Tag: Finale

Be warned, outcasts: This article contains major character or plot details.

Zombies and outcasts and death, oh my! Without her psychic powers, Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) has had to spend the first half of Season 2 at Nevermore Academy using only her sharp detective skills to try and solve the murder mystery that’s become her new obsession: Who is the hooded Avian controlling the murderous crows, what are they hiding, and how do they figure into a string of outcast deaths dating back decades? Well, Episode 4 provides the answers to some of this season’s most sinister secrets — and much more.

When approaching the second season of Wednesday, co-creators and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar knew they wanted to split the season into two compelling chapters. But they also knew that would present a new challenge: keeping fans hooked and hungry for more when the credits rolled on Episode 4.

Millar explains to Tudum, “We felt that if we were going to split the season, then the end of the fourth episode needed to be something amazing; a cliff-hanger to bring the audience back for the next chapter. That was an exciting challenge.”

Gough adds, “At the end of Episode 4, Wednesday literally lets the lunatics out of the asylum, and the rest of the season is: Now you have to deal with that… She solved one mystery, and has unleashed a Pandora’s box of new problems.”

Let’s unpack every beat of that cliff-hanger mid-season finale, from the hooded figure reveal to Wednesday’s bloody — and possibly deadly — showdown with Tyler.

Who is Lois?

For the first half of Season 2, all of the answers seem to lie in the Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility. And Wednesday knows just the lunatic to help her get them: Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen). Fester gleefully throws himself into the chaotic business of getting himself committed, utilizing his 18 passports, 33 driver’s licenses (all under different aliases, from “Fester Diabolik” to “Fester Fiesta”), two rubber duckies, and a very loud rendition of “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner.

Once inside Willow Hill, Fester begins to crack the case. But in the meantime, he has the time of his life, an experience that Armisen relished. He tells Tudum, “Willow Hill is so Tim Burton. There was one quick scene where all of us as patients are painting outside, and one of them has no face. And I was like, ‘Oh man, I am in the right place. This is where I want to be in my life, doing a scene like this.’”

So is Lois a patient, a doctor, the cafeteria worker with whom Fester begins a torrid affair? It turns out that Lois isn’t a person at all, but the acronym for a horrifying secret program: Longterm Outcast Integration Study (LOIS). 

In the basement of Willow Hill, Wednesday and Fester discover the outcasts whose deaths had been faked, and whose urns had been falsified with animal remains — remember when Grandmama (Joanna Lumley) had Wednesday sniff that urn like a fine wine? She detected notes of deer, squirrel, raccoon, and shih tzu, but not a trace of human remains. When Grandmama bought the cemetery for Wednesday, the teen sleuth discovered that Augustus Stonehearst had signed the death certificates for the “dead” outcast patients who had all been cremated and interred there. But as it turns out, they weren’t dead. They were being kept in the basement of Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility as part of the LOIS program.

Outcasts Patricia Redcar, Julian Meiojas, and many others had been used as secret, living experiments. This was the mystery Sheriff Galpin (Jamie McShane) was trying to solve before the crows killed him; he was afraid his son Tyler (Hunter Doohan) would become part of the LOIS program. Meanwhile, Stonehearst’s experiments continue under the watchful eye of the hooded figure Wednesday’s been chasing all season.

Who exactly is the hooded Avian controlling the crows?

First revealed in Episode 1, the mysterious Avian has racked up quite a body count, including Sheriff Galpin. A cryptic clue left by Galpin eventually leads Wednesday to a remote hunting cabin where she discovers the faked outcast obituaries. It’s only when Wednesday sneaks into Willow Hill that she uncovers the hooded figure’s true identity .

But the Avian isn’t, as Wednesday initially suspects, Dr. Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton). It’s her chipper and seemingly harmless executive assistant, Judi (Heather Matarazzo), who hired Fairburn to serve as the face of Willow Hill while she continued her father’s work.

The Judi reveal scene was actually filmed on Matarazzo’s first day. Luckily, she knew the twist beforehand. “It tracked and it made sense,” Matarazzo tells Tudum of Judi’s surprising arc. “I had to understand her motivations very quickly. Al and Miles were very generous in answering my questions within the space of what motivates a character to do something. What is it that she had within herself? What was the drive of that ambition?”

Millar says of the big twist, “One of the challenges of the show is constructing a compelling mystery. We love the idea of leading the audience down the path and thinking that Dr. Fairburn is the bad guy. And then revealing that, actually, the hooded figure is Judi, the ditzy assistant.”

