This will contain major spoilers for both Wednesday TV Series and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. 

I just finished marathoning Season 2 of the Wednesday TV series yesterday, I wanted to wait until all the episodes were out. Same with Peacemaker and Gen V. I really don’t like the weekly scheduling, I’d rather a series just released everything at once, but it did make for less audience retention, so what do I know? I just can’t really keep-up without binging things anymore, because so much content comes out. I honestly think this speaks ill of my aspirations as a writer. Since, first of all, nobody likes my Poli Sci content since it’s probably super depressing to read for most people even if I’d argue that it’s important human rights topics, and second of all, so much fiction comes out now that what do aspiring fantasy writers’ matter? There’re so many more successful people and probably tens of millions of unsuccessful ones. I’m probably always going to be in the latter category. But it’s nice to see shows that tap into people’s dreams.

The Season 1 of Wednesday likely tapped into an audience far beyond what I thought given that it had 252.1 million views and Wednesday Season 2 currently stands at 95 million views from what I found of a brief google search. I can only give my personal opinion. According to Google searches, Gen Z and Millennials are the primary audience, but why? Why the success? What is attracting hundreds of millions of people to this Netflix show? My belief: We’re all looking for the next-generation version of the Harry Potter series. Something slightly more mature, with its own plot, characters, conflict, unique magical races with their own magic powers, and a magical school setting. That is, we don’t want a copy of the Harry Potter series, but rather another Magical School story that – like Harry Potter – is a Magic-based mystery series. A lot of people forget that the majority of the formulaic Harry Potter series was a mystery series in a magical world setting. The cast of characters has to be well-developed, the worldbuilding coherent, and the plot has to be engaging. This is a lot harder than most people realize, but when it succeeds, then it can really shine. Of course, this isn’t the first series from Netflix that attempted to do this:

Wednesday TV Series (2022 – Current) versus The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 – 2020)

Prior to the Wednesday TV show, another the Netflix series, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 – 2020), never had its viewership released so publicly like Wednesday. Why has Wednesday been a stunning success, while The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina had a rushed ending and basically flopped? Both Sabrina and Wednesday are portrayed as arrogant and seeking control, so why the stunning difference in viewership results?

The major difference that I don’t think can be denied for anyone who has watched at least three Seasons of the Sabrina Netflix series like I have and both seasons of the Wednesday TV series available right now: Consistency in the worldbuilding. When there’s a plot twist or major plot point revealed in the Wednesday TV series, it appears to do everything it can to keep the worldbuilding consistent or – if that isn’t avoidable – it’ll use comedy to lampshade or distract from any worldbuilding inconsistency to make the scenes flow better. The comedy is used to enhance the worldbuilding instead of just to make a laugh so far. By contrast, the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina often sacrificed the consistency of the witches needing to be kept secret for the sake of utterly boring pom-pom dances that seemed to increase with each season in order to hide the defects of the plot and to justify its budget. The music and dancing in Wednesday often serve to move the plot forward, and this is especially the case in Season 2, whereas the excessiveness in the latter seasons of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was just an irritating distraction to hide the plot holes. The Wednesday TV Series is focused on the actual plot and having the characters fulfilling narrative purposes, whereas The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina tried to be mindlessly entertaining and it fell flat. Also, although I may dislike this possibility myself, it is plausible that The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina trying to give a Catholic-style religious worldbuilding to Satanism may have caused discomfort and some viewers chose to tune out, especially since Sabrina was revealed to be the prophesied daughter of the Devil. The Wednesday Netflix series has a gothic aesthetic and largely revels in allusions to celebrate famous American Horror writers like Edgar Allen Poe and sticks to brief portions of Eurocentric philosophy for serious story moments like mentioning a quote from Machiavelli. Whereas Sabrina had witches be devil worshippers, the Wednesday TV series leaves religion out of the show and focuses upon stories involving mostly half-human magical people in a school setting.

The second largest difference, and as equally important, is that the Wednesday TV Series is strengthened by the fact that it only has to deal with events in one school setting. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s main struggle and failing was the incoherent choice of two school settings. Focusing on one school setting disadvantaged the other and it was to the point that Sabrina’s human school friends felt like they were holding the story back, because character arcs like her blind best friend gaining premonitions of people dying and that causing problems at school could only be explained as background knowledge, specifically because Sabrina had to go through a character arc in a completely different school. By a refreshing contrast, all of Wednesday Addams’s closest friends and family are in one setting. Sabrina always has to struggle between being a human or a witch due to a conflicting origin story that became less coherent as the story went on; Wednesday Addams is firmly part of the Addams Family, episode one of Season One established she can’t fit in with a human school, and her interests are in uncovering murder mysteries to keep her friends safe and she – refreshingly –  doesn’t have any stakes or concern for mundane human affairs that has never been part of her life. Wednesday’s interests are firmly entrenched in aiding her family and magical society, Sabrina is the comic book orphan trope done extremely poorly because the show couldn’t decide whether she was an orphan, an experiment created by the Spellman family, or the devil’s prophesied daughter as a Morningstar. They seemed to have a plot conflict of wanting two different directions for the show and settled for creating two Sabrina characters so that the poor actress, Kiernan Shipka, suddenly had to do double the work to try to save the show from its incoherent writing by playing two different versions of Sabrina because the writers couldn’t decide which one they wanted. They went from forcing the actress into two settings to making her do double the work with two different versions of Sabrina. By stark contrast, Jenna Ortega playing the role of Enid with the bodyswap subplot is just a temporary, and possibly refreshing, change of pace for both Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers to show off their other acting skills. But after that, it firmly grounds itself back to the consistency of the characters behaviors and the pacing doesn’t drag it on. Wednesday never forgets her friends and the ending of Season 2 is finding and tracking Enid to help cure her problem; whereas Sabrina often forgets her friends to the point a childish clone of hers attacks them without her knowledge, Wednesday’s controlling nature is out of genuine compassion and concern for Enid’s safety throughout the entirety of Season 2.

