Every Wednesday Season 2 Question The First Four Episodes Leave Unanswered

This article contains spoilers for season 2 of "Wednesday."

The second season of Netflix's "Wednesday" is a pleasant surprise. Not only does it bring back so many of the strongest elements of the successful first season — chief among them Jenna Ortega's superlative performance as Wednesday Addams — it also jettisons the aspects about that season that weren't working, replacing them instead with more delightfully tried and true elements. The series is now much more of an "Addams Family" show, with the entire clan more present. It also allows director Tim Burton to infuse more of his signature touches on the series, including a neat stop-motion animation sequence and a perfect blend of humor and horror.

Another noticeable change to the show is how it shifts focus a little bit more toward an episodic rather than serialized structure. Where the first season was written and paced in a similar fashion to a "all episodes streaming" Netflix series (i.e. one big story split up into arbitrary sections), each episode of "Wednesday" season 2 feels like more of a complete experience. However, creators/showrunners Alfred Gough & Miles Millar haven't done away with the series' serialized elements at all. It's still a whodunit, and it still features Wednesday dealing with mysteries. While several of these mysteries are resolved by the end of the season's first four episodes, there are still a number of questions that remain unanswered going into the back half of the season. Here are the most burning questions regarding "Wednesday" season 2 that the next four episodes of the series must address.

"Wednesday" season 2 opens with a sequence in which Wednesday recounts her summer break from Nevermore Academy for the audience. It turns out that, as part of her mastering her psychic ability thanks to her ancestor Goody Addams' book from the first season, Wednesday used her free time to track down her favorite serial killer, The Kansas City Scalper, and bring a stop to his career. Although the Scalper briefly gets the upper hand over Wednesday and threatens to add her hair to his collection of dolls, Thing (Victor Dorobantu) comes to the rescue. A newspaper clipping then reveals that Wednesday delivered the Scalper to the authorities, but only after she saw that he had been scalped himself.

Under normal circumstances, this would appear to be the end of the Scalper's story, save only for the fact that he's played by none other than Haley Joel Osment. While a name actor making a brief cameo on a prestige TV series is far from unheard of, one suspects that we haven't seen the last of the Scalper. He is clearly still alive, so could he make an escape and track down Wednesday in the back half of the season to get his revenge? Only time will tell.

This season, Nevermore Academy has a new principal, Barry Dort, played by the always delightful Steve Buscemi. As with so many new faces in positions of power, Dort's entire persona seems to be a direct response to his predecessor, the late Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie). Where Weems wanted the Outcasts of Nevermore to make an effort to reach out to the Normies of Jericho, Vermont, Dort is running Nevermore on a platform of pure Outcast pride. It's something which appears to be progressive and supportive, but could easily foster some enmity, if the encounter at Camp Jericho with the (admittedly bigoted) Ron Kruger (Anthony Michael Hall) is any indication.

In addition to his questionable politics, Dort appears to be openly capitalist, pressuring Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) to head the school's fundraising committee and manipulating Bianca (Joy Sunday) into assisting her with her Siren abilities. Is Dort merely playing hardball with trying to keep Nevermore's doors open? Or is he doing this for ulterior motives? As an overheard conversation by Bianca and her friends in episode 4 reveals, he appears to be having a phone conversation with a collaborator, telling them that he has everything "under control," whatever that may mean. Dort may pass himself off as dorky and harmless, but his Outcast ability is the creation and manipulation of fire. So, like his ability, he may be more dangerous than he seems.

Speaking of Bianca, she's got her hands full even without Dort's blackmailing. Unbeknownst to anyone else at first, Bianca has absconded her mother, Gabrielle (Gracy Goldman), away from the scamming cult "MorningSong" that she'd been a part of during the first season. For most of the first few episodes of season 2, Bianca is keeping Gabrielle hidden in The Inn at Apple Hollow while the authorities are raiding the MorningSong encampment and arresting its members. However, thanks to Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) causing a ruckus in the Inn in order to get himself committed to Willow Hill sanitarium, the police find Gabrielle unregistered in one of the rooms, and bring her to the station for questioning.

In the fourth episode, "If These Woes Could Talk," Bianca enlists the help of Ajax (Georgie Farmer) to go to the police station and rescue her mother by using her Siren ability. Bianca and Ajax then smuggle Gabrielle onto the Nevermore campus, avoiding Principal Dort as they mention their plan to hide her in one of the classrooms. Will this plan work? Can Bianca (and Gabrielle) use their Siren powers to keep their secrets forever?

Every good whodunit needs a good red herring, and for the first half of season 2, Isadora Capri (Billie Piper) is that very herring. In addition to Willow Hill's Dr. Rachel Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton), Isadora is on the top of the list of Wednesday's suspects for who the mysterious Avian killer might be. However, as with many whodunits, the real killer turns out to be someone almost wholly unexpected by the characters or the audience: Judi Stonehurst (Heather Matarazzo), the daughter of one of Willow Hill's ex-head doctors. Judi confesses that Dr. Fairburn was actually her subordinate, and not the other way around, so the woman who was apparently acting as a front for Judi must have had her secrets. Sadly, we may not learn too many of them, as Rachel finds herself eaten by Slurp (Owen Painter) at the end of the fourth episode.

