Ranker Spotlight: Wednesday Addams

Sequels are so last decade, and prequels are passé. Nowadays, one of the most popular ways to continue a popular media franchise is to make a spinoff based on a popular supporting character. Shows like Better Call Saul and Obi-Wan Kenobi dominate the conversation around TV — and it seems the latest entry in this trend will be Wednesday, a spinoff centered on Wednesday Addams. 

Since the Addams Family was introduced to Americans in the pages of the The New Yorker in 1938, the macabre clan has starred in four TV series, six movies, and a Broadway musical. The characters are clearly reliable at drawing audiences, having demonstrated their staying power for over 80 years. With Tim Burton on board as an executive producer, there’s good reason for Netflix to hope that Wednesday will be a smash hit on par with Squid Game or Stranger Things. 

If Wednesday really is a success, what does that tell TV producers? First, that spinoffs centered on beloved characters really do work; and second, that Wednesday Addams’s fan base is big enough to pursue with future projects. We’re using Ranker Insights to explore that fan base, identify what it loves about the character, and find some other characters and properties they’d likely also love to see spun off.

How Wednesday Ranks on Ranker

The Addams Family has always had one foot in the horror genre and the other in comedy, which is part of what makes the franchise so dynamic and renewable. Much like Batman, it’s given a new spin with each reboot, all existing on a spectrum between campy and dark. That explains why Wednesday is seen in so many different, often contradicting ways across Ranker’s thousands of TV and film lists. 

First, it should be noted that on very general, competitive lists covering both television and movies, Wednesday has some impressive rankings. She’s #6 overall on our list of The Greatest Kid Characters In Film (169K votes) and #15 on The Greatest Female TV Characters Of All Time (1.2 million votes). Though some Addams Family movies and TV series have been better received than others, it’s clear their cumulative effect has made Wednesday Addams a permanent fixture of American entertainment culture. 

Wednesday Addams is also simultaneously thought of as scary and hilarious: she ranks at #14 on our list of The Funniest Kid Characters In TV History (20K votes) and #21 on The Creepiest Kids In Horror Movies (32K votes). Perhaps Wednesday is able to walk the line between quirky and creepy better than than Morticia, Gomez, Pugsley, and Uncle Fester — that theory is supported by the fact that she’s in the Top 100 Best Movie Characters Of All Time (939K votes), ahead of all her family members.

What Do Wednesday Fans Love?

Hundreds of thousands of votes have been cast for Wednesday on some of Ranker’s most popular movie and TV lists. What and who else do those fans vote for? Ranker Insights can tell us more about the likes and dislikes of those who love the Addams Family daughter.

Other Characters

One of the film characters most likely to appeal to the Wednesday Addams fan club is Jack Skellington of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame — no surprise, since they both share a quasi-Gothic sensibility and made a big impression on quirky ’90s kids. Disney has tried to make a sequel to Nightmare happen in the past, but maybe what the company should do instead is an origin story for Jack. 

More surprising is the fact that Wednesday fans are 5X more likely to love Professor McGonagall of the Harry Potter series than any other character in that franchise. Even though the stern, rule-enforcing Hogwarts instructor would probably not have gotten along with Wednesday, she’s even more appealing to fans than more rebellious characters like Sirius Black, or the similarly dour Severus Snape. Maybe the next spinoff should explore Minerva’s mysteries rather than Dumbledore’s secrets. Also among Wednesday fans’ favorite fictional characters is another daughter of a famous fictional American family, Lisa Simpson. 

Beyond giving us some potential spinoff subjects, these correlations with popular 1990s and 2000s media franchises tell us that the current crop of Wednesday enthusiasts are millennials, people who likely came to love the character through Christina Ricci’s portrayal in the 1991 AddamsFamily and 1993 Addams Family Values films. Ricci’s role in the new Netflix series will hopefully help to inspire these young adults to view Wednesday as must-see nostalgia viewing.

Movies

Among the films most likely to be beloved by Wednesday’s fans are Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, again suggesting that Tim Burton’s participation in the new series will be a positive among its target audience. Also on the list, however, is The Princess Bride, a decidedly more upbeat, though still peculiar film that turns the fantasy genre in on itself. The affinity indicates that love for the character isn’t all about doom and gloom — quality storytelling and a tongue-in-cheek narrative style are also key.

TV

The TV shows that Wednesday Addams fans are most likely to love are wacky sci-fi stories that don’t take themselves too seriously. This character’s fan base is 2X more likely to be drawn to Doctor Who, a decades-old science fiction franchise with a proudly nerdy following, but one that favors campy fun over moralizing allegories and gritty realism. They’re also 2X more likely to love Futurama, an animated satire of sci-fi shows crammed with plenty of punchlines. Taken together, these affinities suggest that fans are looking for more of the goofy fun of the ’90s films than the kind of gritty reboot other media properties like Archie Comics and Batman have received in recent years. 

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.

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