Tamal Kundu
In ‘Wednesday,’ the Netflix adaptation of American cartoonist Charles Addams’ the ‘Addams Family,’ certain people have special abilities and are known as the outcasts. The part of the human population that doesn’t have any powers is known as the normies. The titular protagonist (Jenna Ortega), a psychic like her mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), begins attending Nevermore Academy, a school exclusively for outcasts, located in Jericho, New England. She soon discovers there is a monster lurking in the woods of Jericho, killing people. This monster eventually turns out to be a Hyde, just like the one from the pages of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ If you are wondering who is the “Dr. Jekyll” in ‘Wednesday, this is what you need to know. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Who Is Hyde?
When Wednesday arrives at Nevermore, she encounters two central mysteries — the murderous monster and the prophecy about her destroying Nevermore. She eventually discovers that they are connected.
Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) helps Wednesday solve the case by identifying the monster she is dealing with as a Hyde from one of the sketches of Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White). Fester then helps Wednesday find the diary of Nathaniel Faulkner, the founder of Nevermore. In his diary, Faulkner spent years cataloging outcasts around the world, and Wednesday and Fester do find a portion dedicated to Hydes there. According to Faulkner, Hydes are artists by nature. The monster within them is triggered either by a traumatic event or hypnosis. When the latter happens, the Hyde becomes bound to the person who brought it out, regarding them as their master.
Initially, all these clues lead Wednesday to a wrong conclusion as she deduces that the Hyde is Xavier and his master is therapist Dr. Valerie Kinbott (Riki Lindhome), doing the very thing that Xavier, whose father is a famous psychic, warned her against — creating a story in her head using her visions to back it up. In this case, Wednesday also uses the clues she has found along the way. She has Xavier arrested and then focuses on Kinbott, who she believes triggered Xavier’s Hyde traits with hypnotism. However, when she kisses Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), the son of the local sheriff and the boy she thought was a normie, she has a vision where she sees the Hyde killing Kinbott before transforming into Tyler.
Wednesday tries to exact confession out of Tyler through torture, but that doesn’t work, and she gets thrown out of the school. Before she leaves, Wednesday goes to see Eugene Otinger, who was attacked by the Hyde and was in a coma all this time. Eugene is the one who provides her with the final clue, making her realize that Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci) and not Kinbott, who has already been killed, is the real master of the Hyde.
Wednesday subsequently confronts Marilyn with Weems, whose special ability is shapeshifting, disguised as Tyler. Wednesday basically makes Marilyn confess that her real name is Laurel Gates, a descendant of the anti-outcast founder of Jericho, Joseph Crackstone. Laurel’s brother tried to kill all students of Nevermore before her with Nightshade poisoning but ironically was killed by the said poison during his fight with Wednesday’s father.
It is revealed that, before Tyler, his mother, Francois, was a Hyde. Laurel knew about this because her father kept tabs on all the outcasts in Jericho. She approached Tyler and manipulated him by showing who his mother was, using a plant-derived chemical to trigger his transformation into a Hyde.
