Tag: Wednesday Addams

Thing Comes to Wednesday Season 2’s Rescue

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While some would say that Lady Gaga “makes” season two of Wednesday (between her cameo and the song she provided for it, “The Dead Dance”), there’s no denying that what spared it from the problems of season one was none other than Thing. More specifically, the gradual unfurling of his (or “its”) backstory as it relates to a newly introduced character, Isaac Night (Owen Painter) a.k.a. Slurp. That latter nickname being what Pugsley Addams (Isaac Ordonez) gives to him after being the one responsible for reanimating his corpse in the wake of hearing a “ghost story,” of sorts,” about him on his first night at Nevermore Academy, joining Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) there for his inaugural year (which Wednesday is none too enthused about).

As Ajax Petropolus (Georgie Farmer) recounts the tale of Isaac (in a very “submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society” kind of way), a ninety-second flashback sequence—that took Tim Burton and co. eight months to create—shows how the former Nevermore student went from being a “normal” human to a cold and ambitious mad scientist. The black and white flashback that illustrates this transition is one of the standout moments of the season, drawing easy comparisons to Burton’s earlier work, including Frankenweenie, Vincent and even The Nightmare Before Christmas. And, as Burton himself said of making the sequence, “We needed to pretend like I’m back in my student days and do it like I did it in the beginning.”

So it is that the story of Isaac’s transformation from mere “mortal” (by Nevermore standards) into a boy with a clockwork heart (for he invents a heart-shaped mechanism to replace his real heart “so that his body could keep up with his dazzling mind”) leaves an indelible imprint not just on Pugsley, but also the viewer. As does the mention of how Isaac died while conducting yet another one of his diabolical experiments, electrocuted and ejected from the window of Iago Tower. At the end of the story, Ajax baits the youths of Caliban Hall with the mention that only the bravest have ventured out in the middle of the night to try and listen to the tick of his clockwork heart buried beneath the Skull Tree (this obviously having some very strong shades of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Telltale Heart”). So it is that Pugsley, feeling like a loser (and not in an “embracing it” sort of way à la Tame Impala and Beck) and wanting to prove himself in some way, predictably goes to the tree.

Unfortunately, Wednesday isn’t one for paying much attention to her brother in general, let alone when she has her own additional problems to deal with—namely, trying to stop a premonition of her roommate (and, to her dismay, best friend) Enid Sinclair’s (Emma Myers) death. This unwanted vision occurring at the end of season two’s first episode, “Here We Woe Again.” Along with Pugsley going to the Skull Tree with a shovel. However, before he can do something stupid like dig up the grave, he does something even stupider by getting scared by a bat that flies out of one of the tree’s “eyes.”

This shock causes him to fall and, in turn, shock the ground with his powers of electrokinesis. So it is that Isaac’s corpse is “miraculously” reanimated, albeit initially in zombie form, emerging almost instantaneously from beneath the ground. This sets a key “subplot” off for the rest of the season, with “Slurp” (as he’s initially branded by Pugsley) slowly but surely regaining his human form—thanks to the steady consumption of various people’s brains. Confiding only to his roommate, Eugene Ottinger (Moosa Mostafa), the secret of his new “best friend,” who he hides in a shed…chained up, of course.

In “Call of the Woe,” the matter of Thing’s general neglect by the Addams family of late (including everyone forgetting his birthday like he’s Samantha Baker [Molly Ringwald] in Sixteen Candles) is brought up right away, with Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) commending Gomez (Luis Guzman) for being able to get an apparent masseuse named Stassa (Neri Zaccardelli) to rub him down, as it were. A small reconciliation for all the bullshit Thing constantly has to put up with. Including, in this particular episode, having to go along on a camping trip. The first one of its kind put on by Nevermore, courtesy of the overzealous new principal, Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi). The replacement for the now disgraced Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie), who manages to stick around for season two by conveniently becoming Wednesday’s new spirit guide. With “Call of the Woe” reverting to leaning into that Harry Potter/Hogwarts Academy aura it radiated so strongly in season one (along with some overt nods to Charmed, Gilmore Girls and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), it’s an obvious “filler episodes” with its most significant plot point being Slurp’s capture at the camp after he devours the brain of Ron Kruger (Anthony Michael Hall, once again playing a part that goes against his original dweeb typecasting, which Burton helped undo by making him the bully in Edward Scissorhands), a scoutmaster who leads the competition between his Phoenix Cadets and the Nevermore students after a double booking of the campsite leads them to “fight” for it.

As the episode draws to a close, more cornball-ness takes hold as Wednesday delivers a voiceover that repurposes Robert Frost’s overused “The Road Not Taken” to say that she needs to keep investigating the goings-on at Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, where Tyler Galpin a.k.a. the Hyde (Hunter Doohan) of season one is being held captive. And, now, as the end of this episode shows, so is his master, Marilyn Thornhill/Laurel Gates (Christina Ricci). Of course, her grand return is short-lived, with Tyler turning against her in the episode that follows, “If These Woes Could Talk,” which also acts as the “Part One” finale, ergo plenty of “scintillating” details at last revealed. Like the fact that Judi Spannagel (Heather Matarazzo, at last getting some deserved acting work), executive assistant to Dr. Rachael Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton), is the one behind a nefarious program called Lois—which, naturally, Wednesday had previously assumed to be a person.