Judi’s father, Augustus Stonehearst, founded the LOIS program in an effort to harness outcast powers and become one himself. He longed to become a Da Vinci (outcasts with telekinetic ability), but his body couldn’t handle the experimentation. However, Stonehearst was able to turn his daughter Judi into an Avian, and Fester comments that Stoneheart’s experiments on his own daughter were “twisted, even by my own sick standards.”

Millar continues, “I love the idea that Judi was connected to Stonehearst, and actually Stonehearst is connected to Nevermore, so it all leads back to Nevermore and the secrets that the school holds.”

To bring Judi’s arc to life, Matarazzo endeavored to understand the character on a deeper level. “I had the backstory of who she really is, which was helpful. Which then informs the questions of, ‘Well, how saccharine is she? How sweet is she? How much of a show does she put on? And how exhausting is that?’ ”

It also informs how she put rigorous thought into how Judi truly views Wednesday — and how she ultimately underestimates her abilities. “Wednesday is a very clear nemesis for Judi,” Matarazzo says. “And I think Judi’s ultimate downfall is that she didn’tthink that she could get usurped by a teenage girl. There is an arrogance in her demise. So even though she is projecting this role of a secretary for Dr. Fairburn, she’s the one who’s really in charge of it all. And she feels that there’s no way, from her vantage point, that anybody is going to suspect anything. But Wednesday starts to unravel those threads, as Wednesday tends to do, and the whole thing comes tumbling down.”

How do Judi and her father, Augustus Stonehearst, tie back into Nevermore?

Augustus Stonehearst once taught science at Nevermore Academy, and then worked as the Normie head doctor at Willow Hill. As Professor Orloff (Christopher Lloyd) recalls, “Gus was very popular. But I was never a fan. He was a normie and I never trusted him.” Orloff also reveals to Wednesday that Stonehearst’s wife died before he arrived at Nevermore, but he had a young daughter, and he built her an aviary in Iago Tower — the same ominous, abandoned location where Agnes kept Enid and Bruno hostage earlier in the season.

But after his failed attempt to give himself Da Vinci abilities, Stonehearst ended up a patient in the very facility he used to run. As Wednesday deadpans, “Confined to his own asylum, that’s a plot twist worthy of Poe.”

Armed with this information and a hot tip from Thing (Victor Dorobantu), Fester manages to track Stonehearst down within Willow Hill, and zaps his trash-talking parrot into squawking out a single clue: 51971. This turns out to be the passcode for a maintenance closet with a hidden doorway, leading into Willow Hill’s secret LOIS basement.

Matarazzo approached Judi’s involvement in her father’s work from a psychological standpoint. She explains, “Because her father’s focus was his work, she sees that, and thinks, ‘Oh, the only way that I can really achieve any kind of love or standing within my father’s eyes is to join him on this roller-coaster ride.’ Was it the fact that she had a desperate need for her father’s approval and that she never felt that she really got it? And so in her way, she wanted to surpass her father, but she also wanted to keep an eye on him. She didn’t kill him, she kept him in Willow Hill, within her space. She has a desire, I think, to soar and fly.”

Matarazzo wanted to understand Judi on a human level to do justice to her story. “Every character, I feel like, does have hidden motivations — unless, of course, you’re playing a sociopath or psycho, but even then, there’s at least breadcrumbs to understanding the genesis of how they came to be. I wanted to be true to the text and the world [Millar and Gough] created. And I wanted Judi to be the best villain, or perhaps simply the best misunderstood being, that she could be.”

So have we truly seen the last of Judi? Matarazzo has some ideas. “I was like, ‘What if she had a twin?’ I’ve always wanted to play a twin, as somebody who grew up watching All My Children and One Life to Live. There’s always that crazy twist. And again, as we can see in Season 2, even if you were considered dead, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily are gone.”

What exactly happened to Aunt Ophelia, and how does that tie into Wednesday’s black tears?

When Wednesday asks Uncle Fester to infiltrate Willow Hill, he reveals that it’s not his first time in the facility. Years ago, Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones) asked for Fester’s help checking in on her younger sister, Wednesday’s Aunt Ophelia. But by the time he managed to get himself committed, Ophelia had already flown the coop, and now she’s been missing for 15 years.

When Wednesday confronts her mother, Morticia reveals that during her sophomore year at Nevermore, Ophelia was discovered screaming in the quad with black tears running down her cheeks — exactly like the tears Wednesday has been involuntarily weeping all season. Ophelia had pushed her psychic ability too far, and was sent away. Morticia knew her sister’s condition would worsen at Willow Hill, but to no avail. Grandmama had Ophelia committed.

Morticia is determined to protect Wednesday from the same fate her sister suffered — and she’s already seeing too many similarities between the two powerful Ravens. When Grandmama tries to manipulate Morticia into giving Goody Addams’s book back to Wednesday, Morticia throws it into the fire. “My family is non-negotiable!” she says. It’s unclear what exactly the loss of Goody’s book will mean for Wednesday’s attempts to restore her psychic powers, but one thing is clear: Morticia Addams is going to protect her daughter at all costs.

Who is Grandmama Hester Frump?

Morticia’s mother Hester Frump, known to Wednesday as  Grandmama, is one of the few people who can get Wednesday to crack a smile. And only Wednesday can worm her way into Grandmama’s cold heart. On the other hand, the dynamic between Morticia and her mother is beyond fraught.

Zeta-Jones tells Tudum, “You think that the relationship between Wednesday and Morticia is a little strained? Well, the relationship between me and my mother is contentious.”

Lumley echoes, “[Their relationship] is absolutely ghastly.” And whatever happened with Ophelia is still a very present part of that dynamic. “[Morticia] doesn’t measure up to Ophelia.”

The Addams women will retain center stage for Part 2 of Season 2, and we’ll see even more of Grandmama. Gough teases, “We also reveal her relationship dynamics, not only with Morticia, but about how she feels about Gomez (Luis Guzmán). And it allows Wednesday to see her grandmother in a new light that isn’t frankly that flattering. Wednesday learns more about her family history and how these relationships came to evolve.”

Is Slurp regenerating? And what does that mean?

After being captured and committed to Willow Hill in Episode 3, Slurp (Owen Painter) briefly becomes Fester’s cellmate. In the mayhem that ensues after Wednesday breaks her uncle out, Slurp escapes, and has a feast — he eats multiple guards, Dr. Fairburn, and Augustus Stonehearst, now a Willow Hill patient. Before he chows down on Gus’s brain, he looks at the old man and speaks for the first time: Hello, old friend.

It’s becoming clear that Slurp is no mere zombie — he is regenerating, physically and mentally, with every brain he consumes. And he knew Augustus Stonehearst. So what exactly is going on with Slurp, and what can we expect in the second half of the season?

“We’ve seen Slurp beginning to humanize as he starts to eat brains in the first four episodes,” Millar explains. “And in the second half of the season, Slurp really comes into his own. We love the idea of seeing this metamorphosis. This seemingly harmless zombie who was Pugsley’s wannabe pet, has his own agenda. As he becomes more human, we have a lot of fun with what the audience will think he’s up to.”

Painter says of preparing for the role, “A lot of what I looked at early on was clown stuff, like The Three Stooges. Also, there’s this amazing silent movie called The Man Who Laughs, and I watched that a fair amount. That was one of my big jumping-off points, the Gwynplaine character in that film. That’s a really great way of communicating without being able to move much. The prosthetics feel almost like you’re working a puppet at times because it’s so thick.”

Who exactly is Agnes de Mille, Wednesday’s stalker?

The final moments of Season 1 revealed that Wednesday has a stalker. And this season, we find out just who that stalker is: Agnes de Mille (Evie Templeton), a younger student at Nevermore. Eccentric and delightfully unhinged, Agnes is an outcast with the power of invisibility. Obsessed with Wednesday, she’ll do anything to earn her admiration and friendship — even if that means kidnapping Enid and nearly killing her in Episode 2.

But despite Agnes’ antagonistic origin story with Enid, this “pint-sized psycho” has already become a key part of the Nevermore crew this season. Her powers of invisibility prove invaluable to Wednesday’s investigation, and Agnes will do anything to impress Wednesday — even if that means planting sticks of dynamite to help her anti-heroine break into Willow Hill.

Millar says of Agnes, “One of the highlights of Season 2 has been the relationship between Agnes, Enid, and Wednesday. We felt it was important to challenge Wednesday and Enid’s relationship. How does Wednesday navigate the idea of friendship? We put Agnes in the middle of it –– she’s this Wednesday superfan, and someone who believes she is a natural best friend for Wednesday. Agnes does something very extreme in Episode 2 and almost kills Enid. How does Enid reconcile that near-death experience with this growing friendship she sees between Wednesday and Agnes?”

And Templeton is eager for fans to not just meet Agnes, but to understand the universal message behind her journey. “I’m obviously really excited to introduce my character and that trio dynamic that’s going to start to appear between Enid, Wednesday, and Agnes,” Templeton tells Tudum. “Also, there’s a very important message to be yourself, even if you feel like you don’t always fit in. It’s OK to stand out and be different, which is quite impactful for my generation.”

