There is a moment early in Wednesday when Jenna Ortega’s titular gothling, fresh off a piranha attack, utters something so venomously dry it could curdle milk in the next room. That moment tells you everything you need to know about this version of The Addams Family‘s prodigal daughter: yes, she’s witty. Yes, she’s smarter than everyone else in the room. And yes, she’s here to solve a mystery while looking like she sleeps in formaldehyde and dreams of autopsies.
The only problem? After eight episodes and roughly six attempted murder suspects, she’s still not that much fun. But granted, I am not in the target audience for this show.
Let’s be clear—Jenna Ortega is the best thing about Wednesday, and possibly the only reason the show didn’t vanish into the streaming ether with the silent efficiency of a vampire at dawn. She delivers her lines with the steely confidence of someone who’s just read your obituary and decided it was too flattering. Her turn as the morbidly gifted Wednesday Addams is deadpan brilliance… in a show that’s often, ironically, dead on arrival.
Welcome to Nevermore, Where Every Plotline is a Cryptic Crossword
Nevermore Academy is Wednesday’s answer to Hogwarts, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and the last place in Vermont that doesn’t serve maple syrup with a side of resentment. It’s where vampires, werewolves, sirens, and gorgons attend school together, which sounds like a rejected pitch for a CW show, but somehow makes it to the screen here with just enough budget to afford CGI tentacles but not enough to make the town of Jericho feel less like a leftover Gilmore Girls backlot.
At the center of this creepfest is Wednesday herself, shipped off by her parents Gomez (Luis Guzmán, who looks like he’s still wondering when this is going to turn into Narcos) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones, powdered to near-death) after she turns her former high school into an aquarium of vengeance. The setup is delicious. The payoff is tepid.
Wednesday is soon up to her neck in two things: teenage hormones (though mercifully, none of her own) and a Scooby-Doo-level murder mystery. Someone—or something—is butchering locals and students, and it’s up to our joyless heroine to play detective. If Nancy Drew wore black lipstick and glared people into seizures, this would be her spinoff.
The Gothic Gumshoe Trope: Less Velvet, More Scooby-Doo
Now, credit where it’s due: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar do try to give Wednesday a sharp voice. They also borrow generously from other properties. There are hints of Harry Potter, dabs of Riverdale, and a liberal coating of Sabrina the Teenage Witch—the edgy version, not the one with talking cats and canned laughter.
Tim Burton directs four of the eight episodes and gives them his signature lacquer of spooky suburbia. You can practically smell the mothballs and wet crypts in every frame. The gothic architecture looks appropriately cursed. The trees are so gnarled they seem to be perpetually screaming in Morse code. But while the visuals drip atmosphere, the story sloshes around trying to find footing. It’s like wrapping filet mignon in toilet paper: fancy on the outside, confused underneath.
The murder mystery plot—Who is the Hyde? Who is its master? Who cares?—drags like a chain in a haunted house. Just when you think it’s building tension, someone throws a school dance, or Wednesday gets another suspicious vision and gasps with the same expression she uses for disdain, hunger, or arson fantasies.
Cast of Misfits: Some Hit, Others Drown
Aside from Ortega, the standout is Emma Myers as Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s rainbow-puking roommate. If Wednesdayis a black hole of emotion, Enid is a glitter bomb on wheels. Their odd-couple chemistry is genuinely charming and occasionally feels like the emotional core of the show.
The rest of the cast, like everything else, is a mixed bag of embalmed clichés and missed opportunities. Gwendoline Christie brings elegant menace as Principal Weems, but her potential is wasted faster than a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign for a Ouija board. Christina Ricci, in a meta-cameo, plays plant-loving dorm mom Marilyn Thornhill but it takes too long to get to her big reveal.
The love triangle between Wednesday, brooding art boy Xavier (Percy Hynes White), and secret-monster barista Tyler (Hunter Doohan) is less romantic tension and more “Why is she tolerating either of these clowns?” One draws monsters, the other turns into one. Either way, Wednesday remains unmoved, like a statue of grief in a funeral home.
The Monster of the Week is Existential Ennui
One of Wednesday’s recurring issues is tone. The show doesn’t know if it wants to be a supernatural whodunit, a teenage soap, or a postmodern comedy about trauma.
Sometimes it hits a sharp satirical note—like the awkward therapy sessions with Dr. Kinbott (Riki Lindhome), or the strained family dynamics between Wednesday and her tragicomic parents. Other times, it descends into hollow spectacle, like a CGI Hyde that looks like Gollum on bath salts, terrorizing the woods with all the menace of a Muppet going through withdrawal.
The writing occasionally flashes brilliance, then doubles down on the most predictable exposition dumps. Wednesday walks into scenes like a macabre GPS unit: always correct, never surprised. We know she’ll crack the case.
Tim Burton’s Beautiful Car Crash
Tim Burton’s direction is like Frankenstein’s monster here: stitched together, visually compelling, and a little tragic when you remember what he used to be capable of. The man who gave us Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice is still lurking behind the camera, but now he’s forced to funnel his vision through a Netflix funnel that insists every mystery be solved at exactly 55 minutes with cliffhanger bait in the last 90 seconds.
There are glorious sequences—the Rave’N Dance, choreographed by Ortega herself, is a rare spark of weird joy in a show that otherwise trudges toward its finale like a zombie late for work. But these moments are rare. More often we get long shots of forests, overly telegraphed jump scares, and a soundtrack that thinks putting a cello cover of Paint It Blackautomatically counts as mood.
Final Verdict: A Slightly Soggy Tombstone
Wednesday Season 1 is the horror equivalent of a Hot Topic candle: aesthetically pleasing, smells vaguely like burnt teenage dreams, and burns out far too soon. It’s not terrible. It’s not brilliant. It’s not even consistently good. It’s just… okay. In a sea of content that ranges from transcendent to disposable, Wednesday feels like something you watch once, enjoy just enough to not regret, and forget by the time the credits roll.
It’s a show that wants to be subversive but ends up reinforcing the same teenage mystery tropes it sets out to mock. It wants to be dark but often mistakes grayscale for depth. It wants to shock but only manages to mildly spook.
If you’re a fan of the Addams legacy, it offers enough bone shards to chew on. If you’re new to the character, you might wonder why she became a pop-culture icon to begin with. But thanks to Jenna Ortega’s commitment to playing every scene like she’s holding back a murder confession, Wednesday just barely gets a passing grade.
