Can you imagine Wednesday Addams without all of the goth snark?
Yeah, neither could we.
Wednesday Addams has always been a bit of a walking rain cloud.
The Addams family's only daughter was prone to strange and macabre humor long before Jenna
Ortega took on the role of the raven-haired goth teen in Netflix's new series "Wednesday."
Back in 1944, when the original "The Addams Family" cartoons appeared in "The New Yorker,"
one featured a punchline in which mother Morticia encouraged her daughter to commit attempted murder.
She tells her presumably bullied daughter:
When she first made the leap from the funny pages to the TV screen, Wednesday was just
as morbid as ever, albeit also adorable as embodied by child actor Lisa Loring.
In the 1960s "Addams Family" series, pint-sized Wednesday plays with explosives and a guillotine.
"I hope he brings me a new Marie Antoinette doll for my guillotine."
In the '90s, Christina Ricci's version of the character straps her brother to an electric
chair just for kicks.
Dark comedy has always been a through-line for the lovably sadistic character, but when
it comes to the latest iteration of the franchise, Wednesday's macabre one-liners almost got the ax.
Series writer-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke to Geek Vibes Nation ahead of
the show's release, and revealed that executives weren't initially on board with the character's
signature dark humor.
Millar revealed:
The first season of the teen mystery sees Wednesday kicked out of her public school
for throwing piranhas in the boys' pool, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it
comes to the girl's penchant for darkness.
But as Millar said, "That's the essence of Wednesday," and the pair told the outlet that
they ignored all the notes about cutting the show's dark humor.
The version of the show viewers ended up with isn't afraid to make light of the bleaker
side of life, like when Wednesday talks about emojis with her new roommate:
"When I look at you, the following emojis come to mind: rope, shovel, hole."
The pair also credit Tim Burton, who executive produced the series and directed several episodes,
for keeping that integral balance between humor and horror intact.
Millar said:
Meanwhile, Gough says the pair kept that marriage between horror and comedy in mind while writing
the script, telling Geek Vibes Nation:
Ignoring those studio notes apparently paid off, as Netflix claims that "Wednesday" turned
out to have the biggest premiere week of any English-language Netflix original.
By those metrics, which are admittedly not made public by the streamer but are instead
self-reported, "Wednesday" had an even bigger debut than "Stranger Things 4."
"I swear on my late scorpion's soul – my hands are clean."
The show's first season follows Wednesday as she attends Nevermore Academy, a school
for "outcasts" including sirens, werewolves, and in her case, burgeoning psychics.
Soon after she enrolls at Nevermore, strange and violent things start to happen, and it's
up to Wednesday to figure out who's responsible for the attacks on her fellow students.
While "Wednesday" is more of a young adult drama or a mystery series than a comedy, the
show is still shot through with the dark humor Millar and Gough maintained from the script
they initially handed in to Netflix.
Admittedly, "Wednesday" would be lost without it.
Ortega imbues the character's most disturbing lines with a perfect deadpan delivery, and
makes her a protagonist worth rooting for, even if her favorite past-times are the sort
that would make God-fearing normies — as the show calls non-superpowered people — run
for the hills.
As for that balance between humor and horror, Gough says it came naturally, like Wednesday's
knack for bloodshed and mayhem.
He told Geek Vibes Nation: