Since it shattered records around the world with Season 1, Wednesday is no longer just a TV series; it’s a sensory universe in which every detail, big and small, matters in its chilling, tactile, and delightfully dark look and feel. With Tim Burton directing the series and creators Al Gough and Miles Millar back at the helm, you know that every costume, hairstyle, fireplace, and piece of zombie prosthetics was dreamed up with wicked inventiveness and with a keen eye to storytelling. They’ve cranked up the volume on everything in Season 2 as our antihero Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) faces ever more sinister danger and uncovers shocking secrets at Nevermore Academy.

“Season 1 was a table-setter, and we saw a lot of the world, but there’s still a lot of the world left to see,” says Gough. In Season 2, Millar says, “We had a broader canvas and more toys to play with. The world of Nevermore is really expanded — and we had a great time doing it.” In addition to upping the scale of Wednesday’s universe, the crew moved production entirely from Romania, where Season 1 was filmed, to its new home in moody, gothic Ireland. (More on this below in the “Locations” section). Wednesday isn’t exactly the type of girl to embrace change — but the team absolutely did, and it was an epic effort.

“It’s just unbelievable, this world that was created,” says Catherine Zeta-Jones, who’s back as Morticia Addams in a much larger role in Season 2. “It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s hair and makeup, our costumes, our set designers, our sound people, our cinematographers, the new actors coming in. It’s just endless. We had a whole studio in Ireland and it was like our own world. We were in morning, noon, and night. I’m telling you, I wish everybody could have come in and just be here and see it and feel it. It’s just magic here.”

Even amid the sprawling and vibrant production, the dead-eyed amateur sleuth and aspiring author remains the desiccated soul of the series. “The show has always been about the characters at the heart of it and who Wednesday is,” says Burton. “No matter what gets a little bit bigger this season, all those elements remain the same.”

Scroll through, if you dare, to see how the creative team brought Wednesday back to life for the second season.

Season 2’s costume conjurers — Academy Award–winner Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland — set out to sharpen and darken each character’s style without altering their essence. “We start with mood boards, and then from the mood boards we start to think about what sort of style we want to introduce to each character,” says Sutherland. Step inside the fitting room of Nevermore’s most influential trendsetters, from first sketch to final stitch.

WEDNESDAY

One thing to understand about Wednesday Addams (Ortega): She doesn’t adhere to most people’s ideas of “personal evolution,” so don’t expect drastic switch-ups in personal style, either. “We kept her in her monochrome world,” says Academy Award–winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, who also led costuming last season. “She isn’t a person who’s obsessed with clothes or thinks about them. She’s a very unconscious dresser.”

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MERRITT

Still, Wednesday’s colorless world has gotten more complicated since Season 1, now that she’s — gasp — popular, not to mention the most visible outcast on campus. The shift is reflected in her signature look, but subtlety remains key. “We elevated it without it making the look too ‘fashion’ because she’s not that girl,” says Mark Sutherland, co-costume designer this season. One notable exception to Wednesday’s no-glam policy is the look she wears to the Episode 7 gala — but even that couture stunner is within character, reflecting the fact that “she’s not thrilled to be at the party,” as Atwood notes. (Keep scrolling to see Wednesday and the rest of the cast in their full gala glory).

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MERRITT

As Wednesday goes all in on her identity as a truth-seeking teen detective, she adds a new piece to her daily uniform. “I’ve got a really cool ’60s detective coat on for a majority of the season that cuts off,” says Jenna Ortega. “It has that flap all around, from the arms up. It looks pretty cool. Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland were very excited when we saw this coat.”

ENID

Minimalist? Our favorite werewolf, played by Emma Myers, doesn’t know the meaning of the word, especially now that she’s discovered a newfound confidence. “She’s come back, she’s got Instagram fame, so she’s basically walking the red carpet of Nevermore,” says Sutherland.

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MERRITT

For Season 2, Enid is pumping up the volume. “The palette and the energy of Enid’s clothes are reflective of Japanese street style,” says Atwood. “We shopped for Enid’s clothes mainly in New York City. A lot of her clothes we found in Brooklyn and we had fun with adding a slight New York street vibe, which I think is a little more adult, but definitely a nod toward New York meets Japan.”

“The idea is that she has a bespoke version of her own uniform,” says Sutherland. “Just to give her the new edgy look. She’s wolfed out, she’s got her confidence, she was the star of the show when she left Season 1.”

