Maybe it seems ironic to say that the character of Wednesday Addams has been “gentrified,” considering she’s no longer white. And sure, in Jenna Ortega’s hands (whether that includes Thing or not), Wednesday is perfectly “passable” as a macabre dark mistress. To those who examine the presentation of the character more deeply, however, it’s clear to see that she’s been sanitized for the sake of making her more “likable” (read: watchable) to normies and outcasts alike. Except that the true outcasts of this world will not be encouraged to find that Wednesday’s so-called black heart is as penetrable as the Grinch’s.
It all starts promisingly enough when Wednesday reveals her lust for exacting revenge to be uncompromising in the first episode, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe.” This is where we’re introduced to her at Nancy Reagan High—the school’s namesake being a pointed dig at any preppy, pastel-wearing git that Wednesday might be likely to encounter. Except for the fact that, in the present, with the greater commodification of “weird” as normal, one would be less likely to see such 80s-era “queen bees” of a Republican persuasion “running” the school. Nonetheless, one is willing to go along (at first) on this journey helmed by Tim Burton and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (all three being white men serves as something of a “behind-the-scenes” case in point of the aforementioned gentrification).
Suspending disbelief that “normies” still reign supreme in the era of their disfavor (with normies themselves having adopted the “trends” embodied by “freakdom”), we watch as Wednesday vindicates her brother Pugsley’s (Isaac Ordonez) bullying by the jocks of the water polo team, their ringleader being the fittingly-named Dalton (Max Pemberton). To secure justice for Pugsley, she thusly targets the team at their most vulnerable: half-naked in the pool during practice. Unleashing two bags’ worth of piranhas (as Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” plays) into the water, we learn afterward that Dalton ends up losing a testicle. But Wednesday maintains, “I did the world a favor. People like Dalton shouldn’t procreate.” For yes, she does hold fast to her “savagery” for all of episode one, complete with her declaration, “I don’t have a phone. I refuse to be a slave to technology.” Her Luddite ways, of course, will be thrown out the window by the eighth and final episode, “A Murder of Woes,” after fellow student and semi-“love” interest, Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White), gives her one as a parting gift at the premature end of the school year.
Xavier is sort of like the Tristan Dugray (Chad Michael Murray) to townie Tyler Galpin’s (Hunter Doohan) version of Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki). Which brings us to Wednesday’s Rory Gilmore-esque (Alexis Bledel) nature in this edition. Complete with both girls being bookish introverts with writerly aspirations, each starting out at public school (in Rory’s case, Stars Hollow High) before being presented with the opportunity (fine, obligation for Wednesday) to attend a private. Wednesday’s is called Nevermore Academy, not just a private school like Rory’s Chilton, but a private boarding school. Which is where the Hogwarts Academy element comes in. But more on the Harry Potter similarities later. As for those well-versed in poetry ought to detect, “Nevermore” is a direct reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”
Poe being the “mascot,” of sorts, for darkness and lovers of the grim and grotesque, it’s only natural that the writers should see fit to make him a former alumnus of the academy. There’s even a Poe Cup competition in episode two, “Woe Is the Loneliest Number,” during which Wednesday’s blooming friendship with her roommate and would-be werewolf, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), is further solidified by Wednesday’s desire to help her beat the long-reigning winner, Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday). It is she who embodies the school’s proverbial “most popular girl” role—though no one can say for sure if that’s because she’s a siren with a very persuasive voice.
The character of Bianca harkens back to yet another Netflix series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. A show that, who would have predicted, turned out to be much less afraid of full-stop darkness than Wednesday. In it, Sabrina Spellman’s (Kiernan Shipka) own rival at The Academy of Unseen Arts, Prudence Blackwood (Tati Gabrielle), serves as the locks shorn, Black mean girl of the equation. And, like Wednesday and Bianca, Sabrina and Prudence eventually seem to develop a mutual respect for one another after Bianca and Prudence get over the fact that the chosen boy of her affection prefers Sabrina and Wednesday, respectively, to her.
The magical facet of Wednesday’s Burton-ified persona doesn’t just relate to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, either. Even more than that, it echoes Charmed. Most overtly via Wednesday’s powers of premonition mirroring Phoebe Halliwell’s (Alyssa Milano). Charmed in general also seems to cast a towering shadow over the series. At one point, Wednesday tells Thing as she touches a book of spells in “Friend or Woe, “Codex Umbarum—that’s Latin for Book of Shadows.” This being the name of the book the Halliwell sisters use as well for their spellcasting. Then there is Rowan Laslow (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore with the power of telekinesis… just like Phoebe’s oldest sister, Prue (Shannen Doherty). But yes, more obviously connected to Charmed is Wednesday getting premonitions the same way Phoebe does. The latter, too, can’t control when or where the premonitions will arrive, triggered by touching something seemingly arbitrary that leads to a vision that will ultimately offer a bigger clue.
