The record-setting Netflix series “Wednesday” is renewed for a second season. 

   Tim Burton’s “Wednesday” became the second most-watched series on Netflix, surpassing “Dahmer” and following “Stranger Things”. The hit series amassed 341 million hours of watch time in the first week of its release, a new Netflix record for an English language series. Twenty-eight days after its release, the watch time reached 1.2 billion hours.

   The show is a horror comedy series that debuted on Netflix on Nov. 23, 2022. The series follows the eccentric Wednesday Addams played by Jenna Ortega as she navigates her new school, haunted by her parents’ past.

   Ortega has moved on from her Disney Channel beginnings to play more nuanced characters in “X”, “Scream”, “The Fallout”, “You”, and now “Wednesday”. Her character pays homage to the original Wednesday Addams portrayed by Christina Ricci. Ricci returns for this new installment as teacher Marilyn Thornhill.

   On set, Ortega and Ricci avoided speaking about their shared character.

   “I didn’t want to rip her off,” Ortega said. “And I didn’t want to be too much like her.” The new series showcases a more mature and developed version of Wednesday unseen in the 1991 film. 

   A scene of Ortega dancing went viral on TikTok, with users creating Wednesday face filters and trying to recreate her hypnotic moves. The original scene was set to “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps, but the trend is set to a sped-up version of “Bloody Mary” by Lady Gaga. Ortega choreographed the dance herself, inspired by Siouxie and the Banshee and Bob Fosse’s videos of the 80’s goth club scene. Despite this being a fan-favorite moment, Ortega received backlash for revealing she had COVID-19 during its filming.

   Another memorable aspect of the show is a detached hand named Thing that assists Wednesday on her adventures. Many fans assumed that the hand was added using CGI, however magician Victor Dorobantu was hired to play the spunky appendage. 

   Dorobantu wore a blue body suit throughout the filming that could be digitally edited out of the show. A prosthetic was added to his hand to create Thing’s wrist. For Thing’s movement, Dorobantu had to crawl around the set which created unique challenges while filming. He recalls discussing these challenges with crew members, saying “Hey, I can’t fit under the bed, let’s make a hole in the floor,” and “Hey, I can’t fit under the floor so let’s raise the whole building in the air.” The set had to be altered according to Dorobantu’s movement needs.

   On Jan. 9 Netflix announced that “Wednesday” is getting renewed for a second season. Showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are “thrilled to continue Wednesday’s tortuous journey into season two.”