I hate to admit Jenna Ortega is lost in latest Wednesday season 2 episodes

This review is based on the first two episodes of Wednesday season 2 part 2.

The cast announcements might have given us some inkling of the fate that would befall Wednesday season two. The names were dazzling – Joanna Lumley, Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton, Billie Piper, Christopher Lloyd – if a little numerous.

Those who watched the first part of season two will be well acquainted with most of these names, who join Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams at the fraying Nevermore Academy. Here, there are not only mysterious B-plots afoot, but C-, D- and E-plots.

With part two, we return to the Jericho fold where Wednesday is in a coma and the entire contents of the Willow Hill psyche ward have emptied out into the woodland ether – including Tyler (Hunter Doohan) and some newfound side-characters he’s rustled up on the inside, all of whom are out for ill intent. 

Conspicuously absent thus far has been Gaga, whose veteran teacher Rosaline Rotwood was held back until the September drop of four episodes, to keep the Netflix subscriber count up. The hitmaker does finally make an ethereal appearance, in will-o’-the-wisp costuming with exacting bleached brows. But by that time, it’s a headache trying to remember how exactly she relates to everything else going on.

You can’t fault this cast of heavyweights. There are just too, too many of them. The woe-centric second season might not quite have a sophomore slump, but it’s certainly contracted a case of sophomore swell.

Steve Buscemi’s principal is up to no good (Picture: Bernard Walsh/Netflix) There are not only B-plots afoot, but C-, D- and E-plots (Picture: Bernard Walsh/Netflix)

The result is that you forget certain stars are part of this spangled cast until they suddenly pop up again. It’s an incredibly disorientating experience for it to slip your mind that an actor of Steve Buscemi’s calibre is part of this piece, scheming away, until he reemerges to wreak yet more havoc on Bianca (Joy Sunday).

It’s a fate that befell the formerly-great The Bear before it. A show becomes so brilliantly big that everyone wants to be in it, whether or not there’s really space for them.

The real travesty is that this is often at the expense of Jenna Ortega’s exceptional screentime, not to mention a truly woeful dearth of Thing-content.

One bright spot is when her so-far rocky relationship with bestie Enid (Emma Myers) is set to rights with a Freaky Friday episode that allows both to play against type, even if it does come out of nowhere and feel somewhat ripped off.

This is one of the elements I would love to know Ortega’s unvarnished thoughts on – which she probably won’t share after the last pile-on.

Then again, this time around, she’s an executive producer, so perhaps it’s uncharitable to assume she wouldn’t have loved a certain inexplicable BLACKPINK-themed scene that seemed cynically engineered to be a social media-bait vehicle for the K-pop hit.

God bless Principal Weems (Picture: Bernard Walsh/Netflix)

That said, in a show that seems to care more about its increasingly po-faced and convoluted mysteries, any humour is a welcome reprieve.

Perhaps it’s a result of that mishmash of genres – and this came up in our part one review – but we are once again in an Outcast-centric universe as opposed to the contrast-laden real world one. The show is worse off for it.

None of this is to say that the second half of the season is terribly bad. Gwendoline Christie in particular makes a stellar return as Principal Weems, going toe-to-toe with Wednesday while acting as her spirit guide. The Alfred Gough- and Miles Millar-scripted dramedy still has the backbone of good TV, even as it gets tied up in knots trying to do too much. 

Perhaps this is what you get when you’re battling other screens for viewer attention. It could explain why the movement from scene to scene sometimes has the discombobulating simulated effect of scrolling from one TikTok video to another barely related one.

Wednesday season 2 part 2 is available to stream on Netflix.

Got a story?

If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us [email protected], calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.

Comments