Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Wednesday season 1
Jenna Ortega, the star of Wednesday, desires that her character in season 2 embrace her darkness. Wednesday Addams, the sole member of Charles Addams’ gothic Addams family, has been a part of popular culture since 1938. She first appeared in single-panel comics by Addams before making appearances in a variety of other media. Over the years, several actors have played Wednesday, including Christina Ricci in the 1990s and Lisa Loring in the 1960s. For Netflix’s Wednesday, the first Addams Family adaptation to focus on the family’s daughter, Ortega most recently assumed the role as a teenage version of the character.
With her frequent dark one-liners and use of piranhas to just get back at school bullies, Wednesday is frequently portrayed as a morbid young girl with a penchant for the macabre. The new series Wednesday certainly fits that description. Despite having a sinister exterior, Ortega’s character on Wednesday in season one showed courage and heart as she developed relationships with people like Enid (Emma Meyers) and struggled to protect others from the monster. As she sits down with Entertainment Tonight to discuss her hopes for the upcoming season, Ortega reveals that she wants Wednesday to embrace her darkness even more and forgo the heroics in favor of “an antihero stream.” See what she says after the break:
“I guess I kind of want her to be darker. I want her to get more in the nitty-gritty of things and not play things so safe. Because there’s a lot of lines in this one about her saving the school and doing whatever, but for me, her main drive with the monster was kind of a competitiveness, like ‘man, how’s this guy doing this and why can’t I?’ So I think I wanted to continue down an antihero stream rather than typical hero.”
What Wednesday Might Look Like In Season 2
Some people might be surprised by Ortega’s assertion that Wednesday wasn’t sinister enough in season 1 given all of her sinister dialogue and morbid interests. The actor makes a great point about the character playing it safe, which may also be a result of Smallville producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar overseeing this series after having previously produced a successful coming-of-age program about a real hero, Superman (Tom Welling) himself. Going into Wednesday season 2, the involvement of gothic filmmaker Tim Burton & Ortega’s own desire to explore Wednesday’s darker sides should continue to provide an excellent balance for the program.
The key to unlocking more of Wednesday’s darkness in season 2 may lie in Ortega’s interpretation that her desire to solve the murders was motivated by a competitive instinct rather than a natural desire to help others. Season 2 may support Ortega’s belief that Wednesday isn’t necessarily trying to help others with her deeds, though she doesn’t mind doing so if doing so allows her to embrace her darkness, even though she doesn’t necessarily want Wednesday to turn into a villain. Wednesday season 2 should lean more heavily on Wednesday’s expulsion from her first school, which already demonstrated the character can exhibit a profound concern for others while still committing shocking and heinous acts, turning her into an anti-hero rather than an outright hero.
If the plot of the show develops as Ortega hopes, Wednesday season 2 will need to navigate Wednesday’s deepening darkness and find a way to prevent her from being banished from Nevermore, as expulsion has been repeatedly shown to be a result of her actions. Fortunately, the school for outcasts is more than capable of handling her, and depending on who succeeds Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie) as the administrator, Wednesday’s tenebrous nature might even be encouraged. Wednesday will probably start looking into who her enigmatic stalker is in season 2, a quest that could take an overtly ominous turn if the character is motivated more by curiosity and a desire for retribution than by caution.
Source: ET