Wednesday Season 2 Review: Netflix's Peculiar Smash Hit Reckons With Fame

On Wednesday, the word "outcast" has lost all meaning. It's a blanket term for the supernaturally gifted, encompassing all the students at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school that houses sirens, gorgons, werewolves, and Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega), who probably would have qualified to attend Nevermore on the strength of her iconic weirdness even if the Netflix series hadn't given her psychic powers. In the first season, Wednesday stood apart from her peers: an "outcast among outcasts," as director and executive producer Tim Burton put it. But in the second season, the social landscape has changed. This year, Wednesday Addams is one of the cool kids.

It isn't hard to see how art is imitating life here. The sardonic teen's newfound fame at Nevermore, thanks to her heroics in the Season 1 finale, is an obvious reflection of what a phenomenon this show has become for Netflix. So what does popularity mean for both Wednesday and Wednesday? For the character, it's a nuisance. The series wears it better, even if it is absurd to hear "outcast" uttered so frequently when no one is treated like one. Wednesday herself seems less striking this season — she's not any less unusual, but she is less distinct from her surroundings. Her classmates have embraced her, despite her objections, and her visits to the outside world are increasingly fleeting. Something is lost when there's no culture clash in an Addams Family story. And yet in plenty of superficial ways, Wednesday has become a more entertaining show.

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The first half of Wednesday Season 2, which consists of four episodes and premieres on Aug. 6 (followed by the second half of the season, also four episodes, on Sept. 3), addresses the first season's flaws so studiously that it feels like creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are going down a checklist. Free Wednesday from her bland love triangle? Check. Bring her family into the action? Check. Liven up the student body at Nevermore? You can't win them all, but the show makes some progress. The most satisfying change is the end of the love triangle; both Wednesday and the series move on quickly. Even as Tyler (Hunter Doohan), the supposed "normie" turned monstrous Hyde, still lurks around the fringes of the story as a patient at Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, Wednesday can't muster up much angst for lost love. 

Burying her teenage romantic drama gives Wednesday more time for an Addams family reunion. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán have been upped to series regulars as her lovebird parents, Morticia and Gomez, who accept an offer from Nevermore's new principal, Barry Dort (a squirrelly Steve Buscemi), that keeps them close to campus. Isaac Ordonez has also been promoted to series regular as Wednesday's younger brother, Pugsley, now in his first year at the boarding school. With Pugsley stranded in a meandering subplot about a pet zombie and Morticia and Gomez as comfortably devoted to one another as ever, the tension in the family comes courtesy of Morticia's estranged mother, Grandmama (Joanna Lumley), who dredges up old family secrets tied to Wednesday's psychic gifts. But the show's most effective wild card is still Fred Armisen's screwball Uncle Fester, perhaps the family's last true outcast standing.

6.8

Wednesday Season 2

at Netflix

Like

• Ortega gives another commanding performance
• This season is a little more mysterious and spooky
• The show seems to be having more fun

Dislike

• Nevermore is still too cartoonish
• The tone is inconsistent
• Wednesday gets fewer opportunities to clash with the outside world

Fester succeeds in making Wednesday kookier, but the creeps come elsewhere. The plot of the second season is driven by a portent of doom — a vision warns Wednesday that her roommate, Enid (Emma Myers), will die, and that Enid's untimely demise will be Wednesday's fault. Wednesday's supernatural abilities, which may or may not be a danger to her, start glitching before she can figure out how to prevent that vision from coming true, forcing her to rely on shoe-leather snooping to crack the case. It's all standard fare for a young TV psychic, but it works, especially because the show injects the proceedings with strange and morbid details, as Wednesday is hunted by multiple stalkers and a murderous murder of crows. 

These flashes of horror still feel out of step with the show's YA-friendly supernatural boarding school hijinks. In that sense, for all of Wednesday's upgrades, it's just as accurate to say that nothing much has changed. This is still a series that expects its most esteemed cast members to say "normie" with a straight face. Nevermore remains a frustrating setting, one that the show wants to fit into too many molds; it's both a deadly old castle and a quirky refuge, and its students have incredible powers, but the show mostly utilizes them for pranks. Fundamentally, this is another outcast problem: Wednesday has no clear point of view on what it means to be different. And yet in Season 2, the tonal discord comes close to being part of the fun. Has the show gotten better at harnessing its own ridiculousness, or has it just worn down its audience?

Take this season's third episode, which follows the Nevermore students on an off-campus camping trip. It's the most cartoonish episode in the bunch, silly in ways that are often grating, except when they're actually funny. It's also got a musical number and a duel — and why not? Wednesday is a Netflix megahit! The hour couldn't be further from the dark, Tim Burton-directed season premiere, which features as its crown jewel an eerie Nevermore legend rendered in fantastic black-and-white stop-motion animation. Wednesday is at odds with itself, but at least it's unpredictable.

Jenna Ortega, with her dry wit and otherworldly stare, is the show's steady anchor. She's joined by an array of new cast members, many of whom are underutilized — especially Christopher Lloyd as the disembodied Professor Orloff, Billie Piper as music teacher Ms. Capri, and Thandiwe Newton as Willow Hill psychiatrist Dr. Fairburn. Even Enid, the subject of our hero's vision, is sidelined from the main action, distracted by a crush that isn't even as charming as her friendship with the Addamses' living hand, Thing (Victor Dorobantu). Wednesday is best when it stays tightly focused on Wednesday, but the show doesn't do her any favors when it shortchanges most of her relationships, aside from her spirited sparring with Morticia. 

Then again, Lady Gaga hasn't even shown up yet. Four episodes in, it feels like the second season of Wednesday is just beginning to point toward its animating ideas, which could bring issues of fear and prejudice back into the picture. If Gaga's upcoming guest appearance is any indication, Season 2 also seems likely to keep wrestling with the monster of fame — either thematically or just in the sense that it's gotten too big to be stopped. Wednesday is still figuring out exactly how popular a teenage outcast can be.

Premieres: Wednesday, Aug. 6 on Netflix
Who's in it: Jenna Ortega, Steve Buscemi, Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Isaac Ordonez, Billie Piper, Luis Guzmán, Catherine Zeta-Jones 
Who's behind it: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (co-creators, executive producers), Tim Burton (director, executive producer)
For fans of: Piano covers of The Cranberries
How many episodes we watched: 4 of 8