There are minor spoilers for Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 below. If you need to catch up on the first half, all four episodes are available with a Netflix subscription.
Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 was finally released as part of the 2025 Netflix schedule , and when I say finally I mean it had been a long two-and-a-half year wait. One of the biggest criticisms, especially from the show's central star Jenna Ortega, was the series initially focused a little too much on relationships and less on the weirdness and horror of the Addams family. Thankfully, Season 2 has found its stride, and the creators told me how they got there.
While the first season of Wednesday was a huge hit, including that iconic Wednesday dance that was everywhere, Ortega has been candid that she wanted to dig deeper into the horror aspects of the character. Enter Season 2.
When I had the chance to chat with creators Alfred Gough and Miles Miller about how they approached horror vs teen drama (while keeping the show still relatively family-friendly), they openly shared it's a "line" they had to balance. Because they are horror fans, like Ortega they knew it needed to be a bigger part of Season 2:
Yeah, it's definitely a line. I think Season 1 had its moments of horror…but we have definitely some more moments in this season. We have a zombie who's eating brains. So I think organically it felt we needed to go there in terms of that. There's a moment in Episode 2 with the birds in Galpin house, which is a homage to The Birds. We're huge horror fans, so it's something that feels very natural to us, and as Wednesday grows up, the show should grow up a little bit. But hopefully it's not so scary that kids will be screaming and have nightmares for the rest of their lives and be traumatized.
If those moments are "too scary" for younger viewers, they hope that it's something audience won't be "traumatized," over longterm. They also told me they blended horror with comedy a lot in the new episodes, calling it a "weird marriage" of sorts:
It's sort of hopefully moments where they can cover their eyes and, and it's safe. I think the show, for us… we always see it as a comedy, and I think it may be a bit scary and have more horror, but it's also funnier this season. So those are sort of like horror and comedy definitely go together, and that's something that's a weird marriage, but it's true.
In my opinion, this is precisely how the show should go. While I'm someone who spends plenty of time watching as many of the best horror movies or the best horror anthology TV shows that I can, I actually got into the genre originally because, as a kid, I was introduced to weirder elements through The Addams Family. So, I can absolutely see how it's a Gateway show.
I do feel diving deeper into these ideals on Wednesday is the natural course that the series should take, and it's clear this has been the goal since the beginning of filming. Jenna Ortega herself has even called Season 2 much more "graphic" than before, a stark change from the heavily romantic plotline (with a twist) in the first. It makes sense, as Ortega is an executive producer this time around, and has expressed “trust” for the Wednesday Season 2 writers to make sure the new eps weren't just another love triangle.
Either way, there are a couple of scarier-ish moments that the kids might be scared of, but if they cover their eyes, the creators assured me the next scene will most likely make them laugh instead. Just be sure to be prepared when the children ask how zombies are created, when Pugsley decides to bring one back to life, somehow.
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