Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for season 2 of Netflix’s “Wednesday.”
“Queerbait” is a word that the Internet has driven into the ground.
Initially rising to prominence as the term for a marketing tactic where creators heavily imply queer themes to entice a queer audience with no intentions of actually following through with the subplot, the early 2020s saw a rise in people accusing real-life celebrities such as Kit Connor, Billie Eilish, and Harry Styles of queerbaiting. Some even felt forced to publicly come out due to those accusations. As a result, people have become much more vigilant about using “queerbait.”.
On the other hand, queerbaiting has become one of Netflix’s favorite marketing tactics, especially since they’ve figured out how they can queerbait with female characters too.
From the day that “Wednesday,” a Riverdale-style teen drama take on the beloved Addams family, debuted on Netflix, fans have gravitated toward the relationship between the titular character Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) and her sunny werewolf roommate, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers). This occurred in spite of a bland and mediocre love triangle between Wednesday and two other male characters. People were drawn to the girls’ opposing aesthetics and personalities, and the chemistry between them in spite of those opposites. Season 1 showed them growing closer despite their differences.
The queerbaiting is not necessarily limited to the romantic aspect of the show. Season 1 also featured a brief sideplot where Enid’s mother, in an attempt to fix the fact that her daughter could not transform into a werewolf and thus fit in, tries to send Enid to a werewolf camp in a not-so-subtle allegory for gay conversation therapy. Enid wearing a sweater bearing the pink, orange, and white colors of the lesbian flag in one episode did not help things.
The queerbaiting has only ramped up with the release of season 2. From Wednesday allowing Enid to see parts of her novel that she did not even allow her mother to read, to Enid’s jealousy over splitting Wednesday’s attention with Agnes, a fangirl of Wednesday’s, this season is full of moments that the queer audience can spot and speculate on, while others may not give these moments a second thought.
There are also plotlines that, while they have mundane explanations, can also be read through a queer lens. For example, Enid abruptly jumps from one boyfriend to another in this season with the flimsy explanation that the old boyfriend “liked the old [her],” but she’s changed. When the new boyfriend is revealed to have been two-timing her, she’s barely upset when breaking up with him. Wednesday’s love interests from the previous season are also less prevalent in this season: one was written off the show, and the other is an antagonist who spends half of the season locked up. Wednesday’s main conflict this season turns out to be efforts toward preventing a psychic vision of Enid’s death from coming true.
There have even been instances of queerbaiting on the show’s social media pages. One infamous tweet from the official Wednesday Addams account posted a clip of Enid being revealed as a potential alpha, with the caption “If Enid is an alpha, consider me an omega,” thought to reference Omegaverse, a subgenre of queer erotic fan fiction. What is the point of posting something with such undertones other than to stir up queer fans’ hopes for representation?
People online have not hesitated to call this queerbaiting, but they also hold this underlying disdain for others that they interpret as “falling for the queerbaiting,” arguing that it’s obvious Netflix will not canonize a romantic subplot between Wednesday and Enid, scoffing at fans advocating for the writers and showrunners to do so. To that point, it’s important to remember two things.
First, not everyone was around during the early examples of queerbaiting. BBC’s “Sherlock” and the early seasons of “Supernatural” are classic examples of queerbaiting, but many younger Internet users were not online and aware of those as they were happening. They might know them as examples of queerbaiting, but they did not experience the initial hope of representation and the crushing realization that they were being baited. “Wednesday” could very well be some people’s first exposure to true queerbaiting.
Second, it is not wrong for queer people to demand better from Netflix, a media giant, and demand that they stop using queer people and queer themes as a marketing tactic without following through with explicitly queer stories. Although it’s important to support queer indie projects that don’t have the same constraints as big studios trying to maximize profits from every collective on the planet, mainstream media should not be overlooked due to its immense influence on society. Authentic representation of queer people, or any marginalized group, in a piece of mainstream media can reach an audience that might not go out of their way to look for it on their own.
I, unfortunately, remain a pessimist, and think Netflix will do everything in its power to dangle the possibility of a Wednesday/Enid romance on a stick to entice queer people to keep watching. Despite numerous articles covering the queerbaiting even when season 1 was released, season 2 deployed the same tactics. By the time season 3 comes out in 2027, the queerbaiting will likely only get more overt.