Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) is as smart as Hermione and attracted to mysterious occurrences like Harry Potter. So it’s pretty much certain that “Wednesday” is just the right series for Potterheads.
Wednesday was actually born on a Friday the 13th and may sound familiar to some. She is part of the Addams family, a morbid and funny family whose story was already told in the 90s films of the same name. This time it’s all about daughter Wednesday, her brother and her parents appear on the sidelines. But when she does, her father likes to call her his “little poisonous snake”.
Wednesday arrives at Nevermore Academy (her fifth school in eight years) because she gets revenge on her little brother Pugsley’s bullies: she releases piranhas in the pool while the boys train there, causing one of them to lose a testicle.
Only exceptional kids are accepted at Nevermore Academy, located near the small town of Jericho. They also call themselves outsiders. Vampires and sirens are now Wednesday’s classmates. She shares her room with Edin, who comes from a werewolf family, but is still unable to transform and has therefore been to all sorts of specialists.
Wednesday is constantly surprised by visions in which she sees what has happened to people in the past or what the future holds for them. She is always accompanied by her friend “little cold hand”, and the name fits quite well: It is a severed hand with many seams that can move on its five fingers and thus spy on others. She also communicates with sign language and can be placated with hand cream and nail files if Wednesday hasn’t been so nice to her and wants to apologize.
Wednesday is a strong teenager who will not be deterred from her path and her intentions. She is reluctant to allow emotions, the last time she allegedly cried at the age of seven when her scorpion Nero died. And she’s also technically good, opening locks with braces or repairing the coffee machine in the café where a certain Tyler works, who later becomes a close confidante (and even later a date) of hers. She explains to him that she knows her way around machines so well because she started with them at a young age: as a child she built a mechanical guillotine to be able to decapitate her Barbie dolls more efficiently. One of many references to the 90’s movies.
There’s no denying that Wednesday, like her parents, has a penchant for the morbid. When Nevermore principal Weems asks her to take up a hobby and says, “Something will tickle your enthusiasm,” Wednesday replies, “The last one to tickle me lost a finger.”
The language also adapts to the modern age. Wednesday talks about mansplaining, and her roommate Edin recommends that she create an account on TikTok or Snapchat. Edin loves gossip, she writes a gossip blog about her classmates in old Gossip Girl fashion. So the series will almost certainly be located in the 2020s in the future.
The titles of all eight episodes contain the word “sorrow” such as “Because of Leid und Trank” and alienate well-known proverbs. The first episode introduces viewers to Wednesday’s world, but then she begins to investigate a series of mysterious murders involving one of her classmates. Her parents also seem to be hiding a secret that needs to be revealed. And from then on, at the latest, it’s difficult not to click on “next episode” when the credits roll, the series develops a real pull effect.
But that’s not really surprising, because the director of “Wednesday” is none other than star director Tim Burton, who already has experience with staging tombstones and horror stories through films like “Sweeney Todd” and “Sleepy Hollow”.
However, anyone expecting a remake of the 90s films will be disappointed. At this point, Netflix is again focusing on a young audience who can enjoy the series without prior knowledge.
“Wednesday” will be available on Netflix from November 23 and consists of eight episodes.
