[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for Season 1 of “Wednesday.”]
After nearly three long years, the Netflix sensation “Wednesday” is back for the first installment of Season 2.
Hunter Doohan’s character, Tyler Galpin, began as the lovable, friendly barista son of Sheriff Donovan Galpin (Jamie McShane) in the series co-created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. (Tim Burton, as with the first season, executive-produces and directs multiple episodes.) As Season 1 went on, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) had a vision that Tyler was actually Hyde, a shapeshifting creature under the influence of Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci), who’d been supernaturally manipulating him.
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Throughout this startling transformation, Tyler was ultimately revealed as the serial killer known for the carnage behind the attacks at Nevermore, acting under Thornhill’s direction. The season ended with Tyler’s father placing him in a police van, undergoing a transformation into Hyde once more. Viewers were left uncertain what his fate would entail.
Doohan also had to wait for that fate to be spelled out, just as audiences did. “I didn’t know if he had escaped and was on the run, or if he was going to be locked up,” he told IndieWire. “I was waiting eagerly for those first few scripts.”
It took him nearly a year and a half to get answers from the showrunners. “I think it was around early 2024. I went out to Dublin, where we shot Season 2 in April. I think I had just the first maybe three or four scripts by the time I got there,” he said.
“It was just so fun to finally jump back in, because there were almost three years between the seasons coming up, it’s two years between wrapping Season 1 and starting Season 2,” he continued. “It was just really fun to jump back into that world, and I was so eager, because, you know, in Season 1, I spent most of it playing a character who is also pretending to be a completely different person for most of the season. It was kind of like playing two characters, and I really only got to reveal it all in that last episode of Season 1. I was just really excited to not only start there, but like, he’s kind of even more deranged because he’s been locked in a mental asylum, literally chained up for months since we last saw him.”
Throughout Season 1, fans speculated that Tyler may be a potential love interest for Wednesday Addams, showing early interest in her and even sneaking out of Nevermore together. In Episode 7, the two kiss, ultimately leading to that fateful vision where Wednesday saw him as the creature.
“We had this romance, but really, most of that was Tyler tricking Wednesday as part of Christina Ricci’s character’s plan,” Doohan said of the relationship between the two characters. “But I think that for Tyler, there’s that spark there when she comes to see him in Episode 2 of Season 1; I think he had been fantasizing about her coming this whole time.”
“Now, he’s been abandoned by his master and everyone else,” he continued. “For me, I think he’s latched onto Wednesday — he’s the one person who wouldn’t be afraid of him. But then, when she’s just there to get information out of him and she has no plans of helping him escape or anything like that, he definitely feels betrayed by her as well, and so he’s definitely out for some revenge after that. His whole motive from the beginning is just to get out and be free. He is a wild ride, and you get to see a lot of different sides of Tyler this time, and especially with the back half of the season, you get to see a really unexpected twist for him, and you get to see what’s driving him.”
Lady Gaga, meanwhile, is one of the new faces to join Season 2. At SXSW, Ortega told IndieWire that “she’s the best, definitely one of the most talented individuals I’ve ever worked with. It was just a really, really special environment to be there with her and Tim [Burton], two people that I respect and have been inspired by so much.”
Can we expect Gaga to share any scenes with Doohan? We don’t think so. “I didn’t get to meet her,” he said. “I’m still holding out for that day, but [I’m] just so excited she’s on the show. It was such a cool moment for me, just as a fan of hers. To have her actually want to be in it and a part of it is just mind-blowing.”
Ahead of the second part of the season releasing on September 3, Doohan is eager for fans to have the time to speculate on what’s to come. “I’m so excited to see the theories. There are so many storylines that are going to start to collide in the second half of the season. People have a lot of fun stuff coming up.”
Earlier this year, Doohan appeared in Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again” as Bastian Cooper, aka the mysterious Muse — and surprise! He’s yet another serial killer. While his character was shot and assumed to be dead, fans theorize that this isn’t the end of Muse. As for whether we could see a return, Doohan said, “I would love that. That character was so fun. I don’t know, one, why people see me as a serial killer so much, or two, why I seem to get shot in every single TV show I do.”
“Daredevil: Born Again” was another project where things were very secretive from the get-go. “That one was just one audition,” he said. “We talked about Netflix being kind of tight-lipped — Marvel is that times 1000. I didn’t know the character. I think I might have not even known the show when I did the first audition. And then it was only when I got the offer to do it that I found out everything that was actually going to happen. Then I got to do a Zoom with the showrunners and find out more after we accepted.”
Fans throughout the season were trying to figure out who exactly Muse was, as he was masked up until Episode 7.
“There are some sleuths out there, because some people did figure it out way early on. I was even scared to post about it or anything to just try not to spoil it. I love keeping secrets back. When I did ‘Your Honor,’ and I died at the end of Season 1, I didn’t tell anybody. It was really fun to get to see all of my friends and family’s reactions. My mom called and was so mad at me.”
Also coming up for Doohan is “Evil Dead Burn,” which went into production in New Zealand in early July. “It was probably one of the craziest audition scenes I’ve ever [done],” he teased. “That world is just so gory and has got obviously this tinge of camp to it — obviously the newer ones don’t have that same level of camp as ‘Evil Dead 2,’ but I’m so excited to do it and to just be in that world and to work with Sébastien Vanicek, who’s directing this film. His first film, ‘Infested,’ was amazing.”
“I definitely like these intense roles, whether it’s super genre or something more grounded like ‘Your Honor’ or ‘The Wilderness,’ but yeah, after playing [my] third killer, maybe I should line up a comedy next [laughs].”
“Wednesday” Season 2, Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