MORTICIA

Wednesday’s mother, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) swoops into Nevermore Academy this season, and she paints it black … and red. The matriarch’s iconic curve-hugging dress now has a fiery pop of color. “In her new hero look, we have a red panel in the skirt and inserts of red in the sleeve,” says Sutherland.

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MERRITT AND BARBRA ARAUJO

“We were able to play and to really push the envelope a bit but also completely stay in character,” says Zeta-Jones. 

Unlike her daughter, though, Morticia isn’t satisfied sticking to one or two signature looks. In Season 2, Morticia serves versatility in the form of a look for every vibe, whether she’s in her work dress (the costume team calls it the “campaign dress”), in her glamping getup at Camp Jericho, or lounging in her “Morticia at home” outfit. 

GRANDMAMA HESTER FRUMP

Hester Frump, Mortificia’s mother, swans into Nevermore in Season 2, and we soon learn she’s the outrageously wealthy mogul behind Frump Mortuaries — and even more impressively, she’s one of the few people for whom Wednesday cracks a smile. While Morticia has frosty relations with Hester, Wednesday calls her “Grandmama.” Shocking, right?

PHOTO BY BERNARD WALSH

Grandmama is played by the British acting icon Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous fame. “At the top of our list was Joanna Lumley,” says Millar of casting the actor. “Joanna just inhabited this role. And the hair and makeup — she has this extraordinary wig.”

To dress a matriarch this fabulous, no expense could be spared. “When we were researching Hester, we were looking at images of ’50s and ’60s couture,” says Sutherland. A major inspiration for Grandmama’s look is fashion designer and socialite Daphne Guinness — and with a bit of an edge, as evidenced by the lace-up boots. “For Hester, money’s no object, so she would have the highest couture clothes made for her,” says Sutherland. “Colleen and I were in London and we found a lot of high-end, new, Japanese designers.” 

Lumley has no complaints. “I got to wear many, many huge wigs, one on top of the other — and lots of quite constraining clothes, so I loved it,” she says.

A GALA WORTH DYING FOR

Behind the Fashion of Wednesday: Costumes and Iconic Looks of Season 2

Morticia does nothing halfway, so when it’s finally time for the gala she’s been planning all year in Episode 7, all attendees better dress to distress. And adherence to the theme — Venetian masquerade ball — is non-negotiable. The costumes team had to match Morticia’s ambitions, sourcing hundreds of costumes from rental houses as well as creating custom looks. “Some [pieces] were manufactured in costume houses, some were manufactured in-house, some were manufactured by makers that we know in Italy and in England,” says Atwood. The idea was to maintain the period theme but modernize it. For instance, for Wednesday’s goth-chic aesthetic, Ortega’s personal hairstylist and makeup artist Nirvana Jalalvand mixed references from braided Victorian hairstyles and Dior for the character’s hair; British punk rock star Siouxsie Sioux was the inspiration for Wednesday’s makeup. 

Sutherland says, “The day we first got everybody dressed — all 200 extras and the principals  –– when we saw it as a whole with the lighting, the sets, with this gondola coming through the whole set underneath the bridge with Hester and Dort — to see it all in one place, it was really special.

The costume team remade Gomez’s iconic three-piece pinstripe suit from scratch, and Pugsley clashes his recognizable horizontal-striped sweater with the vertical stripes of the Nevermore blazer. “It’s a bit off, but it works,” says Sutherland.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Where was Wednesday Season 2 filmed?

Well, that’s a whole saga. Season 1 filmed primarily in Romania, home of the legendary vampire Dracula. For Season 2, Wednesday packed up and headed to another locale with high gothic cred: Ireland, which happens to be home of Dracula’s creator, Bram Stoker.

The Emerald Isle turned out to be the perfect stomping grounds for our chilly-hearted, literary-minded outcast. “Everything about Ireland fits the sensibility of the show,” says Millar. “We have incredible woods. We have beautiful castles. We have the lush greens, the gray skies. Even though it was summer, some nights were very cold. We were shivering, but it looked fantastic.”

Principal photography began in May 2024 and took place over six months, primarily at Ashford Studios in County Wicklow, Ireland, and many other locations in Dublin, County Offaly, and County Wicklow. “There’s something very magical about the light in Ireland that really lends itself to the show and gives it something that’s very unique and special that translates to the screen,” says Millar. “Even though the show is set in Vermont, it makes it feel more aesthetically like a Tim Burton setting.”

If there was a theme for the locations used in Season 2, it would be forests, forests, forests. “There are many good forests close by,” location manager Maria O’Connor says. “We required so many forests for the show.”

