Netflix's 16-Part Hit With An All-Star Cast Revived A Dead Genre

2 weeks ago 25

Published May 9, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

Ever since it started producing its own original content a little over a decade ago, Netflix has become a pop-cultural powerhouse. They’ve created their own unstoppable franchises, from Stranger Things to KPop Demon Hunters to Monster, an inexplicably mega-popular anthology series glamorizing the lives of notorious serial killers, and they’ve also resurrected old franchises, like Full House and Daredevil and The Addams Family.

Just over a decade after they’d finished retelling Superman’s origin story as a teen soap opera, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar gave Wednesday Addams the Smallville treatment. Wednesday put Gomez and Morticia’s rebellious, rambunctious, misanthropic daughter in a Hogwarts-style boarding school for gifted youngsters. If you thought it was tough to fit in at high school, Wednesday’s classmates at Nevermore include a werewolf, a gorgon, a siren, and a vampire. Wednesday turned a generation of kids who’d never even heard of the Addams Family into diehard fans.

But Wednesday didn’t just revitalize the Addams Family franchise; it revitalized the goth aesthetic. Jenna Ortega’s fabulous take on the character became a style icon. People didn’t just recreate her bizarre dance; they recreated her wardrobe.

Wednesday brought goth back into the mainstream for the first time since Twilight a decade earlier (and Twilight was never all that gothy in the first place). We even got a remake of The Crow on this post-Wednesday goth wave, in an apparent attempt to give John Wick-pilled male audiences their own equivalent of Wednesday Addams.

Wednesday Is Tim Burton's Best Project For Years

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in the woods in Wednesday season 1

With Gough and Millar at the helm, Wednesday threatened to devolve into a sappy coming-of-age drama with little to no horror elements — but not on Tim Burton’s watch. Ortega gave a star-making turn as Wednesday, but the show’s secret sauce is Burton’s direction. Burton didn’t shy away from the pitch-black humor and morbid horror of Addams’ original cartoons. Wednesday is pretty much styled as a typical teen drama with a supernatural makeover, but having Burton behind the camera ensures that there are still real scares, and a palpably creepy atmosphere, and a handful of really dark laughs.

Wednesday was a return to form for Burton. For the past decade or two, he’s been very hit-and-miss, and he’s mostly abandoned his classic style of quirky, comedic, gothic horror. He’s done a couple of live-action Disney remakes, a ghastly Dark Shadows movie, and stepped outside his comfort zone with varying degrees of success. As a pairing of creator and I.P., Burton and the Addams Family are a match made in heaven.

Burton is a visionary filmmaker with a passionate fan base, but a new Tim Burton project just isn’t the guaranteed home run it used to be. Long gone are the days when every time Burton made a movie, he turned out an unforgettable gem like Batman or Ed Wood or Mars Attacks! Those salad days ended more than two decades ago, when he remade Planet of the Apes. With his work on Wednesday, Burton finally gave the fans what they’d been missing.

Wednesday brought back the Burton we remember from Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, not the Burton who let us down with Dumbo and Dark Shadows. It even led to the long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel, which saw Burton reunite with Ortega, Gough, and Millar (and which sometimes feels more like Wednesday: The Movie than Beetlejuice 2).