REVIEW: ‘Wednesday’ Season 2 Is Off To A Confusing Start

Two years ago, Jenna Ortega was able to give her take on a classic character with Wednesday, Tim Burton and Netflix’s new spin on The Addams Family. But can Wednesday Season 2 keep up?

The first season of the series was darker, shifted its focus to individual members of the family instead of the whole unit, and embraced supernatural storytelling tropes we’ve seen in other YA television series. Still, Wednesday Season 1 felt connected to the characters that generations have grown up with. 

Wednesday Season 2 Part 1, on the other hand, well, it genuinely feels like any old CW series that could have run in the 2000s. Now, I don’t say this in a backhanded way. As someone who has seen The Vampire Diaries (and yes, all of its spin-offs), Supernatural, and well, let’s just throw Riverdale in there, I get the appeal, and I love some of them. But those series know what they are. Wednesday Season 2 doesn’t. 

To start Wednesday Season 2, Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) returns to prowl the Gothic halls of Nevermore Academy, after a summer chasing down serial killers with her psychic powers. Yes, that’s the start of this season. Now, back in school, and with her little brother Pugsley  (Isaac Ordonez), fresh foes and woes are awaiting her, and somehow, they’re more complicated than her first love turning into a bloodthirsty monster.

Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 puts its titular character in the role of a hero, and she hates it.

This season, Wednesday is more focused on navigating her personal relationships. The series is more focused on her relationship with her mother (Catherine Zeta-Jones)and her grandmother. And of course, the detached and stoic Wednesday isn’t the best at discussing any of these relationships.

Add in mysterious crows being linked to several deaths, physical backlash from using her power, and the impending doom of the people closest to her, and Wednesday is dealing with a much more complex situation. On top of that, her rabid fan club that puts this deadpan loner in a hero’s spotlight just keeps getting on her nerves.

Creator/showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar return to the series, with a renewed goal of featuring more tender sides of the titular character, even if it’s more unfocused overall. At the heart of Wednesday Season 2 is a new supernatural mystery that pushes her back to old foes and begins to tie up some loose ends left at the end of last season. 

Despite featuring way more screentime for characters like Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), Pugsley, Gomez (Luis Guzmán), and Morticia, Wednesday Season 2 feels so extremely disconnected from the legacy, temperaments, and charm of those characters that this is the Addams Family in name only.

Wednesday Season 2 is investing more in its ensemble, but too many subplots.

The divide between the Normies and the Outcasts is even larger now. The secondary characters, like Bianca (Joy Sunday), Ajax (Georgie Farmer), and Eugene (Moosa Mostafa), have a larger B-plot running through it. However, Wednesday’s superpower is the primary focus. 

Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 is interesting enough to watch, with actors who are throwing themselves into the roles (except Zeta-Jones). The series’ world is vast, and the cryptids and tall tales that the creatives draw upon to create the students of Nevermore Academy are some of the best parts of the series.

The worldbuilding in Wednesday Season 2 continues, but the winding narrative and unwieldy wide swings for significant shock moments make this large world start to collapse on itself. Nothing in Wednesday or at Nevermore can simply exist; everything and every person has to be pulled into a larger scheme. And when everything is important, nothing is. 

In truth, Wednesday Season 2 is caught between a rock and a hard place. The series hits its highs when it’s embracing its originality, but when it tries to insert the Addams Family flavor with easter eggs and moments that viewers would know, it all feels out of place. Weakest when it was trying to lean on the Addams Family charm, this season left me questioning why this needed to be Wednesday altogether, a thought I didn’t have last season. 

Jenna Ortega is the most charming thing about the second season.

There is too much going on, with characters from the first season returning in confusing ways and new twists revealing themselves as Wednesday explores the darker parts of Nevermore Academy and a weird new Headmaster complicating it all. Wednesday Season 2 is somehow overstuffed but also unable to grasp onto any solid story thread to keep it impactful. 

The series isn’t bad, per se, but it feels empty. Coupled with the choice to only release four episodes of the eight-episode season, much of it feels incomplete. A kitchen sink experience that ends up leaving you feeling like you didn’t watch anything at all.

The production design is fantastic, the costuming is consistent, and the effects work is well done, for most of this season. Still, beauty can only get you so far, and that is clear when it comes to the filtering used for some of the characters’ faces.

That smoothing effect is most visible when it comes to Catherine Zeta Jones’ Morticia. While the lighting is still trying to capture the lighting effect that Anjelica Huston made famous, it instead makes her look inhuman. And not in the cool supernatural way, just an uncanny one. It doesn’t always happen, which makes the moments where it does all the more jarring. 

Too much filtering can take a good-looking show too far.

There are moments where the series shines, and much of this is due to how it looks and how well Ortega’s Wednesday handles difficult situations. As weird as it is to have Wednesday solving crimes in her downtime and catching Normie serial killers, that section of the first episode is extremely well done and the most interesting element of who she is becoming. 

While her relationship with her mother, and then Morticia’s relationship with her mother, are all underdeveloped, Wednesday and Enid (Emma Myers) are growing together. While Enid is trying her best to be a good friend, she’s also finding new romance and crossing Wednesday’s boundaries, much like last season.

Still, the fact that we get to see Wednesday take a proactive role in their friendship, even if she isn’t communicating, speaks to her growth. I can say that the rest of the ensemble is underserved, but these two? They’re what kept me watching. 

Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 is a specter of what the series started as, and it’s even farther removed from the source material. While Ortega remains the series’ strongest presence, it’s just not enough to make the series a success. This isn’t a series I wanted to see fizzle out, but sometimes big swings don’t always land. 

Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix, with Part 2 streaming September 6, 2025.

Catch up with our review of Season 1.