Wednesday Addams (Wednesday)
A psychic teen detective at a school for outcasts.
Wednesday Addams, the psychic protagonist of Netflix's Wednesday, is played by Jenna Ortega. As a Nevermore Academy student, she solves murders and stops deaths using her powers. This version is often called pop culture's first female Latinx detective and an iconic figure.
Quick Facts
- Series
- Wednesday
- First minor
- Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe
- First date
- November 23, 2022
- Last minor
- This Means Woe
- Last date
- September 3, 2025
- Based on
- Wednesday Addams
- Charles Addams
- Paul Rudnick
- Christina Ricci
- Adapted by
- Alfred Gough; Miles Millar
- Portrayed by
- Jenna Ortega
- Emma Myers ("Woe Thyself")
- Karina Varadi (young)
- Emily Ring (young)
Facts from the source article.
Concept and creation
The character that became Wednesday Addams debuted in June 1940 in a single-panel comic by Charles Addams. In 1944, the unnamed girl joined her family in The New Yorker, characterized by a black dress, Peter Pan collar, pigtails, melancholy, and macabre nature. She received the name Wednesday in 1962 for a licensed doll collection, inspired by the nursery rhyme "Monday's Child". The 1964 television series The Addams Family gave her the full name Wednesday Addams, portrayed by Lisa Loring as a normal child contrasting with her family.
A 1973 animated series kept this disposition. The 1991 feature film drastically changed Wednesday into a "true goth icon", portrayed by Christina Ricci as a preadolescent, sarcastic, cold, homicidal character. The 1993 sequel showed her potential as a main character. The 1990s films revived interest in the franchise, making Wednesday largely the main character moving forward.
At a time of cultural grunge prominence, she became a "leading figure for the gothcore movement". Her personality from these films was kept in most future installments.
Character biography
Wednesday Addams was born into a wealthy, eccentric American family. At age six, bullies killed her pet scorpion Nero, after which she vowed never to cry again. By fifteen, she had attended eight schools in five years, ending at Nancy Reagan High School in New Jersey. She wrote three unpublished novels about a teen girl detective, Viper de la Muerte, whom a therapist implied was a self-insert.
While at Nancy Reagan, she began having psychic visions but kept them from her family. She was expelled after mutilating her brother Pugsley's bully with piranhas. She transferred to Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for "outcasts" near Jericho, Vermont. There she formed tense relationships with Principal Weems, werewolf roommate Enid Sinclair, housemaster Marilyn Thornhill, and town resident Tyler Galpin.
She uncovered a spy, the sentient hand Thing, and secured his allegiance. After a classmate nearly murdered her, citing a prophecy that she would destroy Nevermore, she decided to remain at the school to investigate local murders and the prophecy.
Reception and impact
This iteration of Wednesday Addams has been received positively by fans and several publications. A TV Time viewer poll named her the most popular television character of 2022. Some journalists consider her the best version of Wednesday Addams, praising her depth and the unexaggerated nuance of her Latina identity. Wednesday and Thing were nominated for the 2023 MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo, and Wednesday and Enid have been ranked as the most heartwarming friendship in television.
She has been ranked among the greatest Netflix characters of all time. Criticism has also been offered: some compare her unfavorably to Christina Ricci's Wednesday, criticizing her reduced deadliness and morality. Her privilege has been derided as a betrayal of her intended subversiveness. The first season's love triangle was divisive, with some saying it did not feel true to the character, and the lack of a queer romance was called a missed opportunity.
Her rebelliousness against her mother has been controversial, and her Latina identity has been described as a quirk rather than an integrated part of the character.
Analysis
Screen Rant has considered this Wednesday perhaps the most unique, while Collider has mused that the show creates a cohesive narrative suggesting all past Wednesdays are facets of the same girl. CBR has written that the genre difference places her in real danger for the first time, giving her vulnerability and audience sympathy. Literary Hub has suggested that Ortega's version shows life in America is getting better for women. Several writers have opined that this Wednesday reflects modern storytelling, with her age and detective work appealing to modern audiences' interest in teen series, mysteries, and true crime.
Camille Bassett and Jason Gilmore have written in Communication Monographs that this version is more stereotypically autistic than ever before, citing traits such as monotone voice, flat affect, lack of blinking, difficulty with social cues, sensory preferences, hypersensitivity, dislike of physical touch, strict routines, hyperfixation, heightened attention to detail, honesty, black-and-white thinking, strong sense of justice, and savant abilities.
They observed that Wednesday is a psychic, a power of the mind, and that her mind is personified as a dark and mysterious place, with her psychic abilities presented as savant-like, and the potential of them causing insanity in line with neurodivergent people being presented as crazy and dangerous.
More in Characters & Cast
Elsewhere in Wednesday
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