Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke to Variety about the finale’s wildest moments and their plans for future seasons.
This interview contains spoilers from Season 1 of “Wednesday,” now streaming on Netflix.
Wednesday Addams cracked the case. Everyone’s favorite macabre teen made her triumphant return to screens in “Wednesday,” produced by Tim Burton, facing her toughest battle of all: high school at Nevermore Academy.
The title character, played by Jenna Ortega, spends the majority of the Netflix series’ first season consumed by a murder mystery she believes herself to be at the center of that involves both Nevermore and Jericho, the town in which the school is located.
In the season finale, it’s uncovered that Nevermore teacher Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, who played the Wednesday character in Barry Sonnenfeld’s “The Addams Family” movies) is actually Laurel Gates, a descendant of Jericho’s founder, Joseph Crackstone. Wednesday reveals the botany teacher’s treachery to Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), who gets a poisoned syringe to the throat and dies in Wednesday’s arms.
After collecting body parts using Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), who’s actually the “Hyde” monster terrorizing Nevermore, Laurel revives Crackstone with hopes of ending the outcasts once and for all. A tense standoff with Wednesday’s allies by her side leads to Crackstone’s final downfall, and the capture of Tyler and Laurel.
While the finale provides a satisfying conclusion to the season’s biggest mystery, it still leaves a fair number of questions: Did Tyler escape from custody? Who sent that threatening text to Wednesday’s new phone? And who will take over as Nevermore’s principal?
Showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke to Variety about all of these cliffhangers, as well as the finale’s biggest twists, working with Ortega on the set in Bucharest, Romania, finding a hand magician actor to play Thing — and their plans for further seasons.
I was surprised to see Thornhill revealed as the villain in the finale. Was that character always going to be the villain, or did plans change when Christina Ricci joined the cast?
Alfred Gough: Thornhill was always the big bad. She was the brains behind the whole operation. We actually thought when we cast Christina, it was going to be such a frickin’ blinking red light over her. We were concerned that, “Oh, my God, are people just gonna guess this.” But I think what really helped is that we had great actors and actresses, frankly, in all the big roles. You have Gwendoline [Christie] and you have Riki [Lindhome]. You’ve watched it on television: “I wonder who the villain is? It’s probably the biggest name on the marquee!” In this case, I feel like they were sort of evenly dispersed.
Miles Millar: Obviously, this is our first whodunnit. The idea of people guessing too soon, it’s like you think that she could be, but it’s so obvious, then it’s not. I think it’s like a dance of hopefully an audience guessing until the end. And then once the Riki character is killed, you think OK, well, that’s that done. So it’s just the monster planned by himself. That’s great that you that you were you were taken by surprise.
