Wednesday (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  In its first week on Netflix, Wednesday logged 341 million viewing hours. That topped the English-language record of 335 million hours held by Stranger Things 4. The total reached more than 50 million households. The show is a supernatural mystery comedy built around Wednesday Addams, the character created by the cartoonist Charles Addams. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar created it, and Jenna Ortega plays the title role.

  The road to that record was not straight. The director who shaped its look, Tim Burton, had stepped away from the Addams family decades earlier. Why did he come back? What kind of school takes in a girl expelled for a pool full of piranhas? And how did a single dance scene send two songs back up the charts?

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• 2. The Director Who Declined

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  Tim Burton was first approached to direct The Addams Family in 1991, and he turned it down. Scheduling conflicts with Batman, released in 1989, and Batman Returns, released in 1992, got in the way. Barry Sonnenfeld took the job instead.

  In March 2010, Illumination Entertainment acquired the rights to the Addams Family drawings. The plan was a stop-motion animated film drawn from Charles Addams's original artwork. Burton was set to co-write and co-produce, and he might also have directed. By July 2013 the project was reported canceled. Burton said the studio preferred computer animation to stop-motion.

  Miles Millar and Alfred Gough began developing story ideas in 2019. They secured the rights, wrote a television pilot script and sent it to Burton. To their surprise, he became interested at once. Burton later explained that the script "spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination".

  Burton was in a low place at the time. After Dumbo in 2019 he felt creatively drained and thought about retiring. During the COVID-19 pandemic he was left to his own "feelings and things". The offer to make Wednesday reconnected him with filmmaking, and he described it as a "health camp".

  Millar said it was "very important" not to copy the earlier films or the 1964 television series. He and Gough made two ideas central. One was the clash between "outcasts" and "normies". The other was a critique of colonial Americans.

  In October 2020, an unnamed Addams Family project with Burton at the helm was announced. MGM Television would handle production. In February 2021, Netflix ordered eight episodes. Burton directed four of them and called it his first real foray into television. Gandja Monteiro and James Marshall directed the rest. Burton also brought in his regular collaborator Colleen Atwood as costume designer, and her clothes would dress a school built for outcasts.

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• 3. Nevermore Academy

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  Live piranhas in a school swimming pool set the story in motion. Wednesday Addams dumps them there after the boys' water polo team bullies her brother Pugsley, and she is expelled. Her parents, Gomez and Morticia, send her to their own high school alma mater. That school is Nevermore Academy in Jericho, Vermont, which was established for outcasts and monsters.

  Wednesday's cold, emotionless manner makes friendships hard. Her defiance also brings her into conflict with the principal, Larissa Weems, played by Gwendoline Christie. Weems is a shapeshifter who once roomed with Morticia. Then Wednesday learns she has inherited her mother's psychic abilities, and those powers help her solve a local murder mystery.

  The student body is a catalog of creatures. Emma Myers plays Enid Sinclair, a werewolf who becomes Wednesday's roommate in Ophelia Hall. Bianca Barclay is a siren and queen bee. Ajax Petropolus is a gorgon with a romantic interest in Enid, and Yoko Tanaka is a vampire. Eugene Ottinger can control bees and later other arthropods. Xavier Thorpe is a psychic who sees visions in dreams and can make art come to life.

  Two figures sit outside the school. Tyler Galpin is a coffee shop barista and the son of Sheriff Donovan Galpin, and he is later revealed to be a Hyde. Thing is a sentient disembodied hand sent to watch over Wednesday. Ortega also plays Goody Addams, a deceased ancestor from the 1600s who appears in Wednesday's visions.

  The second season brings a new set of problems. Wednesday must develop her psychic abilities, face a new tormentor and prevent her roommate's death. Pugsley enrolls at Nevermore. Weems' successor, Barry Dort, is pyrokinetic, and he gives Morticia a fundraising role while he looks after his own interests. Weems herself returns as Wednesday's spirit guide, because the two are 13th cousins twice removed.

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• 4. Casting Wednesday

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  A Latina actress was the creative team's goal for the title role. That choice matched the heritage of Gomez Addams, an element already written into the script. In May 2021, Jenna Ortega, who is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, was cast. Millar said that on their first Zoom call the team knew "nobody else on this planet" was better suited to the part.

  Ortega had doubts. She had worked on teen-oriented Disney Channel shows and planned to put film ahead of television. Meeting Burton over Zoom changed her mind. Emma Myers had a different route in: she first auditioned for the title role before landing Enid.

