Wednesday Season 2 review: Still weird, just not weird enough — but Jenna Ortega brings the zing

Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams is back after three years, but her withering edge has dulled slightly—despite those deadpan eyes still flashing black-streaked tears from her psychic visions.

This latest installment, after the vastly refreshing and biting first season, lacks the same zing and humour. Did it get lost going full-tilt into horror? Or did it simply try to do too much at once?

 To recap: In Season 1, unflinching Wednesday, with her morbid worldview, saved the school and then spent the summer chasing a serial killer.

 You would think that this little diversion at the beginning of Season 2 adds something to the show, but it really doesn’t: It’s a tad entertaining, albeit terrifying to see Wednesday surrounded by ominous dolls, but she makes her way out of it, and the same cannot be said about her serial killer.

 Nevertheless, she has other horrors in store for her this year, which includes suddenly becoming popular, as she is now the school’s hero. She loathes, hates this bit of obligation and makes no bones about it, and if it includes setting a poster on fire in front of the entire school, she will. She has other pressing matters on her hands, as there’s a round of brutal murders occurring in the town: Courtesy devilish crows that will probably leave you breaking out in midnight sweats. But of course, they’re somehow connected to her.

Yet, murder crows aren’t the only thing she has to deal with: Her parents are at school, and the show clearly wants to lean deeply into the nostalgia of The Addams Family. The result is a mixed bag. No doubt, there was always a delightful weirdness about the kooky family in the original series and cartoons. The first season of Wednesday left them at cameos and focused on the character struggling with her own adolescence, among other raging issues of course such as teenage boys and murders around town.

Season 2 manages to bring the entire family into the story, but it feels overstuffed and trying too hard, despite Catherine Zeta-Jones’s delightful performance as the willowy Morticia. Several different plotlines are already running in multiple directions and you're not quite sure what the series is trying to establish, as yet. The notable elements here to unpack are the layers to a fractured mother-daughter relationship, not just between Wednesday and Morticia, but Morticia and her own mother too. Wednesday’s brother Pugsley is in school too, and currently, his side quests seems a little too convenient and contrived.

 A lot is happening, which leaves little room to focus on Wednesday and perky Enid’s friendship — a storyline that really deserves to be front and centre. But more than anything, it’s the humour that worked so well in the first season and made the show so enjoyable that has sadly gone off track.

Ortega still has her moments, but the dialogue doesn't possess the sharpness and flavour of before, often feeling like a rather awkward child trying too hard to act cool amid discomfort and murder. Yes, we get it — she can ‘dangle over a pit of rattlesnakes’, Wednesday’s deadpan demeanor wouldn’t change as her father proudly vouches. But this point becomes stale in the first few minutes itself, that you just want to say, "Yes okay, she hates people. Thank you, next."

 The standout scene, where we see Ortega burst through staid writing, is when she meets Tyler, the man who was behind much of the murder chaos in the first season. Ortega delivers some of the shots here, cutting and slicing, to the point where you finally say, “Okay, that’s the Wednesday I remember.”

The standard remains Wednesday dancing to Goo Goo Muck in Season 1 — we need that same level of bizarreness, surprise, and fresh absurdity to feel at home in Season 2.

 Currently, Netflix has only dropped the first four episodes, and the second round will release a month later. Will it be worth it, or will we be watching another sequel that just seems to exist for the sake of it?