Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 Review: No Sophomore Slump in Sight

This Wednesday season 2 part 1 review contains no spoilers.

The few series still hanging around the world of teen TV often squeeze themselves to death with overly complex plot lines without enough time to wrap them up neatly. Meanwhile, Wednesday is a straightforward comfort. Many shows with a mystery at the center struggle with being overly vague to try and make the audience feel as lost as the characters are, but that is not the case for season 2 of Netflix’s megahit. 

Each piece of the puzzle is explicitly laid out for us to see. Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) supposedly has control over her psychic abilities after studying Goody Addams’ book, but why does she keep crying black tears? She sees a vision of Enid’s grave and a bloody Enid blaming Wednesday for her death, but how does that situation come to pass? Everything that Wednesday does or experiences ties back to those two questions, and that keeps everything moving smoothly as the show progresses in the successful first half of this second season.

Ortega—as always—takes her place as the titular star of the show in stride and gives the same spectacular performance as Wednesday that we have come to expect, but she is far from the only great performance this time around. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán both do a wonderful job with their newly expanded roles as Morticia and Gomez Addams, and Steve Buscemi’s ability to leak a sinister aura from the suspiciously cheery Principal Dort keeps you wondering what sort of menace he’ll blossom into by the end of the series. Joy Sunday gets more to do as Bianca Barclay this season as well as she is backed into a corner in more ways than one, and though we won’t get to see the conclusion of her storyline until the next part of the season it is nice to see her in a larger and non-antagonistic role.

As for the newcomers to Wednesday, Evie Templeton takes the crown for most captivating work as Agnes DeMille. A certified Wednesday superfan, Agnes yearns to worm her way into Wednesday’s life (or service), going as far to mimic Wednesday’s signature hairstyle. Her wide-eyed meek-yet-creepy vibe contrasts perfectly with Enid’s (Emma Myers) extroverted but slightly insecure attitude, and the pair clash when it comes to their respective relationships with Wednesday.

Enid also gets a new love interest in the form of Bruno (Noah B. Taylor), a werewolf from the pack that she ran with over the summer break. Ajax (Georgie Farmer) is still around—with plenty to do outside of his relationship with Enid—and while the dynamic between the three is technically a classic love triangle, I hesitate to give it that much credit. Enid’s push and pull between the two boys is the weakest part of this set of episodes, and that could have been solved by resolving Ajax’s portion of things off screen in the time before everyone returned to Nevermore.

The last of the major new dynamics this season comes in the form of Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) and Eugene (Moosa Mostafa) who start their relationship as dorm mates off on the wrong foot but are quickly wound together in a camaraderie that Eugene clearly would have liked to avoid. The poor kid almost died last season after all, and Pugsley’s antics (which give us some great practical effects, by the way) guarantee that he will not have the low-key year at Nevermore he was hoping for.

Stylistically, Wednesday maintains the aura of its first season, both in aesthetic presentation and the brutality of the violent happenings of the show. The additions of a few black and white anecdotal flashbacks as well as a ghost story with Selick-esque animation add to the depth of the visual world-building of the series as well as serving as a callback to the original black-and-white Addams Family series and Tim Burton’s many animated projects.

The only obvious downfall is that the season is severed at its center. Thinking in the traditional sense, episode 4 serves as a perfect mid-season finale, but the month wait between it and the rest of the season does Wednesday no favors. Stories that have complex mystery elements at their core do well in the binge format because they captivate the audience enough for them to devour an entire season in one sitting—this is why Wednesday season 1 worked so well—and that same enthralling storytelling would also make weekly releases satisfying. Instead, audiences are allowed to take in half of the action all at once before hitting a roadblock and being forced to wait for the rest. There is an advantage to allowing a show to breathe in the middle, but a month between four-hour blocks of Wednesday when the series is better consumed all together does no one any favors.

Even so, Wednesday continues to hit its stride with this half of its second outing. It doesn’t lose control of its growing cast like many comparable TV phenomenons do, and the charm and wit of the first season remains, even if things get too quippy at times. As irritating as the month-long wait for the next four episodes will be, it will surely be worth it and more.

Wednesday season 2 part 1 is now available to stream on Netflix. Part 2 will be released Wednesday, September 3rd.