Tim Burton’s innovative spin-off series “Wednesday” portrays the fictional story of Wednesday Addams, the angry little daughter of the Addams Family. As it is Tim Burton’s cryptic comedy series, there is no shortage of easter eggs and secret symbolism in it. In comparison to the other adaptations, Burton’s Wednesday is dark and enigmatic. “The Addams Family,” created by Charles Addams, initially appeared in the New Yorker as unrelated single-panel cartoons. Later, various adaptations of this fictional family appeared and became famous around the world. The Addams are a morbid, strange, and hilarious family that believes in macabre and deathly rituals yet is not malicious. However, Charles Addams’ cartoon and its different adaptations have entertained us for so many years; Burton contemporaries the notion and represents the family as a misfit of society. Wednesday Addams, who was not just a regular, vibrant, and colorful teenager, is represented as an unaccepted person in society who was not seen to socialize conventionally like the rest. Starting from her new school, Nevermore, and never-ending psychic visions to her ancestral mysteries, this series made a variety of symbolisms that are relevant to the gloomy and gothic tone of the story.
Spoilers Ahead
Edgar Allan Poe And Raven
Edgar Allan Poe is the first author that springs to mind when we think about dark and gothic literature. The melancholic writings of literary genius Edgar Allan Poe personify death and despair. A prime example of this is found in his poem “The Raven,” where he has a mournful conversation with a raven about Lenore, to which the raven replies, “Nevermore.” In the poem, the raven is depicted as a representation of loss and death, just as a raven is usually thought to be a bad omen. However, Edgar Poe considered the raven as a perpetual reminder of the darkness in his life. The series showed, in a fictional way, that Edgar Allan Poe was an alumnus of Nevermore Academy, where Morticia Addams enrolled her daughter Wednesday. Poe, whose literary works are well-known across the world, spent the last years of his life in a terrible depression, which caused him to experience terrifying hallucinations. Especially for that reason, Edgar Allan Poe remained a mysterious figure and was frequently misunderstood by society at the time. Even after his death, his body was buried in a Baltimore cemetery without a headstone. Therefore, as shown in the television show “Wednesday,” we assume Poe was an outcast throughout his life, which may have been a fictional interpretation by the creators but was pertinent given Poe’s tragic experiences in life.
Wednesday, who was also an outcast and a “freak,” as she was called by others, arrived at Nevermore and experienced horrifying psychic visions. According to her mother, Morticia, she was a raven because of the gloomy, foreboding nature of her visions. In “Wednesday,” a raven represents the darkness that was a part of Wednesday’s psychic power and enabled her to see the dark side of the world. While a raven is typically associated with horror, it also symbolizes the reality that life isn’t always as colorful and happy as we’d like it to be—it may also be gloomy and stormy—and that we should learn to accept just like we accept bliss. Even though Wednesday may have had an unsociable, dreadful aura, she wasn’t a cruel person. She was just a curious individual who found the horrors of the world fascinating. We prefer to be around happy people, but Wednesday wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t someone we could laugh and chat with, but that didn’t make her a bad person; Rather, it challenged our instinctive beliefs about socialization, as we always see the cheerful person as a normal being while the introverted person stands out as a misfit in our eyes.
Witch Slander And 17th Century
The witch-hunt massacre was a terrible historical incident that occurred in the 17th century. People who were mentally disturbed or who didn’t care about religious norms were primarily burned by pilgrims who were considered to be respected members of society. Wednesday” represents this issue through its portrayal of Goody Addams, the Addams family’s ancestor. Goody Addams was a witch of great strength who was considered an outcast by society. Like Wednesday, Goody was also a Raven with psychic abilities that allowed her to see the terrifying side of reality. Goody rejected conventional fundamentalism in favor of nature worship, which was against the social norms promoted by the pilgrims of that time. One of the pilgrims, Joseph Crackstone, captured Goody Addams and the rest of her community of outcasts and tormented them. He killed several people out of his desire for power and confiscated their land. Therefore, Goody, with her supernatural abilities, killed Crackstone. Later, Crackstone’s descendants, the Gates Family, attempted to carry out his mission to wipe out all the outcasts, which they eventually failed to do.
Easter Eggs And Hidden Details
From the origin of Wednesday’s name to a Scooby-Doo reference, “Wednesday” is rich with references to previous adaptations as well as other fictional universes. For instance, Morticia revealed in the series that her favorite nursery poem, “Monday’s Child,” which says, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe,” served as the inspiration for Wednesday’s name. Additionally, we got to glimpse another Easter egg when principal Weems planned to place Wednesday in a dorm called “Ophelia Hall.” Wednesday, and Pugsley’s aunt Ophelia Frump, from the Addams family, served as another source of inspiration for the name Ophelia Hall. Furthermore, there are many similarities in the set designs, which were mostly influenced by the comic strips of the original Addams Family and increased the vivacity of the series for comic book geeks like us. However, we got to see another Addams in the series, which was Ignatius Itt. The cousin brother of Addams, Iggy Itt, or Ignatius Itt’s portrait, was found in the Nightshades Library when Wednesday, along with Fester, went there to find Faulkner’s diary. However, Ignatius Itt wasn’t really a person; instead, he was a pile of blonde hair from head to toe with glasses. In the series, Cousin Iggy was described as Nathaniel Faulkner’s right hand rather than an Addams family member. We may need to wait for a further season before we see any meaningful connection between Iggy Itt and the Addams. We even witnessed the iconic snap, which first appeared in the 1964 TV show “The Addams Family.” When Wednesday figured out the riddle to enter Nightshades library, and the solution was “Snap Twice,” we were taken back in time to the days when in the TV show or in the animated versions, the Addams family used to snap in the intro song. In addition to all of that, when Wednesday’s childhood was depicted in the series, and we saw a lot of spiders crawling over her face, it brought to mind Wednesday’s real pet spider, Homer, who originally appeared in a 1964 TV show. Though in “Wednesday,” instead of Homer, we see that Wednesday’s pet was a scorpion that was sadly slain by local boys in front of her. We’ve also seen a very slight nod to Scooby-Doo when sheriff Galpin compared Wednesday with Velma’s inquiry in the Mystery Inc case. Actually, in television shows, The Addams Family and Scooby Doo collaborated once when Wednesday went missing, and the Scooby Doo crew attempted to solve the mystery.
Last but not least, Christina Ricci was the biggest surprise of the series. She had played the role of Wednesday twice so far. First in the 1991 film adaptation of “The Addams Family” and then in its sequel. Though in the 2022 series “Wednesday,” we saw her arrival as Marilyn Thornhill, a separate character who turned out to be the real antagonist of the show. We absolutely love the meta vibe in that episode when Marilyn told Wednesday that they were similar, which was eventually opposed by Wednesday. However, it was a unique take by the creators to show the two Wednesdays together on screen for their final faceoff. Furthermore, in one episode, we saw Marilyn show Wednesday the classic work of fiction by Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein,” in which Victor Frankenstein’s monster was created from a variety of animal and human parts. Later, the concept that electricity could bring the creature to life was made popular by a 1931 adaptation of the book. Marilyn, aka Laurel, recreated Crackstone’s body in a manner similar to Frankenstein’s by collecting all of the victims’ organs and electricity, which was a great tribute to Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece. There may be more of these allusions and symbolism in Wednesday’s debut season, but a few of them certainly caught our attention. Perhaps in the upcoming season, there will be more Addams Family references and other callouts to ponder.
