Wednesday season 2 arrived on Netflix this week (on Wednesday, of course) — while we’ve only seen the first four episodes (the rest come next month), here’s our review so far

Amidst a massive wave of publicity (helpfully collated by Netflix), let’s pause to recall it’s been over two and half years since season 1. While the new season comes in two lots of four episodes, rather than the six we had before, it still seems a long wait. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the growth spurt several actors have inevitably gone through.

What’s our Wednesday season 2 review in five words?

Crowded. Visuals and soundtrack excellent.

Expanding a little

If you’re a fan of the season, this is an obvious watch. While it has many of the same ingredients as before, it also has more of some and less of others. There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of players and maybe too much happening — a mental asylum, new teachers, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega)’s powers on the blink, Enid (Emma Myers) busy in the wolf pack with new love interest, the Hyde (rewatch season 1 if you need to), Thing, Lurch, Mortitia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) Wednesday’s parents, Fester, grandmother (Joanna Lumley)… it’s all a bit of an Addams Family tick list.

Into this add stalking, murder and other mysteries and there’s little time for Wednesday to do anything except move from A to B to C at pace. Not only is the plot crowded, but there’s suddenly a lot of Addams family. The story brings brother Pudsey to Nevermore Academy, but also finds an excuse to have Morticia Addams on campus as well, with Gomez hanging around rather than be alone at home. Wednesday struggles to be the centre of her own story.

Then there’s best-friend Enid who is almost absent from the story (is this as Emma Myers is too busy with The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder)? It’s all very puzzling, but there’s no shortage of fangirls happy to take her place at Wednesday’s side.

Overall

It’s the nature of a reviewer to see the negatives, and there’s still a lot to like. Visually it looks good, the sound track is solid and we’d forgotten Billie Piper’s history as a pop star. While we feel Catherine Zeta-Jones takes a lot of attention away from Ortega, she’s also very good and it reinforces a view she could have done more in season 1.

We still watched it at pace and will watch the final four episodes when they come. We may well even look at the whole and see it’s more than the sum of its parts. We shall see.

RATING: