Season 01
“Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe”
Wednesday Addams, a high-school student, finds her brother Pugsley tied up in a locker. She sees a psychic vision of his bullies whom she attempts to kill in revenge but gets expelled. Her parents, Morticia and Gomez, decide to enroll her in Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts. Meanwhile, a hiker is killed by an unknown creature near Nevermore. Wednesday’s parents release Thing, a sentient disembodied hand, to watch over her. She meets her roommate Enid, her complete opposite, and duels with Bianca, the popular girl, after she bullies another boy, Rowan. Later, Wednesday is nearly killed by a falling gargoyle but is saved by Bianca’s ex-boyfriend Xavier. After escaping her court-ordered therapy session, Wednesday meets Tyler, who agrees to help her escape from Nevermore. However, she is apprehended by principal Larissa Weems and taken back to the school. Later, Tyler and Wednesday meet at the local fair, and Wednesday has a vision of Rowan’s death. Rowan attempts to kill her but is murdered by the monster.
Season 02
“Woe Is the Loneliest Number”
Wednesday convinces a skeptical Sheriff Galpin that the perpetrator of the murders is in fact a monster. Suddenly, Rowan reappears unharmed. Wednesday doubts her sanity and decides to investigate the murders herself. She roams the campus inquiring about Rowan and is told that he has been expelled. Meanwhile, Weems grows worried about Wednesday’s visions, keeping close tabs on her. Wednesday confronts a defensive Rowan as he leaves the school and sends Thing to follow him. Rowan is revealed to be Weems who has shapeshifted into him, and Thing loses them. Wednesday has visions of a book belonging to an old students’ society. In her search for the book, she overhears Bianca planning to rig the upcoming student tournament. Wednesday joins Enid to defeat Bianca and win the tournament. Later, Wednesday discovers a hidden library within the school, where she is captured.
Season 03
“Friend or Woe”
Wednesday finds herself tied up and surrounded by members of an elite students’ society, including Bianca and Xavier. Wednesday frees herself and leaves the library, taking one of the books with her. Weems orders Wednesday to play in the school’s band at an upcoming town ceremony run by Mayor Noble Walker. A drawing in the book leads her to an exhibition at a local fair, where she notices the painting of a girl she had seen in her visions. In the forest, Wednesday envisions the girl—believed to be an old ancestor of hers—ready to be executed by Joseph Crackstone, the town’s forefather intent on killing all misfits, but she is able to escape. Wednesday is ambushed by the monster, which she discovers to be human. Back in town, Wednesday crashes the ceremony and is scolded by Weems. While investigating a crime scene in the forest, police find a camera that managed to capture photographs of the monster.
Season 04
“Woe What a Night”
Wednesday and Thing break into the coroner’s office to copy the files of the monster’s victims. In trying to identify a pattern, she finds that each victim has had bodyparts surgically removed. Wednesday becomes suspicious of Xavier and follows him into his art studio, where she discovers several drawings of the monster, leading her to the monster’s lair. There, she retrieves one of its claws and gives it to Sheriff Galpin to match its DNA. Wednesday and Tyler attend a local dance together. Meanwhile, classmate Eugene, who is privy to Wednesday’s investigative work, witnesses a cloaked figure detonating the monster’s cave. The dance is interrupted by Mayor Walker’s son Lucas who triggers the building’s fire sprinklers in revenge for Wednesday disrupting the town ceremony. Wednesday senses that Eugene is in danger and heads into the forest, only to find him gravely injured by the monster.
Season 05
“You Reap What You Woe”
32 years ago, Gomez is arrested on suspicion of killing Garrett Gates at Nevermore. At present time, the Addamses visit Wednesday for parents’ weekend at Nevermore. A family therapy session is cut short when Wednesday confronts her parents about the suspected murder. Meanwhile, Sheriff Galpin learns that the coroner has committed suicide after admitting to fabricating Gates’s autopsy report. Galpin concludes that Gomez is guilty and arrests him. In prison, Gomez reveals to Wednesday that Gates was killed by accident, while Morticia confesses to killing Gates. Wednesday and Morticia dig up Gates’s grave to find that he had been lethally poisoned before he could be killed, but are caught by police and arrested for the night. Later, they confront Mayor Walker who reveals that Garrett intended to poison the entire school due to his father’s hate for outcasts. Mayor Walker agrees to release Gomez after admitting to covering up Gates’s motive. Back at Nevermore, Weems reluctantly admits to covering up Rowan’s death by means of shapeshifting in an effort to evade controversy at the school.
Season 06
“Quid Pro Woe”
Wednesday attempts to summon Goody, an old ancestor and fellow psychic. During a surprise birthday party, Wednesday has a vision of Goody who instructs her to seek out the Gates mansion. There, she witnesses Mayor Walker as he is leaving the building and sneaks into his car. After arriving back in town, Mayor Walker is run over and severely injured. Weems locks down the school and forbids Wednesday to leave campus. With Tyler and Enid’s help, she escapes and returns to the Gates mansion. There, they discover that Laurel Gates, Garrett’s relative long believed to be dead, might still be alive. They find the severed bodyparts of the monster’s victims in a cellar, but are forced to escape after being ambushed by the monster. Wednesday leads Galpin to the cellar, only to find it empty. At Nevermore, Wednesday convinces Weems not to expel her in order to be able to further pursue her investigation. At the hospital, an unknown figure kills Mayor Walker.
