Audience viewership According to data from users of
TV Time collected by
Whip Media,
Wednesday had the second-most pre-release followers of any Netflix original series on the platform, behind only
The Witcher; it ultimately debuted at number one on Netflix in 83 countries. The series holds the record of most hours viewed in a week for an English-language Netflix series with a total 341 million hours watched in its first week of release, amounting to more than 50 million households, and passing prior record holder
Stranger Things 4s 335 million hours.
Nielsen Media Research reported a combined watch time of 6 billion minutes within its first week of release, making it the second-biggest streaming week ever recorded by the firm.
Variety, citing U.S. viewing-time data from research firm PlumResearch, reported that Netflix originals reached their highest monthly share of viewing in November 2022 — about 60 percent — following the release of
Wednesday. Three weeks after its release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series in the history of the platform, reaching an estimated 150 million households and totaling 1 billion viewing hours by December 2022. Jacob Stolworthy of
The Independent called the series's popularity "unprecedented" and suggested that it could jumpstart development of several other spin-off television series. International response to the series has been strong, with
Column magazine reporting that "a separate record has already been set by the kickoff of the second
Wednesday season. In 91 countries, the series sits at the top of the local charts for English-language series — including Germany and the United States. This has never before been achieved by any English-language Netflix series."
Critical response Season 1 For the first season, the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes reported a 73% approval rating, based on 105 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "
Wednesday isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this
Addams Family-adjacent series might as well be another
CW drama."
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 66 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable". Ed Power of
The Daily Telegraph gave
Wednesday four out of five stars and called it "an addictively
rococo romp that unfolds like a cross between
Euphoria and
Hotel Transylvania". John Anderson of
The Wall Street Journal commended Ortega's "charismatic performance" and called the series "often delightful, despite its deliberate darkness". In his "B"-review for
The Detroit News, Tom Long deemed the series visually appealing and described Ortega's
deadpan as "just as elastic as it needed to be" and her performance overall as "consistently [pushing] outside the caricature enough to keep things lively". Writing for
RogerEbert.com, Cristina Escobar similarly praised Ortega's deadpan humor and commended the series' "satisfactory" ending. While finding that the series would not be "what real fans of
Charles Addams and his characters are looking for", Mike Hale of
The New York Times called the series "tolerable" despite "satisfying only on the level of formulaic teenage romance and mystery" and compared it to the
Harry Potter franchise. Commenting on its tone, Jesse Hassenger of
TheWrap described the four episodes directed by Burton as feeling more like
Veronica Mars than
Sleepy Hollow. Nick Hilton of
The Independent gave the series two out of five stars and criticized the series's tone as "relentlessly quippy
Gen Z" and its performances as "more two-dimensional than the
New Yorker comic strip in which the characters first appeared".
Season 2 For the second season, Rotten Tomatoes gave an 87% approval rating, based on 92 reviews. The website's critics consensus states, "
Wednesdays second season smartly opens up to include more of the whole Addams clan, backing up Jenna Ortega's lovably heartless teenager with an ookier and spookier ensemble." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Lili Loofbourow of
The Washington Post said
Wednesdays second season is "tonally darker than its predecessors, and that sometimes feels like a drag on the show, especially when it veers away from the silly high school antics (such as the notorious dance sequence in Season 1). The spin-off suffers from some of the same conceptual instability that plagued the original films, but the latter, being comedies, managed their contradictions with hand-wavy humor." The episode "Woe Thyself" was particularly well-received, with many calling it the standout of the season while praising the performances from Ortega and Myers. Alex Zalben of
IGN deemed it "the best episode of the series, period," and "[the only episode that] manages to properly balance supernatural shenanigans and the overall plot while elevating the central relationship of the show to the forefront and actually giving Wednesday and Enid clear arcs where they learn things about themselves and each other. You know: a properly structured episode of television."
Queerbaiting allegations Wednesday has been repeatedly accused of
queerbaiting. Many fans have interpreted Wednesday's close friendship and moments of emotional intimacy with Enid Sinclair as suggestive of a romantic subtext; this popular
ship has been dubbed "Wenclair". The show's writers have stated that the show is about the friendship between Wednesday and Enid, and there are no plans for a romantic relationship between the two characters.
Accolades In popular culture Following the release of
Wednesday, Wednesday Addams's dance from the series and its fan recreations to
Lady Gaga's song "
Bloody Mary" went
viral on video sharing service
TikTok, with
Kim Kardashian,
Amelia Dimoldenberg,
Marina Diamandis,
Madonna and Gaga herself also participating in the trend. This resulted in a large increase in plays of the song on
Spotify and on-demand streams in the United States, surging by 415 percent in the week after the series's release. Russian figure skater
Kamila Valieva recreated the dance during a December 2022 competition. Earlier that same month, "Bloody Mary" was sent to French radio as a single, 11 years after the release of
Born This Way, the album it was featured on. The 1981 song "
Goo Goo Muck" by
the Cramps, which plays during the original dance scene, also saw a surge in popularity. According to
Billboard, on-demand streams of the song in the United States increased from 2,500 to over 134,000, and Spotify streams increased by 9,500 percent since the series was released. Janelle Zara of
The Guardian stated that the viral dance trend "may have single-handedly revived Gothic subculture for Gen Z". ==Notes==