Summary
Wednesday Season 2 gets off to a fine start, with Episode 1 introducing another murder mystery, a dangerous stalker, and several new faces at Nevermore Academy.
Students invariably spend the summer holidays getting into mischief, so on that level, at least, Wednesday Addams is pretty normal. But Wednesday’s mischief is extreme by any standards, involving her tracking down a notorious serial killer known as the Kansas City Scalper, trying to pass through airport security with a small arsenal of weapons and a detached hand, and offering herself up as the killer’s latest victim just to get close enough to take him down. This is how Season 2 of Netflix’s The Addams Family spin-off begins, and it’s an adroit opening to Episode 1, since it neatly fills us in on where Wednesday is at after saving Nevermore Academy in the Season 1 finale.
In short: With the help of Goody’s spell book, she has mastered, or so she thinks, her psychic abilities. But personality-wise, she’s no different at all. The point of Wednesday as a character, contrary to most established rules of storytelling, is that she rarely meaningfully changes or evolves. She believes herself to be the smartest person in every room, and she’s usually right. Sure, she can’t explain why she keeps crying black tears every time she uses her powers, but try not to worry about that.
Things at Nevermore have changed, however. The new principal, Barry Dort, is Nevermore through and through, and wants to reinstate old traditions like the Founder’s Pyre ceremony. And Wednesday is a celebrity, much to her chagrin. She’s trying to completely isolate herself and keep a watchful eye over Pugsley, but she keeps being harassed by fawning students and, annoyingly, a potentially dangerous stalker. Add in Enid’s new coming-of-age awakening, which has led her to become unsure about her feelings for Ajax and instead set her sights on fellow Wolf Pack member Bruno, and there’s a lot for Wednesday to be contending with.
And then the murder happens.
The victim is Carl Bradbury, a local private investigator who got his eyes plucked out by crows. The new sheriff in town, Santiago, who is replacing the disgraced Donovan Galpin and is much more amenable to Wednesday’s eerie presence, is looking into it. But Wednesday quickly makes it her problem. Galpin himself, a friend of Bradbury, claims that what they were looking into will affect all Outcasts. Wednesday isn’t convinced, but she assumes that the whole affair is connected to her stalker and the weird visions she keeps having, so that’s reason enough to look into the matter.
This murder will form the spine of Wednesday Season 2, but it isn’t the only thing to keep an eye on in Episode 1. Pugsley is rooming with Eugene, for instance, and becomes creepily enamored with a scary initiation story about a brilliant young Nevermore student with a weak heart who invented his own clockwork ticker to allow his body to keep pace with his mind. After killing himself with one of his fake experiments, he was supposedly buried in an unmarked grave under the Skull Tree, but those who listen at one of the skull’s eyes can still hear his heart faintly ticking to this day. Pugsley immediately decides to look for the tree at the earliest opportunity, further proving that nobody in the Addams family can keep themselves to themselves.
Elsewhere, Dort asks Morticia to chair the Gala Fundraising Committee and appoints Bianca as its student liaison by unsubtle blackmail. Dort insinuates that if the academy can’t meet its fundraising goals, then the scholarship students like her will be the first on the chopping block. The implication is pretty clear. Oh, and there’s a new music teacher, Miss Capri, who Wednesday takes an immediate dislike to (although, to be fair, she kind of dislikes everyone equally).
The climax of Wednesday Season 2, Episode 1 naturally takes place during the Founder’s Pyre ceremony, where Wednesday is lured into the pyre itself by her stalker, who has stolen her novel and hidden it inside. She almost burns to death retrieving it, but emerges just in time to be theatrically honored in the ceremony by Dort, who has commissioned a giant painting of her and her friends saving Nevermore in her honor. In true Wednesday fashion, she gives a crazy speech, alienating almost all of the amassed students, and then sets the painting on fire.
In a double-whammy of closing cliffhangers, Pugsley hears the ticking at the Skull Tree and accidentally reanimates the dead student using his electricity powers, while Enid grabs Wednesday, triggering a terrifying vision of Wednesday standing at Enid’s grave while a one-eyed crow with a white rose in its mouth watches eerily on. Again, the implication is clear. Enid might not be long for the world, and it may well be Wednesday who brings about her end.
Welcome back to Nevermore Academy.
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