“It was definitely a jigsaw puzzle.”
Whether you do it in a book, movie, or TV series, crafting a whodunit (a murder investigation story) is never easy. Authors have to make sure that 100% of the story checks out, especially for spectators who feel like experiencing your work more than once. On Wednesday, showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar had the task of making the audience curious as to who (or what) was killing the Nevermore students, and they decided to put all cards on the table and leave nothing hanging mystery-wise by the end of Season 1.
In an interview to The Hollywood Reporter, the duo of series creators revealed that they wanted the first eight episodes to feel “complete and really satisfying.” That way, they can start a whole new mystery in the next season without having to look back at the questions from Season 1. During the interview, Millar broke down how the mystery of the series’ freshman year was mapped out:
“It was actually much more complicated and difficult than we anticipated just in terms that you wanna make sure that if you look back at the show that there are no loose ends. There’s no — we call it ‘Fight Club’ moments — where it’s like, ‘Well, that couldn’t have happened.’ It was definitely a jigsaw puzzle. And so we had all eight episodes complete, and then we could really make sure that all the red herrings were there, and it felt like a complete mystery, but then we didn’t know it was gonna work until an actual audience saw it. So, it’s actually a real nail-biter when you do a whodunit because it could be so obvious. […] But it’s so gratifying to hear that people were really into the mystery, and the red herrings were working. It could be that person. It could be that person. Misdirect. So that’s literally the most satisfying thing about the show for us. It’s the thing we were most worried about.”
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Gough and Millar Had to Find a Balance Between Giving False Hints and Pointing in the Right Direction
In the second half of Wednesday, Gough and Millar had make viewers suspect several characters at once before they finally revealed that Tyler (Hunter Doohan) was the one killing students. But not only that, the duo added another layer to the twist, by revealing that the boy was being controlled by an evil person who specialized in eliminating outcasts. Gough also broke down the duo’s thought process, and commented how satisfying it felt when it all worked perfectly:
“It was just always having enough red herrings. It was like, once you kind of figure out the mystery, that you could actually say, ‘Here’s the mystery’ in a couple of lines, then it was how you could complicate it. As Miles said, it’s one thing to do it on the page, but then once you get into the casting, and then once you’re shooting it, there were a couple times where we would go back and sort of add a few other little touches to scenes or other things to make sure that the arrows weren’t suddenly pointing to one person or another.”
Wednesday features Jenna Ortega as the title character, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, Isaac Ordonez as Wednesday’s younger brother Pugsley, Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester, Christina Ricci as Marilyn Thornhill, George Burcea as Lurch, Gwendoline Christie as Principal Larissa Weems, Riki Lindhome as Dr. Valerie Kinbott, Jamie McShane as Sheriff Donovan Galpin, and Joy Sunday as Bianca Barclay.
