Jenna Ortega Says WEDNESDAY Season 3 Gets More “Confrontational” as Adulthood Looms

Wednesday Addams may know exactly who she is, but knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life is another matter entirely.

Jenna Ortega is offering a few intriguing clues about Wednesday Season 3, and it sounds like the Netflix series is about to push its wonderfully strange heroine into a problem even she can’t solve with a cutting remark or an elaborate investigation: growing up.

With Wednesday and her classmates reaching their senior year, Ortega says the new season will dig further into family conflict, adulthood, and the uncomfortable realization that eventually you’re supposed to have some kind of plan.

It’s another big step for a series Ortega never expected to become quite this massive. After roles in Scream and Beetlejuice, Ortega’s performance as Wednesday Addams turned her into a household name, and Netflix is moving quickly on the next chapter.

Season 3 is expected to arrive in 2027, with Lena Headey joining the cast alongside Andrew McCarthy and James Lance. The story is also expanding beyond its familiar surroundings, with Wednesday heading to Paris, apparently as part of the latest mystery surrounding the Addams family.

During a new interview with Esquire, conducted while Ortega was filming in Paris in June, the actress explained how Wednesday’s approaching adulthood is going to affect the character and her relationship with her family.

“This season, especially because the kids are seniors in high school now, we’re dealing with more confrontational feelings regarding family and what it means to be an adult and what you see for your life. It’s not really until you get to the precipice of adulthood that you start to realize, Oh, God, well, maybe I’ve got to have a plan.”

That feels like a particularly fun problem to throw at Wednesday. She can stare down monsters, murderers, supernatural conspiracies, and pretty much anyone foolish enough to annoy her. Figuring out adulthood, though? Good luck with that one.

It also gets at one of the reasons Wednesday works as well as it does. She’s an exaggerated, wonderfully macabre character living in a bizarre world, but underneath all of that are problems that are painfully familiar.

Teenagers clash with their families. They start deciding who they want to become outside of their parents’ expectations. Then senior year arrives and suddenly everyone wants to know what comes next.

Wednesday may approach those questions differently than everyone else, but Ortega sees something relatable in the uncertainty. At the same time, she believes the character’s confidence in her own identity is a major part of her appeal.

“Wednesday is very aware of who she is, the world that she lives in, and what she wants out of it. Anytime anyone is just undeniably themselves, it’s quite magnetic.”

Interestingly, Ortega doesn’t necessarily see Wednesday as an extension of herself. She thinks the character has a surprisingly strong connection to Tim Burton, who helped establish the show’s wonderfully gothic personality.

“I got a better understanding of Tim and who he was and what he found funny and charming and interesting through the character. The more I learned about him, the more I realized what Wednesday represented. Or what she could be.”

Burton may be more reserved and considerably less likely to verbally destroy someone standing across from him, but it’s easy to see what Ortega means. Wednesday’s dark humor, fascination with the strange, outsider perspective, and ability to find beauty in things other people consider unsettling fit naturally into Burton’s creative world.

After spending so much time playing the character, however, Ortega admits some of Wednesday’s personality inevitably follows her around during production.

“But while I’m in production, going over scripts over and over again, and I’m there all day, every day, and in every scene… yeah, there’s times where I think like her. Maybe she peeks out a bit more, here and there.”

Ortega isn’t planning to live entirely in Wednesday’s gloomy headspace. One of her upcoming projects gives her the chance to head in almost the complete opposite direction.

She’ll next appear in Klara and the Sun, which is set to be released on October 23. The role allowed Ortega to explore a personality far removed from the darker characters audiences have recently associated with her.

“It was very exciting for me to play this naive, hopeful, optimistic character who’s very different than the characters that I’ve been playing recently,” she said, in an obvious contrast.

She’s also heading into mysterious blockbuster territory with J.J. Abrams on The Great Beyond. Abrams, who helped launch the Kelvin timeline with Star Trek and directed two entries in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, is developing the movie as an original big-screen franchise.

Details surrounding The Great Beyond remain heavily guarded ahead of its planned 2027 release, but Ortega did offer one small glimpse at her character and her connection to Glen Powell.

“The character that I play is a lost young person in a new city. [She has] a confusing history and finds a friend in Glen Powell’s character… and that’s pretty much all I could say!”

Between Klara and the Sun, The Great Beyond, and Wednesday Season 3, Ortega is building a nice mix of characters that should give her plenty of room to stretch beyond the role that made her a global star.

Still, Wednesday Addams isn’t going anywhere, and Season 3 appears ready to explore a side of the character that could be especially entertaining.

Ortega describes Wednesday as someone experiencing a “brutal inner turmoil of angst and upset and confusion at the world,” and now she’s going to pile senior year, adulthood, an uncertain future, and more Addams family tension on top of it.

For a character who usually acts like she has everyone and everything figured out, forcing Wednesday to confront a future she can’t completely control could make for some great storytelling.

Add Paris, a new family mystery, and newcomers like Headey to the mix, and Wednesday Season 3 is shaping up to send Wednesday Addams into some wonderfully uncomfortable territory.