There’s a Reason Everyone’s Telling You to Watch Wednesday
The dark braided pigtails. The long-sleeve black velvet dress. The razor-sharp white Peter Pan collar. The perpetually sullen expression. The witty yet disturbing one-liners. For generations, Wednesday Addams has been an icon for the misfits amongst us.
After first appearing on screen as a young, glowering child of six years old in the 1964 sit-com The Addams Family (iconized by Lisa Loring), Wednesday was resurrected by Christina Ricci in the 1991 film, also called The Addams Family. Ricci’s Wednesday spent her time building guillotines, using her brother as a lab rat for various experiments, and taking on any all-American blonde Girl Scouts in her path. For young millennials who felt out of place, she was the perfect anti-hero.
Now, three decades later, Wednesday has been updated once again for a new generation of teens in Netflix’s eight-episode series, Wednesday. This is Wednesday Addams with a distinct Gen Z twist.
Directed by Tim Burton, Wednesday shifts the focus from the Addams family to Wednesday herself (Jenna Ortega). After maiming one of her brother’s bullies by dumping a bag of piranhas into her high school’s pool, she’s unceremoniously expelled. Her parents, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán), take her expulsion as an opportunity to send Wednesday to their alma mater, Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for supernaturally gifted children, otherwise known as outcasts. Perhaps this is the place where she will finally fit in.
At Nevermore, we are introduced to a host of new characters. There’s Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), the glamorous yet mysterious headmistress with a passion for improving “normie-outcast” relations. There’s Wednesday’s new roommate, Enid (Emma Myers), a peppy werewolf with multicolor claws and a school gossip vlog. In the nearby town of Jericho, there’s—much to Wednesday’s horror—a potential love interest in the form of “normie” Tyler (Hunter Doohan), the floppy haired barista and son of the local sheriff.
After a series of brutal deaths in the woods that surround the school, Wednesday’s new life at Nevermore takes a predictably dark turn—and when Wednesday begins to have psychic visions that links her family’s mysterious past to the murders, she finds herself slipping into the role of a sort of gothic Nancy Drew.
While Wednesday does maintain the distinctly kooky, spooky spirit of the Addams Family universe, it also forges its own stylistic path. The magical boarding school, complete with ancient traditions, houses, and secret societies, conjures up an undeniable Harry Potter vibe. At the same time, the teen mystery element feels vaguely akin to Pretty Little Liars or Gossip Girl.
Wednesday is also peppered with unmistakable nods to the teen movie genre—there’s the classic new-girl-gets-introduced-to-the-school-cliques moment, the makeover moment, the facing-up-to-the-group-of-mean-girls moment. There’s even a direct reference to the famous blood-soaked prom scene in Carrie. What we are left with is a show that feels perfectly pitched for a Gen Z audience. This is, after all, a Wednesday who says things like, “When I look at you, the following emojis come to mind: rope, shovel, hole,” and, “Are you mansplaining my power?”
And thanks to Jenna Ortega’s piercingly modern, layered version of Wednesday, all of these seemingly disparate elements come together seamlessly—it works. Ortega’s Wednesday is still the gloomy, darkly intelligent character she always was, but behind the sullen facade we sometimes catch fleeting glimpses of emotion—and maybe even a touch of warmth.
Yes, she still talks about smothering people in their sleep or chopping off their fingers. Yes, she still spends most of her free time writing her novel on an old typewriter or playing dramatic renditions of “Paint It Black” on her cello. And no, she most certainly does not have TikTok or Snapchat. But for the first time, we get to see Wednesday’s outer shell begin to thaw. She may be macabre and a little sadistic, but in this reincarnation, she is also, ultimately, human. Wednesday isn’t merely a perfectly executed stylistic update of the Addams Family world for a teen audience; it’s also a long overdue reappraisal of a classic outcast character that finally brings her to life in vivid color—or rather, in Wednesday’s case, in vivid shades of black and white.