Wednesday season 2 is even more thrilling – but there’s one crucial oversight

This review is based on Wednesday season 2 part 1.

In the two plus years since we last saw Wednesday Addams, she’s had a summer for the books.

The grisly Netflix series opened in suitably shocking fashion back in 2022, with our antiheroine setting piranhas on her high school’s swim team bullies.

The cold open for season 2, which has been diced into a two-parter with the first four episodes out today, once again shows that Wednesday (Jenna Ortega, as unblinkingly good as ever) is never one to wait for the adults to get the job done.

In episode one, Haley Joel Osment makes his debut in a whacky guest role as the Kansas City Scalper serial killer, who Wednesday allows to capture her so she can use his MO – clue’s in the name – against him.

With some assistance from season one breakout appendage Thing (Victor Dorobantu’s right hand), naturally.

This opener has little to do with the main arc of the season. Instead, it’s a parry to the detractors, who complained the inimitable goth teen had been too soft in the first season.

Date nights? Love triangles? We’re done with all that.

This season, as virtually every interview has assured us, is darker, grittier and generally a ‘No More Miss Nice Wednesday’ type of affair. Ortega might have received blowback for her critical comments on the show’s writing, but she was bang on when she said Wednesday would never be in a love triangle.

Much of Steve Buscemi’s initial screen time as the new Nevermore head is an info dump on where Xavier (Percy Hynes White) has vanished to.

We do see Tyler (Hunter Doohan topless and flexing, for the fancams), but he’s locked up with some choker contraption keeping him non-mutant. The less of him the better, since a dastardly Tyler is probably more to Wednesday’s flavour than when he was pretending to be Joe Regular.

With the boys gone, there’s space for the family’s roles to be expanded, thanks to a plot wangle that means her parents are also back at Nevermore. It never felt right when Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Morticia sashayed back into the Addams family hearse so early in last season’s run.

So there’s also her dad, Gomez (Luis Guzmán), and little brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), a goofy antidote to Wednesday’s deadpan, who arrives for his first year in Nevermore’s purple striped blazer. Plus, the always-good Joanna Lumley enters as their formidable grandmother Hester.

Wednesday’s peppy bestie Enid (Emma Myers, easily going toe to toe with Ortega) is back, and while the show seems to have tamped down on the queer undertones in their relationship – certain sections of the fandom will be devastated – she’s still the person Wednesday is most panicked about when imperilled.

Not counting Thing, who gets to stretch his fingers this season.

After saving the school, Wednesday returns a B-list celeb with a stalker to reckon with. She’s also started crying ink tears, which the NHS is curiously lacking advice on. Plus, there’s a literal murder of deadly one-eyed crows causing havoc, furthering Alfred Hitchcock’s scary bird agenda.

And, this might be the Buscemi effect, but the new headmaster seems up to no good. Also, Pugsley has a murderous zombie pet. 

So the plot has bulked up, but we’re not here for the macguffin mystery as much as the world itself. With Tim Burton’s maximalist gothic direction, the show often meanders off in fun eldritch-tinted ways.

It’s stylish, witty, and lushly-set (in new filming location Ireland), even if the writing doesn’t quite reach the sharp heights of the films.

Our main gripe is the decision to isolate Wednesday. We lose something by the family being so divided and largely sequestered from normie society. The moments she bumps up against it – one sequence where Wednesday terrorises a driving instructor stands out – make you realise that is where most of the uncanny thrills lie.

We’ll have to wait and see how Lady Gaga’s Nevermore teacher factors in all of this – and whether she’ll go near last season’s dance, which TikTokers set to her deep cut track Bloody Mary and was credited with the show becoming a smash hit.

Wednesday season 2 launches on August 6, with the second part arriving on September 3.

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