‘Wednesday’ creators promise ‘horror movie-worthy’ moments in season 2 (exclusive)

Creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gough aren’t joking around when it comes to Wednesday‘s highly anticipated second season.

“We certainly set out to really stretch ourselves and stretch what the show could do and see where our characters could go,” Millar tells Entertainment Weekly. “The last thing you want is people to be disappointed having waited for so long. We really want to ensure that the show is loaded with surprises and comedy and action, and that they see the characters they love, but also introduce new ones.”

Coming off the show’s incredibly successful first season, which hit Netflix in November of 2022, they’re looking to expand on the world they’ve already spent eight episodes establishing. Fans will remember that season 1 followed a teenage Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) as she enrolled in Nevermore Academy and swiftly found herself hunting down a murderous monster. “The mystery is a little more complex than season 1, but I also just feel like the world is bigger and you get to really explore other characters,” Gough says of the new season. “Wednesday’s not in every scene, so you get to learn more about Enid [Emma Myers], you get to learn more about Bianca [Joy Sunday].”

You’ll also get to learn more about the entire Addams family as Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) enrolls as a student at Nevermore Academy, and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also find themselves sticking around for … certain reasons. “You get to explore the mother-daughter dynamic with Wednesday and Morticia,” Gough says. “So it’s really delving more into the Addams family and their backstory, but also their relationships. You can have a family that loves each other, but there’s still issues and clashes.”

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Speaking of family, the show’s adding a “third generation of Addams women” as Millar puts it by bringing in Grandmama, played by Joanna Lumley. “She’s a whole different flavor of Addams that brings such delicious fun to the show and into the family,” Millar says. “We weren’t sure how many episodes that character should be in, but seeing how well it played, I think Grandmama will definitely be coming back if we get a season 3.”

Outside of new characters — of which there are plenty, with this year’s cast including Steve Buscemi, Thandiwe Newton, Haley Joel Osment, Heather Matarazzo, Billie Piper, and Christopher Lloyd — the show is also looking to make Wednesday proud by taking things even darker in its sophomore season. “There’s some moments which are definitely horror movie-worthy,” Millar says. “We have that in season 1, but I think this season there are moments that are very intense, I’ll say.”

As Millar continues, “Season 2 definitely has some moments which are more straightforward horror, and we’re very aware that the show is watched by everybody in terms of the age groups. So we want to make sure that it’s never torture porn, but that there’s enough bite to it that it feels that there are real stakes and that people die in this world, and it’s scary at moments. And I think that’s the great tonal shift that the show makes between comedy and horror.”

Wednesday season 2 premieres with Part 1 on August 6 and Part 2 on September 3 on Netflix.