What’s going on with Enid, Ajax, and Bruno?

It simply wouldn’t be high school without a werewolf love triangle. After wolfing out at the end of last school year and having the best summer ever, Enid (Emma Myers) returns to Nevermore with a new group of wolf-pack friends — and a new romantic interest in Bruno, played by new cast member Noah B. Taylor.

“She’s finally growing into that part of her life, and so Bruno represents everything she’s ever wanted,” Myers tells Tudum. “Enid’s always wanted to be popular, and Bruno is popular, so she feels like she’s fitting in. Bruno’s really, really kind to her. She feels like she’s finally being seen, and she’s finally with her people. I think that’s what really attracts Enid to Bruno. He’s also new, exciting, and fresh.”

But as the sparks fly with Bruno, Enid seems unable to tell Ajax (Georgie Farmer), her flame from last year, exactly what’s going on.

Myers explains, “Enid feels bad for Ajax, and she does care about him. He’s still a part of her life and still a part of her old self, and she has a hard time letting that go. She doesn’t want to hurt Ajax’s feelings, but she can’t fully commit to being done with him. I don’t think that, all in all, Enid definitely knows what she wants — it takes this season for her to figure it out. She doesn’t do anything from a place of meanness; she just really doesn’t want to hurt Ajax because she cares about him. But in turn, by not telling him, that hurts him more than it would have if she had just been up front with him.”

Meanwhile, Ajax is growing closer to someone else as well: Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday). While Bianca juggles school, extracurricular activities, being extorted by Principal Dort (Steve Buscemi), and keeping her mom safe and hidden from the dangerous Morning Song cult she recently escaped, she finds a new and surprising source of support in Ajax.

“Bianca’s relationship with Ajax is really special this time around because we’ve never really seen Bianca lean on somebody before, and that plays into the vulnerability she’s learning to embrace,” Sunday tells Tudum. “It’s sweet to see Bianca depend on someone, since her life was always so unstable and she’s always had to work for herself. It’s lovely for her to finally have a friend that she can look to for help.”

And in Episode 4, the stakes only get higher for our lovelorn Nevermore crew. “In Episode 4, explosions — metaphorical and literal — are happening everywhere all at once,” Sunday says. “We leave off really not knowing where it’s going to go. You can expect a lot of twists and turns, and a lot of clarity as to who these new characters are.”

Did Tyler really kill his former master? Is Marilyn Thornhill truly dead?

When Dr. Fairburn brings Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci) to Willow Hill, she says that her hope is to better understand exactly what Thornhill did to Tyler so that she can begin to rehabilitate him. But Thornhill, of course, has no intention of helping with Tyler’s treatment. Instead, master and monster reunite briefly, and their dynamic is as sick and twisted as ever.

Hunter Doohan tells Tudum, “Tyler’s totally unhinged in a way that we haven’t seen him before. We talked a little bit about wanting him to feel like a caged animal and unpredictable, especially in the first half of the season. You don’t know what he’s thinking and what he’s planning on doing.”

After Judi reveals her true identity and prepares to kill Fester and Wednesday, Fester generates a massive burst of electricity that cuts the power across Willow Hill. The surge causes the patients’ doors to open, freeing them — including Tyler, who’s been kept under lock and key all season, unable to transform into his full Hyde form. Thornhill rushes to Tyler, but isn’t met by a thankful protégé. She’s confronted by a vengeful, unbridled Hyde.

“Christina Ricci is back as Marilyn Thornhill,” Doohan tells Tudum. “I was so excited when I read in the scripts that Dr. Fairburn brings her character to come see Tyler. They’re hoping that bringing her in can help make Tyler better, but he feels betrayed and abandoned by her. He believes his only chance to be free is to free himself from her control … which, unfortunately for her, does mean murdering her.”

In their final moments together, Tyler whispers to Thornhill, “You’re not my mother, you’re my master. Or should I say, you were…”. Then he offers her a terrifying five-second head start in repayment for unlocking his full potential over the course of their long and tortured relationship. He gives a terrifying reading of one word: Run. Then, in full Hyde mode, Tyler chases down his master and plunges his claws into her torso.