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Perhaps the most important forest to get right was the one surrounding Nevermore Academy. The locations team found the perfect gothic fortress, Charleville Castle in County Offaly, which provided great continuity from the Romanian location in Season 1 — but that was the easy part.

“We also had to replicate the gates of the school,” says O’Connor. “That was quite difficult because where the original one was in Romania, the trees were in a certain place, and the road was configured in a certain way. To try to find that in Ireland was tricky, but we ended up on this private estate in Roundwood.” The synchronicity of what the team eventually found was downright spooky. “[A crew member] who had been [on set] in Romania could not believe the similarity between the original and what we re-created. There was a tree in the exact same spot where there was a tree in Romania.” Straight out of one of Wednesday’s visions.

Coming as a surprise to exactly no one, Wednesday is right at home in a cemetery, and several different locations — including forests — were used to bring together the Nevermore Cemetery. Among them: Powerscourt Estate’s gardens and redwoods for atmosphere; an old school building at Clermont for the shed where Pugsley and Eugene hide Slurp (Owen Painter); and Deansgrange Cemetery as the site of the mausoleum, which was built as a standing set — all perfectly, beautifully morbid.

Episode 3 takes a field trip to Camp Jericho campground to show Nevermore House pride, and the production team built the outdoor set by the dramatic Powerscourt Waterfall. “We did a massive set build there, and that took about six weeks of prep, and then we shot there for most of Episode 3, so we got great production value out of that,” says O’Connor.

The Powerscourt Estate was vital to building the world of Wednesday — and luckily, you can visit it yourself. “Powerscourt House is [from the] mid-1700s, and the gardens are [from] the 1800s, and then there was the fire in the early 1970s, when the house was essentially destroyed and the whole roof had to be completely replaced,” O’Connor explains. “When that happened, another family might have just decided that that’s the end of that, but the Slazenger family [that now owns the estate] decided, ‘Why not reconfigure the house not as a family home, but as a tourist destination?’ You have the beautiful gardens, so they reconfigured it and it’s a hugely successful tourist destination now.”

Throughout Season 2, we pay several visits to the spooky, raucous outcast asylum Willow Hill. We can’t help but think the real-life use of the building that stood in for Willow Hill would delight Wednesday — if, in fact, Wednesday were ever delighted by anything. “We took over Clonliffe College, which was an old priest training college in Drumcondra, for about three months,” says O’Connor. It was perfect for the important new location: “It was the scale of it and the big long corridors, the big gothic corridors, which worked really well with where they’d shot in Season 1, so it just fit really nicely with the show,” she explains.

The expansion of Wednesday allowed the production design team, led by Mark Scruton and Philip Murphy, to break a lot of new ground in bringing the distinctive atmosphere of the series to life again. Here are some of the new spaces and details that make Wednesday look like Wednesday.

“We’ve got some animal heads,” says Scruton. “We’ve even got a tortoise. Keen eyes would’ve noticed that the original ’60s show had one of those in the background of the set.”

PHOTO BY OWEN BEHAN

The previously mentioned flash of red in Morticia’s outfits was created in tandem with production design, reflecting one of the many moments of creative synchronicity during production of Season 2. Early in the season, Morticia takes over Rotwood Cottage, previously occupied by Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci) and infuses it with her certain je ne sais quoi. And it’s a treasure trove of spooky-chic objets de art.

“We went in with lots of nice deep red colors in the furnishings to really punch that up,” says Scruton. “We definitely dug into some references from the original show, as well as in some of the dressing that is hidden away.” (See above.) The cottage interiors took nine weeks to build, and for the exterior, O’Connor found the perfect spot for the inviting yet sinister little cottage in the woods. “In the end, we ended up putting a miniature in a forest, Cloragh Woods, which is close to Ashford,” the location manager says.

Keep your eyes peeled (but preferably not bleeding black blood) for hidden details in every frame. Panels of wallpaper throughout the season depict various Poe stories, including “Ligeia,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,”and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Set decorator Neville Gaynor also created wallpaper based on the illustrations of Irish stained-glass artist Harry Clarke.

