Jenna Ortega cements her status as the 21st century’s reigning goth queen with this sneak peak at the upcoming series.
With Wednesday Season 2 due later this year, and Netflix‘s Tudum event having just passed, the streaming behemoth used the latter to pump up interest in the former by dropping the first six minutes of the premiere episode, “Here We Woe Again.” The teaser explains what our favourite dead-eyed tween has been up to over her summer vacation – hunting down a serial killer. Let’s go to the video, shall we?
Ah, that looks like fun. Eagle-eyed viewers will have noted that Wednesday’s target, the Kansas City Scalper, is played by former child star and noted party animal Haley Joel Osment, which is a nice touch.
Wednesday is, of course, a spin off/reboot of venerable spooky franchise The Addams Family, which started as a one panel comic strip by creator Charles Addams before being adapted as a classic TV series in 1964 and a couple of really fun movies in the ’90s. Subsequent attempts to revive the franchise for he big screen were pretty patchy, but genre veterans Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with the help of executive producer and lead director Tim Burton, seem to have cracked it with Wednesday. The series puts the titular Hot Topic fan in a new context by packing her off to Nevermore Academy, a prep school for monsters, kids, and monster kids, where she navigates the travails of adolescence, along with all the supernatural shenanigans we know and love.
Having recently racked up acclaimed turns in Scream, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and now Wednesday, star Jenna Ortega has carved herself a cool little niche as pop culture’s premiere spooky kid, Here, she’s joined by a pretty great supporting cast, including Luis Guzmán as dad Gomez, Catherine Zeta-Jones as mum Morticia, and Isaac Ordonez as our heroine’s little brother, Pugsley Addams.
On the school side of things, Emma Myers is back as Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s chipper werewolf roommate, along with Bianca Barclay (Sunday), Moosa Mostafa (Eugene), Georgie Farmer (Ajax), Dorobantu (Thing), and Hunter Doohan (Tyler Galpin).
New series regulars this season include Steve Buscemi, Billie Piper, Evie Templeton, Owen Painter,
and Noah B. Taylor, but who they’ll be playing remains a mystery for now. As for guest stars, look forward to former Uncle Fester Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Lumley as Grandmama, Thandiwe Newton, Frances O’Connor, Heather Matarazzo, and Joonas Suatamo.
Of course, the big new is that Lady Gaga is also on board. As announced at Tudum, the pop star will be playing the “mysterious and enigmatic” Rosaline Rotwood, “a legendary Nevermore teacher who crosses paths with Wednesday.”
She’s not showing up til Part 2, though. As seems to be increasingly common, Wednesday Season 2 is being split in half, with the first four episodes dropping on August 6, and the final four on September 3.
And if that bit of business at airport security in the above clip looks familiar, that’s because it’s riffing on an iconic scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Check it out:
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