Good take on it…. Though I disagree with some of it. The issue with Wednesday Addams is that she is a tertiary character in an ensemble piece. She’s a one-dimensional, single joke adorable psychopath and in the 1990s that’s how she was played. Heavy lifting in the original plot had to be done by Gomez - and Ricci was so good they did the Family Values film. But it was all plot and zero character - when something is all plot and no character, you can do what you want. They’re vehicles for events and there’s no real peril.

To put together a teen detective film noir, which seems to be the genre they went for, you need to have a troubled narrator, a fully realised character who needs to have flaws which hold them back. Think Jessica Jones or Brick - both excellent examples. Wednesday as an entirely uncaring psychopath doesn’t work - there’s nothing to invest in, Wednesday as a heavily guarded, emotionally repressed, kick-ass sociopath will work (just.) I didn’t buy the romance story at all…. But without understanding why she’s closed off from her mother, why she’s so guarded with everyone and where her violence comes from - there’s nothing to invest in.

I think the scorpion back story is a narratively integral part of the entire Wednesday experience - and it’s beautifully offset when Thing gets knifed. Ortega was very devastating in that scene. I nearly cried on her behalf.

I didn’t experience it as a comment on violence against women, rather a comment on the perils of emotional repression - and the importance of friendship.