PHOTO BY JONATHAN HESSION, ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE MCKENDRY

NEVERMORE HOUSE PRIDE

PHOTOS BY HELEN SLOAN (OPHELIA), JONATHAN HESSION (THISBIE, CALIBAN)

We’re already honorary members of Ophelia House, home of Wednesday and Enid’s dual-personality dorm room, and in Season 2, we get to explore the other houses of Nevermore Academy — Caliban, Thisbie, and Puck — each with its own visual style. The costume department collaborated with Scruton to create Varsity jackets and other house merch that the students wear. Sutherland recalls, “I looked into different artworks for those different characters from Shakespeare to see if there was a thread of color. Luckily enough, Mark [Scruton] had  similar ideas for the colors. Then the art department designed the motifs for each one.”

Season 2 introduces a new space, Iago Clock Tower, which is a dangerous and crumbling structure with a deeper history at Nevermore. It’s the site of Agnes’ “prank” in Episode 2, but the even more nefarious purpose for its existence — Augustus Stonehearst’s cruel experiments on outcasts — isn’t revealed until later. It was a “massive build” for Scruton’s team. “The real challenge was that the full purpose of the clock tower only becomes clear in the final episode,” Scruton says, “so we had to reverse-engineer everything to make sure it would support that reveal — both physically and story-wise."

The courtyard has been completely reimagined for Season 2, and each element was planned in miniature before it was created atepic scale — including this large sculpture of a werewolf. “In everything we do, we start off with models,” says Scruton. “We make sure we get every detail right before we commit to building the final thing.”

PHOTOS BY HELEN SLOAN (COURTYARD), BERNARD WALSH (STATUE)

After Season 1, the courtyard at Nevermore Academy was destroyed, so for Season 2, the outdoor space where our favorite outcasts bond, play out social hierarchies, and curse each other with magic has been expanded in the new Ireland location. The new courtyard is referred to as “the Link.” “We wanted it to feel like a natural evolution of the Nevermore world — familiar yet refreshed — while still tying back to our original location at Cantacuzino Castle,” says Scruton. “To preserve that visual continuity, all the brickwork was cast from molds taken directly in Romania, ensuring the texture and tone remained consistent.”

There’s much to gawk at in the Link. The gargoyles are custom-designed and even include a few familiar faces from Season 1. “The new gargoyles were all custom-designed, many of them subtly reflecting characters from the academy, just as we did before,” says Scruton. You also might notice a large window, which is the focal point of the space, was modeled after real-life Charleville Castle (a popular ghost-hunting site in County Offaly, Ireland). “Other standout features include stained-glass windows emblazoned with the Nevermore crest, and a towering stone werewolf with a perfectly positioned rock that Principal Dort (Steve Buscemi) uses to make announcements,” says Scruton. “We also added a Venetian-style bridge and a colonnade balcony — both offering quieter, more intimate spaces for character-driven scenes.” There’s also a new coffee stand, The Tell-Tale Cafe, a nod to the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” replacing the Weathervane from Season 1, which is now off-limits to students after the chaos in Jericho.

For the bachelor pad Thing deserves, model maker Mark Maher combined the “dark wood of the Addams family” with the “bright world of Enid.” Comes complete with tiny creature comforts: a beanbag chair, shower cap, even a bottle labeled Maher’s Malt.

When you’re watching a Tim Burton production, you know it. There’s a distinctive, otherworldly energy — but it’s way more than a vibe. The returning director helms multiple episodes this season, including Episode 1, and has set the tone since the beginning of Season 1. 

“We have worked with Tim for nearly five years between the first season of Wednesday and then on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” says Gough. “So we have a real shorthand with him, which is great. But the challenge was, ‘How do we top Season 1?’ There’s more story, more characters, more scope, and we really embraced that.”

While Burton’s artistic imprint infuses every frame, there are elements of Wednesday Season 2 that are especially Tim Burton. Let’s explore those in excruciatingly engaging detail.

Watch the Stop-Motion Animation Sequence from Wednesday Season 2

Initially, the writers conveyed the mythology of the Skull Tree in Episode 1 in a more straightforward manner — but then saw an opportunity to infuse the season with even more style. “We thought, ‘This is just boring, so how do we make it special and unique and very Tim?’ ” recalls Millar. The answer was clear: a stop-motion animation sequence.

Gough and Millar pitched the idea to Burton — who has famously directed the stop-motion classics The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie — who loved it. The stop-motion animation began with a design concept and miniature model from the Wednesday team. Scruton then had to fly the mini model to Burton to get it approved; the model even had its own seat. (Hopefully it had an easier time getting past TSA than Wednesday did in the Season 2 premiere).