  In early August 2021, Luis Guzmán was cast as Gomez in a guest-starring role. Catherine Zeta-Jones joined as Morticia, in a capacity not yet disclosed. Later that month, Thora Birch was among the announced series regulars. She left in December 2021, and the fate of her character, the dorm mother Tamara Novak, was left unclear.

  In March 2022, Christina Ricci was cast as a series regular in a similar role. Ricci had played Wednesday in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values. She said, "I was really flattered to be asked and to be asked by Tim Burton". The two had worked together on Sleepy Hollow in 1999. Her schedule on the Showtime series Yellowjackets nearly kept her from accepting. An October trailer revealed Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester and confirmed Ricci as Marilyn Thornhill.

  In April 2024, Steve Buscemi joined the second season as Nevermore's new principal. He had worked with Burton on Big Fish in 2003. The May cast list added Billie Piper as Isadora Capri and Joanna Lumley as Grandmama. Thandiwe Newton was cast as Dr. Rachael Fairburn. In November, Lady Gaga was cast, and she turned out to play Rosaline Rotwood in the second part of the season.

  For the third season, Eva Green joined in November 2025 as Morticia's sister, Ophelia Frump. She had worked with Burton on Dark Shadows, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Dumbo. February 2026 brought Winona Ryder as Tabitha, with Chris Sarandon, Noah Taylor, Oscar Morgan and Kennedy Moyer also named. In April 2026, Lena Headey, Andrew McCarthy and James Lance were added as guest stars.

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• 5. Shooting in Romania

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  The Southern Carpathian town of Bușteni, in Romania, hosted principal photography for the first season from September 2021 to March 2022. Cantacuzino Castle stood in for Nevermore Academy, with computer-generated imagery extending its exterior shots. Other locations included Politehnica University of Bucharest, Sinaia railway station and the Bucharest Botanical Garden. Monteoru House was used too. The Olga Greceanu Mansion in Dâmbovița County played the Gates mansion.

  The whole town of Jericho was built at Buftea Studios. Production designer Mark Scruton drew mainly on Charles Addams's cartoons. He also took ideas from Burton films such as Beetlejuice and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  Ortega called the job "very stressful and confusing" and "the most overwhelming job I've ever had", blaming a fast-tracked shooting schedule. She prepared by learning cello, canoeing, fencing, archery and German. Joy Sunday said the canoeing was especially grueling. The whole cast and some dozen stuntmen raced each other for an hour each day, and mornings could start at 5:30 am.

  Ortega kept away from Christina Ricci on the subject of the character, so that her own version would be distinct. She also changed lines she felt did not suit Wednesday. Her reasoning was blunt: "you can't lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it's boring and nobody likes you."

  The dance to the Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck" was Ortega's own choreography. She drew on Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse and goth dance club footage from the 1980s. She filmed it with body aches and a sore throat, taking medicine between takes while waiting for a COVID-19 test result. MGM confirmed she was removed from the set after testing positive. Ortega asked to reshoot the scene, but there was no time.

  The Romanian magician Victor Dorobantu played Thing. He wore a blue chroma-key bodysuit that was edited out later, leaving only his hand visible. A prosthetic stump on that hand created the look of a severed limb.

  The second season began shooting on the 7th of May 2024 in Ireland and wrapped on the 4th of December 2024. Four episodes were done by August. Locations included Charleville Castle in Co Offaly and Dean's Grange Cemetery in Co Dublin, with Ashford Studios in Co Wicklow. One report held that Ortega left Scream 7 over scheduling conflicts with the show. In April 2025 she denied it, saying she left because Melissa Barrera, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had departed that project.

  The third season began filming on the 23rd of February 2026. On the 20th of April 2026, a first look showed Ortega, Dorobantu and Fred Armisen filming in Paris.

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• 6. Cellos and Classics

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  Danny Elfman, a longtime Burton collaborator, joined the series in December 2021. He wrote the original theme and co-composed the score with Chris Bacon. The music mixes that original work with pop songs and classical pieces. Cello renditions of "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, played by Apocalyptica, and "Physical" by Dua Lipa sit alongside it.

  The final song used was "Sweet Dreams are Made of This", originally by Eurythmics. John Reed arranged it, and The Hampton ROCK String Quartet performed it. The classical list includes Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Elgar's Cello Concerto. It also has Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals, Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee".

  Lakeshore Records released a 48-track soundtrack on the 23rd of November 2022. A four-track extended play of classical and pop covers followed on the 30th of November. Critics noticed the music. Tony Sokol of Den of Geek called the score "a major character, not only thematically, but as an emotional delivery system". Linda Codega of Gizmodo found the cello segments "memorable". Amelia Emberwing of IGN said Elfman's score and Burton's material went together "like peanut butter and jelly".

