Summary
“Hyde and Woe Seek” neatly tidies up a lot of leftover plot points from the Part 1 finale, making it a little unclear where things are heading in Part 2.
There are two major selling points of “Hyde and Woe Seek”, beyond the obvious fact that it’s the Part 2 premiere and follows on directly from the Part 1 mid-season finale. One is that it’s set during Día de (los) Muertos, aka The Day of the Dead, which, as far as Wednesday is concerned, is a perfect excuse to go overboard with the production design. The other is that it brings Gwendoline Christie’s Principal Weems back into the fold. In Episode 5, she pops up repeatedly as Wednesday’s new spirit guide, which is possible thanks to an incredibly distant familial relation somewhere along the limbs of the Addams family tree.
And Wednesday needs a spirit guide, trust me. Judi is busying herself doing damage control for the remains of Willow Hill, but Fester, Slurp, and Tyler are still on the loose and are now wanted fugitives. Enid’s life is still in danger, but Wednesday can’t figure out precisely who from or how to prevent it, and her psychic powers haven’t returned. And, though this last one isn’t public knowledge, Wednesday also freed Tyler’s mother, Francoise, another Hyde, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The presence of Weems adds a lot to this mid-season premiere. She hates Dort, understandably, constantly gives Wednesday sage advice that she continuously ignores, and even gets a catty exchange with Morticia, even though only Wednesday can see her. She’s right about the riskiness of Wednesday’s plan to trap and control Tyler, and even about the deeper psychological reasons for why she’s so adamant about doing it. Wednesday is the protagonist of Wednesday, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but that doesn’t mean she can be right and successful all the time, and “Hyde and Woe Seek” makes that point pretty capably.
Her plan is silly, to be fair. Through information gleaned from Miss Capri, who has personal hands-on Hyde experience from a previous relationship, Wednesday learns that masterless Hydes wither and die, and that the females are much stronger and more robust, so through some of Marilyn’s demented research, she plans to jump Tyler and become his new master. In her head, she thinks this is protecting Enid, but because she won’t be totally open about why, Enid interprets her intervention as insulting mollycoddling and instead asks Thing for help in reactivating the Nightshades to take matters into her own hands.
Through Agnes, Wednesday learns of this plot and decides to piggyback onto it to ambush Tyler. Elsewhere, though, Francoise has already gone to Morticia for help, so when Wednesday tries to confront Tyler, his mother arrives in her Hyde form and leads him away. Morticia made her promise that they’d both leave Jericho for good if they were reunited, and while we still have no real confirmation of whether they’ll stick to that agreement, it’s still a superior, less dangerous short-term solution than the one Wednesday was planning. Not that she’d accept that, obviously.
With the Tyler plot seemingly dealt with, at least to a certain extent, Wednesday Season 2, Episode 5 also continues to develop the importance of Slurp, who is becoming more and more human thanks to his relentless brain consumption, and clearly, if the ending is anything to go by, has a connection to Judi. In Part 1, I assumed Slurp was just a kind of novelty plot to give Pugsley something to do, but it’s quickly developing into something else.
Pugsley is still involved in it, obviously. He spends “Hyde and Woe Seek” looking for Slurp with Gomez, and tracking him to the Pilgrim World festivities, where he goes on a bit of a rampage (if you were anticipating Gomez calling out some of the cultural appropriation at play here, you won’t be disappointed). When Pugsley finally tracks Slurp down, he finds him almost human in appearance and able to speak fluently. He asks Pugsley to help him escape, and he does, which is how he makes his way to Judi’s house. It’ll be interesting to see precisely where all this is going, especially with Tyler and Francoise out of the way (for now).
While it’s surprising how quickly and summarily Part 2 seems to be shoving aside the key plot points from Part 1, I don’t think we’re quite as done with some of these stories as the show would like us to believe.
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