Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 Completely Skips The Sophomore Slump
It’s an altogether ooky first half of a season.
Wednesday was a surprise hit even for Netflix. Even though the Addams Family-inspired series carried a big name in Tim Burton, who directed a smattering of episodes, the gothic YA drama was led by Jenna Ortega, who at the time was still relatively unknown. One viral dance and a breakout performance later, and it’s hard to imagine the series without Ortega, who brought her beyond-her-years professionalism to Wednesday Addams’ matter-of-fact macabre manor. The combination was as electric as Uncle Fester, and the series quickly shot up the Top 10 when it premiered the day before Thanksgiving in 2022.
It may have taken three years for Wednesday to graduate to her sophomore year, but she’s finally back — at least for the first semester. Wednesday is the latest Netflix offering to be subject to a new experiment: releasing only half a season at a time, in order to extend the excitement around the story. It may be a risky strategy, but Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 feels uniquely calibrated to this strange structure, turning a four-episode arc into what amounts to a miniseries, compacting all the altogether ooky drama of Wednesday in a sleek new form.
Wednesday Season 2 may be split up into two chapters, but it’s definitely more than the sum of its parts.
Wednesday spent her summer vacation honing her premonition skills with the help of the spell book from her spirit guide, Goody Addams, and managed to solve a cold case of a serial murderer (a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Haley Joel Osment). Now, she’s back at Nevermore, currently run by the gung-ho Principal Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), who is on a mission to bring Nevermore back to its glory days and embrace Outcast ways at any cost, strange traditions and all.
At first, Wednesday is just focused on identifying the stalker who started texting her at the end of her freshman year, but it’s only a matter of time before she’s swept up in another murder case that brings her to Willow Hill, the spooky psychiatric facility where Hyde Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan) is now living.
But that’s only one of the many storylines around Nevermore. In Season 1, fans lauded Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán’s portrayal of Morticia and Gomez Addams, so this season features them much more properly as Principal Dort recruits siren Bianca (Joy Sunday) to manipulate Morticia into securing a wealthy donor for the school: her mother. Joanna Lumley’s Grandmama is more akin to Miranda Priestly than other versions of the character, but her scenes with Morticia about old family secrets are fascinating.
The greater Addams family features more heavily in Wednesday Season 2.
In these subplots, Wednesday reveals it isn’t just a Netflix show: this is real TV. The second season involves B-stories, C-stories, running gags, and even 30-Rock-style cutaway gags that harken back to TV long past. Each episode has a specific conceit (Prank Day! Camping retreat!) that is fully fleshed out and provides something for the other characters to do while also feeding into Wednesday’s quest. And even with the half-and-half structure, these four episodes tell a whole story, complete with red herrings, a caped villain, and a shocking reveal.
It’s hard not to compare Wednesday to Squid Game, the other big Netflix series that returned for Season 2 after many years. But Wednesday completely skipped the sophomore slump Squid Game fell into: even just the first half of Wednesday Season 2 is a more complete story than the entirety of Squid Game Season 2.
As is expected with a two-part season, there’s a big cliffhanger in the final moments, but fans only have to wait four more Wednesdays for Season 2 on September 3. There are plenty of mysteries left to solve and Lady Gaga hasn’t even shown up yet, so it’s already clear the back half of Season 2 will be just as action-packed.
