A mad scientist blasting sinister pipe-organ music. A boy strapped to an electric chair designed to suck electricity out of him, not pump it in. Another boy dragged telekinetically to an operating table and strapped down for an experimental and highly unethical procedure. A sword-wielding goth teenager who slices off her enemy’s hand. An enemy who comes back from the grave and reattaches said hand. The hand taking back control and beating the shit out of the enemy. Sci-fi equipment that looks like the Parliament Mothership. Lots and lots of levers and knobs and coils and visible bolts of electricity. Much of this shown in glorious black and white. And at the end of it all, a monster battle across the tiled rooftops of nevermore, ending with a mother monster (apologies to Lady Gaga) dead in the arms of a stone werewolf and her offspring howling with grief.
This episode of Wednesday, which became a really fun show about halfway through this now-concluded second season and never let up, is like a Tim Burton Starter Pack. The longtime purveyor of gothic whimsy dips deep into his bag this time, pulling out visual references to his own Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, and Batman among others, while also riffing on the mid-20th century’s horror/SF cinema touchstones. If I ordered a show from Tim Burton, this is how I’d want a season to wrap up, no question.
The main action centers on finally getting to the bottom of the Addams Family connection to Isaac Night, the mad scientist whose antics are described above. Once Gomez’s roommate at Nevermore, he tricked his friend into using his supernatural electric charge to power the machine designed to remove the Hyde from his beloved sister Françoise. He knew all along that the procedure would kill Gomez, a sacrifice he deemed worth it for the only person he’d ever truly loved.
Fortunately for us Wednesday viewers — otherwise there wouldn’t be a show! — Gomez’s then-girlfriend now-wife Morticia Frump intervened in the form of her blade, chopping off Isaac’s hand and wreaking havoc on the machine. Even so, she was too late: Gomez was permanently stripped of the powers that made him an Outcast. Though Françoise survived and went on to have the half-happy life we’ve seen described over the course of the season, Isaac didn’t make it. Gomez and Morticia buried him in the shallow grave he’d prepared for Gomez, and that was that, until Pugsley woke him up.
It’s only by saving her own worst enemy that Wednesday saves the day. Rather than killing Tyler, she sets him free from where Isaac strapped him down to involuntarily remove his Hyde powers. The monster knocks the zombie out, then does battle with his own mother, whom he knows colluded with Isaac in the power-removing scheme. In the end, the mother Hyde voluntarily falls to her death rather than risk the life of her repentant Hyde son. The entire fight is thrillingly animated, unapologetically Burtonish, and, in the end, legitimately dark. I loved it.
Back in the tower, Isaac proves less dead than everyone thought. He wraps his telekinetic fingers around Wednesday’s throat and squeezes, ready willing and able to finally exact revenge against the hated Addamses, whom he blames for both his death as a human (Gomez and Morticia) and his humiliating pet-like existence as a zombie (Pugsley). This, of course, would fulfill Wednesday’s prophecy that an Addams would die.
Then Thing — an anagram for Night, depicted in a hilariously over-explanatory graphic — springs into action. He retakes control of himself and starts socking Isaac in the face, grabbing him by the hair and smashing his head into the wall, etc. Actor Owen Painter channels his best Bruce Campbell from Evil Dead 2 in this one-man fight scene. Thing ultimately triumphs by tearing out Isaac’s (beautifully designed) clockwork heart, ending his threat for good.
There are character developments throughout. Wednesday, who already told off her Grandmama last episode for making bigoted comments about her powerless father, rekindles her friendship with Morticia. Agnes’s involvement in Enid’s life is nearly as intense as it was in Wednesday’s, but she’s much happier to take no for an answer now, as she does when Enid responds to her prepared list of boyfriend candidates by saying she’s taking a boyfriend break for the foreseeable future.
Even so, Agnes is still devoted enough to Wednesday not to leave the vacated school behind with her idol still at risk. It’s she who alerts Enid when Isaac and company bury Wednesday alive beneath the magical Skull Tree prior to their attempt to drain Pugsley. As a result, it’s Enid who deliberately wolfs out under the full moon, giving her enough strength to free Wednesday from her live burial (“That was enjoyable,” she reflects) but trapping her in that form forever.
Unless Wednesday has anything to say with it. Armed with the diary of her mysterious Aunt Ophelia, given to her by Morticia, she sets out on a quest with Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) to track down the lone wolf. But the moment she touches the journal, she has a vision: Ophelia is alive and unwell and living in captivity in her evil Grandmama’s basement, calling for Wednesday’s doom. All this sounds like a pretty rich setup for Season 3 to me!
There is one question I have about the episode, though, and it’s a real specific one. When Isaac commandeers Iago Tower to rebuild his machine, he plays Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” on the old-fashioned phonogram. This is classic horror/villain music, signaling drama, danger, and death in countless films such as Fantasia, Sunset Boulevard, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I first heard it added to the soundtrack of the silent horror classic The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney Sr. It’s absolutely the kind of music that a vengeful mad genius like the resurrected zombie scientist Isaac Night would select as the score for his masterstroke.
It’s also absolutely the kind of music that a cynical mad genius like the sullen teenage telepath Wednesday Addams would proclaim “cliché,” as she does in this episode. Sure, she spends most of her time playing big obvious goth-adjacent pop songs on the cello, so she’s hardly one to talk, but yeah, she’d size Isaac up like that for sure.
My question is this: Should she have said it regardless? It’s not our fault in the audience that the writers of this episode selected one of the most shopworn needledrops in cinema history for the climax of this season. If they’re insecure enough about it to have Wednesday hang a lampshade on it for us, should they simply have chosen another song to avoid the issue altogether? A quarter century or so into the post-Whedon era, I’m not sure we need anymore heroes quipping at danger.
But that is pretty much my one quibble about this finale, much as the failure to do much with Bianca (other than that amazing fencing scene) is my one real quibble with the season as a whole. Overall, Wednesday is finally the creepy kooky mysterious spooky and altogether ooky fun I’d been promised during Season 1, only to wind up disappointed. By leaning even harder on the gifts of its two irrepressible leads, then adding a third cut from the same living-cartoon-character cloth in the form of Agnes (she refers to them as “the Three Musketeers”; Wednesday and Enid disagree), the show located and leaned on its greatest strengths — not the plot, but the performances. Wednesday is a showcase more than it’s a show, and accepting that its superpower.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.