Summary
“Woe Thyself” is a brilliant episode that plays up everything this show already does well while digging into Wednesday’s relationship with Enid in the most on-brand way possible.
The lingering questions of what Wednesday was doing with its Season 2 storylines after that midseason premiere are answered pretty much immediately in Episode 6, so don’t worry about it. Francoise, Tyler, Slurp — it’s all connected. But that isn’t the hook of “Woe Thyself”, which is instead a Freaky Friday send-up complete with that much-talked-about Lady Gaga appearance. It’s like an episode scientifically conceived to play to all the show’s strengths and appeal to all of its fans at once.
Let’s just get the nitty-gritty plot connections out of the way. Francoise, it turns out, had a brother named Isaac Night, a brilliant student of Stonehearst who designed the life support system that keeps Professor Orloff alive. Needless to say, this is Slurp, who continues to search for Francoise after finding her photograph on one of the Willow Hill goons whose brains he ate in the sewers. This not only establishes a connection between Slurp and the Hydes, but it also promotes Isaac to the status of Big Bad, since his nearly-human form is a much more intimidating and calculated antagonist than Tyler or Francoise.
We’ll return to this towards the end of “Woe Thyself”, since the bulk of the action is devoted to Enid and Wednesday’s inadvertent Freaky Friday-style body swap. This comes about after Weems — correctly! — diagnoses Wednesday’s psychic problems as being intimately linked to the unresolved issues with her mother. Her lack of empathy makes her the weak link in the family chain, and she needs to fix that before she can regain her abilities and figure out how to save Enid. Of course, she completely ignores this advice and goes to Grandmama Hester, who points her to the headstone of Rosaline Rotwood, a legendary Raven psychic whose dark energy still emanates from her resting place. Through her, Wednesday can temporarily regain her Sight.
Rotwood is played by Lady Gaga, in case you were wondering. She’s the classic dark sorceress type who warns Wednesday that not maintaining the gaze of the raven while borrowing her powers will have some serious unforeseen consequences — and she’s right. But since Wednesday is doing this during the curfew that has been implemented to protect the Nevermore students after the Willow Hill debacle, Enid arrives to drag her back to the dorm so she isn’t banned from attending the gala. And in so doing, she breaks the spell. When they wake up, they’re in each other’s bodies.
This is such a great idea for this show, and Wednesday Season 2, Episode 6 milks it for all its worth. Jenna Ortega is doing an impression of Enid, while Emma Myers is doing an impression of Wednesday, and both keep landing themselves in trouble by walking headlong into all the secrets they’re keeping from each other and the issues they’re hiding from themselves. Enid, for instance, might be an Alpha, a rare breed of werewolf who can transform without a full moon. Wednesday is literally allergic to colour. Both are a little testy around each other, given the issues that have been fomenting between them during the season, but if they don’t get back into their own bodies before dawn, Enid’s death prophecy will be fulfilled.
There are so many highlights here, from Enid-as-Wednesday dressing up in rainbow colours and doing a K-pop dance number in the Nevermore courtyard to Wednesday-as-Enid breaking up with Bruno after overhearing him talking to his girlfriend back in the Philippines in Tagalog. But it culminates in Enid-as-Wednesday attending a family dinner — roadkill pot pie, prepared by Lurch — and Morticia forcing Weems to show herself and explain what’s going on. With Wednesday-as-Enid locked in the lupin cages on account of her recent transformations, Enid-as-Wednesday has to break her out and switch places with her before dawn.
This matter is seriously complicated by Isaac, Francoise, and Tyler. Now reunited, Isaac is determined to complete his life’s work of divorcing his sister from her Hyde persona, since the condition is slowly killing her, but it’ll mean breaking back into Willow Hill to do it. This is easy enough, since Isaac has Judi’s ID card and keys after — presumably — killing her in the previous episode, but he needs a power source first. That comes from Nevermore, where he removes it from Professor Orloff’s life support machine and feasts on his brains for good measure.
Agnes, though, who was attending a support group Orloff was hosting — also attended by Thing, who is curious about his origins after being found by the Addams family with only a silver signet ring; something to keep an eye on — catches him in the act. She sneaks into their car and calls Wednesday to tell her so, sending her the location of the vehicle, which is heading back to Willow Hill. Wednesday and Enid, still in each other’s bodies, head there to save the day while Isaac gears up his machine to “fix” Francoise.
Thanks to Enid wolfing out — still as Wednesday! — they’re able to save Agnes and overpower Tyler, and also, I think, prevent the machine from doing its work on Francoise. This isn’t likely to have any positive repercussions. In the meantime, though, Wednesday and Enid race back to Rotwood’s headstone, where a frank admission of how they really feel about each other returns them to their own bodies. It’s a nice moment, and long overdue, and it not only results in success body-wise but prevents Wednesday’s premonition of Enid’s death from coming true. She is, for now at least, saved.
But something else is afoot. Weems appears and leads Wednesday to another headstone, this one cleaved in two, and tells her that another life is now at risk. A member of the Addams family must die. But which one?
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