Summary
Wednesday Season 2 is just as good as the first, if not better, and the only downside is that Part 1 necessarily only tells half of its binge-worthy story.
Let me just start by saying that I’m not a fan of reviewing half a season either. But if Netflix is going to be adamant about cleaving its most prized shows in two and releasing them in batches a month apart, then it’s my job to rate each release as its own thing. That’s how they’re being treated, after all. Wednesday, which hasn’t been since since it debuted in full almost three years ago, is the latest example of this woeful distribution strategy, but it’s far from the first. Season 2 is divided into two four-parters, with Part 1 chronicling the title character’s overdue return to Nevermore Academy, introducing several new faces (and some familiar ones), and kick-starting a macabre new mystery.
Here’s the good news, though – it’s great. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since Season 1 was great too, but it’s always worth repeating, given how the needs of leveraging recognisable IP can often outweigh the need for doing a good job of it. But Wednesday remains a delightfully macabre and eccentric coming-of-age drama spliced with a horror-adjacent murder mystery, feeling totally of a piece with previous versions of The Addams Family while simultaneously updating the essential concept for the TikTok era. It works on just about every level, led by a truly dynamite cast spearheaded by Jenna Ortega as Wednesday herself.
Speaking of Wednesday, the hook of this outing is that she is returning to Nevermore not just with her useless brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) in tow, but also as a reluctant celebrity after the events of the Season 1 finale. Naturally, she hates this. A school where everyone is by definition an Outcast doesn’t lend itself to hero worship, but Wednesday is nonetheless flanked by a coterie of tittering devotees the second she arrives back on campus.
And the campus has changed. The new principal, Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi, The Studio), is a traditionalist Nevermore die-hard who might as well be wearing a sign that reads “not to be trusted”. Within an episode, he has already started conspiring, pushing Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones, National Treasure: Edge of History) to chair the Gala Fundraising Committee – she and Gomez (Luis Guizman, Havoc) thus remain on campus, much to Wednesday’s chagrin – and installing Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday) as its student liaison through what is unmistakably blackmail. It remains to be seen quite how sinister he is, given this is, as mentioned, only half a season, but at the very least, he’s not as well-meaning as he claims.
But nobody is. Wednesday now has a stalker, there’s a new killer on the loose who can compel crows to pluck out the eyes of victims, and while Tyler (Hunter Doohan, Daredevil: Born Again) and Marilyn (Christina Ricci, Batman: Caped Crusader, Monstrous, Yellowjackets) have been apprehended and institutionalised in the time that has elapsed between seasons, they’re still very much presences in the looming Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, a secondary location that increasingly grows in importance as Part 1 of Season 2 progresses. The hospital’s administrator, Dr. Rachael Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Suncoast, Solo: A Star Wars Story), is among the clutch of new characters, along with Nevermore’s new music teacher Isadora Capri (Billie Piper, Scoop, I Hate Suzie, Kaos) and Wednesday’s grandmama, Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Fool Me Once), from whom Morticia is bitterly estranged.
Thing in Wednesday. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
But thanks to the smart changes that keep Morticia and Gomez in-situ at Nevermore, Wednesday never stops feeling like an Addams family show, giving all the familiar characters their time in the spotlight, sometimes in totally new dynamics. Pugsley has an entire subplot with Eugene (Moosa Mostafa) that sees them reanimate a brain-eating zombie and try to keep him as a pet, Enid (Emma Myers, Family Switch, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder) has to contend with a love triangle and another student, Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton, Criminal Record), who is competing for Wednesday’s affections, and in a particular highlight, Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen, Forever) crops up for an on-brand assignment going undercover at Willow Hill along with Thing (Victor Dorobantu), who even gets some more character development of his own.
It’s very much an ensemble affair, and the secret to Wednesday, despite its eccentricity and grim-dark underpinnings, is that it’s chock full of likeable – or detestable – characters who are simply enjoyable to spend time with. The all-star cast helps to bring them to more vivid life, but they’re fascinating figures at their very conceptual core, which means that anything they’re up to is automatically pretty engaging. Tim Burton and the creative team behind this show clearly understand this; far from running out of ideas, they seem to be barely scratching the surface of how many fun things the Addams family can get up to. Even the relatively trite and familiar hook of Wednesday’s psychic powers being on the fritz only opens up more opportunities for character drama, with Wednesday having to reluctantly turn to her family and friends to help her solve the latest mystery that commands her attention.
And even the mystery works! In a show with so much aesthetic and tonal appeal, the A-B plotting can sometimes be an afterthought, but the core riddles at the heart of Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 are full of unexpected twists and turns and even shocking character deaths that you probably won’t see coming (or expect the show to commit to, if nothing else.) The only downside is that we’re only seeing half of the story; there’s a chance the remaining four episodes might be terrible, and then I’ll have to completely revise my opinion on the show overall. It seems unlikely, but you never know with streaming.
If nothing else, though, the Part 1 finale provides a really solid and surprising amount of closure, so in the worst-case scenario, we get half of a great season. But given how the first four episodes play out, I have more than enough faith in this creative team to stick the landing.
