Wednesday - a fan theory

CAUTION: SPOILERS

Although this is going to sound critical, it’s really not. While I don’t really rank my TV shows when I do my recap of the year because I find it really hard across such diversity of shows, genres and so on, Wednesday was certainly one of my favourites. However, if you’re going to be picky, as a piece of TV it’s unusually told with a lot of really convenient coincidences and fewer, but enough to be a noticeable pattern, excised scenes that contain pretty important information. There’s another point too, but we’ll come back to that later, because it’s unique and hard to call a pattern.

Let’s start with a really huge example of the really convenient coincidences. Enid has been struggling to transform, it’s a huge thing for her - she fights with her mother about it, and although she gets support from her father, it’s still distressing. But, when Wednesday is fighting the Hyde form of Tyler, Thing can not only direct Enid straight to the spot they’re fighting in middle of the woods (convenient) but she transforms for the first time (at least as far as we know) so she can fight him and save Wednesday. While this is cute (and gives the Enid-Wednesday shippers some ammunition) it’s super convenient. If you keep poking, really not too hard, you can find plenty of these. Wednesday knows exactly how to counter all of the attacks against them in the Poe Cup boat race, for example - some of that could have come from Enid - which falls into the excised scenes category nicely - but knowing about the Siren pushing the boats around seems to be something that Wednesday works out and counters, perfectly, aiming a net underwater without any issue and so on. It’s awfully convenient that Uncle Fester and his defibrillator fingers are around in the episode where Thing gets stabbed and almost dies. (I would normally let that one go, you see this kind of writing quite often, but because there are a lot of coincidences, it sneaks in.) Uncle Fester also provides Wednesday with motorised transport so when she’s trailing Xavier, who takes a car for his secret meeting in the woods, she can keep up. I’m not going to give an exhaustive list - that’s not actually an exhaustive list of all the ways that Uncle Fester’s is used as a convenient plot device/coincidental aid!

Although the boat race preparations provide one obvious example of suppressing information, consider the conversation where Wednesday convinces Weems to shapechange into Tyler and confront Thornhill/Gates. Now, you can certainly argue that both of these examples are taken out for the sake of building tension. I’m not arguing that point, although both scenes could have flashbacks, Enid could easily congratulate Wednesday for her brilliant planning, Wednesday could easily regret that her persuading Weems to confront Thornhill/Gates led to her death when she’s with Enid in her office in the final episode for example.

So, what is this fan theory. (Be quiet all you arts student, I was trained in a different discipline, we present, methods, results, then draw conclusions, we don’t tell you the answer, then tell you why you should agree with us. We let you see the evidence and see if you can work it out for yourself.)

Well, what if you assume that it isn’t a TV show? What if you assume it’s a book? I’m going to work on the assumption that it’s a piece of Lit Fic (although other genre conventions would fit, this is just well known and fits nicely so far)? We actually see Wednesday write the damn book, tell someone (I’m pretty sure it’s Miss Thornhill) that the book has taken an unexpected turn, very much as events as Nevermore Academy don’t turn out as she expected. Typically in Lit Fic everything is told from a single character’s perspective but we don’t necessarily get to know everything they know. The convenient coincidence is a particularly common occurrence in this genre because we, the reader, don’t get to see the other characters doing things that then affect the central character just because they don’t know about it. If you’re bored on a Sunday afternoon and you get a text inviting you to go to the pub, cinema, coffee shop or if your mate can drop round - those things happen in real life and we don’t think anything of it. In a book where the setting is modern London we’d probably think nothing of it. Wednesday doesn’t get invited out to the cinema, and suddenly it’s odd in her TV series. Is that fair? Or a hint?

In the show we see Wednesday finish writing her book. Imagine she’s writing the book and someone is reading it, whether it’s an editor, or someone years later. In lots of books in series you see The End and then keep reading for a sneak peak of what happens next. Of course this kind of cliff-hanger is a contrivance in TV too but it does fit nicely with the “it’s all a book being read later” take.

If we assume this is true, we’re left with one question. Who is reading it? An editor/publisher would seem to be the obvious candidate. But it has the feeling of being historical. Not necessarily historical like a bodice ripper or a regency drama, but events of the past still, maybe a decade or two ago. That gives some interesting possibilities. I still read Wednesday as Ace, but if you don’t, her kids might be reading it. Enid's kids might be reading it. If you read them as endgame romance, Enid and Wednesday's kids might be the same people. Pugsley's kids might be reading it. Enid might be reading it to herself as well.

I hope they get to end the series on their own terms and that’s the final reveal. I’m not sure who I hope it will be, of course in a sense it’s all of us, but it would be fun to see.

Many thanks to Mo. Although this was bubbling around in what passes for my brain, a conversation with her really forced me to think it through to the point it could become a blog post.