MTV’s Daria blazed a trail for snarky, sullen “Misery Chicks.” Netflix’s Wednesday steers it into the drama fans craved, without sacrificing any wit.
She’s the introverted, misanthropic adolescent whose satirical commentary on the mundane absurdities of her life set her apart from her more sociable peers. Sound familiar? Daria and Wednesday were both spun off from larger franchises (Beavis and Butt-Head and The Addams Family respectively), but acquired new fans when they were allowed to grow into worlds of their own. Daria’s family moved from Beavis and Butt-Head’s hometown of Highland, Texas to the suburb of Lawndale. Wednesday’s parents sent her to Nevermore Academy, just outside of Jericho, Vermont. Daria Morgendorffer and Wednesday Addams quickly found new best friends and struggled with the awkwardness of their first romantic affections.
Ironically, MTV’s Daria was held back by remaining stubbornly a sitcom, despite its cynical outlook. Netflix’s Wednesday, however, dove deep into the supernatural murder-mystery melodrama The CW’s Riverdale pioneered, while retaining its protagonist’s morbid snark. The early online fandom for Daria demonstrated through fanfiction and critical commentary a collective desire for the emotionally closed-off heroine to display deeper feelings, while staying essentially herself. Wednesday managed to square that circle by coping with traumas, wrestling with tumultuous relationships, and leaning on fan-favorite hurt/comfort tropes without fundamentally changing its titular heroine.
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Wednesday’s Self-Awareness Leads to Deeper Relationships Than Daria
The Addams Family was surreal even before Wednesday established Nevermore Academy as “Hogwarts gone goth.” Lawndale, however, was mostly an affluent “any town” than Highland, better suited to satirizing high school life and the slice-of-life coming-of-age subgenre. But Daria afforded its titular heroine less flexibility to earnestly explore her angst in a dramatic context than Wednesday. This was because Gomez and Morticia’s daughter started with a stronger sense of herself. In Daria, it wasn’t until Season 5, Episode 13, “Boxing Daria,” that the titular heroine realized she liked being isolated. By contrast, Wednesday admitted to Ms. Thornhill in Season 1, Episode 2, “Woe Is the Loneliest Number,” that she acted as if she didn’t care if people disliked her, and that “deep down,” she secretly enjoyed it.
This self-awareness allowed Wednesday Addams and Bianca Barclay to decelerate their rivalry in Episode 4, “Woe What a Night.” In this case, Bianca confessed her envy that Wednesday didn’t care what others thought of her, while the latter confided she wished she cared a little more. When Wednesday’s best friend, Enid Sinclair, stormed off to bunk with another friend in Episode 6, “Quid Pro Woe,” Wednesday recalled how the ghost of her ancestor, Goody Addams, had warned she was destined to be alone. She acknowledged for the first time that it didn’t feel good.
Enid took it upon herself to befriend Wednesday, but their relationship was defined by conflict. This was largely due to Enid’s desire for a personally transformative bond than the purely transactional favors Wednesday negotiated. By contrast, Daria and her best friend, Jane Lane, were more simpatico; their only serious fights were in the Seasons 3 and 4 finales “Jane’s Addition” and “Dye! Dye! My Darling.” In “Jane’s Addition,” Daria grew to resent how much time Jane spent with her new boyfriend, Tom Sloane. In “Dye! Dye! My Darling,” Jane mistakenly accused Daria of trying to steal Tom, who then kissed Daria and broke up with Jane.
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Wednesday Includes Romance Tropes Popular With Daria Fanfic Writers
Neither Daria nor Wednesday started their shows seeking boys’ attention. Before Tom Sloane in “Dye! Dye! My Darling,” the closest Daria came to receiving romantic affection was a platonic kiss on the cheek from her longtime crush, Trent Lane, who also happened to be Jane’s older brother. Wednesday, however, had unwanted rivaling suitors competing for her affection throughout the series. She also had her first kiss with the persistent Tyler Galpin in Episode 7, “If You Don’t Woe Me by Now.” While Tom proved highly controversial among Daria fans, leading to the popularization of the “Tom is Evil” trope in fanfiction, Tyler proved to be truly villainous.
Wednesday’s first kiss with Tyler was immediately followed by her vision of him killing their therapist Dr. Kinbott as a Hyde. To dispel any doubts that Tyler was evil, he privately shared with Wednesday, in Episode 8, “A Murder of Woes,” the sadistic pleasure he’s derived from his murder victims’ fear and pain. This left her frozen and trembling. Similarly, Tyler’s Hyde attack on Eugene Ottinger — Wednesday’s fellow member of the Nevermore “Hummers” beekeeping club — in “Woe What a Night” left Eugene comatose and hospitalized in the intensive care unit in Episode 5, “You Reap What You Woe.” Wednesday’s subsequent visit to Eugene’s bedside to express how much she missed him shares similarities with “Sins of the Past,” the 1998 fanfic by former Outpost Daria webmaster Martin J. Pollard, which explored a similar storyline with Daria’s sister Quinn.
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Lastly, there’s the presence of LGBTQIA representation to consider. In Daria, this came in the form of the bisexual Alison in the Daria TV film “Is It Fall Yet?”, with the implication that Jane could potentially be bisexual. However, Alison’s bisexuality wasn’t presented in a positive light and was depicted as predatory. Though Wednesday didn’t prominently feature LGBTQIA characters in Season 1 apart from Eugene’s mothers and Wednesday herself being potentially aroace, Enid’s actor Emma Myers hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a future Wenclair romance.
Though both Daria and Wednesday are beloved by fans for the accolades they achieved, Wednesday has by far explored the types of storylines Daria fans only dreamed of for the titular heroine. In this regard, Wednesday is a new generation’s Daria, but with greater mileage in terms of capitalizing on all the dramatic potential the MTV show missed out on by remaining a sitcom.
