The makers of the “Wednesday” show break down the final twists, sharing plans for season two

Brake alert: This interview contains spoilers from the first season of “Wednesday,” streaming now on Netflix.

Wednesday Adams cracked the case. Everyone’s favorite grumpy teen makes her triumphant return to screens in the Tim Burton-produced “Wednesday,” facing her toughest battle of all: high school at Nevermore Academy.

The title character, played by Gina Ortega, spends the majority of the first season of the Netflix series consumed by a murder mystery, believing she’s at the center of it, which includes both Nevermore and Jericho, the town where the school is located.

At the end of the season, it’s revealed that Nevermore’s teacher Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, who played the character Wednesday in Barry Sonnenfeld’s “The Addams Family”) movies is actually Laurel Gates, a descendant of Jericho’s founder, Joseph Craxton. Wednesday reveals a botany teacher’s infidelity to Headmaster Weems (Gwendolyn Christie), who gets a poison shot in the throat and dies in Wednesday’s arms.

After collecting body parts with Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), who is actually the monster “Hyde” terrorizing Nevoror, Laurel revives Crackstone in hopes of ending the Outcasts once and for all. A tense confrontation with Wednesday’s allies on her side leads to Crackstone’s final downfall, and the capture of Tyler and Laurel.

While the finale provides a satisfying conclusion to the season’s biggest mystery, it still leaves quite a few questions: Did Tyler escape custody? Who sent the threatening message to Wednesday’s new phone? And who will take over as director of Nevermore?

Talk to Showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar diverse Rounding out all of these cliffhangers, plus the finale’s biggest twists, is working with Ortega on set in Bucharest, Romania, finding a charming actor to play the Thing — and their plans for other seasons.

I was surprised to see Thornhill appear as a villain at the end. Will this character always be the villain, or did plans change when Christina Ricci joined the cast?

Alfred Goff: Thornhill was always the big bad. She was the mastermind behind the entire operation. We actually thought when we cast Christina, it would be like this blinking red light above her. We were worried that, “Oh my God, people are just going to guess this.” But I think what really helped us was that we had great actors and actresses, honestly, in all the big roles. You have Gwendolyn [Christie] And you have Ricky [Lindhome]. I watched it on TV: “I wonder who the villain is? That’s probably the biggest name in the marquee!” In this case, I feel like they were evenly dispersed.

Miles Millar: Obviously this is our first business trip. The idea of ​​people guessing so early on, it’s like you’d think it could be, but it’s so obvious, it’s not. I think it’s like a dance that I hope the audience can guess until the end. And then once Ricky’s character is killed off, you think, well, well, it’s done. So he is just the monster he planned by himself. It’s great that you were caught off guard. This was definitely our intention. We loved the idea of ​​two Wednesdays in that final basement scene. It felt so delicious and irresistible.

She also killed Wems’ manager, Gwendolyn Christie. What was her reaction when she found out she was going to die?

Millar: She was a great soldier throughout it all. She loved it, because she felt so surprised. She was totally on board for it. I think for us, it went down on Wednesday, the emotional impact of that death. We wanted this world where the people you care about die, so that there is cost and sacrifice for this story. She was incredible. That relationship between Wednesday and Weems is perhaps one of the strongest on the show. I think they are good together. We always love the scenes with them together in the office with the height difference, and it feels like two really strong characters have an unspoken respect for each other. It feels like a really sad but poignant way to end this and season one with her death.

Let’s talk about Tyler. In those final moments of the season, he’s in custody, but we see him start to get out of Hyde. Does that leave the door open for Tyler to return in a potential season 2?

Goff: yes. definitely. he’s there. This is what we wanted to convey.

Do you already have a structure for what you’d like Season 2 to look like if it gets renewed?

Millar: yes. For us, he’s always looking into the future, and when we sit down to create a show, he’s looking at multiple seasons, ideally. This was never expected, but it is an expectation that we hope the show will succeed. So, you always put together at least three or four seasons of potential storylines for the characters. It can evolve and change. Often times, you want to know about the characters or the cast and who you would love to write about. So you want to keep it open and organic enough for it to change and evolve, but we definitely have a very clear path of what we want to do in future seasons.

Wednesday stays true to the character audiences love, but he still shows emotional growth throughout the season. How did you plan that trip?

Goff: This was really a hat trick. The North Star was that Wednesday should always be Wednesday, but she had to make a trip. It’s a slight arc, but definitely an impactful one. When you get to the end and see the hug with Enid—

Millar: We love that this is a bow. The off-season arc is a hug. But very impressive. I think, hopefully, that moment between these characters is really the emotional high point of the show. It was designed that way for sure, and I think the audience is going to be surprised at how much that affects them. To see these two hugging, that seems so small and petty on a regular show. In this, Wednesday’s emotional journey is actually very important.

Jenna Ortega brings a wide emotional range while not blinking and staying mostly deadpan. What was it like working with her?

Gough: She is a very intuitive actress. When we met her, she had just the thing I needed Wednesday. This is something that is difficult to describe, because we have seen hundreds and hundreds of young actresses for this role. I met her on Zoom and kind of knew her. Then Tim continued to climb, and we all know that. was her. I remember having lunch with her when she was in L.A., talking about her situation, and talking about not blinking. I think it’s a role you have to inhabit. I don’t want to speak for Jenna, but I think it’s a role that in a weird way becomes a little way, because you have to live in that space. She participates in 95% of the show.

Millar: In terms of the process, we’d meet with Jenna every morning in the trailer, go into the scene, and often cut and really cut back on a lot of the dialogue. Tim talks about her being a lot like a silent movie star. So much in the face in the eyes. This is a window into the real situation for Wednesday, in terms of what you say is not necessarily how you feel. Gina was one of those rare actresses who can really convey so much and say nothing. It was her marathon. She was in almost every scene, learning reams of dialogue every day. Archery, rowing, sword fighting. It takes a lot of the body as well as a lot of words to learn. The show seems so breezy, but it was a very tough show.

Thing is really a superstar of the series. How did you approach this character and decide to incorporate him into the story so much?

Gough: When we were developing the show, it was in the script. The thing is so unique to the Addams family that we thought we couldn’t have an Addams copy of the world you’re exploring [without] something there. It is easy to write on the page. To actually translate that on screen, we found a charming actor who’s up close.

Millar: He is a Romanian magician who mainly does card tricks. So he’s incredibly skilled. We’ve done a lot of hand people testing. Tim was very involved in this. He was kind of obsessed with the thing. It was a lot of time that I actually spent rehearsing and getting the sign language right with our visual effects supervisor. In our studio, they already had an ancient Roman puppet theater from Roman TV shows with puppets. And so they would rehearse in this puppet theater and come back and upload a video of what he was doing. So it was very complicated and intentional in terms of making it feel weirdly complicated and real. So I think that moment when you saw the pole stabbing was very risky, because we wanted it to be — for Wednesday — very emotionally devastating. In the wrong hands, it could have been incredibly cheesy and like, “Oh, my God, really?” But I think it really works because of Jenna’s performance, and because you really do at that point believe that he’s sensitive, that he has feelings and all that stuff. It was a risk we took, and I think it paid off.

Wednesday is given a phone call at the end of the season. Can we see her texting in Season 2?

Millar: I think our idea is that she throws the phone out the window on the next hit. I just don’t think she should use the phone. I think she might be vaguely surprised or amused by it. But then she will refuse him.

Gough: The main thing is to take the phone. He will become a TikTok star in the second season.

This interview has been edited and condensed.