It’s not that The Addams Family ever left pop culture: in 2019 and 2021, for instance, two animated films were released by Universal that grossed over 300 million dollars combined (with a cost of only 47 million). With Jenna Ortega as the lead, it can be said that Netflix wasn’t taking too much of a risk with the release of Wednesday in 2022. What no one expected was that it would be the absolute hit that it was: 341 million hours viewed worldwide (more than Stranger Things) earned it an immediate renewal. And here we are, of course… Although it wasn’t always like this for the youngest Addams.
Tiririrí, chas, chas
Lost among adaptations, not everyone knows that The Addams Family was originally a comic strip published in The New Yorker for 50 years. In total, its author, Charles Addams (by coincidence), published only 150 cartoons of a macabre family filled with dark humor… that did not have a proper name. In fact, Wednesday Addams did not appear in the strip for six years, until August 26, 1944, when Morticia told her daughter “Come on, don’t come crying to me. Tell him you’ll poison him back”, while Pugsley, the boy, looked through the door.
For 18 years, the character had no name, simply being one more of the Addams, until in 1962 the FAO Schwartz store decided to launch two exclusive dolls for its customers: one of the mother and one of the daughter… And they asked the author to give them proper names. For the mother, for obvious reasons, he chose “Morticia,” and for the daughter “Wednesday,” from an American poem that began with “The boy of Monday is handsome, the boy of Tuesday is graceful, the boy of Wednesday is full of sorrow.” There was not much doubt.
On the doll, there was a card that read “She is romantically pale because she was raised in the basement of the old, dilapidated Addams mansion. Imagine her childhood: lessons in black magic… Sunday dinners of two-headed roast pork… The pet octopus. Nice people adore Wednesday. Unpleasant people think she is a cheerful, wicked, and creepy companion for all their wicked plans. As it is evident that Wednesday could fall into bad hands, don’t doubt it for a moment.” They could have ignored this piece of history and faded into oblivion, but when in 1964 they insisted on making a comedy for television and had to give a name to everyone, the name of the girl was already more than decided. That’s how history is made!
In fact, Wednesday Addams gained popularity later on, with the sitcom. Since then, she has been adapted into two animated series, another live-action series, five movies (one of them direct to video), a musical, and even a crossover with Scooby-Doo. Although she is over 70 years old, no one would say that Wednesday, especially with Jenna Ortega’s face, has aged a bit. The second season is just around the corner on Netflix, on August 6, and perhaps it’s time to celebrate it by reading the original strips. After all, it might be the perfect time to join a marathon.
