The following contains major spoilers for the “Wednesday” Season 1 finale. Turn back if you haven’t seen it!
Wednesday Addams carves out a neogothic niche for herself in the new Netflix series “Wednesday,” from creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Once she transfers to Nevermore Academy in Jericho, Vermont, the child protegé finds herself in her element at a school for outcast children of classic monsters like werewolves, vampires, sirens and gorgons to name a few. Season 1 contains a maze of mysteries for Wednesday to solve, including her own parents’ cloudy past, a monster wreaking havoc in the nearby woods and some suspicious adult activity in regards to how Nevermore and Jericho are being run.
We get most of our answers to all the questions that arise as Wednesday pokes around in unfinished business across institutions — connected to the Jericho Sheriff Galpi (Jamie McShane), Mayor Noble Walker (Tommie Earl Jenkins), Headmistress Weems (Gwendolyn Christie) and Jericho’s historical figurehead Joseph Crackstone as well as the founder of Nevermore.
Although the path down memory lane is twisty, buckle your seatbelts, because the end is wild.
Who is the Hyde Monster?
Sheriff Galpin instructs his deputy at the beginning of the series to describe the disturbing murders in Nevermore and Jericho’s woods as bear attacks. He knows the murders are connected to Nevermore, but he doesn’t know how to prove it at first. Wednesday is the key. After clearing her father Gomez’s (Luis Guzmán) name of murder of one Garrett Gates (remember this name), Wednesday sets out to uncover the true identity of the monster murdering innocent bystanders and cutting off random body parts between the various cadavers.
Uncle Fester (Fred Armenten) suggests that the monster might be a Hyde. Wednesday then helps to find the highly-secret diary of Nathaniel Faulkner who founded Nevermore and traveled the globe observing outcasts. While reading the diary, complete with vivid sketches of the creature, Wednesday latches onto Faulkner’s description of Hydes (yes, like Jekyll and Hyde) as artistic and moody in temperament. This observation combined with Xavier Thorpe’s (Percy Hynes White) vivid psychic connection to the monster — he sketches and paints visions and pictures from the perspective of the creature — leads Wednesday to believe that Xavier is the one transforming into the beast and killing people.
“She’s an investigator and I kind of fall into the suspect category, I guess,” Percy Hynes White, who portrays Xavier, told TheWrap. “And I think I’m the only other psychic at the school who she can relate to and talk to. So that’s kind of my role in her in her story.”
Xavier also attends therapy sessions with Dr. Kinbott, Rikki Lindhome. Wednesday finds out this. Faulker’s diary also detailed that a Hyde must be unlocked by some traumatic event, so she reasons that Kinbott must be responsible because she would be the only one aware of Xavier’s true condition. He is charged with the killings. She gets him arrested, using some framing and a name that will soon be revealed.
Plot twist #1 – Xavier isn’t the Hyde. Tyler Hunter Doohan is Tyler.
Sheriff Galpin’s son masqueraded as a normie for the majority of the first season of “Wednesday,” but after Thing steals some documents from the Galpin’s garage, she confronts Tyler about it, reading that his mother, who was a Hyde, was triggered by her postpartum depression after giving brith to Tyler. Tyler learned that his mother suffered from severe bipolar disorder and that he inherited the Hyde genes. He confirms to Wednesday privately that she’s right, and he goes dark real fast.
“I found out in The audition process. They told me right before my final audition that I had a secret and I was like, ‘Is it the secret?’ They told me officially after that,” Hunter Doohan, who plays Tyler, told TheWrap. “I felt like I played two different characters, and I only got to play the real character for like, three scenes. So it was really fun to step into the real darker side of Tyler the end.”
Who is Unlocking Hyde Monster’s Secrets?
Upon further investigation into the Gates family mansion, Wednesday, Enid and Tyler discover that someone has been keeping Garrett’s sister Laurel’s bed warm, even though she supposedly drowned years ago. Wednesday finds reason to believe that not only is it the real Laurel Gates, determined to exact her father’s vendetta of ridding Jericho and the world of outcasts, but that Laurel Gates has been walking around under the alias of Dr. Kinbott, town therapist.
Wednesday receives a tip by Eugene Ottinger (MoosaM) that leads her to a new direction in her investigation. When Eugene went to check out the Hyde’s lair – a spirally cave tunnel — someone else was lurking around there, and the mysterious silhouette sets fire to the cave. Eugene was unconscious when the Hyde attacked his, but he wakes up to discover that the figure was wearing a pair of red boots.