But no, it’s an acronym for Long-term Outcast Integration Study, a program started by Judi’s father, Augustus Stonehearst. The purpose of the experiments? To remove outcasts’ powers and reassign them to normies (this providing plenty of meta commentary on how “weirdness” is increasingly commodified—particularly since Burton’s 90s heyday, with Gap grafting grunge for its own products, and now, with Burton’s “style” itself being ripped by AI). Or, as Judi tells it to Wednesday and Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), who “broke into” Willow Hill by doing his “insane” shtick, “[My father] loved outcasts. He wanted to be one. Imagine being able to extract their abilities and share it with normies.” Wednesday immediately cuts in, “You mean steal them and exploit them. This is a basement bargain attempt at Dr. Moreau.”

But Judi does well to remind Wednesday that the experiment wasn’t an “attempt”—her father succeeded. For she then confesses that she was born a normie too, but now, thanks to Augustus’ work, she’s an Avian, therefore possessing the gift of being able to control birds. In this case, of course, opting to wield crows to do her evil bidding throughout the first four episodes, particularly one “lead” crow. Identifiable as the “red-eyed” or “one-eyed” crow. And while the unveiling of who the Avian really was might have been enough to sate the audience for now, there are those who still have lingering questions about who the red-eyed crow really is, because that part of the plot sort of just fell off. However, a through line that remains consistent—by becoming retroactively visible—is the way that Isaac and Thing are mysteriously “connected.” This first made slightly apparent at the end of “If These Woes Could Talk,” when, after everyone breaks out of the asylum, Isaac catches a glimpse of Thing amidst the chaos and casts it a look of simultaneous longing and recognition. One that the viewer doesn’t think much of, especially since it’s quickly broken by Isaac being shot multiple times (not that it has an effect on him).

Still “at large” at the start of “Part Two” of the second season, “Hyde and Woe Seek,” other dangerous escapees include Tyler a.k.a. the Hyde and the woman we find out is his mother, Françoise Galpin (Frances O’Conner), formerly Françoise Night. As in, that’s right, Isaac’s sister. So it is that this macabre family reunion is an integral part of the episode, along with the reintroduction of Principal Weems as Wednesday’s new spirit guide (who first shows up while Wednesday is in a coma). Which means plenty of interjecting and needing to allow Wednesday a Dexter Morgan amount of time to respond to people since she’s so in her head talking to someone who isn’t there. At least not to others. All as she hatches yet another scheme designed to avert the premonition she had of Enid’s death. This time, it involves trying to become Tyler’s new master, now that Thornhill is dead (killed by none other than Tyler himself).

Another key part of the story is anchored in Pilgrim World’s (yes, that throwback to Addams Family Values returns) Los Spooky Noches!, an expectedly appropriative “celebration” of Day of the Dead. It’s the site where Pugsley reunites with an increasingly human-looking Isaac, and chooses to set him free despite all the carnage he continues to leave in his wake. Something Gomez bears witness to, only to have Pugsley lie to him about not seeing the former “Slurp” anywhere. A lie that Pugsley confesses to in the Freaky Friday-inspired episode that follows, “Woe Thyself.” Needless to say, it’s Wednesday and Enid who end up swapping bodies, which is why the first scene is of a literally color-allergic Wednesday outfitted in pastels and makeup while dancing to the tune of Blackpink’s “Boombayah” before actually deigning to go out into the quad area so that everyone at Nevermore can see her like this. From the outset, it’s plain to see that Enid’s influence is somehow at play. Though it takes a bit longer for the viewer to find out that Lady Gaga—in the role of a now-dead ex-Nevermore teacher named Rosaline Rotwood—is responsible for Enid’s, let’s call it, pull over “Wednesday’s” choices.

And while Wednesday and Enid deal with their Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis issues, Thing decides to attend a support group held by the detached head that is Professor Orloff (Christopher Lloyd, who played Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values), called “Some of Your Parts,” a play on, what else, “the sum of your parts.” A phrase that comes up in a stirring speech he gives to the appendages in attendance, all of whom want to know from what body they originally came from. To this, Orloff says, “We may never know who we were attached to. You can’t see yourself as an appendage, but as a whole person, worthy of love and respect. We are more than just the sum of our parts. But sometimes, the parts are greater than the whole.”

It’s a statement that, in many regards, applies to how Thing is the part that’s often greater than the whole of Wednesday. Serving as, for all intents and purposes, their family dog, it is his story that turns out to be the most jarring and compelling plot twist of all—that Isaac was the whole body he once belonged to. Of course, that unexpected revelation doesn’t arrive until the finale, “This Means Woe.” After the humiliation of Principal Dort that occurs in the previous episode, “Woe Me the Money,” wherein Wednesday’s grandmother, Hester (Joanna Lumley, looking a lot like Jane Fonda), also cruelly insults Gomez for having no “abilities,” deriding him as a useless normie.

