You’ll fall for them in a snap
Jenna Ortega, Wednesday
Netflix
Wednesday really is a scream. The Tim Burton-produced horror comedy, created by Smallville‘s Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, is one of Netflix’s most watched shows of all time, according to Netflix. Jenna Ortega gives an inspired performance as teen iconoclast Wednesday Addams, who does classic Netflix teen show things like try to solve a mystery, get caught up in a love triangle, and clash with authority figures at her boarding school for supernatural youth.
With all those people watching all those hours, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Wednesday Season 1 and are looking for something similar to watch while you wait for Season 2. The good news is that since Wednesday shares so many traits with other shows, there’s no shortage of shows like Wednesday to watch, especially on Netflix. Pack up your cello, put on your finest black clothes, and get to streaming.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Kiernan Shipka, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Diyah Pera/Netflix
Netflix canceled supernatural teen horror dramedy Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in July 2020, which surprised me at the time. Then Wednesday was announced in October 2020, and Sabrina’s cancellation made perfect sense. Sabrina and Wednesday are so similar that Netflix couldn’t make them both at the same time. (I’m not saying that’s actually the reason Sabrina was canceled — Covid was the main reason — but Wednesday is Sabrina with more upside.) Sabrina is based on the Sabrina the Teenage Witch comics, and follow the titular half-human, half-witch (Kiernan Shipka) as she attends the Academy of Unseen Arts, a supernatural school just like Nevermore Academy, and solves mysteries, navigates conflicts with classmates, authority figures, and family, and gets caught in a love triangle. They have similar whimsically macabre visual sensibilities and charismatic lead performances (Wednesday is a better character than Sabrina, though). If you loved Wednesday but didn’t watch Sabrina, you’re about to find your second-favorite show.
Legacies
Jenny Boyd and Danielle Rose Russell, Legacies
Chris Reel / The CW
Let’s keep the supernatural teen shows coming! This one is a spin-off of The Vampire Diaries that aired for four seasons on the CW. (Wednesday is constructed like a CW show with a bigger budget.) On Legacies, Danielle Rose Russell stars as Hope Mikaelson, a half-vampire, half-werewolf, and half-witch (I know that math doesn’t add up, but just go with it) who begins attending the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, which is, you guessed it, a boarding school for supernatural teens who don’t fit in anywhere else. It lacks a lot of Wednesday‘s humor and flair — Tim Burton definitely didn’t direct any of this — but if you just love the world of a school for werewolves and vampires, check it out.
The Order
Sarah Grey and Jake Manley, The Order
Netflix
Yet another Netflix supernatural teen show set at a school (Belgrave University) where a new student (Jack Morton, played by Jake Manley) finds mystery, danger, and romance while learning about the school’s magical secrets (a secret society called the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose). The students are a little older, the budget is lower, and the tone is more serious (though there’s plenty of humor) than Wednesday, but if you want to watch another show about a supernatural school without leaving Netflix, it will do the trick.
The Umbrella Academy
Elliot Page and Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy
Netflix
Not exactly a supernatural teen show, but not not a supernatural teen show, at least from a vibes standpoint, The Umbrella Academy follows a group of superpowered siblings who reunite to solve the mystery of their father’s death. It’s based on a comic series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. The Umbrella Academy and Wednesday aren’t that much alike from a plot standpoint, but they definitely feel a lot alike in a way that’s hard to describe in a way other than it feels like the Netflix algorithm would recommend one if you watched the other. The Umbrella Academy had a big dance scene in Season 1, so Wednesday has a big dance scene in Season 1, because Netflix knows people love dance scenes. They’re some of Netflix’s most Netflixiest shows.
The Midnight Club
Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, Annarah Cymone, Ruth Codd, Adia, Chris Sumpter, Aya Furukawa, Sauriyan Sapkota, The Midnight Club
Eike Schroter/Netflix
One last Netflix teen show before we move on. This one hails from co-creator Mike Flanagan, Netflix’s master of emotionally heavy horror, and thus is a full-on teen horror drama, as opposed to Wednesday‘s teen horror comedy. It’s about a group of terminally ill teenagers in a youth hospice who gather every night at midnight to tell each other scary stories. It’s a heart-wrenching, occasionally frightening, and morbidly funny series that’s another sort of vibe-based counterpart to Wednesday.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Head, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Charisma Carpenter and Alyson Hannigan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Fotos International/Courtesy of Getty Images
The Addams Family was around long before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Buffy basically invented the snarky teen supernatural drama genre whose torch Wednesday picked up. Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as the titular slayer, who has to balance killing monsters with normal teen girl stuff. Sunnydale High isn’t technically a magical school, but it may as well be, what with all the demon principals and werewolf classmates and so on and so forth. She’s even in a love triangle with two vampires, the soulful Angel (David Boreanaz) and the bad boy Spike (James Marsters).
Smallville
Tom Welling, Smallville
Michael Courtney/Warner Bros./Getty Images
A large portion of the credit for Wednesday‘s success is due to showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who know more than maybe anyone else about how to make a coming-of-age TV series about a beloved character that’s been part of pop culture for decades. They created Smallville, the show about Superman in high school that ran for 10 seasons on the WB and the CW. Tom Welling stars as young Clark Kent, the superpowered being from the planet Krypton tries to pass as a normal American high school kid. Clark Kent is about as different a character from Wednesday Addams as could be, but Gough and Millar’s fish-out-of-water story architecture will feel familiar.
You
Jenna Ortega, You
Beth Dubber/Netflix
If more Jenna Ortega is what you want, more Jenna Ortega is what you’ll get. Warning: She doesn’t show up until the second season of You, but the creepy stalker drama is well worth the ride. The series stars Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg, a true freak of a man who hides his tendency to stalk and obsess (and, usually, eventually kill) behind an unassuming persona. Ortega plays Joe’s shrewd teen neighbor when he moves from New York to Los Angeles to restart his life. You is much less family-friendly than Wednesday, but it balances its darkness with dry humor in a way Wednesday fans might just recognize. –Allison Picurro
Yellowjackets
Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, Yellowjackets
Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME
The presence of OG Wednesday (and Wednesday‘s own Marilyn Thornhill) herself, Christina Ricci, is enough to earn Yellowjackets a spot on this list. The thriller series about a high school girls soccer team that get stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash splits its timeline across two different periods. One takes place in the past, slowly revealing the slow descent into chaos that occurred during the 19 months the girls were stranded, and one 25 years later, catching up with four of the survivors as they’re stalked by a mysterious presence. The show takes its time revealing the mystery of what really went down after the crash (…cannibalism? We’re still not totally sure) and what sinister secrets the women are still holding on to after all these years. The teen timeline will speak to Wednesday fans (the teens also happen to be the best part of Yellowjackets), and the series similarly ends its first season on a cliffhanger. For her part, Ricci stars as the adult version of one of the survivors, Misty Quigley, who harbors a ruthless nature of her own. –Allison Picurro
