‘Wednesday’ Finale Ending Explained: Who Is the Monster?
The following contains major spoilers for the “Wednesday” Season 1 finale. Turn back if you haven’t seen it!
Wednesday Addams carves out a neogothic niche for herself in the new Netflix series “Wednesday,” from creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Once she transfers to Nevermore Academy in Jericho, Vermont, the child protegé finds herself in her element at a school for outcast children of classic monsters like werewolves, vampires, sirens and gorgons to name a few. Season 1 contains a maze of mysteries for Wednesday to solve, including her own parents’ cloudy past, a monster wreaking havoc in the nearby woods and some suspicious adult activity in regards to how Nevermore and Jericho are being run.
We get most of our answers to all the questions that arise as Wednesday pokes around in unfinished business across institutions — connected to the Jericho Sheriff Galpi (Jamie McShane), Mayor Noble Walker (Tommie Earl Jenkins), Headmistress Weems (Gwendolyn Christie) and Jericho’s historical figurehead Joseph Crackstone as well as the founder of Nevermore.
The path down memory lane proves to be a twisty one, though, so buckle your spotted seatbelts because the ending is a wild ride.
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Who Is the Hyde Monster?
At the very beginning of the series, Sheriff Galpin tells his deputy to describe the disturbing murders in the woods between Nevermore and Jericho as bear attacks. He knows the murders are connected to Nevermore, but he doesn’t know how to prove it at first. This is where Wednesday comes in. After clearing her father Gomez’s (Luis Guzmán) name of murder of one Garrett Gates (remember this name), Wednesday sets out to uncover the true identity of the monster murdering innocent bystanders and cutting off random body parts between the various cadavers.
After suggesting that the monster could be a Hyde, Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) helps Wednesday find the top-secret, safeguarded diary of Nathaniel Faulkner, founder of Nevermore, who traveled the world observing outcasts. While reading the diary, complete with vivid sketches of the creature, Wednesday latches onto Faulkner’s description of Hydes (yes, like Jekyll and Hyde) as artistic and moody in temperament. This observation combined with Xavier Thorpe’s (Percy Hynes White) vivid psychic connection to the monster — he sketches and paints visions and pictures from the perspective of the creature — leads Wednesday to believe that Xavier is the one transforming into the beast and killing people.
“She’s an investigator and I kind of fall into the suspect category, I guess,” Percy Hynes White, who portrays Xavier, told TheWrap. “And I think I’m the only other psychic at the school who she can relate to and talk to. So that’s kind of my role in her in her story.”
Xavier also does therapy sessions with Dr. Kinbott (Riki Lindhome), and Wednesday discovers this. Faulker’s diary also detailed that a Hyde must be unlocked by some traumatic event, so she reasons that Kinbott must be responsible because she would be the only one aware of Xavier’s true condition. She accuses him of the killings, getting him arrested (with the help of some framing by a name soon to be revealed.)
Plot twist #1: Xavier is not the Hyde. The Hyde is actually Tyler (Hunter Doohan).
Sheriff Galpin’s son masqueraded as a normie for the majority of the first season of “Wednesday,” but after Thing steals some documents from the Galpin’s garage, she confronts Tyler about it, reading that his mother, who was a Hyde, was triggered by her postpartum depression after giving brith to Tyler. Tyler, who was told his mother had severe bipolar disorder, inherited the Hyde genes. He confirms to Wednesday privately that she’s right, and he goes dark real fast.
“I found out in the audition process. They told me right before my final audition that I had a secret and I was like, ‘Is it the secret?’ They told me officially after that,” Hunter Doohan, who plays Tyler, told TheWrap. “I felt like I played two different characters, and I only got to play the real character for like, three scenes. So it was really fun to step into the real darker side of Tyler the end.”
Who Is Unlocking the Hyde Monster?
Upon further investigation into the Gates family mansion, Wednesday, Enid and Tyler discover that someone has been keeping Garrett’s sister Laurel’s bed warm, even though she supposedly drowned years ago. Wednesday finds reason to believe that not only is it the real Laurel Gates, determined to exact her father’s vendetta of ridding Jericho and the world of outcasts, but that Laurel Gates has been walking around under the alias of Dr. Kinbott, town therapist.
Wednesday gets a tip from Eugene Ottinger (Moosa M) that sends her investigation in a whole new direction. When Eugene went to check out the Hyde’s lair – a spirally cave tunnel — someone else was lurking around there, and the mysterious silhouette sets fire to the cave. Eugene went unconscious after the Hyde attacked him, but when he wakes up he remembers that the figure was wearing red boots.
Plot twist #2: The Hyde’s master is … Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci)!
