Wednesday's Showrunners Have Already Sketched Out At Least Three Seasons
Netflix's coming-of-age comedy series "Wednesday" is finally here, and it looks like the streaming giant has yet another success on its hands. "Smallville" co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar developed the show, with Tim Burton and Danny Elfman also lending their talents as director and composer. Jenna Ortega ("Scream") takes up the role of Wednesday, previously played by Christina Ricci. Catherine Zeta-Jones ("The Mask of Zorro"), Luis Guzmán ("Narcos"), Fred Armisen ("Portlandia"), Isaac Ordonez ("A Wrinkle in Time"), and newcomer Victor Dorobantu round out the rest of the Addams family as Morticia, Gomez, Uncle Fester, Pugsley, and Thing.
"Wednesday" puts a spin on the classic "Addams Family" story, aging the titular character up to a teenager and having her deal with the stresses of high school. It also adds many more supernatural elements to the world, with Wednesday attending Nevermore Academy, a school that houses monstrous students, including werewolves, sirens, and vampires. Wednesday herself develops psychic abilities as she works to solve a murder.
Fans and critics gave "Wednesday" positive reviews, earning it a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ortega is both literally and figuratively the star of the show, with many critics praising her performance. Roger Ebert and The Wall Street Journal agreed that her portrayal of the deadpan goth teenager elevated the show.
With all the success, it's natural for talks of subsequent seasons to arise, and it turns out the "Wednesday" showrunners are more than ready to continue the story.
There's plenty of material to continue Wednesday
"Wednesday" co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are no strangers to long-running TV shows. The duo worked together on 10 seasons of "Smallville," three for "Into the Badlands," and two seasons of "The Shannara Chronicles." Needless to say, the creative pair love coming-of-age and fantasy stories, so "Wednesday" was a familiar concept.
Both Gough and Millar recently sat down with Variety to discuss their Netflix show, including potential future seasons. From the show's earliest concept, it turns out that the duo planned ahead for numerous seasons. "For us, it's always looking at the future, and when we sit down to create a show, it's looking at multiple seasons, ideally," Millar said. "That's never expected, but that's the anticipation that hopefully the show is successful. So you always lay out at least three or four seasons' worth of potential storylines for the characters."
However, even though they outlined a plan for numerous seasons, nothing is set in stone. Millar continued to say that they left things open to see which characters become fan favorites with the audience. Those, and whoever Millar and Gough enjoy writing about, will undoubtedly get more screen time in future seasons. Hopefully, "Wednesday" fans get to experience what the creative duo has in store.
At the time of this writing, "Wednesday" still awaits a renewal, but the entire first season is streaming on Netflix.