The conclusion to Wednesday’s second season improves upon the first batch of episodes with smart storytelling, perfected performances, and an emotional ending.
“Every family has its dark chapters. Including ours.”
The first half of Wednesday’s second season preached themes of legacy, disruption, and a message where Wednesday proved that she’s an Outcast, through and through, regardless of whether she possesses any supernatural powers. These ideas continue to blossom in Season 2: Part 2. However, these remaining episodes don’t just reinforce what it means for Wednesday to be an Outcast, but what it means for her to be an Addams.
Wednesday Season 2: Part 2 is slightly more surreal and morose, but there are still opportunities for these episodes to have fun and break away from the grander Hyde and premonition plot. Part 2 warmly complements the season’s first-half, all of which culminates in a deeply weird season of television. Like a complex piece of orchestral cello music, Part 2 hits new notes that strengthen what came before them and create something beautiful.
Season 2: Part 1 ended on a cliffhanger, and these new episodes don’t waste any time in resolving this hurdle and moving on to fresh conflicts as Wednesday attempts to recover her psychic powers and prevent an ancient prophecy. This supernatural fulfillment corresponds to a deeper connection to the entire Addams lineage. Fortunately, Part 2 is no longer a case where Wednesday is the only interesting character and everyone else is dead weight. Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday still carries the show, but the rest of the cast’s growing pains get worked out and turned into assets. It’s no longer a letdown whenever an episode cuts away from Wednesday.
Season 2: Part 2 also gets a lot of mileage out of Weems (Gwendoline Christie) as Wednesday’s new Spirit Guide. Weems stays cryptic, while an annoyed Wednesday prods to get her powers back. This could be a really cloying dynamic, so it’s encouraging that Wednesday shows restraint in this department. Lady Gaga’s appearance as Rosaline Rotwood is slightly more gratuitous and unnecessary. It’s isolated fan-service that allows Gaga to float around like a ghost, yet it certainly meshes with Wednesday’s gothcore aesthetic.
Curiously, Slurp (Owen Painter) receives the greatest glow-up in these four episodes and he proceeds to take on a much larger role that becomes independent of Pugsley. It’s initially smart to juxtapose Pugsley’s drama with Slurp against Wednesday’s own efforts to tame a Hyde. They’re complementary ideas as the Addams siblings embark down these parallel dark paths. It at least thematically justifies Pugsley’s ongoing B-story and better connects it to the rest of the season than it was in Part 1. All the Slurp material plays much better in retrospect once the character’s full role comes into focus. Alternatively, the Hyde design still looks so freaking goofy the majority of the time, especially when Wednesday wants the audience to feel sympathy for these monsters. They’re at their most effective when they’re obscured in shadow and stylized lighting.
The Hydes are awkward, but these four episodes look gorgeous and feature some inspired art design and cinematography, especially in Tim Burton’s two episodes that cap off the season. Wednesday has fun with lavish masquerade galas and a standout Day of the Dead celebration that’s mixed with Pilgrim iconography in a delirious amalgamation of history. They’re fun excuses to deck out the school with ghoulish, garish decorations.
There’s also a wildly entertaining body swap episode that really allows Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers to have some fun and flex their acting muscles as they do their best imitation of the other. It’s a completely ludicrous setup, albeit one of the more entertaining highlights of these new episodes. If nothing else, Wednesday glams up and rocks out to BLACKPINK in what amounts to one of the season’s strangest and most satisfying sequences. The season’s most interesting dynamic involves the schism that forms between Wednesday and Enid. Wednesday refuses to be vulnerable and comes clean about her foreboding premonition, while Enid further retreats into the camaraderie of her Nightshade “pack.” It’s rather clear that these wounds will be healed by the season’s end, but it’s still a compelling dramatic throughline that makes sure that these four episodes have as much emotion and heart as they do supernatural mayhem.
Wednesday learns how to get out of her own way and truly be humble. Wednesday’s first season preached the idea that Nevermore’s students are more than the sum of their parts, but this message is much clearer by the end of season two. These episodes have plenty to say on the dangers of good intentions and how something that’s kind and pure can slowly fester over time until it’s corrupted. This theme applies to not just Nevermore, but also Wednesday, Enid, Pugsley, and even Tyler. Family can be a beautiful, freeing form of acceptance, but there’s also the potential for it to be as much of a prison and life-sentence as any supernatural curse.
Wednesday is ultimately strengthened through her blood family and found family — both in a figurative and literal sense — but it’s fascinating to see how these episodes are equally interested in toxic family dynamics, like what’s perpetuated by the Galpin and Night families. Generational trauma and sins of the father, in the truest sense, are fundamental to these episodes. It’s also surely no coincidence that both Wednesday and Tyler are haunted by apparitions of their ancestors, yet Wednesday’s is a helpful guide and Tyler is taunted by his eternal connection to his family’s past. Wednesday may be a little glib in terms of how it explores this theme, but there’s nothing wrong with an adaptation of The Addams Family that’s so family-oriented.
Season 2: Part 2 doesn’t get so consumed by its central mystery that these final episodes are just dense in exposition. The success of the season’s conclusion and whether Wednesday sticks the landing or not are open to interpretation, but one has to respect just how gonzo Wednesday gets with some of its solutions. There’s also a major reveal in the season finale that’s actually kind of brilliant. Part 2 gives its episodes plenty of room to breathe. They’re not just an overstuffed mad dash to the finale. Wednesday gets to be quirky and further develop its personality instead of just jumping from one plot twist to the next. It’s why these episodes feel more natural than the four installments that preceded them.
There’s more efficient pacing and plotting across these installments that help the season end as confidently as possible. It’s deeply appreciated that Wednesday doesn’t keep Wednesday in her coma for an entire episode while the series indulges in her subconscious. This is a season of eight episodes that has exactly the right amount of story, rather than five episodes’ worth of content that’s spread across eight entries. Tim Burton once again directs two of these four entries. So much of Season 2: Part 2 is Burton riffing on Frankenstein, but there’s also a glorious moment in which he does his best Sam Raimi impression. Newcomer director Angela Robinson also does an exceptional job and her episodes easily hold their own with Paco Cabezas’ installments from Season 2: Part 1.
Wednesday’s second season ends on a note that’s stronger than where it started. Part 2 is daring, ridiculous, captivating, and imperfect, not unlike Wednesday Addams herself. If Part 1 was an incremental step forward from the first season, Part 2 is an even bigger push to something better. Wednesday is more confident and ambitious with its storytelling and plot twists, which will likely lead to an even stronger third season that continues to refine the series’ and titular character’s voice.
Wednesday continues to thrive in the shadows, but her future has never been brighter.
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