Team Wednesday partnered with Mackinnon & Saunders, a stop-motion studio that has worked with Burton on past projects. The firm’s executive producer Ian Mackinnon says of Burton’s aesthetic, “Tim’s an amazing artist. He’s drawing every day on napkins in restaurants, in his notepad. It’s a great way of communication as well for him to put his thoughts and feelings down onto paper.”

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIM BURTON

The sequence lasts about 60 seconds but took two-and-a-half months of painstaking work … which isn’t to say it’s perfect. In fact, it’s intentionally imperfect. A central philosophy of Burton’s aesthetic is that nothing should look too clean, too expected. Burton’s vision for the stop-motion story was that it should look like it was created by an art student in 1937 Prague — a telling example of his specificity.

The Clockwork Heart itself epitomizes the artfully cobbled-together quality the team was going  for. “We used lots of found objects,” says director of animation Chris Tichborne, who worked with Burton on Corpse Bride, “and soldered them together to create all the workings and the intricacies, but slightly crudely. It’s still beautiful, but just imagine a student making something like that.”

PHOTO BY OWEN BEHAN

Scruton knows there’s no detail too minor on a Burton project. “Visually, we’ve always worked to stay true to Tim Burton’s aesthetic sensibilities,” the production designer says. “Throughout the sets, you’ll find subtle references and homages — not just to Tim’s own work, but to things we know inspire him. Take the organ in the music room, for example. If you look closely, you’ll spot touches inspired by Ray Harryhausen — some of the gargoyles and figures perched atop the organ were designed as a tribute to that stop-motion, gothic fantasy world. It’s all about layering the visual language with references that enrich the world without overwhelming it.”

Keep an eye on the fireplaces throughout the series –Wednesday’s fireplace game is strong, and very intentional. “We set our bar very high last season with fireplaces,” says Scruton. For one, check out the tree-shaped hearth in Morticia’s cottage, a Shakespeare-inspired one in Caliban Hall, and the one in Principal Dort’s  office, which is carried over from Principal Weems’s office in Season 1.

PHOTO BY OWEN BEHAN

NOT YOUR AVERAGE ZOMBIE

Another very Burtonesque element to Season 2 is Slurp (Owen Painter), Pugsley’s zombie friend. (Or is he more of a pet?) VFX supervisor Tom Turnbull says, “As with Season 1, there are certain things that Tim really cares about. This season, Slurp was a big one. He really cared about how that creature would be represented … We just stood back and let him do it, because he’s going to take it somewhere, and then we’re going to be able to take that and make it better and more believable.”

Slurp couldn’t be any old zombie. “We had to capture our Wednesday essence of a zombie that has the traits and the characteristics and the visual look that suits the show,” says prosthetics manager Tristan Versluis.

It took between three and five hours every day to prepare Owen Painter to play Slurp the zombie — the process originally took about 10 hours. The actor needed to put on body prosthetics, a full prosthetic head, and elaborate costuming all before heading to set. 

It takes a whole lot of work to look this undead. “Slurp has a hollow head,” says Turnbull. “He’s got a big hole on the side of his head and we had to hollow that out. He’s missing his nose; it’s just an open hole. When he first comes out of the ground, he’s in pretty bad shape. And it’s also revealed as we go along that his jaw can open up extra wide — a distended jaw — and he has a giraffe tongue that he uses to eat brains. Those are all things that we have to work on and integrate with Owen.”

Television’s most macabre family has lived in the cultural zeitgeist for many decades, but it might come as a surprise that despite the earlier series, films, and cartoons, there isn’t a huge amount of pre-existing canonical Addams family lore. 

“What’s interesting about the Addams family is that prior to the ’60s TV show, they didn’t even have names,” says Gough. “They were just panels, so that’s where they got their name. So you really had that show and the ’90s movies. People love the Addams family, but they don’t know much about them.”

That’s given the creators a broad canvas to explore and add to the Addams canon in Season 2. “One of the most interesting things about Wednesday is the Addams family mythology,” says Burton. “We’ve grounded that element of the story so that we could identify real family issues that happen in real life. Past iterations can skew more cartoony, and we’re bringing it back to real emotions, real feelings, real family issues.”

INTERGENERATIONAL WOES

Digging into the complex relationship between Wednesday and Morticia was fertile ground for Gough and Millar. Whether or not your family is also in the mortuary business, you might find the dynamic among the Addams women surprisingly relatable. “We both have teenage daughters, so seeing the mother-daughter relationship is something that we’re very familiar with, and the dynamic of teenage girls and their mothers is fantastic drama,” says Millar. And adding Grandmama Hester Frump takes the familial drama to another level. “Hester can see that Wednesday is sometimes irritated by or disobedient toward her mother, and she rather loves that,” says Lumley of her character. “She fans the flames.”