  The second season kept the mix of hits and classical works. Chavela Vargas's "Un Mundo Raro" and Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" are on the list. So are "No Time to Cry" by the Sisters of Mercy and Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark". Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights, from Romeo and Juliet, gets an on-screen performance, with Ortega playing it on cello.

  Lady Gaga released a new song for the second part of the season, "The Dead Dance", in September 2025. It was featured in the seventh episode.

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• 7. Premiere to TikTok

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  A first teaser for Wednesday appeared on the 17th of August 2022, and a full trailer followed on the 9th of October. The opening sequence was unveiled on the 8th of November. The series premiered on the 16th of November 2022 at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. All eight episodes reached Netflix on the 23rd of November.

  Expectations were already high. Data from TV Time users, collected by Whip Media, showed only The Witcher with more pre-release followers among Netflix originals. Wednesday debuted at number one in 83 countries. Nielsen reported a combined 6 billion minutes of watch time in its first week, the second-biggest streaming week the firm had recorded. Variety, citing PlumResearch, said Netflix originals hit their highest monthly share of U.S. viewing in November 2022, about 60 percent.

  Three weeks after release, Wednesday became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series ever. It reached an estimated 150 million households and one billion viewing hours by December 2022. Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent called its popularity "unprecedented". In December 2022, Netflix posted a promotional video of Thing roaming New York City and capturing the reactions of passersby.

  The second season came in two parts. The first four episodes premiered on the 6th of August 2025, and the last four on the 3rd of September. Column magazine reported that the series topped the local English-language charts in 91 countries, including Germany and the United States. It said no English-language Netflix series had done that before.

  A dance carried the show beyond the screen. Fan recreations of Wednesday's dance, set to Lady Gaga's "Bloody Mary", went viral on TikTok. Kim Kardashian, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Marina Diamandis, Madonna and Gaga herself took part. In the week after the premiere, U.S. plays and on-demand streams of the song rose 415 percent. The Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva recreated the dance at a December 2022 competition. That same month, "Bloody Mary" went to French radio as a single, 11 years after its album, Born This Way.

  The dance scene itself used the Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck". According to Billboard, U.S. on-demand streams of that song jumped from 2,500 to over 134,000. Spotify streams climbed 9,500 percent. Janelle Zara of The Guardian wrote that the trend "may have single-handedly revived Gothic subculture for Gen Z".

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• 8. Reviews and Awards

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  Rotten Tomatoes gave the first season a 73% approval rating from 105 reviews. Metacritic assigned 66 out of 100 from 26 critics, which it labels "generally favorable". Ortega drew most of the praise. Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph gave four out of five stars and called the show "an addictively rococo romp". John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal praised her "charismatic performance".

  Not everyone agreed. Mike Hale of The New York Times found the series "tolerable" but not what "real fans of Charles Addams and his characters are looking for". Nick Hilton of The Independent gave two out of five stars. He called the tone "relentlessly quippy Gen Z". Jesse Hassenger of TheWrap said Burton's four episodes felt more like Veronica Mars than Sleepy Hollow.

  The second season scored an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 92 reviews, and 65 out of 100 on Metacritic from 29 critics. Lili Loofbourow of The Washington Post found it tonally darker, which she said sometimes dragged. The episode "Woe Thyself" drew the strongest praise. Alex Zalben of IGN called it "the best episode of the series, period" and credited it with giving Wednesday and Enid clear arcs.

  That friendship has also produced an argument. Many fans read romantic subtext into Wednesday's closeness with Enid and nicknamed the pairing "Wenclair". The series has repeatedly been accused of queerbaiting. The writers say the show is about friendship and that no romance between the two is planned.

  Awards bodies took notice. The show earned three Golden Globe nominations, one for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy and two for Ortega. It won four Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series and for Ortega as lead actress. Other awards lists included Burton's direction of "Wednesday's Child Is Full of Woe" and Colleen Atwood's costumes. The MTV Movie & TV Awards listed "Goo Goo Muck" for Best Musical Moment.

  The story is still being written. Netflix renewed the show for a second season in January 2023, with Ortega also serving as producer. Gough and Millar told Variety they saw "a pretty clear runway" for future seasons. Ortega said season two would "lean into the horror aspect" and drop any romantic love interest for Wednesday. In July 2025 a third season was ordered. A spin-off centered on Uncle Fester has been in early development since December 2023, though as of August 2025 the creators were focused on the third season.

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