This is something Wednesday makes Hester pay for—literally—by the end of the fundraising gala (when Enid and Wednesday’s invisible stalker/groupie, Agnes DeMille [Evie Templeton], find their moment to engage in some choreo for “The Dead Dance”). That’s when Hester and Morticia both realize Dort made Bianca (Joy Sunday) siren them into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t have. In Hester’s case, donating her entire fortune (from being, what else, a mortuary mogul) to Nevermore and insisting no normies shall ever be allowed to attend again. Wednesday couldn’t agree less, changing her tune from the second episode, “The Devil You Woe,” when she condemns Judi for championing Fairburn’s book, Unlocking the Outcast Mind. Judi, as Dr. Fairburn’s assistant, is naturally sycophantic about it, prompting Wednesday to ask whether Dr. F is even an outcast. Judi says no, but what does that matter? Wednesday replies, “It’s like a vegetarian writing a book on cannibalism.” Just as it’s like Daria dressing up as Quinn, at times, to watch Wednesday’s emotions shine through so often in season two. Though, mercifully, not half as often as in season one, wherein that notorious kiss was shared between her and Tyler.

Ortega seemed to understand (too late) that such behavior did not align with the character whatsoever, later reflecting, “Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play [in season one], did not make sense for her character at all. Her being in a love triangle? It made no sense.” Hence, the ousting of Percy Hynes White’s character, Xavier Thorpe, in season two. And besides, any residual traces of mawkishness (including the Freaky Friday conceit) are made forgivable by Thing’s incredible journey to understand “who” (not what) he is. Or, more precisely, who he comes from. And, just as any human discovering their true family origins, Thing comes to realize that maybe life really does boil down to nurture over nature. Or, from the Addams family’s perspective, un-nurture over nature.

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Genna Rivieccio

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September 10, 2025
Living (Dead) Doll: Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance” Video

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Lady Gaga’s relationship to Wednesday has, by now, been well-established, with “Bloody Mary” being far more associated with Wednesday Addams’ (Jenna Ortega) signature dance scene than the actual song that was chosen for it, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck.” The dance in question happened toward the end of the fourth episode in the first season, “Woe What a Night” (which might as well now be called “Marry the Night”). And as Wednesday pays homage to Lisa Loring’s disjointed moves in the OG The Addams Family series (specifically, in the episode titled “Lurch’s Grand Romance”), the song that now automatically enters people’s minds (thanks to the scourge that is TikTok) is the “sped-up” version of “Bloody Mary.”

So it was that Gaga’s association with the Universe Addams became sealed—which is exactly why she was asked about using one of her songs for a certain scene in the second season (namely, when Enid Sinclair [Emma Myers] is performing her “solo” at the gala in “Woe Me the Money”). However, Gaga did Tim Burton one better by deciding to tailor an original composition for the show. As she told Tudum (Netflix’s website for further deep dives into its original series and films),

“I immediately had a song in mind called ‘The Dead Dance,’ and I had started working on it. But once I knew it was going to be for Wednesday, I decided that I was going to work on it even more and I made it extra special for the show. To me, when you know that music and pop culture and Tim Burton all come together with this cast, that’s a very special recipe. So that’s why I’m here. After that happened, they asked me if I wanted to be on the show, and I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

That role she secured being Rosaline Rotwood, a now-dead former teacher at Nevermore who ends up being responsible for the Freaky Friday plotline between Wednesday and Enid in episode six of season two, “Woe Thyself.” And so, there you have it: TikTok made all this happen with the viral use of “Bloody Mary.” Indeed, in an alternate universe, wherein “Bloody Mary” actually had a music video made for it, it would probably look a lot like the aesthetic presented in “The Dead Dance,” directed (in black and white, Ed Wood-style) by none other than Tim Burton himself. As such, it’s got all the hallmarks of a Burton movie, complete with creepy dolls—and Gaga playing the “lead doll,” if you will (perhaps, in her own subtle way, playing into the current trans-protective mantra, “Protect the Dolls”). Naturally, there’s no better location for all of this than the infamous La Isla de las Muñecas (The Island of the Dolls) in Mexico City.

With opening notes that recall the tune of “Dance in the Dark,” Gaga the living (dead) doll slowly comes to life, exhibiting the sort of bodily movements that recall Ian Curtis having an epilepsy attack. Her erratic movements cease as she begins to sing the opening verse, “Like the words of a song, I hear you call.” Her shaking then persists (something in the hand movements reminding one of Edward Scissorhands) as she adds, “Like a thief in my head, you criminal/You stole my thoughts before I dreamed them/And you killed my queen with just one pawn.” With these lines, it’s as though Gaga tailoring the single to Wednesday is already apparent in the ostensible allusion to how Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), who turned out to be a Hyde controlled by Nevermore teacher Ms. Thornhill (Christina Ricci, whose appearance is another meta nod to a previous iteration of Wednesday Addams), did Wednesday wrong. “Making” her fall in love with him despite knowing full well he is a hideous monster inside. Though, to be fair, the Wednesday that most people know and hate would never deign to fall in love (so saccharine and cliché as it is).

