‘Wednesday’: A Delightfully Cold Jenna Ortega Delivers More Ghoulish Fun in Second Season

Alci Rengifo

The second season of Netflix’s “Wednesday” leaves little doubt that its success is owed to the presence of Jenna Ortega and style of Tim Burton, who again directs several episodes this season. Its gothic production design is an instant tonic for fans of “The Addams Family,” but Ortega fits so well into the title character you swear she was born to play this role. We have seen her be an energetic hero in other movies, in this series she carries through the plot with her cold irony. She has more riding on her shoulders considering the mass success of the first season of “Wednesday” when it premiered in 2022, becoming one of Netflix’s biggest hits. Despite suffering from some usual second round challenges, this is still a satisfying delivery.

Summer break is over for Wednesday (Ortega) and we learn she spent her vacation doing the usual, like perfecting her psychic skills and tracking down and scalping a serial killer (the Kansas City Scalper to be exact). Now it’s time to return to Nevermore Academy, where Wednesday is a hero for having saved the school from the clutches of Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci). She gets fan letters, requests for autographs from classmates and adoration from new headmaster Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), who wants her help to return Nevermore to its former glory. Dort even pleads for Wednesday’s mother, Morticia Adams (Catherine Zeta-Jones) to chair a fundraising gala committee. There are other perks, including an exclusive for the Addams whenever Morticia and dad Gomez (Luis Guzmán) visit. Then, a local private investigator is found with his eyes gouged out by crows and Wednesday receives a perturbing vision hinting at the imminent death of her best friend, werewolf Enid (Emma Myers). On top of that, she also has a stalker.

This is the first half of the second season and so what we get are four episodes to set the tone. Some of the initial charm of the first season, which in a way absorbed the CW’s teen drama trends (and refined them) through a spooky lens is lost because it’s hard to repeat the original spark. Wednesday is now placed even more into a Nancy Drew mystery involving a local psychiatric facility overseen by Dr. Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton) and the fate of Tyler (Hunter Doohan). Tyler’s father becomes another victim of the new, mysterious killer Wednesday must now confront. The writers still find space for goofy school humor. Nevermore has a prank day which opens the door for antics involving zombies, kids tossing dynamite and faked slashed throats. Wednesday, who is prone to quoting Voltaire and casually discussing death, is naturally not impressed. New music teacher Miss Capri (Billie Piper) struggles to convince Wednesday to join an orchestra for the upcoming gala with her cello skills. Her brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), is the one having more fun. 

As happens with many first halves of new seasons, there’s much setting up going on that will have larger payoffs in the second half. Some of it is in the form of new characters like the entertainingly demented Agnes (Evie Templeton), a Wednesday groupie who pulls off quite the stunt to get her attention and offer her help in unmasking the new murderous stalker. Campus intrigue centers on Dort concocting schemes to use Morticia to attract certain donors for Nevermore, including using a teacher’s ability to “siren song” to convince Mrs. Adams to get her mother to donate. Some of the twists do take on the flavor of shows like “Riverdale,” where the rules of the scripts entail making every new development get particularly outrageous. What holds it together is Ortega and the classic dashes of Addams Family fun, like Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) fooling around with an asylum cafeteria lady. Gomez and Morticia flirt with their famously morbid compliments. In a truly hilarious moment he encounters a zombie and thinks its Morticia trying to do S&M. Wednesday receives a manuscript back from a publisher who includes “seek help” in their notes. Let us not forget Thing, the hand member of the family who crawls around and is somehow soe expressive as just five fingers. Lady Gaga is charismatic and fittingly weird in her short cameo as Nevermore professor Rosaline Rotwood. Gaga is also releasing a new song to coincide with the season, “Dead Dance.”

The fourth episode ends on a fittingly bloody finale that tosses away the humor for something more intense and drenched in rainy nights where brains get eaten and Wednesday comes the closest she ever has to disaster. Will this season repeat the mass success of the first? One can never know with audiences. Yet, “Wednesday” doesn’t disappoint. It has just enough of what makes it a gothic treat. One is almost surprised to see Netflix release this in the middle of summer when heatwaves and sunshine are on the forecast. This series would be so at home in the fall for pumpkin carving season, especially when Jenna Ortega is so convincingly gloomy, playing her cello and finding it so petrifying to just smile.

“Wednesday” season two part one begins streaming Aug. 6 on Netflix.