After a nearly three-year wait, Jenna Ortega’s droll teen detective Wednesday Addams is back to endure one of life’s most spine-chilling and shuddersome experiences: high school. Yes, yet another year of Nevermore Academy lies ahead for the titular anti-heroine of Netflix’s hit goth-comedy Wednesday, which means even more macabre mysteries, frightful schoolgirl dynamics, and hair-raising adolescent hijinks for the young Addams to plumb.
However, aswe soon find out in the premiere of this season—the final half of which drops September 3—there are other ghastly developments that welcome Wednesday back to Nevermore’s halls. For one, there’s her newfound fame and popularity among her fellow outcasts following her success in defeating demon-pilgrim Joseph Crackstone last season, which has pigtailed fangirls clamoring for her autograph between lessons. (“I only sign my name in blood…I never said it was my own blood,” Wednesday warns.)
There’s also the increased presence of the rest of the Addams clan on campus. Little bro Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) joins as a student to learn how to harness his electrokinesis (though he spends far more time trying to tame a pet zombie he’s named Slurp). And parents Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) are all but leading Nevermore’s PTA, chaperoning camping trips and getting schmoozed by the new principal Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi) to chair the Academy’s fundraising efforts. The proximity of Morticia, in particular, brings out even more prickliness from the famously morose teen, a relatable angst that comes to a head in campy fashion. (Hint: Zeta-Jones gets to tap into her Zorro past.)
The expanded screen time of Zeta-Jones and co. should appease those who felt that the family was missing from this Addams Family spin-off last season. And in fact, the ancestral tree branches out even further with the introduction of Morticia’s formidable mother Grandmama Hester Frump, who’s played by Absolutely Fabulous great Joanna Lumley. (Fred Armisen is also back as lightbulb-loving weirdo Uncle Fester.)
However, at least in the first four episodes of the season, splashy cast additions like Lumley, Buscemi, Billie Piper (as Isadora Capri, a former child prodigy turned the Academy’s new head of music), Thandiwe Newton (playing Dr. Rachael Fairburn, the chief psychiatrist at Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility), Haley Joel Osment (portraying a serial killer known as the Kansas City Scalper, who Wednesday hunts down during her summer vacay), and Christopher Lloyd (returning to the Addams Family universe as Professor Orloff, Nevermore’s longest-serving teacher) feel wasted, with the actors given scanter narratives than their talents merit. (You have to hand it, though, to Romanian illusionist Victor Dorobantu, who continues to give Thing more personality and pluck than many of his fuller-bodied co-stars.)
And it’s not just the supporting stars who are dulled in the new episodes, which are equally split by directors Tim Burton (who also serves as executive producer) and Paco Cabezas (The Appeared, Mr. Right).Ortega is an interesting performer whose goth-girl charms are reminiscent of Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but season two’s Wednesday Addams isn’t just deadpan: She’s damn near soulless, all clipped deliveries and unblinking stares.
This season sees Wednesday wrestle with distressing premonitions that her upbeat bestie Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) will soon die and that she will somehow be responsible for said demise. But, even with black tears that dramatically run down the Addams girl’s face every time such a vision emerges, it’s hard to be convinced of her concern through the character’s relentlessly dark stoicism. “I don’t evolve; I cocoon,” Wednesday says of her ghoulishly guarded nature.
There might be more room for Wednesday’s personal growth or those side-character storylines if, as was the case with season one, the series weren’t already so crammed with competing elements, from high-school melodrama—see Enid’s love triangle with gorgon Ajax (Georgie Farmer) and the wolfishly appealing Bruno (Noah B. Taylor)—to haunting murder mystery. Because of that genre commotion, none of the individual components are allowed to sing. And the show’s younger demographic means that any efforts to freak and frighten are less harrowing and more Hot Topic. At least all of that genre-hopping looks pretty great—the series won for its costuming, makeup, and production design at the 2023 Emmys—save for some shoddy CGI where a few monsters are concerned.
Unlike the show’s first batch, which saw eight episodes drop in one fell swoop, the sophomore round has been given Netflix’s increasingly popular split-season treatment à la Emily In Paris, Bridgerton,and Wednesday’s closest streaming relative, Stranger Things. It’s easy to not be a fan of the multi-part model when it comes to made-for-binging streaming titles—they tend to spell doom for a show’s momentum—but Wednesday season two might be the rare breed to benefit from the format. By the midseason finale, your head might just be spinning from all of the macabre mess unfolding onscreen—so a month away from Nevermore could do the mind some good.
Wednesday season two, part one premieres August 6 on Netflix
