nevermore teacher in Season one, reprises her role — although now confined to a mental institution. Wednesday’s colorful werewolf roommate Enid, portrayed by Emma Myers, plays a smaller role in the new season, having her own romantic issues to deal with.
A new antagonist stalks Wednesday with a murder of crows in Season two, and Wednesday deals with the mysterious loss of her power, which hinders her investigative progress. The first half of the second season ends with a shocking twist and an action-packed final scene, leaving viewers to wonder what other mysteries Wednesday will uncover in part two.
All the classic Addams Family characters have a part in the Netflix original, although their characterizations deviate slightly from their 1964 and 1990s counterparts. Wednesday’s parents Morticia, portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Gomez, portrayed by Luis Guzmán, maintain their comedically passionate love affair. However, in a departure from the original, Gomez’s scenes of mentorship are reduced to amusing but generally unhelpful quips rather than the genuine parental care he provides in previous iterations.
Wednesday’s brother Pugsley, portrayed by Isaac Ordonez, maintains the more “normal” identity of his character, and yearns to be accepted by his peers, although he shares most of the family’s more off-putting qualities. Thing, the disembodied hand that acts as a butler to the family, and Uncle Fester, played by Fred Armisen, also play a large part in the show.
A main conflict in the show is the tenuous relationship between Morticia and Wednesday, a contention that deviates from previous portrayals of the family yet is intensified in the second season as Morticia becomes more involved at the Academy and in Wednesday’s life. Typically, the Addams family are an idealized — although unconventional — paragon of family values; Morticia and Gomez are madly in love, every member cares deeply for the others and the family is generally a tightly knit group.
Although the show explains the tension with a traumatic experience Morticia has with her late sister’s psychic powers, watching the mother and daughter clash feels like a huge step away from what the family is meant to represent. In the second half of this season, I hope to see a resolution to this conflict and a reparation of the once-loving relationship I associate with the characters.
This conflict, along with the love triangle storyline from Season one, seem to be pandering to a mainstream audience while fundamentally misunderstanding the characters. Although I am not opposed to romance for Wednesday – I was a big fan of her storyline with Joel in the “Addams Family Values” — I believe that a high school love triangle is not believable for her character, and that such a contentious relationship with her mother retracts from the family’s core values in exchange for relatability.
Although the plot can seem a bit ridiculous at times, Ortega’s outstandingly chilling, but still endearing performance keeps you enraptured through the whole story. The show also does a great job at building suspense, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats, ready for the next detail to be unveiled, trying to piece together the mystery from behind the screen.
The end of the fourth episode offers more questions than answers, leaving a spellbound audience waiting for the final episodes to be released in the coming week.