SPOILER ALERT: The following reveals major plot points from the Season 2 finale of Netflix‘s Wednesday.
Wednesday creators expanded the lore for one beloved member of the family, some might say the right hand, in Season 2.
Thing, portrayed by Victor Dorobantu, has been a key fixture of the series and an integral part of the Addams family from the start. Season 1 viewers understood the depths of the family’s trust in Thing when patriarch Gomez Addams (Luiz Guzmán) entrusted the appendage with looking out for his only daughter, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega), during her first semester at Nevermore Academy. He did such a good job protecting the show’s protagonist that Alfred Gough and Miles Millar honored Thing in Season 2 with a magical backstory.
“There wasn’t a Thing origin story. What’s great for us with the Addams family is that there really isn’t any mythology or lore to them, other than the TV show, which is where they first got their names. And, of course, there’s the Charles Addams panels, but they didn’t have names in those. It was just called the Addams Family,” Gough explained during a chat with Deadline this week. “For us, it’s a great blank canvas to really delve into these characters and figure things out. People always ask us, ‘Where’s Thing from?’ and ‘Are you ever going to tell Thing’s origin story?’”
Millar added, “It felt like a natural idea and MacGuffin for a season. It was interesting following some of the comments. We thought it was pretty obvious from the very first moment that [Isaac/Slurp] appears, you see the hand come out of the dirt. You think that would be the big clue that gives it away. But I think many people hopefully didn’t see it and were surprised by that ending, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh my God! It was right in front of our faces the whole time.’”
In the finale, viewers learn that Thing is actually the disembodied right hand of Davinci student Isaac Night (Owen Painter), also known as Slurp the Zombie, named by Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), who accidentally revived him from beneath the Skull Tree in the woods.
“Here’s one I just literally caught this morning because I turned it on. I was watching the last episode, and in the title sequence, Thing comes out of the tree,” Gough noted.
“Originally in the title sequence, we had the end with the arm coming up out of the ground. And I said, ‘No,’ because it felt so obvious. If you’re watching the show and that’s the first episode and you see, you’re going to think, ‘Oh, it’s Thing,’” Millar added. “So we changed it to Thing coming out of the tree. From the beginning, it’s all there and planted, literally, if you’re looking for it.”
Owen Painter as Slurp in ‘Wednesday’ Season 2
Courtesy of Netflix
In the finale, Thing’s story begins to unfold when he throws himself into danger to protect Wednesday, yet again. Wednesday was being restrained by Isaac, the first part of his plan before burying her alive. Thing makes a valiant effort to outwit Isaac, who he attempted to kill with a crossbow. Unfortunately, Isaac was ready for him, and Thing was then also captured. It is in this moment that Isaac grabs hold of Thing, showing how they were connected before Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) separated them with a knife.
After sewing the appendage back onto his wrist, the Davinci takes Pugsley to fuel his crazy machine, which he plans to use to extract his sister Françoise’s Hyde ability for good. As Wednesday and her parents come to the rescue, Morticia reveals the reason she cut Thing from Isaac was because he tried the same thing with Gomez years ago. Morticia tells Thing she knows he’s still in there despite being reattached to Isaac. After Wednesday disables the machine with an axe, Isaac’s ability no longer works, and Thing attacks him.
“That’s really the emotional heart of the show, and that’s the emotional climax of the season. That’s the moment when Thing obviously separates and stumbles back to the family, his real family, and takes ownership of that,” Millar said. “It felt like that was really a moment we were driving to all season. Tim [Burton] directed it so beautifully, and it really does — we think — pack an emotional punch when you see that. It’s very bizarre, because it’s a disembodied hand and it should be moving, and I think it is.”
“It was one of the questions that came up in the writers’ room when we talked about how, in a world of outcasts, does Gomez fit into this? Why did he go to Nevermore? It led to the idea of, What if he did have powers and they were taken away from him? “And then it all combined into this moment in the climax, which we see in flashback,” Millar remarked.
He added, “The loss of his powers was interconnected with Isaac Knight and Thing’s origin story. That was the sacrifice that resulted in the confrontation with Isaac. It was in this moment that Gomez lost his power, and yet, even though he was not officially an outcast or possessed an outcast ability, Morticia’s love remained undiminished. She would never judge him less because he lost his electrical ability. That was something that speaks to their relationship, their devotion to each other, and also answers the question that an audience might ask. ‘Why is he an outcast?’ We wanted to answer that question.”
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