In any event, as Gaga’s range of motion starts to escalate in the video, she begins to prance around in other parts of the wooded area she’s in—a graveyard, as it were (or so they say…though there seems to be no sign of a gravestone anywhere). The other dolls, too, appear to reveal errant signs of life, usually through an arbitrary eyelid flutter or, more eerily still, a slight smile. The lyrics then continue to speak to the unique form of heartbreak Wednesday experienced as Gaga takes it to the chorus, “Yeah, I’ll keep on dancin’ until I’m dead/I’ll dance until I’m dead/‘Cause when you killed me inside, that’s when I came alive/Yeah, the music’s gonna bring mе back from death/I’m dancin’ until I’m dead/I’ll dancе until I’m dead.”

In Wednesday’s case, the only music that’s bringing her back from death is the distinctive picks she plays on her cello. All while ruing the day she ever let Tyler/a Hyde’s tongue into her mouth. Indeed, right after being the one to kiss him (also very un-Wednesday-like behavior), she has the premonition that leads her to finally understand that he’s been the one who’s been behind the murders all along (not, as she originally thought, Xavier Thorpe [Percy Hynes White]). So it is that she runs away from him and comments to herself, “Of course the first boy I kiss would turn out to be a psychotic, serial killing monster.”

As for Gaga, the only place she keeps running is to the makeshift dance floor she’s created in the woodsy “island,” with four live people—not dolls—suddenly serving as her backup dancers while she performs some choreo that is decidedly “Vogue”-inspired (but then, Gaga is no stranger to grafting elements of Madonna’s oeuvre, whether intentional or not). Even her hair and ensemble, for as “staid Victorian” as it’s meant to be, has echoes of Madonna’s eighteenth-century look at the 1990 VMAs (while performing, what else, “Vogue”). Though, naturally, most will see only the “nod” to Michael Jackson in the “Thriller” video (on a side note: it’s also very Madonna to freely pay homage to Jackson without thinking about what that means in terms of continuing to deify someone who was a probable pedo).

Around the three-minute-twenty-second mark, the video gets a suffusion of color, almost as if Enid Sinclair decided to weigh in during the edit, insisting that it was all too dreary (and also, why not add in some more shots of the moon?). Though, of course, any dreariness in visuals is belied by the danceable backing music, co-produced by Gaga, Cirkut and Watt (both of whom co-produced much of Mayhem). The sort of music, in short, that Wednesday would detest, billing it as the kind of thing that only “a trend-chasing, rainbow-loving social media addict whose tastes in clothes and music are a heinous assault on culture” would enjoy.

That said, it wouldn’t surprise anyone at this point to see Wednesday “vibing” to it at yet another Nevermore school dance. For this is a different kind of Wednesday—a more maudlin kind under Burton’s, and now Gaga’s, influence.

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Genna Rivieccio

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September 4, 2025
Doja Cat’s “Demons” Video Is the Scariest Thing Christina Ricci Has Ever Starred In

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As one of pop culture’s main “Queens of Spook,” Christina Ricci’s presence in anything haunted, eerie, ghostly or generally “demonic” is usually a no-brainer (this being why she chose to join the cast of Tim Burton’s [highly watered-down] Wednesday in a role apart from Wednesday Addams herself…though no one will ever hold a candle to her 90s-era performance). What does feel a bit “off-brand” for the actress, however, is appearing in a Doja Cat video just because it happens to have a scary premise. And, to be sure, the Christian Breslauer/Doja-directed offering is probably the most chilling narrative (even if more than slightly filched from Poltergeist) Ricci has ever been a part of.

Where other films of the beloved former child actress have always been in a more “light-hearted spirit” of scariness (e.g., The Addams Family and Casper), this particular addition to her “filmography” is a no holds barred fright fest with Doja in the eponymous role of one of the homogenous-looking demons that stalks the house. Opening with a “For Sale” sign that has a “Sold” sticker on it, the camera zooms in closer to said abode, its low angle pointed upward toward the bedroom before we find ourselves in the interior of that second floor, where an immediate homage to 1982’s Poltergeist can be seen as the static on the TV illuminates the room. The room that, we soon find out, belongs to Christina Ricci. Meanwhile, her children continue to sleep…totally unbothered by the demonic force that appears to relish plaguing only Ricci. Accordingly, a not-so-peacefully sleeping Ricci opens her eyes intuitively as Demon Doja crawls out from behind the TV, hangs upside down in the corner and proceeds to arrogantly demand, “How my demons look (how them demons)?/Now that my pockets full? (ayy, ayy, ayy, yeah, ayy)/How my demons look (ayy, yeah)?/Now that you bitches shook (bitch)?”

