7 Things That Still Don’t Make Sense About Wednesday

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Wednesday is a supernatural drama and comedy following the titular Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega). As part of the classic Addams Family, she is naturally quite obsessed with all things macabre. In particular, Wednesday has an obsession with murder and mystery, with a seemingly strong compulsion to solve cases around her. The first season brought Wednesday to Nevermore Academy, where she found herself among Outcasts, not to mention monsters and murderers. While we have overall loved the adventure that Wednesday has provided up until now, we’re still scratching our heads about some character decisions or scenes.

7) Gomez Addams’ Shame About Self-Defense & Murder

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The Addams Family is known for many things, including their extremely comfortable relationship with death. The family is full of supernatural characters, aspiring serial killers, and the like. Likewise, they all seem to fondly remember how those who came before them died. They’re not an evil family, but they do have a morbid fascination with the world around them.

Furthermore, we know that the family has a different sense of morality and ethics than most. All of which would leave the viewer inclined to believe that Gomez Addams would not be ashamed of being accused of murder. This is especially true had he murdered in self-defense, or in the defense of the love of his life. Thus, Gomez’s apparent shame at being arrested for a cold case murder is…odd. Yes, we know he didn’t commit the murder, but Gomez seems like the type who would proudly take the fall for his wife.

As a reminder, nobody batted an eye at Uncle Fester’s ever-expanding list of crimes. His cameo in both seasons makes it pretty clear that Fester is up to his usual antics: robbery, murder, and mayhem. Given that Wednesday celebrates this, but judges her parents for their foray into crime, makes it all the stranger.

6) The Overly Complicated Canoe

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Early in the series, Wednesday is pulled into a school event, the classic spirit building sort of event you’d expect to see at a boarding school. Sure, it’s not even remotely Wednesday’s cup of tea, but she’s been given a pretty good reason to care about how the event (called the Poe Cup) goes down.

The competition involves a canoe race to an island, during which the Sirens of the school have a natural advantage. Many teams have tried to counter this advantage by decking out their canoes, with everything from swinging axes to spears.

Truthfully, these canoes seem more complicated than effective. Take the canoe with the axe; this axe swung relatively slowly, giving plenty of time for four team members to dodge with ease. Even if they hadn’t dodged, they likely wouldn’t have gotten all that hurt. So how did the benefit outweigh the downfall? One can only imagine that added a fair bit of weight to the canoe, slowing them down. Is this complaint pedantic? Yes, and it still bugs me.

5) Nevermore’s Lack of Defense Against Siren Tactics

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Nevermore Academy is full of Outcasts, and truthfully, we have a lot of questions about them. Largely, we have to hope that future seasons will highlight a larger variety of Outcasts, while explaining details about them as they go. However, Season 1 immediately brought one important question to the forefront: Does Nevermore Academy seriously have no standard defense against Sirens?

Let’s take a step back. Sirens are known for their captivating songs, capable of mesmerizing any target. The Siren students at Nevermore can all be spotted sporting necklaces made of Corinthian Coral to help tone down their siren songs. There’s a problem with this method, as it requires the students to willingly wear the necklaces at all times. See the problem?

Bianca’s early story revelations help explain why this is a problem. Her mother all but confirms that Bianca abused her siren song as a means of gaining entry to the school. This implies that the higher-ups do not have any protection against the song. This fact is further highlighted by Principal Barry Dort, who does have his own protection. Bianca’s surprise at that speaks volumes.

4) Forced Mother/Daughter Issues

Image courtesy of Netflix

Wednesday Addams likes to think she’s different from everyone around her, yet she’s going through some pretty stereotypical teenage coming-of-age style lessons. That in itself isn’t a problem, especially as it helps make the series more appealing to a broader audience. The problem is that Wednesday and her mother have a lot of issues, and most of them feel forced.

Upon her arrival at Nevermore Academy, Wednesday begins her protests, declaring she’s nothing like her mother and that she does not want to live up to her expectations. Those declarations would make a lot more sense if Morticia were actually pressuring Wednesday to follow in her footsteps. The fact that Nevermore Academy was a backup plan makes it clear that this wasn’t their intention for Wednesday.

Yet Wednesday continues to rebel against her mother. It’s classic teenage drama, but it feels oddly trite coming from such a character. As she loves to point out, she’s bigger than this sort of drama, so why does she keep creating it for herself?

3) Where Did The Teens Get a Water Truck Full of Paint?

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Who can forget the dramatic events of the Nevermore Dance, aka the Rave’N? Unfortunately, this fantastical night was interrupted by a prank, and that leads to the next bit of confusion. A bunch of local teenagers (all normies) created a pretty clever plan to sneak onto the school grounds and dump fake blood on all the Nevermore students.

We’ll overlook how potentially suicidally stupid it is to make a bunch of werewolves and vampires mad, and focus on a different point. Part of the ingenious plan required a water truck full of watered-down red paint. First, where on Earth did they get that truck, and how did they fill it with the right proportion of paint to get that effect? Second, how did they know how to interact with the sprinkler system without triggering any alarms? Given the school’s age, the latter is probably somewhat easier to overlook, as an older system would probably have more faults.

2) Where Did Joseph Crackstone’s Staff Come From?

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Joseph Crackstone is, both directly and indirectly, the big bad of Wednesday Season 1. He’s a pilgrim from the distant past, and it’s safe to say he harbored quite the grudge against Outcasts. His grudge cost many people their lives, including his own. Ever the hypocrite, Crackstone vocally hated Outcasts, but didn’t seem to have any problem using magic for personal goals, such as revenge.

We won’t hash over all the details of his return; everyone can watch Season 1 to see how that plays out. While we have so many questions about how he and his family obtained this magical knowledge, the biggest question revolves around his staff. While alive, Joseph Crackstone can be seen holding a staff. When he’s brought back from the dead, he is again seen with a staff, though this time it’s pretty clear that it’s magical in nature. It allows him to cast spells and conjure flames, horrible things like that. Where would somebody like Crackstone have gotten this staff? It’s a big part of his backstory to just gloss over.

1) Wednesday’s Hereditary Powers

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Wednesday is an Addams through and through, and that means her solo series has her getting hereditary powers. The series reveals that Wednesday has some psychic abilities that give her visions into the past, which she immediately abuses to solve her cases.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the hereditary nature of these powers. From the beginning, viewers are informed that this is an Addams family power, going back to Goody Addams (and possibly farther than that). We know this because Goody was Wednesday’s psychic mentor, explaining why Wednesday kept having visions of her. However, Wednesday’s mother, Morticia Addams, is also a psychic who acts like an expert on the matter of Addams’ visions and abilities. To make matters more confusing, Morticia’s sister, Ophelia, is also psychic.

Notice a problem with that? Moticia famously married into the family, as she was originally a Frump. So how does she fit into the hereditary line of Addams’ powers? There is one logical explanation for this: Morticia’s family is also a descendant of Goody Addams. It would be in keeping that the Addams Family would marry distant relatives. It’s the sort of thing they’d openly discuss, and yet it hasn’t come up.

Wednesday is available to stream on Netflix.