SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Wednesday.”
Things are looking up for the Addams family.
“Wednesday” Season 2 opened with its heroine (Jenna Ortega) having just mastered her psychic ability before pushing it too far and losing it altogether, a problem she hadn’t managed to solve by the end of Part 1. Instead, she lands herself in a coma after liberating the Willow Hill asylum and getting thrown out of a window by Tyler (Hunter Doohan). When she wakes up, she has a new spirit guide — surprise! It’s Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie), the late principal of Nevermore Academy, who Wednesday suspected of villainy before she died like martyr at the end of Season 1.
Despite that, Wednesday is far from friendly with Weems, especially after being told that if she wants things to go back to normal, she needs to remember that one’s psychic ability is tied up with their ancestry, so she’s got to heal her relationship with her mother, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Wednesday resists that for as long as she can, preferring instead to torment her mother by seeking the counsel of her grandmother, Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley), as she tracks down Tyler, his mother Francoise (Frances O’Connor) and his uncle Isaac (Owen Painter). (Another surprise! While it was previously thought that all of Tyler’s family was dead, Francoise had actually been trapped in the Willow Hill asylum as a L.O.I.S. subject while Isaac was a zombie brought back to life by Pugsley.)
Eventually, once they realize that Isaac has kidnapped Pugsley, the three Addams women team up and get their secrets out on the table, namely that Isaac was friends with Morticia and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) at Nevermore until he tried to kill Gomez by hooking him up to a machine that would remove Francoise’s hyde abilities, which were killing her. Wednesday sets out to stop Isaac from doing the same to Pugsley, but in the process, Isaac captures Thing (Victor Dorobantu) — revealing that Thing was originally his hand, which Morticia had chopped off — and buries Wednesday alive. Agnes (Evie Templeton) sees the whole thing happens and tells Enid (Emma Myers) so that the two can dig her up, but they aren’t fast enough on their own. Enid has to wolf out under a full moon to save Wednesday, and having just learned that she’s an alpha wolf, she knows this means she will be stuck as a wolf forever, and flees.
Wednesday catches up to Isaac, Francoise and Tyler at the lab where they’re keeping Pugsley. She manages to save him, and frees Tyler in the process — Isaac and Francoise had been lying to him by planning to remove his powers against his will in an attempt to “save” him, since Francoise’s sickness was already consuming her. In a rage, Tyler makes a hyde transformation, as does Francoise. As they fight, she eventually falls to her death and dies. Isaac tries to kill Wednesday in vengeance. But Thing, who Isaac had sewn back onto his arm, regains his autonomy and rips Isaac’s heart out.
Series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke with Variety about how they tied up the overlapping family stories that made up “Wednesday” Season 2.
Let’s start with Francoise. I thought the mysterious Willow Hill patient Wednesday saves was going to be revealed to be Ophelia! When did you decide Tyler’s mom was actually alive, and how did you build the character?
Alfred Gough: When Tim Burton first read the drafts, he thought it was Ophelia too. It was a good switch. We were happy when we saw online that people were guessing that. We always knew that Tyler’s mom was still alive and had been hidden from the world. That’s something we knew we were going to delve into in Season 2. She’s locked away because even among outcasts, hydes are this thing that that they don’t want [to deal with]. They’ve been banned from Nevermore. People are trying to figure out, “How can you control them if you’re not a master?” There’s a lot about hydes that is still a big question mark, which makes them fun in our world.
Miles Millar: We loved the idea of, once Tyler was in a facility, what would that be like? And how could we marry that to the mythology of the show? We always look at the show in terms of families. There’s the Addams Family, and this season is very much about the messed up Galpin family when we see Tyler, Francoise and Isaac together. It’s the most dysfunctional family of all time.
When Francoise runs into Morticia, and when she eventually finds Tyler, she has no idea yet that Isaac is also alive and that there’s hope for them to continue to procedure they tried out decades ago. So is she being genuine at first when she praises Wednesday to Morticia and promises to take Tyler and get out of town?
Millar: She’s being genuine. But she obviously breaks that promise when she doesn’t leave. She has her own agenda, which we ultimately learn is to save her son. It all comes down to mothers, really. Morticia makes a deal, but Francoise is an unreliable partner and decides that she actually has different priorities.
After Isaac and Francoise are reunited, Tyler doesn’t have anyone to talk to. His mother and uncle are on the same page about removing Francoise’s powers to save her, and Tyler seems uncomfortable with that, but he goes with it until the reveal that they actually want to take his powers away. What’s he feeling about all of this? He’s developed a lot of self-loathing, but being a hyde is still clearly important to him.
Gough: Francoise knows the darker side [of being a hyde]. She’s older. She knows it’s a death sentence. Tyler understands that, but he likes the idea of being free, and he feels the freest when he’s a hyde. So I think he’s somebody who has totally embraced his power. And he loves that, even though he only gets it for short flashes. The high is worth the pain for him. He was certainly happy to help his mother try to take her powers away if that’s what she wanted, but when she betrays him, there’s no discussion. She’s just decided that this is what to do. That’s when he’s had enough.