With a backing beat that has echoes of Busta Rhymes’ 1998 track, “Gimme Some More” (which itself samples from the Psycho theme), Doja’s aggressive tone punctuates the sinister sonic landscape produced by D.A. Got That Dope (which doesn’t have quite the same ring as Mike WiLL Made-It). And as Ricci lies in bed seemingly paralyzed by a combination of shock and fear (so often one and the same), Demon Doja inches closer to Ricci while still on the ceiling. She then taunts her with such “flexes” as, “You look like me…in your dreams”—while said in the guise of a horrifying hellhound (this somewhat harkening back to the absurdity of Doja posting an unflattering photo of her face and labeling it a “thirst trap”). From the ceiling, she then ends up back at the edge of the bed, her claw-like hand slithering up the side of the frame in what itself feels like a nod to Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street.

And, on that note, the next scene takes place in the bathtub, where “Human” Doja (if there still is such a thing) sits in black, sludge-like water as the demonic hand again slithers out from the water, Krueger-style. Breslauer and Doja then pan up into the attic where Demon Doja and two doppelganger hellhounds revel in their general evilness, crawling around and growling at the camera.

Having already directed Doja Cat’s videos for “Streets” and “Freaky Deaky” (which owes a great debt to Clueless and “Erotica”), Breslauer is no stranger to cultivating un certain aesthetic for Doja. One that often features vibrantly-hued cinematography that belies the seedy overtones of whatever theme Doja is focusing on (in the instance of “Streets,” that includes a slew of zombie-like men busting through concrete from beneath the streets to get a look at Doja writhing around on the hood of a cab). In this “Demons” scenario, that vibrancy still exists even if the muted color palette favors mostly blacks, browns and grays throughout.

Incidentally, the one noticeable pop of red (the color associated with the devil Doja reveres so much these days), veering near pink, is the top Ricci wears after changing out of her pajamas and making a beeline for the video camera (more specifically, the kind of video camera that requires a VHS tape). Because, clearly, she’s going to want to document this demonic presence if anyone is ever going to believe her (this, too, smacking of Casper). Climbing up the ladder that leads to the attic with her weighty video camera in tow, Ricci catches a glimpse of Demon Doja in her human form again—this time wearing a shirt that reads: “Cash Cow.” Needless to say, this is an undoubted reference to 1) the fact that her first big hit was called “MOOO!” (during which she declares, “Bitch, I’m a cow, bitch, I’m a cow”) and 2) how she recently wrote off her last two records, Hot Pink and Planet Her, as unapologetic “cash grabs.”

Pointing her flashlight in Doja’s direction, closer inspection reveals that she’s typing at a typewriter (will any of Doja’s Gen Z fans understand what that is?), in what appears to be another slight horror movie nod…this time, to Jack Torrance in The Shining. Among the “cheeky phrases” she’s writing out? “I’m a puppet, I’m a sheep, I’m a cash cow.” And yet, the animals she’s surrounded by in this scene are goats. This hardly seems like a coincidence as this particular animal is frequently associated with ritual sacrifice. And since Doja is on that dripping demonic titty lately, it makes sense. And yes, the other animals she mentions in her lyrics (cows and sheep) are also “favorites” on the ritual sacrifice front (you know, apart from virgins).

Continuing her typing, Doja adds (in her version of Kendrick Lamar singing “Humble” intonation), “I’m the fastest-growing bitch on all your apps now/You are tired of me ’cause I’m on your ass now/You are mad at me ’cause I am all they slap now/I can nap now/Lots of people that were sleeping say I rap now/Lots of people’s hopes and dreams are finally trashed now/Lots of people say they met me in the past now/I done took the spotlight and made ’em black out/I done took the whole dick and blew my back out.” If that’s true, it still isn’t stopping Demon Doja from being diabolical through her physical movements as the video switches into “nightshot” mode in conjunction with Ricci’s video camera. All while her two now-awake children are downstairs watching the static on the TV. Because, indeed, the Poltergeist tribute remains the most consistent, with all the appliances in the kitchen going haywire as Demon Doja whirls around on a chair among her fellow demons.

At this point, Ricci essentially throws her hands up in the air and flees the fucking scene with her kids. Recently-made down payment be damned. Better that than being damned herself due to staying in the house. It is here, too, that a deeper, more insidious symbolism arises if one is to look at the video as a study in how the proverbial white family is scared of any “black presence” that infiltrates its space. Of course, Doja doesn’t seem like the type to actually try at conveying this form of a Jordan Peele-esque statement, and yet, with “Demons,” it seems difficult to ignore such symbolism.

