Jenna Ortega’s solemn-faced teen rebel Wednesday Addams is back on Netflix this week, with the long-awaited second season of Wednesday finally starts streaming from August 6 (a Wednesday, of course).
Wednesday’s eccentrically charming family and her patience-testing classmates are still there, though, along with returning crew like director Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman. Everyone’s favourite crawly hand Thing, too.
The second run of the Addams Family spin-off comes with new additions, including Steve Buscemi and Thandiwe Newton, but there’s another major change you might not notice. Season 2 still looks like it’s conjured out of a Gothic painting, but behind the scenes, the backdrop is wildly different.
Wednesday season 2 has swapped Romania for Ireland
Set in Vermont, the Netflix fantasy adventure series utilised the castles and forests of Romania in its first season to build a murky world full of dark spells, werewolves, and pinstriped school uniforms. The country that birthed Dracula made so much sense as Wednesday’s filming location.
However, for Season 2, Wednesday moved from Romania to Ireland. The storyline is still mostly set around Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts and freaks, but the Emerald Isle offers a new backdrop you might not even notice.
For show runners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, moving to Ireland was sort of a homecoming. The duo previously shot a good chunk of their martial arts series Into the Badlands in Dublin. Ireland was even the first choice to film Wednesday’s debut season, but pandemic-related factors prompted Gough and Millar to choose Romania instead.
‘Everything about Ireland fits the sensibility of the show,’ says Millar. ‘We have incredible woods. We have beautiful castles. We have the lush greens, the grey skies… Even though the show is set in Vermont, it makes it feel more aesthetically like a Tim Burton setting.’
Wednedsday season 2 was filmed at a ‘haunted’ Irish castle
An Irish highlight in season 2 is the Charleville Castle that stands in for Nevermore Academy. The castle lies in County Offaly, bordering the town of Tullamore. The Gothic-style country house is very on-brand for Wednesday given its rumoured haunted history. Drawing the attention and night-vision cameras of paranormal investigators, one of the castle’s ‘star’ ghosts is Harriet, a little girl who died spiralling down one of the mansion’s staircases.
To replicate the school gates of the school, a he crew finally settled on a private estate around Roadwood Park Farm, stumbling upon an archaic entrance route into what seemed like a house from ages ago. The resemblance between the original gates in Romania and this makeshift gate in Roadwood was uncanny to the point that they could even find “a tree in the exact same spot” as the Season 1 location.
What are the other Ireland locations of season 2?
Most of the second season was filmed at Ashford Studios in Ireland’s County Wicklow. Other Irish locations that provided hauntingly stunning backdrops for the series include Offaly, Wicklow, and Dublin. Filming took place over six months, from May to November 2024.
Who stars in Wednesday season 2?
Apart from leading lady Jenna Ortega starring as Wednesday Addams, the series brings back familiar faces like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, Isaac Ordonez and Fred Armisen as Wednesday’s supernatural family.
New cast members include Steve Buscemi as the new principal of Nevermore Academy, Joanna Lumley as Wednesday’s ‘Grandmama’, and Lady Gaga in an undisclosed role. Gaga has also recorded an exclusive new track this time, following the success of her viral hit ‘Bloody Mary’ in the first season.
When is Wednesday season 2 streaming?
Wednesday season 2 drops on Netflix in two parts. The first four episodes drop on August 6, with the rest landing on September 3.