The first season of Wednesday took the streaming world by storm, quickly becoming one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of all time. With its popularity on social media, it was near-impossible to avoid seeing some of the season’s hottest moments. Now after a good three-year break, the Addams family is back for an overall disappointing follow-up.
Much like its first season, Wednesday sets up a few mysteries early and teases impending danger for the characters we love. It uses cliffhangers, foreshadowing and regular twists to try and get you invested in the central arcs, and for the first two episodes I was having a good time. Those first two episodes are the most horror-focused of the series so far – the campiness is still there, I was loving the horror-inspired beats. There’s some great teases and it seems like the quality of the first season has been effectively replicated. From there though, the season crumbles and falls apart as the central narratives are slow, unexciting and at times just straight-up boring. There’s a zombie-focused arc through the season that’s an absolute drag. In the first half, it seems like it was thrown in there purely to give Pugsley something to do, and also to use as an excuse for whenever they needed shit to hit the fan. No matter how central the arc becomes to the season’s narrative, it remained painfully uninteresting.
Speaking of “the first half”, the fact that Netflix decided to cut this release into two parts is absolutely perplexing. First off, there’s nothing in the first four episodes strong enough to warrant a standalone release. The horror-focused start is followed by two piss-poor episodes that focus too much on cheap gags and only contain a very light side of thrills. At the conclusion of the fourth episode, there’s nothing about the cliffhanger that would warrant waiting a whole month to find out what happens next. On top of that, when the show returns there’s no groundbreaking changes that make the month-long wait worth it. It’s a cheap cash-grab from Netflix that does nothing but negatively impact the pace of the season as the fifth episode has to continue the narrative while re-establishing the tone.
As you can imagine, the second half of the season does absolutely nothing to improve on the first. It has some entertaining sequences, but overall it’s just four more episodes of mediocrity. There’s twists, turns and reveals aplenty, but the impact is entirely muted as I don’t really care about any of the main characters involved outside of Wednesday herself. With hardly a single character arc to latch onto, there’s just no stakes in the narrative, even going into the finale. The finale is actually quite solid, but the journey is so empty and void of any real suspense and anticipation that it’s not exciting in the slightest.
As much as the story offers hardly a lick of value outside some fun episode-specific arcs, the one thing that remains consistent to the first season is that Jenna Ortega is phenomenal. Her charisma and playful attitude is perfect for the role of Wednesday, lighting up the screen with her deadpan gaze and straight-laced dialogue delivery. While the character is notoriously emotionless, she brings so much life to the character through subtle lively character traits. Her chemistry with the actors around her elevates those performances and the scenes they share, ensuring she’s the most important element of the series. With the lack of an intriguing story, it’s Ortega’s performance that makes this at least watchable in the most unengaging sequences. With the narrative crumbling around her, it’s reassuring knowing her brilliance as an actor isn’t impacted.
Of the rest of the cast, I don’t have anything to complain about in respect to the performances, it’s just unfortunate that the arcs they’re responsible for delivering are abysmally subpar. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Morticia) and Luis Guzmán (Gomez) have a little more of a presence in this season and contribute to a number of satisfyingly entertaining moments. They, along with Emma Myers (Enid), are the most impressive of the supporting cast, bringing unique personalities to life and going toe-to-toe with Ortega for some fun moments. Hunter Doohan returns as Tyler, and while his performance is okay, the character has no memorable presence in the narrative. You could strip the character from the season and it would make almost no difference, limiting the impact of the performance. Evie Templeton debuts as Agnes, and while I initially thought the character would be annoying, she grew to be one of my favourite elements of the season.
In the end, I was unimpressed by Wednesday almost the entire way through this season. It starts strong with two great episodes before completely losing its way. There’s still some fun to be had with a few entertaining subplots, but the arcs at the centre of the season aren’t the least bit exciting or thrilling. Jenna Ortega is incredible as always, having perfected the character’s charming personality and elevating those around her. Perhaps the first season was a lightning in a bottle moment, because this season’s narrative really didn’t stick the landing… and it wasn’t helped by the terrible split release decision.
5.8/10
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