You Can Now Rewatch Wednesday Season 2's Surprising Standout Scene On YouTube
“Tonight, you're gonna hear the tale of the Skull Tree.”
Wednesday isn’t your typical Tim Burton project. First of all, it’s a TV series, so he doesn’t even direct all the episodes. But it also doesn’t have that over-the-top campy feeling of Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks!, or Batman. There’s still a grim edge — and, since it’s Wednesday, plenty of deadpan humor — but it was difficult to point out Burton’s episodes in Season 1’s lineup.
That changed in Season 2. The first four episodes of Wednesday Season 2 are now available on Netflix, and the two episodes that Burton directed, the first and fourth, have his unmistakable stamp. Now, you can watch the highlight of the season opener, a stop-motion animated horror story, whenever you want. Check out “The Tale of the Skull Tree” below:
Burton’s love of stop-motion dates all the way back to Vincent, the animated short he made in 1982. Since then, he’s leaned on the medium for projects like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. It’s in these that Burton developed his classic character style, full of gaunt figures with sunken cheeks and big eyes.
“The Tale of the Skull Tree” harkens back to Burton’s stop-motion origins. In Wednesday, it’s used to illustrate the ghost story Ajax tells the freshmen of Caliban Hall, including Pugsley, who’s inspired to determine the truth of the tale. It’s the story of a young man who, when faced with a terminal diagnosis, tried to manufacture his own heart, and apparently, you can still hear his clockwork heart ticking in the tree he was buried in.
“The Tale of the Skull Tree” leads Pugsley to a disturbing truth.
Wednesday Season 2 amps up the story’s stylized moments, using black-and-white flashbacks to explore Wednesday’s childhood and cutaway scenes to execute punchlines, among other examples of creative direction. After Season 1 proved that a Wednesday-focused series can actually work, Season 2 is trying to make the show as good, and as weird, as possible.
Season 2 Part 2 premieres on September 3, so there’s a possibility of another stop-motion interlude. But even if this is the only one, there’s an obvious takeaway: Tim Burton’s still got it.