A third, and not so insignificant difference, is that the Wednesday TV series doesn’t waste its time on a new love interest every season for the sake of romantic melodrama, whereas The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina treated it as a flavor of the month. Whereas Sabrina had to go through a new half-assed mini-arc with each subsequent suitor after Harvey, Wednesday’s potential love interest and herself are going through their own personal character arcs and they have lives outside of rekindling a failed romance between them. This freshens up the subplots to be better paced, better developed, and all the other side characters to be given more character depth by having the story explore their own character dynamics and respective character arcs. In other words, the stupidly annoying romance subplots disappearing is a massive benefit to the worldbuilding and character arcs of all the other characters, so that they can shine and add to both the plot and worldbuilding with their own story arcs. The Siren has a subplot with her mother that the gorgon is involved in, and they are friends with Enid, which allows it to naturally flow back to Wednesday’s staunch determination to help those she cares about. Wednesday’s brother has his own arc of trying to make friends. The second season of Wednesday even adds actual depth and gives us a reason to better understand why Wednesday is hesitant to seek her mother, Morticia’s, help. A deeper comparison can be made between Wednesday’s habits and those of her Mother’s habits from book writing, to believing they know what is best, and to their respective relationships with Morticia’s own mother. All this deeper worldbuilding, character depth, and better paced story arcs . . . is just from not having any shitty love triangle subplot involving Wednesday. Something that The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina repeatedly failed to do.

Fourth, the plotting in Wednesday is far more refreshing for Season 2, because there’s no Chosen One or prophecy plotline. I honestly do not understand how that doesn’t bore people after watching such stories since they were children all the way into adulthood. It’s boring. Fortunately, unlike the Sabrina Netflix show, the Wednesday Netflix show has avoided such crap thus far with Season 2 and has focused solely on a Magical murder mystery with even the character of Thing gaining a character arc. While the Harry Potter series is famous for a prophecy as the driving force of the plot, most of the story for the first four books of the seven book series was a focus on uncovering a magical mystery in each respective book of its main series. Fifth, and as positive consequence, thus far the Wednesday TV series has been more consistent with the use of its magic than the Sabrina series with each character having a unique ability such as the new Principal having a fire ability and class displays of levitation in the story. While spellcasting perhaps has less focus, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was never consistent on this point, given that Sabrina mistook easily defeating the minions of Lucifer for a group of school thugs and had a more difficult time with other witches and warlocks.

A final sixth reason, and probably my most personally biased reason: I cannot stand shows that glorify “a normal life” anymore because all it reminds me of is working a 9 – 5 job and I see no reason to glorify living “normal” for a boring, shitty 9 – 5 job that consists of my every day existence as I slowly wither and die of old age knowing everything I do in life will be obliterated by the heat death of the universe far after I’m long dead. So, why the fuck would living such a dull existence be a good thing? What is glorious about it? Why should any thinking person find such a morbid existence appealing versus . . . fucking Magic. What moron picks a shallow existence over magic? Who the fuck yearns “to be normal” in a 9 – 5 dead-end job versus a world with fucking magic? I fundamentally never understood the appeal. What sort of boring, dull, and empty existence is that? I wouldn’t even care if magic caused world-destroying problems. It’s fucking Magic. I’d happily die living with magic than without it, if ever given such an opportunity, as should any thinking person. What kind of utter dumbass thinks otherwise? What idiot prefers a boring 9 – 5 existence? Even if magic was unsustainable and uncontrollable, that’s just no different than climate change, if you think about it. As such, the Netflix show of Wednesday is automatically superior for never making such a worthless conflict, unlike the entirety of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Overall, I just stopped watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina after its Season 3 and never watched the final episode apart from one episode and skipping to parts of the ending, because I genuinely didn’t care. I couldn’t care because it could never commit fully to its premise; Season 2 of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was my favorite within that series because it was building a cold, ruthless character arc for Sabrina’s character to become the Queen of Hell but then the very last episode undid everything to make Lilith the Queen . . . only for the first episode of Season 3 to make Sabrina the Queen. Why didn’t they just make a dark ending of Season 2 be that Sabrina was the Queen of Hell then, if that was going to be the start of Season 3? Then, the entire premise of Season 3 is just a redo of Season 2 to stymie the plot and then the ending is Sabrina in some ugly, awful British dress to sit on the throne again. Fuck the British. What was the point or purpose here?

I’d rate the second season of Wednesday as a 10 / 10, whereas the first season of Wednesday only got a 7.6 / 10 for me and I can’t wait for Season 3. The pacing, story arcs, and the challenges Wednesday went through felt refreshing and it kept me guessing for some parts. I enjoyed both the new characters and how they moved the plot for the old ones. Wednesday’s entire arc is about learning that she can’t stick to her old ways and does need to accept that she can’t control everything, and rely on her friends whom she’s been working hard to keep safe on her own. Unlike Sabrina’s Netflix story, Wednesday’s friends aren’t completely fucking useless idiots and actually do help her back just as much and prove themselves time after time. The dialogue is straight-up better in Wednesday Season 2 because everyone acts with a great mix of logical coherence and emotion for their behaviors and it has just been a great Magical murder mystery series thus far.