Despite posting record numbers for Netflix, there’s still no sign of a recommission for Wednesday.
Updated 28/12/22: In a recent interview, the Wednesday showrunners outlined their Season 2 aspirations.
Yes, we’ve still no news about a recommission for Wednesday, but the show’s return appears all but assured. So much that, in a recent interview for The Hollywood Reporter, the showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar discussed their continuing plans…
Wrapping up Season 1
Naturally, the interview is rife with spoilers, but if you’re up to date it’s well worth a read. Avoiding them, Miles Millar addresses how they wrapped up the first season and its lack of loose ends:
“Well, I think for us, it’s always about feeling that the season, because there’s only eight episodes, it feels like a book, so it feels complete and really satisfying. When you reach the end of a series, you wanna feel satisfied that the story is told. It’s about tying up those loose ends, and then you want expectations and cliffhangers for questions for the next season but really wrapping this mystery up, so we can really begin with a whole new mystery next season.”
He also talks about the setting of Nevermore Academy:
“We wrestled with that initially, in terms of, if we’re doing the teenage Wednesday Addams, is it funny if she’s the fish out of water in a regular high school? But then we felt like every day should get back to the family, and we sort of wanted her out of the family. And then the other thing about the boarding school offered was boarding in the world of the Addams Family. So you see, where did Gomez and Morticia go to school? What is that? How do these people exist in this real world? So, it excited us in terms of opened and expanded the world of the Addams Family, and that’s something, I think, certainly, people have been intrigued by. Now we have the opportunity in future seasons to really expand that world, and what’s great is that no one’s really explored this part of the Addams Family, so it really is a fresh canvas, which we’re excited to be able to draw on.”
Season 2 and female relationships
Al Gough looks to the future of the show:
“We wanna sort of explore and sort of complicate all of those relationships going forward. The school was closed when they left, which gave us the most possibilities for season two, and I think that’s something that we’re excited to explore. For us, the show also is really about this female friendship, with Wednesday and Enid really being at the center of that. The fact that they really connected with audiences, it has been really gratifying. So, we’re excited to explore now that Wednesday’s dipped her toe into the friendship pool, what’s that gonna look like? It’s like, she hugged. That was her big arc for the season, right? So it’s like now, we do that.”
“Then, the other thing that’s really interesting is to continue to explore the Wednesday-Morticia mother-daughter relationship as well, which now that Morticia knows about the power, it has given her sort of an idea of how that’s going to go. How is their relationship going to evolve?”
Smallville
The interview also addresses the pair’s past superhero form; they created the teen Superman show Smallville and parallels are drawn between the two shows. Remarkably, Smallville ran for ten series and the pair clearly hope for a lengthy future for Wednesday too. Gough says:
“Well, the beauty of television is you could go on for many seasons, which we’ve done before. What’s also fun is the more you go, the world and the stories kind of reveal themselves. So, it’s actually something that we enjoy doing, and you also have that special relationship with an audience when they’re invested in these characters over a period of years. So, we’d like it to go on for as long as it can.”
We’ll keep you posted on Wednesday. In the meantime, the first season is available to stream on Netflix.
Original article (from 22/12/22) follows…
Wednesday – recommission not expected until the New Year
Despite posting record numbers for Netflix, there’s still no sign of a recommission for Wednesday.
Last week we reported on Wednesday‘s stellar streaming numbers, as the show crossed the billion streams mark for Netflix. With those kind of numbers, you’d imagine that the network would be desperate to announce a further series (or two, or three), especially given that the show centres on a young cast. As we’ve seen with Stranger Things, young casts shoot up fast!
There’s certainly a will from the show’s creators Al Gough and Mark Millar, who have publicly discussed how they might use the wider Addams Family characters in a second season.
So what’s holding up the Wednesday recommission?
As with The Sandman, it appears that it is a behind-the-scenes issue – or so Deadline suggest. While the first season of Wednesday was commissioned long before the sale, its makers MGM Television have since been acquired in an $8.5B deal by Amazon. That makes the owners of Netflix’s biggest streaming rival the suppliers of one of its hottest properties.
Thankfully, the fact isn’t expected to derail the show – the producers are reportedly mulling new locations and talking to writers. Let’s face it, when something is this popular there’s always a deal to be done!
However, the Deadline piece suggests that we ought not to expect an announcement until the New Year. Plenty of time for another rewatch then!