Why does Wednesday save Tyler when she has the opportunity to kill him? They used to have feelings for each other, but as you said after Part 1, she’s shown no interest in forgiving him for his lies and murders before this.
Gough: Part of it, in that moment, is strategic. She needs Tyler to be the distraction so she can go save Pugsley. And I do think there’s a moment where she feels bad for Tyler that he’s being betrayed by his family, because she feels betrayed by her family keeping these secrets from her. They have a weird kindred spirit that she’ll never admit but, but he’s obviously brought it up. But if she was going to justify it to herself, it’s just like, “I let him go so he could be the distraction we needed to get to free Pugsley.”
Do you think Tyler receives that act of mercy with gratitude? Is there a place in his heart for Wednesday after what she did for him, or will he go back to hunting her down after joining whatever secret hyde society Miss Capri is selling him on?
Millar: There’s a deep connection and an appreciation that they both step outside the lines of what an ordinary person would do. There’s a respect there, and a connection that neither quite understands yet. They’re both sort of confused and surprised by their behavior with each other. They’re not quite sure of the dance of their relationship, and that certainly speaks to what could be in Season 3.
Let’s move on to the Addamses. Hester Frump makes a nasty comment pointed at Gomez about how outcasts without powers should be banned from Nevermore, and Morticia fights back, saying that being an outcast is a state of mind. What are you trying to do and say with that debate?
Gough: There’s an old school philosophy, and there’s a new school philosophy. Hester’s is very old school. It was also a question we were asking in the writers’ room: What is Gomez? He’s a member of the Addams family, but he doesn’t have a power. Nor did he ever — it’s not like it was in the Charles Addams panels or anything like that. And what does it mean to be an outcast? I think it is a state of mind, which is proven by the popularity of the show. Clearly, people feel like outcasts even if the world doesn’t see them that way.
Tell me more about Hester. She’s got a coldness and cruelty to her, which Wednesday has too, but Wednesday still has a capacity for deep and loving relationships in her own way, while Hester is more of a loner. Does Hester actually love Morticia and Wednesday?
Gough: Hester’s, again, from a different generation. Hester would say, “I love Morticia, but I don’t necessarily like her,” which is a very — I mean, my mother-in-law said that to my wife once. You know what I mean? She was raised a different way, and for women of that generation, she was a vanguard. But that usually meant you got one or the other, and she put aside her family to further her career. That was a choice that she felt she had to make to protect them and to have this legacy. Morticia went the opposite direction. She married for love, and she and Gomez are very much in love. She’s spent her life raising her family, so as cold as Wednesday is, she was still raised in a family that loved her and accepted her, so there’s always going to be more empathy. And she’s younger, and from a different generation.
Where does Wednesday’s relationship with Morticia stand now? They were finally able to get on the same page in order to save Pugsley, but Wednesday still seems to be reeling from all the secrets that were hidden from her.
Millar: It’s a key relationship in the series, the mother-daughter relationship. Morticia’s arc is one of trust: At the beginning of the season, she’s all about the spellbook, which she eventually burns, and at the end of the season, it’s the offering of Ophelia’s diary, which is an act of trust. It speaks to an evolution in their relationship. Mothers and daughters will always go through different phases, and they certainly leave the season in a much better place than they started. We will see what happens in Season 3.
Another member of the family, Thing, finally got an origin story. How long have you known that was coming, and that he was originally the hand of a villain?
Gough: It was something that we always wanted to do. We knew it wasn’t going to be a Season 1 story, but we wanted to do it in Season 2, because that character so connected with people. When he was stabbed in Episode 7 of Season 1, people were like, “Oh, my God, are they going to kill Thing?” This disembodied hand had won the hearts of so many, so we wanted to to really explore that. And we wanted to tie it to the Addams Family and to Nevermore. We liked the idea that Gomez lost his power, but Thing came out of that tragedy.
Moving onto Enid: We saw her wolf out under a full moon in Season 1, when she saved Wednesday from Tyler. If she’s an alpha, why was she able to turn back into a girl that time?
Gough: She’d never wolfed out before. That was her first time.
Millar: Also, in terms of the mythology, that was a blood moon. That was special. Basically, the rules are that if you’re a late bloomer and you wolf out on a blood moon, that is a signal that you could be an alpha. Alphas are able to transform whenever they want, but if they do it on a full moon, it could mean that they are forever a werewolf.
What’s your philosophy as writers when you’re working with that kind of lore? There are so many existing references for both the Addams family and the different creatures and abilities you deal with. Do you prefer to consult and combine older versions when you’re putting together the rules in “Wednesday,” or do you write your own?
Gough: You always have to create your own mythology. The hyde is a creature that has never existed before in any other supernatural thing. And with werewolves — people know what a werewolf is, so there are certain rules of we adhere to, and then we try to make it our own and make it specific to the world. Especially with established things like werewolves or vampires, you play by the rules, but then you have to give it your own twist that you’re bringing. What are the unique rules you’re bringing to your own world?
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Source link
