Wednesday Addams digs deep into her family’s skeletons this season, and while the story nearly buries itself under too many plots, it still unearths plenty of macabre fun.
Season 2 of Wednesday juggles villains, subplots, and family drama with plenty of charm, but often at the expense of focus. Characters like Thing, Agnes, and Grandmama shine, while Wednesday’s psychic powers and strained family ties weigh down the narrative. The result is a season that’s equal parts delightful and overstuffed, which is an enjoyable watch, if not a seamless one.
Thing is my favorite character, and seeing him save the day at the end was my favorite part of the show. As a result, seeing him neglected was sad and took away from my opinion of the Addamses as a family. I always thought of him as a member of the family, but they think of him as a servant. In contrast, I adored the relationship between Enid and Thing, and Enid building him a house was one of the sweetest moments of the show.
Another amazing character was Agnes, the most competent of all the characters. She was the only one, apart from Ajax, who consistently utilized her ability to solve problems. Her reveal as a stalker was masterfully set up with glances at her in the beginning. Wednesday’s treatment of her as a servant revealed flaws in Wednesday and humanized Agnes by showing her being hurt. It was rewarding to see her become her own person, complete with an immediate wardrobe change.
In contrast, Enid was self-absorbed and bratty this season. Last season, she needed to focus more on herself, and this season, she has the opposite problem. She seemingly casts aside Ajax for no reason, without communicating. She is also incredibly mean to Agnes. I liked the friendship triangle in this season much more than the love triangle in the previous one because Wednesday is as invested as we are in a season where Wednesday’s motivations and audience interest were a major disconnect.
Another thing this season focused on was the relationships between the various members of the family, particularly that of Wednesday and her mother. They are both authors who have faced harsh criticism, but the characters never seem to realize this similarity, which would be the perfect thing to repair the relationship between the two.
A new familial relation that we meet in this season is Wednesday’s Grandmama (Hester), who is delightful. Since Gomez, Pugsley, Fester and Morticia are all less gloomy than Wednesday, the addition of Hester makes Wednesday less of an outcast in her own family.
The show can become somewhat hard to follow due to the numerous new characters and side plots. Some characters are introduced to misdirect us from suspecting Judi, such as Aunt Ophelia, Fairburn and Miss Capri, but there are just too many. In the case of Aunt Ophelia and Miss Capri, they both could have been introduced at the end of the season to set up season three.
The main villains of the season were Francoise, her brother Isaac, and her son Tyler. Their family dynamics were quite fascinating, and their backstories were well set up. I also enjoyed the reveal of who Francoise was through the fight with her son. I liked that Francoise chose to save Tyler over herself, and if it weren’t for the fact that they were framed as villains, I would be rooting for her. I also like that they brought Tyler back because he was too important to stay locked up in Willow Hill.
One of the subplots involved Enid and Wednesday switching bodies. While I loved the Freaky Friday moment, I do wish it had caused a few more problems for them, or if they had stayed in each other’s bodies while discovering something significant. The actors were brilliant at impersonating each other, and Enid triggering Wednesday’s color allergy was quite funny, but it didn’t change anything.
I liked the different villains in this season, with three different villains to take down. All the villains, from Judi, who locked up Outcasts at Willow Hill, to Isaac, who tried to kill Pugsley, to Principal Dort, who founded Morning Song, were menacing in their own ways. However, the storylines felt a bit cluttered. The show should have just stuck to the three main plots. Yet they did a good job of setting up backstories. Overall, I would give this season a 7/10.