As the star as well as serving as an executive producer of the series, Ortega was committed to getting the mother-daughter dynamic right. “Season 2 was important to me,” she says. “It’s a little bit hard, because obviously teenagers are always going to butt heads with their parents. I tried my best to leave in moments where we actually see them [appearing] alike in certain ways, or at least [having] a bit more respect for each other.”

We get to see new sides to the Addams men as well. Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) enrolls at school this year, which is a major thorn in Wednesday’s side. Although he arrives at Nevermore with a zap and a bang, Pugsley’s social life starts with a fizzle. “He really wants to fit in and he really wants a friend,” says Ordonez, but that’s easier said than done. Luckily, Gomez (Luis Guzmán) is around to provide morbid and moral support. “I’m just helping my son with his self-confidence and his self-esteem,” says Guzmán. “I love him. I want him to make it. I want him to be comfortable. I want him to be secure with himself. I want him to know that as a father, I really do love him and care about him, and I’ll help him in any way I can.”

NEW MYSTERIES

At the heart of Morticia and Wednesday’s conflict is Morticia’s concern for her only daughter — which our fiercely independent antihero can’t stand. In Season 2, Wednesday’s Raven powers, which enable her to see the future, are suddenly glitching, which is causing those terrifying black tears. “Morticia is desperately trying to help Wednesday recover her power, but Wednesday is resisting,” says Millar. And the answer to her dilemma may lie in the broader Addams family tree, the likes of which have never been explored in such depth.

To help uncover some of the answers that Wednesday needs, her beloved Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) is back, and in Season 2, we learn a whole lot of delightfully disturbing information about his past (which just might help solve some of Wednesday’s woes). Gough says, “We were able to expand his role because it was so much fun to have Fester in the show, and you just got a taste of it in Season 1.”

One shocker (pun intended) from Fester’s backstory: He’s been a patient at Willow Hill before.

All right, we can’t pretend this is too surprising, but the reason why is a real surprise. His history at Willow Hill makes him the perfect spy to infiltrate the facility and pass information back to his niece.

“What I like about the role of Uncle Fester is that he’s kind of a loner,” says Armisen. “He is on the outside of it all. He’s in the family, but just off on his own adventures. And he and Wednesday, even though they’re related, they’re also friends and they like each other, so they help each other out. Even with the spooky quality to everything, there’s an optimism to it too. It’s still somehow happy and positive even though it doesn’t look that way. Then the way the story unfolds in Season 1 and in Season 2, it grows and gets more mysterious, and I love that.”

Talk about committing to the bit — Armisen actually shaved his head to achieve Fester’s iconic chrome-dome look. He also posed for every single one of the photos the art department used to make 33 fake driver’s licenses and 18 passports, embodying a wild range of alter egos from “Fester Diabolik” to “Fester Fiesta.”

Of course, Wednesday’s aunt Ophelia is the most shadowy figure in the extended Addams Family, and by the finale of Season 2, we get some answers … but still have many more questions. Morticia’s missing sister was a powerful Raven like Wednesday, and in a disturbing parallel, also suffered from the same affliction: crying black tears. Before she vanished 20 years ago, Ophelia was committed to Willow Hill by her mother, despite Morticia’s protestations. All season, Morticia has been motivated by her fear of Wednesday flying the same path as Ophelia, but the mother’s vice grip on her daughter finally loosens. The same Morticia who burned Goody’s book earlier in the season now hands Ophelia’s journal to Wednesday. “That’s frankly a big step for her, realizing that she’s not a little girl anymore,” says Gough.

Good thing bad luck comes in threes, because Wednesday has already been greenlit for a third season, and Addams family dysfunction is far from resolved. In the final scene this season, set in the basement of Grandmama’s mansion, we get a peek at Aunt Ophelia. It’s a major moment when we realize she’s not missing anymore.

“With everything in the Addams family, the mysteries always lie within the family,” says Gough. “That glimpse of Ophelia is what’s going to lead us into the next season and potentially the darkest chapter of the Addams family.” Millar says, ominously: “The Addams family love each other, but they also love secrets and lying to each other. It’s that juxtaposition of love and lies.”

Let that portentous tease haunt your thoughts until Season 3. In the meantime, all eight episodes of Season 2 are streaming and screaming now, only on Netflix.