Season 07
“If You Don’t Woe Me by Now”
At Mayor Walker’s funeral, Wednesday notices a lurking figure and chases it into the forest. The figure is revealed to be Uncle Fester, who explains to Wednesday that the monster she has been investigating is a Hyde. Together, they retrieve a diary from the hidden library revealing that a Hyde must always have a master. Later, they track and follow Xavier, who they witness meeting up with Dr. Kinbott, Wednesday’s therapist, in the forest. After returning from a date with Tyler, Wednesday finds her dorm ravaged, the diary stolen, and Thing gravely injured. Research into Laurel Gates reveals that she is both alive and the master of the Hyde. Wednesday initially suspects Dr. Kinbott, but she is killed by the Hyde. Police arrive to arrest Xavier, who Wednesday believes to be the creature. Wednesday meets with Tyler and kisses him but suddenly has a vision of him being the Hyde.
Season 08
“A Murder of Woes”
Wednesday and her classmates lure Tyler into the forest, where they kidnap him. Seeking a confession, Wednesday starts torturing Tyler. Disagreeing with her methods, her classmates alert Weems, and Wednesday is arrested. At the police station, Tyler finally confesses to being the monster. Fed up with Wednesday’s behavior, Weems expels her from Nevermore. Wednesday visits Eugene at the hospital, who tells her that the figure he saw at the monster’s cave wore red boots, matching Ms. Thornhill’s. Using her shapeshifting powers, Weems and Wednesday get Thornhill to confess her true identity—Laurel Gates. However, Gates is able to kill Weems and subdue Wednesday. Using Wednesday’s blood, Gates resurrects Crackstone and leaves Wednesday to die, but Goody appears to heal her. Enid, having finally transformed into her werewolf form, defeats Tyler in his Hyde form while Crackstone breaches Nevermore in his pursuit to destroy the school. With help from Bianca, Wednesday destroys Crackstone, and Eugene helps defeat Gates. Xavier is released from prison, Tyler is detained, and Wednesday departs Nevermore, which is closing for the remainder of the semester.
Development
During pre-production on the 1991 film, Tim Burton was assigned to direct, but ended up passing on it due to scheduling conflicts with Batman Returns, resulting in Barry Sonnenfeld taking the job. In March 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings. The film was planned to be a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’s original drawings. Burton was set to co-write, co-produce, and possibly direct the film. In July 2013, it was reported that the film was cancelled, which, according to Burton, was due to the studio favoring a computer-animated approach over the stop-motion technique.
Showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough started developing story ideas in 2019. They subsequently acquired the rights to the intellectual property before writing a pilot script, which they sent to Burton. To their surprise, Burton immediately became interested upon receiving the script. Commenting about his decision to join the project, Burton stated that he could relate to the title character’s worldview and that the script “spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination.” Millar stated that it was “very important” to the creative team not to emulate the prior films and 1964 television series. Millar and Gough decided to make the juxtaposition of “outsiders” and “normies” as well as criticism of colonial Americans major themes in the series.
In October 2020, Wednesday was initially announced as an unnamed Addams Family project being helmed by Burton. The series’s production would be handled by MGM Television, with Burton as director. Gough and Millar would serve as showrunners; while Gough, Millar, and Burton would also be executive producers alongside Gail Berman, Jon Glickman, and Andrew Mittman. In February 2021, Netflix gave the production a series order, consisting of eight episodes. In August 2021, Kayla Alpert was added as an executive producer and 1.21, Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, and Glickmania were also producing the series. Deemed his “first real foray into television”, Burton directed four out of the eight episodes, with Gandja Monteiro and James Marshall directing the remaining episodes. Burton brought on regular collaborator Colleen Atwood as costume designer.
The creative team sought a Latina to play the role of Wednesday Addams in order to align with character Gomez Addams’s heritage, an aspect of the character that was already worked into the series’s script. In May 2021, Jenna Ortega, who is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, was cast in the role. Millar stated that, upon their first Zoom call together, the creative team knew that “nobody else on this planet” was better suited to portray the character. Ortega said that she was initially hesitant about joining the project due to her past work in teen-oriented Disney Channel shows. In the beginning of August of that year, Luis Guzmán was cast to guest-star as Gomez Addams, and Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as Morticia Addams in an undisclosed capacity. Later that month, Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, and Percy Hynes White were announced to be cast as series regulars. Myers initially auditioned for the title role before she was cast as Wednesday’s roommate Enid.
In September, Gwendoline Christie and Victor Dorobantu were added to the cast in starring roles while Isaac Ordonez, George Burcea, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Iman Marson, William Houston, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, Oliver Watson, Calum Ross, and Johnna Dias Watson were cast in recurring roles. In December 2021, Birch left the series, leaving the status of her character, dorm mother Tamara Novak, unclear. In March 2022, it was announced that Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, was cast as a series regular, replacing Birch in a similar role. Commenting on her casting, Ricci stated, “I was really flattered to be asked and to be asked by Tim [Burton]”, with whom she had previously collaborated on the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow. Ricci was almost unable to accept the role due to possible scheduling conflicts with Showtime series Yellowjackets. In October of that year, Fred Armisen was revealed to be portraying Uncle Fester in an unknown capacity, and Ricci’s role was confirmed as Marilyn Thornhill.
A first teaser trailer for Wednesday was released on August 17, 2022, followed by a full trailer on October 9 and the unveiling of the series’s opening sequence on November 8. Wednesday premiered on November 16, 2022, at Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. Its eight episodes were released on Netflix on November 23, 2022.
- S02E01 – “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe”
- S02E02 – “Woe Is the Loneliest Number”
- S02E03 – “Friend or Woe”
- S02E04 – “Woe What a Night”
- S02E05 – “You Reap What You Woe”
- S02E06 – “Quid Pro Woe”
- S02E07 – “If You Don’t Woe Me by Now”
- S02E08 – “A Murder of Woes”
Lovely
Thank You for your comment 🎬❤️