WEDNESDAY: Season 2 – Review by Susan Granger
With the Emmys approaching on Sept. 14th, attention must be paid to Wednesday: Season 2 with 12 nominations; it has become the second most-watched English language series in Netflix history – with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman as Morticia and Gomez with Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley.
In the title role, Jenny Ortega’s nomination as Outstanding Comedy Series Lead Actress is a notable achievement in Latina representation since she’s the third and youngest Latina to receive this honor, following America Ferrera and Rita Moreno.
Focusing on macabre horror, Wednesday re-visits the gothic world of the Addams family’s morbidly stoic daughter as she navigates teenage life at Nevermore Academy while sinister forces – both outside and inside the school -conspire against her.
There’s a secret government program targeting outcasts, zombie regeneration, cult manipulation, bizarre rituals, supernatural experiments, fractured family betrayals and the persistent question of identity.
With loyal Thing (Victor Dorobantu voicing the severed hand) at her side, plucky Wednesday’s subtle deadpan humor masks inner turmoil, particularly as she hones her prophetic visions.
A deeper friendship develops with Wednesday’s ‘werewolf’ roommate Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) under the eagle eye of sniveling, newly installed Principal Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), replacing the late Principal Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie), a 13th cousin and now Wednesday’s ‘spirit guide.’
The extensive cast includes invisible Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton), tormented Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), Bianca (Joy Sunday) and Isaac Night (Owen Painter) whose tragic backstories and subplots interweave with this season’s themes of autonomy and control.
Created by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar with Tim Burton indolently directing, the eight episodes and the arrival of Grandmama Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley) serve to explain additional mythology.
Burton’s visuality is best viewed in a sorrowful black-and-white stop-motion sequence, featuring his signature animated Claymation style; it’s a short ghost story about a boy with a clockwork heart buried under the Skull Tree.
Still to come: revealing more ancestral secrets and introducing hidden relatives, like Eva Green as Aunt Ophelia and Chris Sarandon as Balthazar in Season 3, set for summer 2027.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, Wednesday: Season 2 is a campy, sardonic, convoluted, if over-stuffed 7 – with all 50-minute episodes available on Netflix