Plot twist #2: The Hyde’s master is … Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci)!
The not-so-normie teacher used a plant-derived chemical to unlock Tyler rather than Dr. Kinbott’s hypnosis (Tyler sees Dr. Kinbott too.). Thornhill, aka Laurel Gates, must have learned about Tyler’s true identity from her father who kept tabs on all the outcasts in town, including Tyler’s mother Francois. Thornhill found the records and showed Tyler. This trauma enabled Tyler to transform into the Hyde. When Dr. Kinbott got too close to the truth, Thornhill sent Tyler morphed into the monster to kill her and pin it on Xavier, leaving Kimbott’s necklace in his art studio where he painted his disturbing psychic visions of the beast.
Wednesday is the day Thornhill (Gwendoline Christie), a confessor, makes a statement. However, Marilyn, pretending to Tyler, stabs Weems in their jugulars, injecting Nightshade into her and then kills her. Things are about get more frightening.
What about the missing body parts?
The short version is that the Gates descend from Joseph Crackstone, Jericho’s founding father. Along with the historical lineage, Crackstone passed down his malevolent desire to expunge the world of outcasts, so Laurel has tasked Tyler with killing various random people — both outcasts and normies — and taking miscellaneous body parts from them in order to construct a zombie body for the phantom Joseph Crackstone. After she knocks Wednesday out following her violent stabbing of Weems, Thornhill takes Wednesday to Crackstone’s crypt where his tomb and dead body remain. She arranges organs and limbs in jars surrounding the coffin.
Thornhill’s larger motives include carrying on the Crackstone mantle of “protecting normies from outcasts.” As revealed earlier on in the series, Garrett Gates died serving the same cause, attempting to poison all of the Nevermore student body when Gomez and Morticia attended, but falling victim to his own lethal weapon, a vial of Nightshade poison that smashed against his chest in fighting Gomez.
How is Wednesday connected to All of This
Wednesday was not only involved in what should have been largely her business but also had an ancestral connection to Jericho’s founding. It turns out her father’s predecessor Goody (also portrayed by Jenna Ortega), was one of the first outcasts who came to Jericho from Mexico. Goody originally defeated Joseph Crackstone’s efforts to exterminate all outcasts, sealing him in his sarcophogus with a blood lock. Not only did she kill him, but she cursed his soul too, and Laurel/Thornhill knows this because she took Goody’s Book of Shadows, which Wednesday searched for at Pilgrim World on Outreach Day. Wednesday’s blood, blood of a direct living descendant of Goody, is needed to break that lock on the night of a full blood moon, which is why Goody told her in an earlier vision that she is the key.
Thornhill traps Wednesday, slits her palm and unlocks Crackstone’s coffin with an incantation. Crackstone stabs Wednesday thinking she’s Goody, effectively killing her. Goody comes to Wednesday and tells her she can get through her fatal stab wound. She does this by using the necklace that her mother gave to her. The powerful talisman allows her to conjure spirits. Wednesday is healed and heads off to fight the resurrected Crackstone. After she took an arrow for Xavier and almost smothered her, Queen Bee Bianca intervened and distracted him by stabbing his back.
Goody believes Crackstone’s supernatural conjuring must be stopped. Wednesday does just that, twisting her broken sword (the one her dad and mom used to kill Garrett Gates) for good measure. Crackstone disintegrates Lord Voldemort’s style in a blast of ash and fire. Wednesday and her friends have saved their scattered community from destruction. Oh, and Eugene’s bees stop Thornhill from shooting Wednesday.
What’s Next?
Tyler the Hyde remains alive for one reason. The finale’s final shot shows Tyler being transported in hypersecure vehicles, but he awakes and transforms into the monster. Also, Crackstone’s heirloom ring is still lying around somewhere in that Nevermore pentagon quad after falling off his disintegrated corpse.
Enid, a wolf who is determined to defeat the Hyde in a last fight against Wednesday in the woods, is another noteworthy ending story point. It is also worth mentioning the heartwarming hug that Wednesday shared with Enid as she fought the Hyde. Wednesday is well-known for her dislike of color and physical touch.
Bianca said she left Nevermore to help her mother with Morning Song and their community. It is not clear if she will return, but she did hint Wednesday that they would be clinching the fencing title next year.
Wednesday will undoubtedly be her return to her haunted home. She stamps out “THE END?” on her magnificently morbid typewriter, narrating the outtro to her show. Oh, but some new stalker texts her on the new phone Xavier gets her, telling her they’re watching her.
Also, when will Season 2 be?
