Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 is even more of an Addams Family affair than Season 1, looping in extended family members like Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) and Grandmama Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley). But the show keeps bringing up one key relative we haven’t met yet. No, I’m not talking about Cousin Itt (but where is he?). I’m talking about Ophelia Frump.
Ophelia is Morticia’s younger sister. She’s appeared in several other Addams Family films and TV shows, including The Addams Family series (played by Carolyn Jones), The Addams Family film (played by Allegra Kent), Addams Family Values (played by Laura Esterman), and The New Addams Family (played by Lisa Calder). She’s frequently portrayed as cheerful, but given what we know of her in Wednesday, that certainly won’t be the case if she ever shows up in the series.
Who is Ophelia in Wednesday Season 2, and why is she so important?
Catherine Zeta-Jones in “Wednesday.”
Credit: Jonathan Hession / Netflix
In Wednesday, Ophelia’s story is a tragic one that has stuck with Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Like both Morticia and Wednesday (Jenna Ortega), Ophelia is a psychic. Also like Wednesday, Ophelia pushed her psychic abilities too far while attending Nevermore, to the point that visions gave her black tears. This led Hester to send Ophelia away to Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital. Morticia begged her mother not to have Ophelia committed, as her condition would only get worse, but to no avail.
This dark splotch in the Frump family history is one of the reasons why Morticia and Hester don’t get along. It’s also why Morticia is so worried about Wednesday using Goody’s book of spells and testing her psychic abilities without a guide. She doesn’t want to see her daughter befall a similar fate, and she’s determined to be a better mother to her than Hester was to Ophelia.
However, Ophelia’s commitment at Willow Hill isn’t the end of her twisted tale. Uncle Fester reveals to Wednesday that Morticia asked him to infiltrate Willow Hill once in order to check on her dear sister. However, when he arrived, he learned that Ophelia had vanished. By the time of Wednesday Season 2, she’s been missing for 20 years.
Or has she?
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Have we already met Ophelia in Wednesday Season 2?
Fred Armisen and Jenna Ortega in “Wednesday.”
Credit: Helen Sloan / Netflix
In episode 4 of Wednesday Season 2, Wednesday and Fester discover a sinister experimental program at Willow Hill. Called LOIS (Long-term Outcast Integration Study), the program looks to extract Outcast abilities and give them to Normies. It’s already been successful at least once, as program head Judi (Heather Matarazzo) obtained avian powers through LOIS.
None of the LOIS test subjects are in Willow Hill voluntarily. In fact, Willow Hill faked all their deaths so no one would know to come looking for them. You know what else they could have faked? Ophelia’s disappearance.
That’s right: I think Ophelia was thrown into LOIS due to her psychic abilities, and that’s where she’s been trapped for the past 20 years.
When Wednesday and Fester discover the LOIS subjects, they find one woman (Frances O’Connor) curled up in the corner of her cell, disappointed by the fact that Wednesday and Fester aren’t here to put her out of her misery. The show separates her physically from other Outcast characters, and she’s not given any visible Outcast powers. It also separates her from the others once they’re freed from their cells, as she’s the only one who doesn’t chase after Judi in a fit of bloodthirsty rage. Instead, she sticks by Wednesday’s side in the chaos that follows.
From all these differences from the rest of the pack, it’s clear that Wednesday wants this one woman to stand out in particular. And why else would the show draw so much attention to her if she’s not the long-lost Ophelia? Her presence at Willow Hill lines up with everything Morticia has told us about her, right down to her mysterious disappearance.
Plus, wouldn’t it be poetic that Wednesday, a psychic suffering from the same black-teared visions as Ophelia, be the one to free her aunt from Willow Hill?
Wednesday Season 2, Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix, with Part 2 premiering Sept. 3.
