Backroads (1977)

That pretty much sums up the personality of the titular Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega), the protagonist of the Netflix Original series Wednesday. For those who have not yet been introduced to the delectably morbid family, Wednesday Addams is the daughter of Gomez Addams (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones). She is sarcastic, intelligent, and has a taste for the macabre. To quote her, “Sartre said ‘Hell is other people.’ He was my first crush.” Wednesday Addams struggles to get along with people due to her complete lack of empathy. She sees the world as a “place that must be endured” and that doesn’t help her social skills. But, she is sharp and uses her lack of emotional connection to analyze situations from objective perspectives and solve mysteries unhindered by partiality. She is like an eagle perched on the top branch of the tallest tree, a deadly observer, waiting for the correct time to reveal herself and solve all problems at hand.

In Wednesday, however, Wednesday Addams is far from a silent and detached observer. Wednesday is as much a coming-of-age series as it is a mystery thriller, and the coming-of-age aspect plays out through Wednesday’s adventures, or misadventures to be precise. Navigating a space where people lie to cover up horrible truths and are guided more by their prejudices than their sense of urgency to get at the truth is not easy for Wednesday Addams. She makes and loses friends and foes, and gradually learns to appreciate the nuances of human interaction, without for a second sacrificing her own individuality. Her natural penchant for feeding bullies to piranhas is untouched by the end of the series, but she goes through a change of heart about the world and some of the people in it.

Wednesday starts like any typical coming-of-age story. The protagonist’s life is upended and they’re introduced to circumstances they initially hate. Wednesday Addams gets kicked out of her high school after she tries to get back at the boy who bullied her brother by dumping piranha in the pool while he was swimming. So she is taken to Nevermore Academy, a school for the special “outcasts” of the world. These outcasts include witches, werewolves, vampires, and almost everyone who has supernatural attributes. It is revealed in the very first scene of the series that Wednesday gets psychic visions, so it makes sense for her to be at Nevermore. Amidst attempts to run away from school, she slowly starts unearthing clues to a mystery that has been haunting Jericho County for a while. Located on the outskirts of Jericho, Nevermore’s students are the prime suspect in the spree of murders happening there. Apparently, a beast has been hunting down civilians and killing them. Wednesday Addams has a psychic vision about it and decides to dedicate her time to hunting down the beast. She writes detective novels and has developed a penchant for solving mysteries.

The story structure of Wednesday is unique in that it has the typical narrative structure of all three genres – horror, mystery, and coming-of-age blended in perfect sync with each other. Wednesday goes through the familiar stages of rejecting her new circumstances, finding something intriguing that keeps her there, forming meaningful bonds she never wanted to, and eventually becoming invested in the place she wanted to leave initially. The character development happens at the same pace as the development of the mystery. The mystery is designed like a classic whodunit, with the list of suspects growing and narrowing at every turn. We have a very reliable narrator in Wednesday Addams who takes us through the revelations and the logical complexities of the mystery at hand. Meanwhile, the mystery is itself sinister in nature and this makes way for the horror aspect of the story. With a few jumpscares and a lot of gory visuals, the series has a treat waiting for fans of sanitary horror. It isn’t difficult to stomach but still leaves an impact. And every episode ends with either a twist that changes everything or a horrifying visual that gets burnt into the viewer’s mind.