When it came time to film that moment, Doohan tried to understand the psychological reasoning behind Tyler’s actions. “He’s thinking, ‘The only way I can be free is to kill her, and then I’ll finally have my full power, and I can just make my own choices.’ He doesn’t know yet that he’s not going to be able to survive without a master, so he’s potentially signing his own death warrant. But he sees it as his only option. Tyler’s got a lot of hurt and feelings of abandonment underneath all the rage — but even though their bond is weakened, it’s still there. And so it is also hard for him. I was trying to play both of those feelings at the same time.”

And as for delivering that terrifying “run” line? The whole team knew it was a key beat. “I loved that moment in the script,” says Doohan. “I loved the way he toys with her, and how he’s looking down on her like, ‘What don’t you get about this? You better go.’ Right after we shot that scene and that line, Al and Miles were like,  ‘Oh, that’s going to be a trailer moment.’ ” (And it was.)

So is Marilyn Thornhill truly dead? “Christina Ricci is just an amazing person and actor, and she brings such value to the show, and the character’s so wonderful,” Gough says. “Never say never.”

Millar adds, “I will say, in this show, no one is officially dead dead. There’s always a way.”

Where’s Tyler? And what will happen to him now?

As Marilyn Thornhill says earlier in the episode, “If a Hyde murders their master, they seal their own doom.”

So what does that mean for Tyler? He’s killed his master, he’s escaped Willow Hill, but is he free? And how will he survive now?

Gough tells Tudum, “Getting more into the Hyde mythology, when you kill off your master, a Hyde will eventually go crazy. The idea is that Thornhill puts him in this position, and he kills her off in a fit of rage. What’s going to happen once he’s out without a master? That just seemed like a very interesting place, narratively. You have a deranged monster who’s slowly losing his mind. There are moments that you can see the real Tyler, and his feelings, fighting against his Hyde side — and there’s even more of that being explored in the second half of Season 2.”

Is Wednesday dead? Did she survive that big final showdown with Tyler?

From the beginning of the series, Wednesday and Tyler have been a key part of the narrative. Their ending last season set the stage for a tense reunion at the top of Season 2, when Wednesday went to Willow Hill to inform Tyler his father had been murdered.

“Tyler’s been spending every waking moment in Willow Hill obsessing over the next chance he’ll get to see Wednesday,” Doohan tells Tudum. “When she finally comes to see him at Willow Hill, it doesn’t go the way he planned. Tyler is holding onto his connection to Wednesday. And then he finds she’s only there to get information to help her new investigation, which really pisses Tyler off.”

During that initial reunion, Tyler isn’t able to fully Hyde out. But with the shock collar off and his master dead, Tyler’s next target is clear: Wednesday. Once he finds her, he doesn’t hold back. Tyler grabs Wednesday and throws her through a window.  She falls from a devastating height, hits the cobblestones, and lies bleeding — her fate unknown.

“I’ve always dreamed of looking death in the face,” Wednesday tells us in what may be her last voice-over. “But in my final moments, all I hear is my mother’s words ringing in my ears. Maybe I have made everything worse. Much worse.”

Jenna Ortega tells Tudum of shooting that particular scene, “I absolutely love that we didn’t see Tyler actually physically throw Wednesday out the window. That was Tim Burton’s last-minute idea where you just see the tension between the two before it happens, and then what breaks the silence is the shattering of the glass. I thought that was a cool way to end that episode. If you’re going to have a break in a season like that, it’s nice to leave on probably the darkest note that we’ve ever left on in an episode. I was excited to do that midway through the season.”

Millar says of the shoot, “We talked about that scene a lot … I remember standing outside the location and looking at the window, saying, ‘That’s really, really high.’ ”

Did Wednesday survive the fall? And even if she does survive, what will be the consequences going forward? Doohan shares, “Tyler might have killed Wednesday; he throws her out a window and makes his escape. It leaves Wednesday with an uncertain fate — and also a lot of new threats if she does wake up.”

But despite all the lingering uncertainty, one thing is for sure: it was a fun sequence to shoot. “ Tim and I were crying laughing,” Ortega says. “We had so much fun shooting that. It was great to see Wednesday in that Willow Hill environment. Makes total sense that she would release a bunch of patients from a psych ward.”

The chaos of the mid-season finale will lead us into the final four episodes of Wednesday Season 2, out Sept. 3. “Fans have a lot to look forward to in the second half of the season,” Doohan teases. And Gough adds, “The mysteries of Willow Hill definitely carry over into Part 2.”

Start that countdown, outcasts — September cannot come soon enough.

Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix. Part 2 will premiere on Sept. 3. 

Want a sneak peek of Part 2?

Watch below, if you dare…

Watch the Wednesday Season 2, Part 2 Teaser