Yet Isadora is still very much alive, and she appeared to have some sort of relationship with Dr. Fairburn, with the woman hiring her to teach music therapy classes at Willow Hill. Isadora seems highly interested in Wednesday, challenging the girl on her cello technique and goading her into joining a special orchestra that she's putting together for an upcoming fundraising gala. Is this just foreshadowing for an episode in the back half of the season set during this gala? Similar to Haley Joel Osment, it's suspicious to hire an actress like Piper only to have her simply be a minor red herring. I'd expect Isadora has some secrets that we'll learn in the next four episodes.

One of the more delightfully grisly subplots of the first half of season 2 is the saga of Slurp, who is a zombie that Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) inadvertently resurrects and decides to try and keep as a pet. Slurp appears to be the corpse of the "Skull Tree Kid," an old Nevermore student who used to be a brilliant scientist before one of his experiments went awry and his body was buried beneath the school's Skull Tree. The Kid passed into Nevermore urban legend, but Pugsley's discovery indicates that there was some truth to the story that Ajax passes on to his fellow students.

However, Slurp isn't talking, at least not at first. Initially, he appears to be your average zombie on a never-ending hunt for food, especially human brains. However, Pugsley and his roommate Eugene (Moosa Mostafa) discover that with each brain Slurp consumes, he appears to be growing his own brain back, and is thus becoming more intelligent after every snack. By the end of episode four, Slurp appears to be regaining the memories and personality of whoever he was in life, as he encounters the mute paraplegic Augustus Stonehurst and recognizes him by saying "Hello, old friend" just before he consumes the old man's cranium. It's a good bet that we'll be learning a lot more about Slurp — including what his name really is — in the rest of the season.

The biggest mystery that hangs over "Wednesday" season 2 concerns Wednesday herself and the entire Addams clan. Despite initially believing that she's mastered her psychic ability with the help of Goody's book, Wednesday rapidly begins to lose control of it during the first episode, with her visions failing to manifest and black bloody tears appearing the few times a vision does occur. Her final vision, which seems to be a warning that her friend and roommate Enid (Emma Myers) will die for reasons that are Wednesday's fault, causes Morticia to insist that Wednesday be permanently separated from Goody's book. This all has to do with the secret history of Morticia's ill-fated sister, Ophelia, a history that none of the elder Addams clan are eager to talk about.

By the end of the first half of the season, Wednesday has only managed to discover that, like her, Ophelia had a psychic ability and, like her, began to suffer black bloody tears when using it too often. Shortly after this, Grandmama (Joanna Lumley) had Ophelia sent to Willow Hill, and so far the story ends there. Surely there's more to be revealed, especially whether or not Ophelia might still be alive. We know the Addams Family love to have skeletons in their closet, but this is one that needs to be let out sooner rather than later.

As part of the reveal of Judi as the Avian killer, Wednesday learns that Judi is not a natural Outcast, but a born Normie who volunteered to be a part of her father's experimental project known as LOIS (Longterm Outcast Integration Study), which sought to find a way to give Normies Outcast abilities. While the experiment backfired in Augustus' case, it succeeded with Judi, who has now become an Avian. It turns out that all the Outcasts who've been captured and experimented on over the years have been secretly kept alive in the bowels of Willow Hill while their deaths were faked for the authorities. Thanks to Wednesday and Fester, the patients are able to finally escape, and the incarcerated Outcasts initially turn their eye toward enacting their revenge on Judi.

Yet Judi appears to escape in all the chaos, so unlike Fairburn and her father, she's very likely alive. What will she do now that her secret's out and her cover's blown — attempt to continue her experiments? Seek revenge on Wednesday? Some combination of the two? For that matter, what will happen to the now freed LOIS patients? Will they get to go back to their lives? Will some (or all) of them go back to Nevermore? And what's with that seemingly harmless woman that Wednesday personally escorts to safety — does she know Ophelia, or perhaps could she be Ophelia?

Before the series can address all of those larger questions, there are two immediate matters at hand to clear up once the back half of season 2 begins. The first is what's to be done about Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), the killer Hyde from the first season who spends the majority of these initial four episodes chained inside Willow Hill. After being freed by Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci), Tyler kills her, proving he's no longer under her thrall as his master. Is Tyler his own master now? Or does he have a new, heretofore unseen master, someone who's pulling his Hyde strings? After all, as Fairburn and others mention several times, a Hyde must always have a master.

Certainly Tyler needs no master to have murderous impulses toward Wednesday, the girl who foiled his plans and put him in chains. So, while it's not a huge stretch to wonder why Tyler seemingly kills Wednesday at the end of episode four by hurling her down onto the street through an upstairs window, one must ask if he happens to be working on the orders of someone else. In addition, while it's extremely unlikely that Wednesday is actually dead, the incident does beg the question of what will happen to her and how she'll get out of it. A secret preview trailer of the back half of season 2 reveals that Wednesday is less dead than she claimed, and has simply gone into a coma, which she eventually wakes up from. But how much time has passed, and will Wednesday be too late to save Enid and solve Nevermore's mysteries? We have to wait until September 3, 2025 to find out the answers.

"Wednesday" season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.