This is the component that suddenly makes Wednesday a teen detective who actually gives a shit about saving her school from an unknown and sinister antagonist. That Wednesday and Pugsley had to be forced to go to school in general during the first series run of The Addams Family should be an indication, however, that Wednesday would never care enough about any “institution” of learning to stick around and save it. Indeed, there are glimmers of Wednesday’s contempt for the entire construct of school at the beginning, when she notes of Nancy Reagan High, “I’m not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago, but I admire the sadism.”
Other callbacks to Wednesdays of the past show up in moments both big and small, from Wednesday telling Tyler she used to decapitate her dolls with a guillotine as a child (this being mentioned in the 60s sitcom version of the show) to her particular way of dancing to her having an ancestor who was a witch to her utter contempt for whitewashed pilgrim history just the same as Christina Ricci’s Wednesday in Addams Family Values. And, speaking of, Ricci’s own presence in the show goes largely wasted and underused. Except when she has the gumption to say to Wednesday, “Never lose that, Wednesday. The ability to not let others define you.”
Alas, Wednesday is gradually being conditioned, molded and defined by norms and conventions as the series goes on. This includes her cringeworthy romance plotlines with both Tyler and Xavier. If anything, Wednesday would be more prone to asexual tendencies, the antithesis of Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Worse still, they actually have Wednesday kissing a boy already in season one. Goddamn, at least work up to that kind of thing. All “sexual” interactions when it comes to Wednesday Addams, after all, should be strictly Bollywood.
Even more unnatural is that Tyler, who writes her off as “Grim Reaper Barbie” (that “Barbie” can be associated with Wednesday at all in this series should tell one everything), has the gall to actually take some kind of “ownership” over Wednesday. Doing so when she confesses to him that she is deigning to attend the Rave’n dance (Nevermore’s version of a prom) with Xavier in episode four, “Woe What A Night.” He then bitches out, Dean-style in Gilmore Girls, and berates her, “I mean, call me crazy, Wednesday, but you keep giving me these signals.”
Of course, the “real” Wednesday would never give any signals to a boy apart from a death stare. Regardless, she lets him continue to whine, “I thought we liked each other, but then you pull something like this and I have no idea where I stand. Am I in the ‘more-than-friend’ zone or just a pawn in some game you’re playing?” Wednesday, genuinely looking guilty, therefore emotional, about what he’s saying, becomes cliché enough to reply, “I’m just dealing with a lot right now.” No outright ignoring or horrification over how some guy would try to make her apologize in any way for her behavior.
But herein lies the rub with the true essence of the character. No normie actually has the stomach to watch how a misanthrope would realistically behave without some “light” sugar-coating to it. Some glimmer, through plot device, that all the character really needs is to be “drawn out.” That their defenses are only up because they’re just protecting themselves, but secretly want to be an active participant in “society.”
Maybe that’s why something about Wednesday feels tantamount to “dark and weird” Billie Eilish going blonde pin-up and then dating an older white male that fronts an “indie” band. In both scenarios, the lack of faith in audiences to want to stick with such a bleak character/persona—an “anti-hero” (and not in the chirpy, Taylor way), if you will—is part of the capitulation to “Disney-fication.” But oh, let’s not forget about the Harry Potter-fication as well. For, not only does the headmaster, Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), end up dead, but the “Voldemort” of the narrative also ends up inexplicably brought back to life in the last episode. A dash of Pretty Little Liars even gets thrown in when Wednesday receives a stalker-y text (because, lest one forget, she has an iPhone now) in the vein of “A.” By this juncture, the only on-the-nose “quirky” aspect missing is some background music from Lana Del Rey (“Ultraviolence” would be a good choice).
Hence, whatever season two holds, it’s sure to provide more of Wednesday “gradually” opening up to people as she feigns cold-bloodedness through her barbing dialogue. Yet, to borrow from a meme that gained traction during the Trump presidency (“I know this isn’t the USA Miley was talking about partying in”), “I know this is isn’t the dark and macabre Wednesday that Christina Ricci’s version would have grown up to be.”
Angela Chase once told Jordan Catalano, “Admit it… That you have emotions.” That appears to be what Tim Burton, et al. is saying to Wednesday with this “modernized” rendering of her. And yet, to quote another character from a teen drama, Blair Waldorf, “You have to be cold to be queen.” In this instance, queen of misanthropy. Which Wednesday no longer really is, leaving that, ostensibly, to the descendants she inspired in the animated personages of Daria and Emily the Strange.
