DANSE MACABRE

SFX ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS OF WEDNESDAY SEASON TWO: HOW DO YOU FOLLOW UP A VIRAL DANCE SENSATION? AND HOW EXACTLY DO YOU STAY ON THIS MORTAL COIL?

- WORDS: CLARISSE LOUGHREY

REQUIESCAT IN PACE, WEDNESDAY ADDAMS? Part one of Netflix's return to the gothic wonderland that is Nevermore Academy ended in quite the shock.

Our heroine - Jenna Ortega's pigtailed, casually homicidal teen - was left sprawled out on the cobblestones in front of Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital. “I’ve always dreamed of looking death in the face,” she reflected. “But, in my final moments, all I hear is my mother's words ringing in my ears. Maybe I have made everything worse. Much worse.”

When showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar first began work on season two of Wednesday, Netflix had yet to confirm whether it would be split into two parts, à la Stranger Things and Bridgerton. Tyler has escaped from Willow Hill, and Wednesday may be dead.

So say your prayers for Ms Addams, but there’s plenty ahead too for her once-suitor, now potential vanquisher Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan). Back in season one, he was revealed to be a Hyde of the Robert Louis Stevenson variety: a vicious creature embodying a person’s darkest, most animal nature, manipulated by Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci) to help bring about the downfall of all outcasts, including Wednesday and her schoolmates at Nevermore.

But Marilyn's dead - and that now means we have a Hyde on the loose without its master, which the showrunners tease will lead us to some “raw, gut-wrenching moments” and a “phenomenal” turn from Doohan.

As Doohan explains, “He believes he'll be in full control and he can do whatever he wants. But we learned from Christina Ricci’s character in episode four that a Hyde basically can’t survive without a master, so there’s a lot he’s going to learn in the next episode. Tyler's not under someone else's control, but he's also not in complete control of himself.