Red-eyed and causing mayhem by simply “expressing herself” (however unconventionally), Doja is scaring the white folks because she’s Black and belligerent (ergo the appropriateness of a line like, “How my demons look?/Now that you bitches shook?”). A Black rage that can only be expressed by getting up close and personal enough to make someone like Ricci’s “character” actually notice it. For, once the white person closes their door, they’re even blinder than usual to racial injustice. And then, apparently, when they’re forced to be confronted with it, they have the luxury of still turning (nay, running) away from it regardless. As Ricci and her brood eventually do by the conclusion of “Demons.” But that seems to suit Doja just fine, with this result also being an additional metaphor for how little she cares about alienating (demonating?) anyone.

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Genna Rivieccio

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September 4, 2023
All Actresses Who Have Played Wednesday Addams Ranked Worst To Best

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Netflix’s Wednesday premiered on November 23, 2022, marking the first live-action Addams family TV adaption since The New Addams Family in 1998. The series is directed by the gothic horror king, Tim Burton, and sees Jenna Ortega take on the titular role of Wednesday Addams. Wednesday is also a unique series in that it is the first Addams family adaption to focus solely on one member of the family. However, it’s no surprise that Wednesday was picked as the main protagonist.

Wednesday is the one member of the Addams family who, in nearly every interpretation, manages to shine on her own and isn’t too dependent on her family as Gomez, Morticia, and Pugsley tend to be. Additionally, she boldly breaks the mold of what a little girl is expected to be by being independent, unemotional, fierce, and with a morbid sense of humor. Ortega did a masterful job of portraying Wednesday as an “outcast” at odds with both her family and the world. However, Wednesday has been onscreen since 1964, with several actresses portraying the character and each putting their twist on her. Here is every actress who has portrayed, or voiced, Wednesday, ranked worst to best.

7. Cindy Henderson

(Taft Broadcasting)

Cindy Henderson was the second actress to portray Wednesday and the first to lend her voice to the character in an animated series. Henderson voiced Wednesday in the 1973 animated series The Addams Family. However, the show only ran for one season and Henderson never reprised her role as Wednesday afterward. She largely stepped away from the film industry after the 70s. Meanwhile, although The Addams Family cartoon was strange, funny, and ghoulish, it didn’t quite do justice to Wednesday. She wears a pink dress in the series and is portrayed as rather timid, sweet, and happy. Henderson gave her a soft, sweet voice but without adding much personality to it.

6. Nicole Fugere

(Warner Home Video)

Nicole Fugere portrayed Wednesday in the 1998 film Addams Family Reunion and in the TV series The New Addams Family, which ran for one season between 1998 – 1999. Fugere was the last live-action Wednesday before Ortega. She made a strong Wednesday with her interest in the macabre and her intense rivalry with her brother, Pugsley (Brody Smith). However, she didn’t quite nab the melancholy and woeful portrayal of Wednesday that Charles Addams initially imbued into the character. Instead, she leaned more to the remorseless, frightening, and sadistic side of Wednesday. While she was masterful at portraying Wednesday’s severe side, she made the character a little flat by not exploring her more sorrowful and sophisticated side.

5. Chloë Grace Moretz

(Universal Pictures)

Chloë Grace Moretz was the third actress to voice an animated Wednesday. Moretz portrayed Wednesday in the 2019 animated film The Addams Family and its sequel, The Addams Family 2. Though the films follow the whole Addams family, they hone in on Wednesday. The first film sees Wednesday befriend a girl from school and consider adding a bit of color to her life. Meanwhile, the sequel explores Wednesday growing older and feeling distant from her family. Moretz does a fantastic job of finding a balance between Wednesday’s sadism and melancholy. She also provides Wednesday with a nice icy tone. The only issue is that Wednesday changes a bit too quickly throughout the films, and sometimes the characteristics that make her Wednesday fade a bit.

4. Debi Derryberry

(Turner Entertainment)

Debi Derryberry portrayed Wednesday in the 1992 animated series The Addams Family. The Addams Family was released in the wake of the live-action The Addams Family film in 1991, which reignited interest in the macabre family. It ran for 2 seasons and was an enjoyable and quirky take on the Addams family that included funny one-liners and some slapstick humor. Derryberry is an American voice actress most well known for portraying Wednesday Addams and Jimmy Neutron. Derryberry offered a very unique take on Wednesday. Her Wednesday wasn’t as macabre, dark, or menacing as some other iterations, but Derryberry masterfully kept the emotion out of her voice and gave Wednesday a very mature and sophisticated tone. It certainly meshed well with the idea of Wednesday being an old soul or a “child of woe.”

3. Lisa Loring

(ABC)

Lisa Loring was the very first actress to take on the role of Wednesday. She portrayed Wednesday in the 1964 live-action sitcom The Addams Family. Loring was just a tender 6 years old when she took on the role. At such a young age, she wasn’t quite old enough to nab the melancholy aspect of Wednesday. She just couldn’t help looking and sounding adorable and innocent. However, she did manage to pull off Wednesday’s signature death stare and an innocent interest in the macabre. Loring was a very realistic young Wednesday, one who showed traits of morbidity and melancholy that made it clear she wasn’t quite the innocent little girl that she appeared to be on the outside.

