Stranger Things Meets The Umbrella Academy In Netflix's 2-Part Fantasy Series

Published Jul 14, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

When Stranger Things was winding down, and Netflix was looking for its next flagship series, it stumbled into an untapped goldmine. The Addams Family is one of the most iconic properties in the history of horror, and they have a teenage daughter who’s obsessed with all things macabre. Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar updated Wednesday Addams for the roaring 2020s, sending her to a Hogwarts-style school for supernaturally gifted kids and casting up-and-coming scream queen Jenna Ortega to play her.

Wednesday was the runaway hit that Netflix hoped it would be. It was hailed as a fresh take on a familiar icon, and viewers showed up in droves to binge the first season. It launched Ortega to superstardom after Scream and X had put her on the map, and it gave Netflix its first real candidate for a Stranger Things replacement. Wednesday has all the relatable adolescent foibles of your average teen drama, but it also has the fantastical fun of Harry Potter and Stranger Things and Teen Wolf. It takes Wednesday and her classmates’ interpersonal drama seriously, but those classmates include a werewolf, a siren, a gorgon, and a vampire.

The only real problem with Wednesday is that the current streaming business model and Ortega’s busy schedule force us to wait three years between seasons. Wednesday season 3 is on the way, but it could be a while.

What To Expect From Wednesday Season 3

Last summer, just before Wednesday’s second season premiered, Netflix renewed it for a third. Back in the day, you could expect TV shows to release a new season every single year, but those days are long gone. The first season of Wednesday dropped in 2022 and instantly became one of Netflix’s most-watched shows, so a second season was a no-brainer. But instead of striking while the iron was hot, Netflix waited a full three years to finally release Wednesday season 2, and it led to a massive dip in viewership.

Andor and Severance took the same massive hiatus between seasons 1 and 2 (they even came out in the same years), but those shows needed three years to tackle their complex themes and cinematic imagery. Wednesday is basically a CW show, and it only has eight episodes a season. I know Tim Burton is directing a lot of them, but it’s TV; it shouldn’t take this long. Based on the current trajectory, we can’t expect to see Wednesday season 3 until 2028, which is ridiculous. By the time we get season 5 or season 6, we could be watching a middle-aged Jenna Ortega playing Wednesday Addams as a college freshman.

Story-wise, I’d expect Wednesday season 3 to follow another serialized mystery storyline. Season 1 followed Wednesday’s investigation into the Hyde attacking people on campus, and season 2 saw her trying to identify her own sinister stalker. Season 3 might involve a strange religious cult coming after Wednesday, or maybe a government conspiracy.

But honestly, I’d rather see more standalone adventure-of-the-week episodes, like the body-swap episode from Wednesday season 2, than another serialized mystery. Wednesday works best when it’s focusing on the characters, and building out their relationships through comic situations, but we’ve lost a lot of that kind of “filler” that network shows used to thrive on.

Wednesday

8/10

Release Date November 23, 2022

Network Netflix

Showrunner Miles Millar, Alfred Gough

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  Wednesday Addams / Goody Addams

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