Review of Wednesday season 2: Jenna Ortega’s charm could power a thousand hearses
Wednesday season 2 starts. You are all ready to watch.
Hark! The bells are ringing, and a new semester has started at Nevermore Academy. Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega), a newly famous person, is, of course, not happy about it. “I liked it better when people were scared of me and hated me,” she says in a monotonous voice as a group of amazed classmates scrambles around her ankles, their signing books open.
Sadly, she can’t escape her new celebrity. Bianca (Joy Sunday), who plays “It Girl,” tells Wednesday, “You’re kind of a big deal now after the whole saving the school from the demon pilgrim thing.” She says this to both Wednesday and the viewer, who may not fully understand what happened in the last season’s finale because they are too busy giving death stares to their swooning fans. The South American demon Queod?net? Yes, that’s right. We’re talking about the demon pilgrimage. You might remember that this was the big first-series fight over Joseph Crackstone, a violent 17th-century pilgrim brought back to life by the evil botany teacher and beastmaster Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci).
Thornhill had already manipulated Tyler Galpin, who is both a barista and an actual monster, into killing several students, police officers, and local therapists. Now she wanted to use the reanimated Crackstone to help her kill everyone else. Anyway, Wednesday has either blown up Crackstone or put Thornhill and Galpin in jail, so Nevermore is finally safe. Let joy, or at least cautious relief, be free.
Part 1 of Season 2 of Wednesday is all set to premiere on Netflix on Wednesday, August 6, 2025. In the United States, fans will be able to watch the latest episodes of the series at 3 AM ET/12 AM PT, following the usual release time of the streaming service
And what now? Peace reigns, and the second series of this deliciously dark murder-mystery/high-school comedy drama can go on in an orderly way. At least, the four episodes that are available before the second half of the series comes out in September may do so. Or maybe not, because here comes another evil guy! Specifically, here comes the Kansas City Scalper, a professional dog groomer who collects dolls and kills people. He is played by Haley Joel Osment (of The Sixth Sense fame) in a velour tracksuit. In a fast-paced opening scene, we find out that Wednesday has spent her summer vacation looking for the Scalper, getting tied up by him, turning the tables on him, taking his scalp, and finally bringing him to justice. The most important thing about all of this is that it’s not clear (at least not in this first episode) what happened next, but only a berk would bet on the scalpless sod showing up later and ruining everyone’s Weetos.
All in all, it’s a very Wednesday start to the new season of Wednesday. That is, a massive, complicated, and very funny thing that happens very quickly and costs a lot of money, only to be rapidly forgotten because of the needs of a more pressing story strand. In this case, it’s Wednesday’s mysterious stalker. He/she/it has come back after the last series and determined that our peerlessly nihilistic heroine must pay for something or other. They have started to leave her a series of increasingly loud and cryptic messages telling her to DO SOMETHING or other ABOUT THIS. Who is thienragedry enemyCould you please clarify the issueem with him/her/it?
There are a lot more strange things. A local private investigator is pecked to death by a group of crows that are very much out to kill. Wednesday has terrifying dreams of her ditzy roommate, Enid (Emma Myers), dying soon.
Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), who looks like Ned Flanders and has a statement suit and a mustache that follows you around the room, is the new principal of Nevermore. Dort is a fan of Bruce Springsteen and can’t be trusted.
Isadora Capri (Billie Piper, who is definitely having a great time) is a new music teacher who also straddles the line between “seems quite nice, actually” and “is almost certainly a shapeshifting necromancer.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones’s Morticia Addams is back, and she’s just as delightful as ever, but Luis Guzmán’s Gomez is lumpy and beaming, and his performance looks strangely unfinished, as if he stopped rehearsing midway through because he got sidetracked by a scotch egg.
Aside from a few small issues, the season opener is great because it is full of comedy and narrative. Tim Burton’s fast-paced filmmaking makes sure that any budding seriousness or emotion is quickly crushed by a shot of a decaying body or a moment in which a group of CGI caterpillars come together for no reason at all to form the phrase “BUG OFF.”
In the middle of it all lies Ortega’s Wednesday, whose charm might power a thousand hearses. Not that she would care about how excited we are. “Don’t put me on a pedestal,” she tells her schoolmates who are in love with her during her guest of honor speech at the catastrophic first Nevermore gala. “All I can do is lead you off a cliff.”
This article was originally published on theguardian.com