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The not-so-normie teacher used a plant-derived chemical to unlock Tyler rather than Dr. Kinbott’s hypnosis (Tyler sees Dr. Kinbott too.). Thornhill, aka Laurel Gates, must have learned about Tyler’s true identity from her father who kept tabs on all the outcasts in town, including Tyler’s mother Francois. Thornhill got the records, showed Tyler and provided the trauma needed to unlock his transformation into the Hyde. When Dr. Kinbott got too close to the truth, Thornhill sent Tyler morphed into the monster to kill her and pin it on Xavier, leaving Kimbott’s necklace in his art studio where he painted his disturbing psychic visions of the beast.
Wednesday draws a confession from Thornhill with Weems (Gwendoline Christie) pretending to be Tyler, but unfortunately Marilyn stabs Weems in the jugular, injecting her with Nightshade and killing her. Things are about to get even more spooky.
What About the Missing Body Parts?
Long story short, the Gates are descentents of the one and only Jericho founding father Joseph Crackstone. Along with the historical lineage, Crackstone passed down his malevolent desire to expunge the world of outcasts, so Laurel has tasked Tyler with killing various random people — both outcasts and normies — and taking miscellaneous body parts from them in order to construct a zombie body for the phantom Joseph Crackstone. After she knocks Wednesday out following her violent stabbing of Weems, Thornhill takes Wednesday to Crackstone’s crypt where his tomb and dead body remain. She arranges the organs, limbs and more in jars around the coffin.
Thornhill’s larger motives include carrying on the Crackstone mantle of “protecting normies from outcasts.” As revealed earlier on in the series, Garrett Gates died serving the same cause, attempting to poison all of the Nevermore student body when Gomez and Morticia attended, but falling victim to his own lethal weapon, a vial of Nightshade poison that smashed against his chest in fighting Gomez.
How Is Wednesday Connected to All of This?
Besides getting involved in what could have remained mostly none of her business, Wednesday also has an ancestral connection to the founding of Jericho. It turns out her father’s predecessor Goody (also portrayed by Jenna Ortega), was one of the first outcasts who came to Jericho from Mexico. Goody originally defeated Joseph Crackstone’s efforts to exterminate all outcasts, sealing him in his sarcophogus with a blood lock. Not only did she kill him, but she cursed his soul too, and Laurel/Thornhill knows this because she took Goody’s Book of Shadows, which Wednesday searched for at Pilgrim World on Outreach Day. Wednesday’s blood, blood of a direct living descendant of Goody, is needed to break that lock on the night of a full blood moon, which is why Goody told her in an earlier vision that she is the key.
Thornhill traps Wednesday, slits her palm and unlocks Crackstone’s coffin with an incantation. Crackstone stabs Wednesday thinking she’s Goody, effectively killing her. But Goody appears to Wednesday one last time, telling her she can pass through her to heal her fatal stab wound, through the necklace her mother gave her, a powerful talisman and conduit for conjuring spirits. Wednesday heals and heads to fend off the resurrected Crackstone. He almost smothers her again after she takes an arrow for Xavier, but Queen Bee Bianca pulls through and distracts him by stabbing him in the back.
The supernatural conjuring of Crackstone must be defeated, according to Goody with a good old fashioned stab through his black heart, and Wednesday delivers, twisting the broken sword (the same one her mom and dad used to kill Garrett Gates) she uses for good measure. Crackstone dissolves Lord Voldemort style in a burst of ash and flames. Wednesday and her friends have saved their outcast community from eradication. Oh, and Eugene’s bees stop Thornhill from shooting Wednesday.
What’s Next?
Tyler the Hyde is still alive, for one thing. One of the closing shots in the finale shows him being transported in a hypersecure vehicle, but he wakes up and morphs into the monster. Also, Crackstone’s heirloom ring is still lying around somewhere in that Nevermore pentagon quad after falling off his disintegrated corpse.
Other noteworthy finale story points include Enid wolfing out to fight the Hyde as it takes a final shot at Wednesday in the woods. Also shoutout to that heartwarming hug between a bloody Enid and Wednesday, who is known to despise both color and physical touch, which are characteristic of her werewolf roomie.
Bianca mentioned leaving Nevermore to help her mother out with Morning Song and their community, so who knows if she will be back, though she did hint to Wednesday that they would clinch the fencing title together next year.
Wednesday, though, most undoubtedly will return to her haunted new home. She stamps out “THE END?” on her magnificently morbid typewriter, narrating the outtro to her show. Oh, but some new stalker texts her on the new phone Xavier gets her, telling her they’re watching her.
So, Season 2 when?
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