‘The Precipice of Adulthood’: Jenna Ortega Teasers ‘Wednesday’ Season 3 Will Tackle the Horror of Growing Up

LOS ANGELES — Netflix’s macabre global juggernaut Wednesday is preparing to exchange monster-slaying for a terrifying new frontier: high school senior year and the impending dread of adulthood.

Speaking in an in-depth interview with Esquire for its September 2026 Mavericks of Hollywood issue, star and executive producer Jenna Ortega offered fans the clearest indication yet of where the hit series is heading in its third chapter.

As production continues in Dublin, the 23-year-old actor revealed that Season 3 will follow Wednesday Addams and her Nevermore Academy peers into their final year of secondary school, a milestone that introduces problems far more confronting than supernatural beasts.

From Supernatural Monsters to Senior Year Anxiety

While previous seasons leaned heavily into gothic murder mysteries and monstrous academy threats, Ortega explained that Season 3 will force its characters to reckon with existential real-world questions regarding family dynamics, independence, and life after graduation.

"This season, especially because the kids are seniors in high school now, we're dealing with more confrontational feelings regarding family and what it means to be an adult and what you see for your life," Ortega told Esquire. "It's not really until you get to the precipice of adulthood that you start to realize, 'Oh, God, well, maybe I've got to have a plan.'"

Ortega, who has been filming in Ireland since February, acknowledged that immersing herself in Wednesday’s uncompromising worldview for months at a time often bleeds into her day-to-day life off-set.

"We mesh pretty well," she admitted regarding her iconic alter ego. "But while I'm in production, going over scripts over and over again, and I'm there all day, every day, and in every scene… yeah, there's times where I think like her. Maybe she peeks out a bit more, here and there."

Reinforced Cast and Addams Family Secrets

The thematic focus on family strain aligns directly with major additions to the Season 3 ensemble.

Following her debut last season, Joanna Lumley has been promoted to a series regular in her role as Wednesday's wealthy grandmother, Hester Frump. Furthermore, Eva Green joins the regular cast as Ophelia, Morticia Addams' long-missing sister who was revealed in the Season 2 cliffhanger to be locked in a basement cell beneath Hester's estate.

The new season will also see Hollywood icon Winona Ryder join the show in a recurring guest capacity, marking a high-profile reunion for Ryder, Ortega, and director Tim Burton following their collaboration on 2024's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Production Roadmap — 'Wednesday' Season 3

A Defining Role for a Generation

Returning cast members for the third outing include Emma Myers (Enid Sinclair), Hunter Doohan (Tyler Galpin), Joy Sunday (Bianca Barclay), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Morticia Addams), Luis Guzmán (Gomez Addams), Isaac Ordonez (Pugsley), and Fred Armisen (Uncle Fester).

As Wednesday continues to anchor Netflix's global television slate, Ortega noted that playing a character with such an unwavering sense of identity remains intensely gratifying.

"Wednesday is very aware of who she is, the world that she lives in and what she wants out of it," Ortega observed. "Anytime anyone is just undeniably themselves, it's quite magnetic."

With production progressing through the summer, fans can expect the dark coming-of-age chapter to land on streaming screens in 2027.