Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’ expands the scope of the protagonist’s abilities, particularly her skills in solving a string of murders and finding the culprits. Apart from her razor-sharp brain, she also relies on her psychic abilities to get the job done. However, she is yet to master her powers, and often, after using her psychic muscles, she ends up with a stream of black tears on her face. At first, she dismisses it as a simple malfunction, but it turns out to be much more than that. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Black Tears Point Towards the Overuse of Wednesday’s Powers
As smart and sharp as Wednesday is, she is still a newbie when it comes to mastering her psychic powers. In the first season, she finds a lot of about this stuff, particularly being a powerful Raven with things beyond her control, from Goody, her lookalike ancestor whose spirit also acts her guide in this journey. The end of Season 1 marks the end of Goody’s journey as she crosses over to the other side, which leaves Wednesday without a person to guide her through this treacherous new territory. She takes Goody’s book of spells as her tether, and spends an entire summer learning spells from it and seemingly mastering her craft.
However, it soon turns out that Goody’s book might be a bit too advanced for a still-rookie Wednesday. While she uses her powers to catch serial killers, like the Kansas Scalper, she doesn’t understand the extent to which she is pushing herself. She becomes overconfident and even refuses her mother’s advice, who had already pointed out that she must be more careful with the way she is handling things. But of course, Wednesday doesn’t pay any mind to her mother, and this leads to the black tears. While she dismisses the depth of their meaning, Thing keeps pointing out that perhaps she needs to slow down a bit. However, he keeps it a secret from Morticia on Wednesday’s behest.
Eventually, when Wednesday has a vision of Enid’s death, she falls unconscious with a stream of black tears on her face. Morticia is alarmed by this sight, but she is also not entirely surprised. She knows that her daughter has been secretly using Goody’s book over the summer. While Wednesday didn’t seem too interested in finding out what the tears meant, Morticia makes it clear that the tears are a clear sign of psychic exhaustion. Wednesday has been using her psychic powers too much without consideration of the toll it is taking on her, and eventually, it will catch up with her. Sure enough, she is unable to use her powers after her fainting incident.
The Black Tears Point Towards a Tragic Fate for Wednesday, If Left Unchecked
While explaining the drawbacks of psychic exhaustion to Wednesday, Moriticia gives her the story of her sister, Ophelia, as a warning sign. It turns out that Ophelia, too, was a gifted Raven, and much like Wednesday, she was focused on getting to the true depth of her powers with the sheer impatience and hubris that Morticia’s teenage daughter exhibits now. Because there was no one to guide Ophelia either, she fell further into the loop of pushing the limits. Unlike Wednesday, she didn’t have a mother concerned about her well-being.
One day, when Ophelia was in her sophomore year in Nevermore (another parallel to Wednesday), she was found screaming in the quad. She had black tears coming out of her eyes, and no one knew how to help her. Following this incident, Ophelia’s mental health worsened, and it seemed that she was starting to lose her mind. This prompted her mother, Hester Frump, to send her to Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, which did not sit well with Morticia, who believed that her sister needed a more caring hand. She knew that Ophelia would only get worse in the hospital, but by the time she sent Fester there to check up on her, her sister had fled the place. It has been well over a decade and a half now, and she hasn’t been heard from since.
Ophelia’s tragic fate led to the worsening of Morticia and Hester’s relationship. As Morticia sees history repeating itself with Wednesday, she refuses to follow in her mother’s footsteps and is ready to do whatever it takes to save her daughter from descending into madness, even if it means burning Goody’s book. Of course, Wednesday doesn’t get it and she resents her mother for it, but Mortician would rather have a fraught relationship with her daughter rather than see her being admitted into an asylum. Wednesday must wait for her next guide to come along and help her not only understand her powers, but also find and stop at the limit beyond which nothing good can happen.
Read More: What Happened to Xavier Thorpe? Did Percy Hynes White Leave Wednesday?
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