Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Wednesday Season 2 Part 2.
With the release of the last four episodes of Season 2 last week, Lady Gaga finally made her highly anticipated debut in Wednesday. It had been a long time coming after “Bloody Mary” saw a major resurgence in 2022, thanks to a viral TikTok trend of Wednesday Addams’ (Jenna Ortega) now-iconic dance from Season 1 edited to a sped-up version of the song that was first released over a decade ago.
In Season 2, Episode 6, “Woe Thyself,” Gaga makes a brief cameo as Rosaline Rotwood, a former Nevermore professor and powerful Raven who once taught Wednesday’s Grandmama (Joanna Lumley). It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the multihyphenate performer may not have had the time to play a more meaningful role in Wednesday Season 2, but fans were nevertheless disappointed, and understandably so.
Though she was on-screen for less than five minutes total, Gaga fits right in, and the strength of her screen presence leaves no question as to why Grandmama would have been so entranced by Professor Rotwood back in the day. Still, Gaga’s character sets in motion one of the major highlights of Season 2 — Wednesday and Enid (Emma Myers) switching bodies.
Despite Her Horror Background, Lady Gaga Is Criminally Underused in ‘Wednesday’ Season 2
Though Gaga’s 2011 song “Bloody Mary” never actually plays during either season of Wednesday (the song Wednesday originally danced to in Season 1 was “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps), it very much fits the tone of the hit Netflix series. A big horror fan herself, Gaga has often used horror imagery and themes in her music videos for songs like “Bad Romance,” “Alejandro,” and, most recently, “Abracadabra,” not to mention her iconic 2009 VMAs performance, during which she appeared to bleed out on stage while singing “Paparazzi.” This laid the groundwork for Gaga’s role as the Countess in American Horror Story: Hotel, for which she won a Golden Globe in 2015.
After a guest role in American Horror Story: Roanoke the following year, Gaga moved away from the horror genre as she transitioned to the silver screen with A Star is Born and House of Gucci, which makes Wednesday her first TV role in nearly a decade. Gaga thrives in horror, and Wednesday could have been a great opportunity for her to return to the genre after the critical and commercial flop that was Joker: Folie à Deux, but her time on the series was unfortunately short-lived. She did, however, release a new song for the series, “The Dead Dance,” which Enid and Agnes (Evie Templeton) perform in Episode 7, along with a music video directed by Tim Burton.
Lady Gaga’s ‘Wednesday’ Cameo Leads to Season 2’s Best Moment
Lady Gaga’s appearance on Wednesday may have been brief, but she plays a crucial role in the lead character’s arc and contributes to one of the funniest subplots of Season 2. When Wednesday seeks advice from her Grandmama about restoring her psychic powers, she’s directed to the gravestone of Rosaline Rotwood, a legendary Raven who taught runes and ancient cryptology back when Grandmama was a Nevermore student. Buried in the Nevermore graveyard, Rotwood’s headstone is imbued with dark energy that could temporarily bring back Wednesday’s psychic ability. After reciting the inscription underneath her headstone, Rotwood appears to Wednesday and instructs her to hold her hand over a candle flame to restore her sight, warning her that breaking her gaze would result in severe consequences. Having snuck out after curfew, Wednesday put everyone in their dorm at risk of being barred from attending the gala, so Enid tracks her down and wakes her from her vision at precisely the wrong moment, forcing Wednesday to break Rotwood’s gaze, which causes her and Enid to switch bodies. Rotwood later tells her they have until dawn to unravel each other’s innermost secrets in order to switch back.
Body-swapping is an odd, fantastical trope used to force two characters to understand each other better by literally putting them in each other’s shoes, which is also played for laughs as actors get to embody a completely different character. It’s the kind of plot device that’s right at home in the weird world of Wednesday, ultimately serving to guarantee that a fan-favorite character will survive until the next season, and capitalizing on Wednesday and Enid’s fun opposites dynamic, especially considering their lack of shared screen time in the first half of the season. Enid gives our titular goth girl a lovable foil who accepts her for who she is, but swapping bodies with Wednesday reveals some painful truths. When she snoops through Wednesday’s belongings, finds her novel, and reads the description of the character Wednesday based on her, there are some pretty mean things written there, so Enid decides to get back at her by dressing Wednesday in her colorful clothes and dancing around the Nevermore courtyard until she starts breaking out in hives, discovering Wednesday is literally allergic to color. Meanwhile, in Enid’s body, Wednesday discovers Bruno (Noah B. Taylor) is cheating on Enid and finds out she’s an alpha. To switch back, they confess what they most admire about each other, with Enid complimenting Wednesday’s fearlessness and Wednesday commending her kindness and quiet strength.
Wednesday‘s wacky, body-swapping subplot was a great way to bring these two characters back together and create some light-hearted fun by allowing Ortega and Myers the chance to completely switch up their performances and embody each other’s characters, which they pull off very convincingly. It’s hilariously jarring to see Ortega smile, giggle, shriek, and prance around like Enid, while Myers adopts Wednesday’s rigid posture and flat affect. According to Myers, she and Ortega didn’t have the best time shooting the body-swapped scenes, telling CinemaBlend, “It’s really comical, but honestly, we were both miserable and nervous because we wanted to get it right. We both were just freaking out the entire time, feeling like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I’m doing any of it right!’ But it’s amazing seeing her play Enid, because she nails it, and it’s really funny to see her through it, because she has never had that much energy in her entire life.”
Keeping Wednesday and Enid at odds throughout most of the season, with Wednesday instead spending more time with her obsessive fangirl, Agnes, took away one of the strongest core elements of Wednesday. Having them reconcile through body-swapping was an amusing way to resolve the conflict while still pushing Wednesday toward the truth regarding the Galpins. So while Lady Gaga may have been criminally underused, with her role in Wednesday turning out to be nothing more than a brief cameo, at least the introduction of her character led to one of the season’s best moments — and a catchy new song.
Wednesday
- Release Date
-
November 23, 2022
- Network
-
Netflix
