Tim Burton’s Wednesday, based on the subversive cartoon strip The Addams Family by Charles Addams, is a smash hit. Jenna Ortega’s rendition of Wednesday Addams has not only impressed lifetime fans of the character but drawn in a massive new fan base. Ortega’s sinfully ghoulish Rave’N dance has taken over the internet, and the '80s jam "Goo Goo Muck" by The Cramps is back on the charts everywhere.
Season one of Wednesday now holds the record for the most hours viewed in a week for any English-language TV show on Netflix with a record-breaking 341.23M hours viewed, also putting the coming-of-age, neo-noir, horror fantasy ahead of Stranger Things season four. So, even though Netflix hasn’t officially renewed the show, a second season seems like a no-brainer at this point. The show creators also have a lot of plans for the story going forward, a revelation that has only made fans of the show even more excited.
Wednesday's Showrunners Have Plans for the Characters in Season 2
In classic Wednesday style, she avenges her harassed brother Pugsley by dropping a bagful of live piranhas into her school’s pool while his bullies are still in it. The gruesome retaliatory act gets her expelled, and she is sent to Nevermore Academy in Jericho, Vermont.
Nevermore, the alma mater of Morticia and Gomez Addams, is a school for the “outcasts,” aka supernatural beings that a society full of “normies” (essentially, muggles) consider dangerous freaks of nature. This allowed the show to have a fresh set of characters and scenarios for Wednesday to navigate but also took her away from her family, who have been an integral part of all previous versions of The Addams Family. However, this very premise also opened the show up to somewhat-fair criticism that because of its reliance on certain unimaginative settings and tropes, Wednesday ended up getting The CW teen show treatment.
In the second season, we will likely see the eccentric teen sleuth Wednesday forming better bonds with her peers. Showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar recently broke down their plans for season two. They want to include the other Addams family members in the story more than they had scope to in the first season. Millar said that they have a tentative three or four-season layout for the characters:
“...you always lay out at least three or four seasons’ worth of potential storylines for your characters. It can evolve and change. Often, you want to see which characters or cast pop and who you like to write for. So you want to keep it open and organic enough to change it and evolve it, but we certainly have a pretty clear runway of what we want to do in future seasons.”
In an interview with TV Line, Millar mentioned that Wednesday will remain the focus of the show since she’s the titular character, but also noted that they have plans for more Morticia and Gomez in season two:
“We felt like we just touched the surface with those characters and the actors are so amazing in those roles. Catherine (Zeta-Jones) is, I think, an iconic Morticia. The relationship between Wednesday and Morticia is also essential to the show, and the idea that Wednesday is trying to forge her own path outside the family is important.”
Al Gough mentioned his viewpoint about who Wednesday is as a character in the same interview:
“The series is really about a girl who sees the world in black and white, and learning there are shades of grey. I think like any relationship or any friendship, it can get complicated by other factors. It’s never going to be smooth sailing. And it’s really her learning to navigate the ups and downs of friendship.”
Characters We Hope Have More Screen Time
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
The first season saw two of Wednesday’s love interests – Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan) and Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White) – take centre stage. Most older fans of the show would be glad to see ‘love triangles’ and ‘will they, won’t they’ scenarios go away. Apart from freeing up time for other characters and more interesting storylines, these narrative motifs have already been done to death (pun intended) in every fictional story involving teens, YAs, and otherwise.
Instead, season two can explore an ‘enemies to besties’ storyline with Wednesday and Bianca Barclay, aka Brandy Jane (Joy Sunday), fellow Nevermore alum and a siren. Bianca is on a path to break generational curses and do better than her mother, who is revealed to be a member of a nefarious cult. How does this cult really siren potential victims through an app? How did Bianca siren her way into Nevermore?
It would be interesting if the show dived deeper into the other outcasts and their supernatural powers. In season one, Wednesday is seen warming up to her roommate, a colourful werewolf, Enid (Emma Myers), who is tonally the very opposite of Wednesday. Another interesting character is Eugene (Moosa Mostafa), a fellow classmate with the power to control bees. Wednesday symbolically adopts Eugene as a de-facto brother in the absense of Pugsley. Maybe Bianca can become a member of Wednesday’s ever-growing gang of friends, all oddballs and misfits, even among outcasts.
Maybe Pugsley can start going to Nevermore eventually and have his very own gang of friends. We can also have one episode with Thing (Victor Dorobantu) out on his own side quest. Perhaps Lurch (George Burcea) and Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) can join in too. We also hope to see Gomez and Morticia’s characters get more fleshed out since Luis Guzmán and Zeta-Jones could do with some more screen time to breathe more authenticity into their characters. For their portrayal of the iconic gothic romantic couple, Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston have a dedicated fan base who have found these new renditions rather tepid so far.
As far as new additions to the show go, cool Cousin Itt and witchy Grandma/Granny (sometimes referred to as an Addams and sometimes as a Frump, canonically) can drop by too.
It is yet to be seen if Christina Ricci, whose (unironically) seminal portrayal of Wednesday Addams in the '90s adaptations has influenced way too many wannabe Millennial goths, shows up again as Marilyn Thornhill.
Finally, Gwendoline Christie’s Principal Weems may just yet resurrect from the dead, unless we get an entirely new cast member joining in her place. Interestingly enough, Gwendoline Christie has teased a comeback, "We haven't seen her put in the ground, have we?"