As we approach Wednesday<em> </em>season 3, Jenna Ortega shares her vision for the relationship between Wednesday and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones). The tension between Wednesday and her mother was evident in season 1, but it intensified in season 2 when Morticia began living on Nevermore Academy’s campus. Much of Wednesday season 2 featured arguments and conflicts between the mother and daughter.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Ortega expresses her desire for Wednesday and Morticia to stop arguing and instead collaborate. After witnessing many female characters unite toward the end of season 2, Ortega hopes the show will embrace this theme more in season 3. Check out her comments below:

I would like them [Morticia and Wednesday] to stop arguing and team up. We’d just been talking about women banding together, and you see that a bit in the final episode, or episodes. I think we should lean into that. It’s really exciting and refreshing to see women displayed that way.

Regarding what Ortega envisions beyond Wednesday’s relationship with Morticia, she wants the titular character to confront “the darker side of herself” more without the show “taking things too seriously.” She also wishes to see more of Wednesday attempting to harm or kill her brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), which is a more common theme in other Addams Family adaptations.

I think it’s important to see Wednesday deal with the darker side of herself a little bit, too – but also never taking things too seriously. And I would like to see more death attempts between her and Pugsley. She doesn’t try to kill him enough! I want to see stuff like that.

Zeta-Jones agrees with Ortega on the direction of Wednesday and Morticia’s relationship. Rather than mirroring the tense dynamic between Morticia and her mother, Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley), Zeta-Jones hopes to break this cycle with her daughter. She also wants to delve deeper into what went wrong between Morticia and Hester.

Now that we’ve introduced the wonderful Joanna Lumley as my mother, I’d like to tell more about that story. We left it on a bit of a cliffhanger, but what was it that got to that situation? And how, as a mother, I don’t want that to happen in this relationship [with Wednesday].

You know, teenagers and mothers do actually go over to the other side of this contentious relationship that a lot of women and mothers and daughters relate to in the show. I’d like to see the maturity of this mother/daughter relationship a little bit more and some kind of amends to what this relationship with my mother is about – or where it really festered, for want of a better word.

Based on the ending of Wednesday season 2, there is a good chance that both Ortega and Zeta-Jones will see some of their wishes fulfilled in season 3. Wednesday and Morticia now share a level of understanding that they previously lacked, which bodes well for their collaboration and avoiding the negative dynamics seen in Morticia’s relationship with her own mother.

The cliffhanger reveal of Hester keeping her other daughter, Ophelia, secretly captive suggests that more family backstory will be explored as well. This provides a natural opportunity to unpack the history between Morticia and Hester, especially after Wednesday’s vision of Ophelia as she likely investigates the dark truth behind what happened to her aunt.

After facing criticism for focusing too much on a love triangle storyline in season 1, season 2 steered clear of this route for Wednesday’s character. Wednesday season 3 has the chance to make a similar correction regarding Wednesday and Morticia’s relationship, which many fans criticized for straying too far from traditional Addams Family dynamics.