2. Jenna Ortega

(Netflix)

Jenna Ortega is the most recent actress to play Wednesday. She made her debut on November 23, 2022, when Netflix dropped the first season of Wednesday. Ortega, by far, offers the most layered version of Wednesday yet. From the onset, though, she masterfully portrays the “child of woe” with an expression of perpetual, subtle sadness. She also captures Wednesday’s maturity, sophistication, and brilliance. Where she differs from previous interpretations is in her psychic powers, anti-social personality, humor, and her disdain for her mother. In some ways, these are good changes as they make her transition from a child to an adolescent realistic. At the same time, it slightly tarnishes the legacy of the Addams family, which was that they always perceived themselves as normal and were a close-knit loving family, who taught others to embrace their peculiar, but harmless, differences.

1. Christina Ricci

(Paramount Pictures)

While Ortega was a worthy successor of Wednesday, she couldn’t quite top the iconic legacy of Christina Ricci’s take on the character. Ricci took on the role of Wednesday in Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1991 film The Addams Family and its sequel, The Addams Family Values. Ricci shined as Wednesday because she perfectly encompassed everything that Charles Addams had intended her to be. She was dark, yet not overly complex, choosing to shield herself in a constant haze of gloom and sorrow. However, Ricci’s Wednesday, though maintaining her inability to express emotion, still was able to express skill and passion as she tormented her brothers or challenged America’s white-washed Christopher Columbus history. Ricci proved the most masterful take on Wednesday because she could give her a personality and a place in her family, without having to change her fundamental characteristics of morbidity and lack of emotion.

(featured image: Netflix)

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Rachel Ulatowski

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November 26, 2022
With A Callback to Addams Family Values, Wednesday Prompts Thanksgiving Revelers to Remember That It’s Still “Pilgrim World”

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Being that Wednesday has arrived to Netflix just in time to capture the “Thanksgiving spirit,” it’s clearly no coincidence that, in episode three of the mostly Tim Burton-directed series, screenwriter Kayla Alpert should offer a callback to one of the most memorable plotlines of 1993’s Addams Family Values. In it, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are forced to go to a horrendous normie summer camp called Camp Chippewa. Worse than that, Wednesday is enlisted to play the part of Pocahontas in a Thanksgiving-themed play (yes, in the summer) put on by their ghoulishly white-bread camp managers/counselors, Gary (Peter MacNicol) and Becky Granger (Christine Baranski).

After the Grangers attempt to brainwash Wednesday, Pugsley and a fellow outcast named Joel Glicker (David Krumholtz) with a marathon of Disney movies, Wednesday emerges from the isolated cabin pretending that the “immersion therapy” has worked. Even going so far as to smile at the awaiting crowd of normies, including the odious Amanda Buckman (Mercedes McNab)—the Aryan ideal in every way. But the Grangers should have known better than to believe Wednesday could be so easily cajoled into “normalcy” by visions of The Brady Bunch and Annie. Instead her performance was all designed to lure them into a false sense of security before she changes tack on the script’s dialogue at the last minute.

So it is that, rather than “sweetly” agreeing to break bread with the pilgrims, Wednesday as “Pocahontas” (who wasn’t even alive anymore during the “first Thanksgiving”) suddenly declines the invitation and declares, “You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations, your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides, you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation, your people will have stick shifts.”

Barring the part about the stick shifts, the monologue has remained fairly timeless. Nonetheless, with the world of Wednesday being set in a Salem-esque town called Jericho featuring a theme park billed as Pilgrim World, it was ripe for throwing more shade at the white forebears who came to the “colonies” to claim the land as their own. What’s more, both Wednesday and Jericho’s “founding father,” Joseph Crackstone (William Houston), appear to be at the center of some ominous prophecy unveiled by Rowan (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore Academy (the school for outcasts where Wednesday is exiled after unleashing some piranhas on the water polo players at Nancy Reagan High). Wanting to understand more about why a pilgrim would be in the mix, Wednesday asks at the beginning of “Friend or Woe,” “If I’m going to be responsible for Nevermore’s demise, the question is: why am I sharing this apocalypse with a pilgrim?”

The answer starts to slowly unravel as Wednesday continues her search for Rowan’s murderer while Nevermore gears up for its “Outreach Day”—meaning the students from the school are “allowed” to enter Jericho freely under the pretense of volunteer work that enables them to “commingle” with the town’s normies. Wednesday does her best to get through the torture, complete with being subjected to seeing more signage that urges people to “Visit Pilgrim World: Where History Comes to Life.”

Initial mention of the theme park is made in episode one, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe,” when Wednesday encounters a trio of meatheads, including Lucas Walker (Iman Marson), the son of Pilgrim World’s owner. Approaching Wednesday sitting at a table at local coffee shop the Weathervane, Lucas and his henchmen are all dressed in pilgrim garb while on their break from working at one of the only sources of “industry” in town. Mocking them and the park itself, Wednesday ribs, “Why are you three dressed like religious fanatics?” “We’re pilgrims.” She returns, “Po-tay-toh, po-tah-to.” They shove an advertisement her way and announce, “We work at Pilgrim World.” Briefly studying it, Wednesday bites back, “It takes a special kind of stupid to devote an entire theme park to zealots responsible for mass genocide.”

