Netflix’s Wednesday Creators On Plans To Give Wednesday A Same-Sex Romance
Miles Millar and Al Gough, creators of Wednesday, have stated they are in no rush to give Wednesday and Enid a romantic relationship.
Recently, there has been a lot of hubbub among Wednesday fans about whether or not Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) and her best friend Enid (Emma Myers) should get together on Netflix’s new hit show. Some of this hubbub has even been fueled by Jenna Ortega herself, but the show’s creators Miles Millar and Al Gough say that maybe everyone should hold their horses. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Millar said “We’re not gonna discount anything…but we’re not gonna be, this is where you sometimes get misdirected by fans and things like that, so it’s just being really open to see how those characters develop and that friendship.”
In other words, the Wednesday creators will take fans’ favorite ships into account, but they can’t let that shape the story they are trying to tell. “This idea of sisterhood is key to the show,” Millar says. Enid and Wednesday were written as friends, and friendship is the most important element of their relationship. It may one day evolve into something else, but it must be a natural progression, not something done just to please a portion of their fan base.
This pressure to create romantic relationships between the main characters of television shows has been around even before Netflix and social media were a thing. Fans of Law and Order: SVU, for instance, were dying to see lead detectives Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) sleep together since the show’s first season, even if the creators of the show wanted them to remain close friends, not lovers.
This kind of pressure has only increased now that fans have more space to talk about their favorite shows online, and now that same-sex relationships are also more accepted by the viewing public. Wednesday fans, like many other TV show fans, have a lot of strong opinions, and those spread around much more easily in today’s current, connected world. An idea for a relationship can be spread from one person to millions with just the click of a mouse.
Wednesday did actually already flirt with the idea of romance with Tyler, a male love interest, and, to a lesser extent, her male classmate Xavier. This implies that the character is heterosexual, although she is also still finding herself and could therefore be open to exploring her sexuality later.
The many viewers of Netflix’s Wednesday already know, though, that the show is not really about romance at all. It is about Wednesday discovering herself as she strikes out on her own for the first time at boarding school. She goes from being a loner to realizing (reluctantly at times) that friends are an important thing to have, and that she doesn’t have to face the world by herself.
Millar and Gough’s comments make it tough to discern whether there are plans to make Wednesday and her more bubbly and colorful friend Enid an item in the future, but the thing that is clear is that their friendship is of utmost importance. If that friendship one day blossoms into something more, that could be great. If not, fans can still appreciate the bond between the two and accept that not every good TV relationship is obligated to turn romantic.
