After Wednesday first landed on your streaming schedule in November 2022, it took two months for the Netflix series to be renewed for season 2 and three years for it finally to premiere. With the first part of Wednesday’s second season streaming on Netflix now, the creators know how frustrating it is to wait for a new season and why episodes take so long to premiere.
Compared to waiting weekly for a new episode to come out, some streamers throw an entire season of a show out there at once. However, that can mean long waits for new episodes, sometimes years at a time between seasons. We’re already going to have to wait until 2026 for wildly popular shows to hit Netflix like Outer Banks, Bridgerton, One Piece, and Beef.
Fortunately, Wednesday creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar told Collider that production in the writer’s room is happening now for season 3. Considering how long it took for The Addams Family offshoot to get up and running after Season 1, Millar got real on how frustrating the long wait between seasons could be and why that was the case for Wednesday:
Well, no one was more frustrated than us in terms of the three-year delay. I mean, we had a writers' strike and various other countries. We moved from Romania to Ireland. So, we had a lot of logistical issues to deal with. But yeah, we're used to doing network TV. It's what we grew up on. Smallville every season was 22 episodes. It's frustrating for us, too, as storytellers and creators, to have to wait to share what we're doing with an audience that long.
It looks like the waiting game not only applies to streamers but to the creators behind such binge-worthy shows. Shows like Smallville ran on a more predictable network TV timeline with 22 episodes every year on the same network. Based on Miles Millar’s claims, Netflix shows like Wednesday can vary in location settings and get hit with delays like the 2023 WGA Writers Strike. But it’s nice to know the Wednesday creators want to get their show going just as much as the fans.
Because entire seasons of some streaming shows drop at once, there's a lot of pressure to make each episode perfect. Miles Millar continued to talk about how working with a big-scale production like Wednesday is another reason why each season is so time-consuming to make:
That said, the production is much bigger. We are going to be dropping visual effects shots into this last episode the day before it drops on Netflix. So, it is up to the wire in terms that we always push visual effects to the max in terms of what we can do. These aren’t just episodes; they really are movie-scale productions. We have over 3,500 visual effects shot this season. I mean, they're massive shots. So, it's all about quality and making sure that the show is as good as it can be. But they're big episodes.
There’s no denying that the 2025 Netflix release of Season 2 has a lot of special effects. Between Tim Burton’s signature CGI designs for the creature characters and the practical effects that went into Thing, there’s plenty of creepy and kooky VFX to gaze at. But I never would have guessed 3,500 visual effects shots! No wonder each season has taken a lot of time to come to us. This also proves that TV show demands can be on the same level as a film production.
If each new season of Wednesday continues to take 2+ years, I feel like I’ll be losing my mind. Plus, how long can lead Jenna Ortega pull off looking like a high schooler? On the bright side, Alfred Gough cleared the air about trying to launch a new season sooner instead of later:
You are dealing with, as Miles said, more complex storytelling and more complex episodes, and what people expect from these. But obviously, you want to get it on sooner rather than later. It's hard. As a fan of any show, a new season comes on, and you're like, ‘What was the old season again?’
As an avid streamer, I understand that pain. The longer it takes for a new season to hit, I honestly forget about important details that happened in the previous seasons. Well, it's a good thing when streaming shows provide recaps before their new season premiere episode.
Playing the waiting game can actually be beneficial for a Netflix show to hit the streamer's Top 10. Imagine all of the subscribers that need to refresh their memory by rewatching each season to get ready for the next! Millar explained going through the same thing himself and the show’s production plan going forward:
Yeah, it's the memory. I think the weird thing is we see the show's trending again because people are rewatching Season 1 to remember what it was. I had to watch Severance Season 1 to start Season 2. But Smallville, we shot 22 episodes in nine months. Here we're shooting eight episodes in nine months, and the level of visual effects and production is much higher. So, 18 months would be the bare minimum we could get this show back up, just from production to air.
Since streaming shows often have shorter seasons compared to a traditional network productions like Smallville, each episode carries more weight in storytelling and production value. Ideally, it's always well worth the wait.
The three-year wait for Wednesday’s season 2 to hit our Netflix subscription has felt long, but with all of the visual effects, location changes, and unexpected delays coming into play, the long break is understandable. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait too long for Part 2, which comes to Netflix on September 3rd.
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