For yes, like her Christina Ricci foremother playing Wednesday, this is one character who will not suffer the bullshit of such Republican holidays as Thanksgiving. And, fittingly, in Addams Family Values, the “outcasts” were viewed by the Grangers as those that white society has long “othered.” Which is why Becky (truly the perfect name) casts only “the ethnic ones” as Native Americans (further insulting the “misfits” of the camp by appointing a white girl their leader). During her “Native American” casting announcements, Becky uncertainly lists out all of the “ethnic” names, grudgingly stating, “Mordecai, Yang, Esther, um, Consuela, Irwin and, um, I’m still not sure just how to pronounce this…Jam-ahl, Jay-mul? Whatever.”

The self-superior sentiments of white people like her are crystallized all the more in the dialogue of the so-called play, with Amanda in the part of lead pilgrim Sarah Miller. Trying to make the slaughter of innocent people come across as “palatable,” “Sarah” says things like, “You are civilized as we—except we wear shoes and have last names.”

Meanwhile in “Friend or Woe,” Wednesday swaps her volunteer assignment at Uriah’s Heap with her roommate, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), so that she can infiltrate Pilgrim World and try to find out more about this dastardly “founding father.” Upon entering, it’s plain to see that the “enterprise” is like a monetized version of The Crucible as one man shouts, “Welcome to Pilgrim World! Witch trials every day! Two o’clock, four o’clock!”

Soon, the outcasts are given an introduction by Arlene (Lisa O’Hare), who greets, “I am Mistress Arlene. A real OC.” The Nevermore kids stare at her, dreading what they seem to know she’s going to tell them regarding what that play on “OG” stands for: original colonist. Wednesday’s nightmares continue when she’s instructed that her assignment will be to pass out samples of fudge in the fudge “shoppe” that inexplicably exists at Pilgrim World. Wednesday not only informs German tourists that fudge didn’t exist in this time period, but also that, “All proceeds go to upholding this pathetic whitewashing of American history.”

Christina Ricci’s Wednesday would be proud. And yes, Ricci herself has given her blessing to the project by appearing as a teacher at Nevermore named Marilyn Thornhill, who gets introduced to Mayor Noble (Tommie Earl Jenkins) by Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie) as follows: “In the spirit of outreach, she’s Nevermore’s first normie teacher.” What that will mean for “normie-outcast” relations (this being a foil for white-“other” relations) remains unclear.

The fact that Wednesday is this time around portrayed by a Mexican-descended actress like Jenna Ortega lends further meaning to her railing against the normies that would support an operation like Pilgrim World (especially its Black owner, Mayor Noble). To boot, her psychic vision of the past unearths the torment of her ancestor, Goody Addams (also played by Ortega), a fellow “outcast” who gets to have an Arthur Miller-esque moment of dialogue when she derides Crackstone (before being sentenced to burning for witchery), “It is you, Joseph Crackstone, that should be tried. We were here before you. Living in harmony with the nature and the native folk. But you have stolen the land. You have slaughtered the innocent. You have robbed us of our peaceful spirit. You are the true monster! All of you!” This extends to those who still presently celebrate Thanksgiving like it’s not one of the most obscene holidays ever foisted upon the American public.

Wednesday’s reminder of this dark period in Jericho’s (and the U.S.’) history leads her to seethe over the fact that the entire purpose of Outreach Day is centered around the celebration of a new bronze statue in the town square. One that immortalizes Crackstone. So obviously, she enlists Thing to blow it up with the simple tools of some gasoline in the fountain and a match. And, honestly, it doesn’t feel like such a monument’s “erection” could even be possible in the present climate, with long-standing statues of white supremacists already being political battlegrounds, let alone brand-new ones.

In the wake of the explosion, during which time Wednesday happily plays Vivaldi’s “Winter” (from The Four Seasons concerto) on her cello, Principal Weems automatically accuses Wednesday of the “crime.” By now notorious for being an outcast among the outcasts, Weems chastises her, “You’re a trouble magnet.” Wednesday replies, “If trouble means standing up to lies. Decades of discrimination, centuries of treating outcasts like second-class citizens or worse.”

The idea of labeling Native Americans as “outcasts” might be a bit of a whitewashing, slightly offensive move unto itself, and yet, was that not how all “minorities” were made out to be by the white European settlers of the 1600s (and beyond)? Wednesday adds to her ardent condemnation of, among other things, Pilgrim World and the white supremacy it promotes, “Why be complicit in this cover-up? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And maybe that’s why Americans continue to engage in the “act” of Thanksgiving every year, all while wondering how racism can remain be the dominant “tenet” of the nation.

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 24, 2022