(Credits: Netflix)

There is a difference between being dark and being wounded. One is a choice; the other is a condition. And if you look closely, Wednesday Addams is not just parading around in monochrome sarcasm and spiked pigtails for effect. She is grieving. And not for a person, necessarily, but for something far more abstract: safety, innocence, connection, and perhaps even her sense of belonging.

Popular culture loves to flatten characters like Wednesday into quirky archetypes. She is goth, she is morbid, she is different. People treat her like an aesthetic: Halloween-core with sharp one-liners. But what the Netflix series does, subtly and often without spelling it out, is reveal that Wednesday’s detachment, cruelty, and self-isolation are not just traits. They are trauma responses.

Grief does not always look like crying into a pillow. Sometimes it looks like refusing to call your mother “Mom”. Or being so self-reliant that it becomes toxic. Or treating friendships like optional assignments. When Wednesday pushes people away, it is not because she does not feel. It is because she feels too much and would rather control her environment than risk emotional rejection. That is grief. And it is old, buried, and barely named.

She is not mourning a single death. She is mourning emotional availability. Her relationship with her family is laced with secrets and expectations. Her mother adores her but does not see her. Her father is loyal but oblivious. Her brother needs her more than she knows how to give. She is surrounded by people, even ones who love her, but left completely untouched in the ways that count.

In the show, we see her form connections despite herself. Enid, Tyler, and Xavier, these people become cracks in her carefully constructed walls. But she never dives headfirst. She tiptoes, tests, and retreats. That is what grief does. It makes you wary. It convinces you that opening up will cost you something you cannot afford to lose again. So instead of crying or screaming, Wednesday controls. Investigates. Solves. Outsmarts.

There is one particular kind of grief that does not get talked about enough: the grief of never having had a safe space to be emotionally messy. Wednesday’s entire persona is built around precision and control. Her chaos is curated. Her darkness is performative, but also protective. She is a girl who has never been allowed to break down, so she turned her breakdown into a performance.

The most heartbreaking moments in the series are those where she lets down her guard, not dramatically, but through micro-expressions and fleeting pauses. The way she pauses when someone calls her a friend. The way she instinctively hides hurt behind an insult. The way she softens just enough to show that she wants to connect, but does not know how.

Goth is the uniform. Grief is the wound underneath. And for all her detachment and disdain, Wednesday is aching for something to hold onto. Not love in the romantic sense, but clarity, truth, and safety. Something pure in a world she sees as fundamentally rotten.

So yes, Wednesday Addams is gothic. But more importantly, she is grieving. And perhaps that is why she resonates so deeply with this generation, a group of young people who are constantly told to be strong, sarcastic, and unfazed. We are all just trying to keep it together with eyeliner and avoidance. Perhaps we all have a little Wednesday in us.

And perhaps what she needs, what we all need, is not another label or interpretation. It is permission to feel deeply, without having to turn it into a joke.