Shoutout to u/Silvery_Barbs_5e --if not for your beautiful presence, I would've forgotten this in my digital vault.
*I forgot to mention that Oil of Antimony was a toxic chemical preparation developed by Paracelsus, so it's especially fitting that Wednesday begins her "prep" with a red-violet mixture.
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Related:
Breakdown of Laurel's notes
Alchemy-related posts compilation
This is part of my Sigmund's Gymnasium series, where I break down some of the concepts in the show that connect back to the original Addams cartoons and the school of thought that influenced them.
Psychoanalytic theories were a staple of The New Yorker humour during Charles Addams' time, and as such, the Addams cartoons played around with the Uncanny, but especially with the double or doppelganger through depictions of twin characters, identical parent-and-child pairs, and clones.
One of the reasons why I enjoy the Hyde lore so much is how it's almost a literal visualisation of concepts associated with Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. For example, the common critical readings of the novella, such as the born-criminal theory. Another is how it visualises Otto Rank's psychoanalytic theory of the Double, which gave writers and filmmakers a framework for exploring alter-ego themes that we commonly see in movies like Fight Club, Us, and Black Swan.
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Things I will talk about in this post:
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We learned from Faulkner's diary that a "Hide" can manifest through three means: 1. hypnosis, 2. chemical inducement, and 3. traumatic experience. All of these entail a fracturing of the individual's "self".
In my opinion, this part of the lore is almost taken straight from the pages of Otto Rank's 1914 essay, Der Doppelganger (The Double), where he traces and discusses the history of the Double and its representation in literature and film. In these representations, the double can manifest as a spirit, a twin, a shadow, a reflection, or a demon.
Rank noticed that historically, the double was often a guardian angel or spiritual twin that manifested as a protector from death. It's a projection that acts almost like an insurance policy against the destruction of the self.
We see this concept adapted into the Hyde lore when Tyler had to be tortured and injected with a poisonous serum to forcefully induce his Hyde to manifest. The Hyde is essentially a projection of Tyler that emerged after Laurel actively broke down the "old" Tyler through violence.
We see another version of this concept adapted in cinema through movies that focus on "split personality", where a traumatised character "splits" into an aggressive, protective personality.
The Double is essentially the self splitting itself to preserve itself.
Otto Rank noticed that in later cultural manifestations of the Double in literature and cinema, the Double became a reminder of death. We find this in superstitions about dying when we meet our doppelganger, as well as in stories like Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In contemporary cinema, we see this adapted in Fight Club, Jordan Peele's Us, and Black Swan, where the protagonists are forced to confront their mortality because of their alter egos.
We see this being adapted again in Wednesday with the Hyde condition, where every transformation shortens their lifespan.
And at the same time, the Hyde is a literal harbinger of death to those around him, which is more of a literal take on Freud's interpretation in The Uncanny of Otto Rank's Double.
Before Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud codified the Double into a psychological framework, the double was represented as a fundamental duality within existence: good and evil.
For example, in John Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan can be read as God's double--the Devil as the part of God that God cannot, or will not, recognise as Himself. Or, of course, the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
But from this devilish alter ego of old, psychoanalysis transformed the Double into a pathology. The double no longer appears simply as a demon, but as aggression, narcissism, sexual desire, criminality, and multiple personalities.
Otto Rank's study of the fragmented self gave us the psychoanalytic lens through which to understand films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of Charles Addams' favourite silent films.
The Double appears in the relationship between the narrator Francis and his friend Alan, as well as in the master-slave double of Caligari and Cesare. The sleepwalking Cesare is controlled entirely by the hypnotic will of the sinister Dr Caligari, acting out the hidden, murderous impulses of the mad doctor.
Sounds familiar, right?
Our favourite series also made its own version of this through Laurel and Tyler's master-slave bond, in which Tyler commits murders on behalf of Laurel.
Reflections (1919) by Norman Lindsay
In Rank's essay, he discusses how some cultures "derived their denomination for the human soul from observing shadows or the reflection of the body in water."
For example:
>"The Fiji Islanders believe that every person has two souls--a dark one which exists in his shadow and goes to Hades, and a bright one which exists in his reflection on the surface of water..." -Otto Rank, Der Doppelganger
Or how the Greeks considered it a sign of death if one dreamed that they saw their reflection in water.
And the importance of water in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
>"...grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water..." -Chapter 11
The sequence is only fitting, then, when you play Tyler's two scenes with water side-by-side: in Season 1, Episode 3, he is submerged in water, while in Season 2, Episode 5, he resurfaces from it as his grotesque doppelganger.
https://i.redd.it/wmfs00zowyjh1.gif
Tyler and the Hyde, Wednesday and Goody, are two of the common ways the Double appears in fiction.
The Double can either be an externalised Other who looks like the self, or an internal part of the self that is projected outward.
Another example of the Double in the show is Thing and Isaac. In a sense, Thing is a projected version of Isaac, to whom, in Gomez's words, "Isaac's goodness" was transferred. Thing is Isaac--he has the fingerprints and DNA--but he's also not Isaac.
Though technically, Enid's werewolf side is her "alter ego", we can't really call it her Double or doppelganger in the same way we do Tyler and his Hyde, because the key defining trait of a doppelganger is its uncanniness.
Enid's werewolf side has always been part of her identity. It is something she has always anticipated manifesting and becoming. She's not only familiar with the state of being a werewolf, but she's also consciously controlling it, which is something highlighted in episode 206. There's no essence of the uncanny. When we see Enid as a werewolf, we still call her Enid.
The Uncanny, popularised by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche, which means "Unhomely", is the unsettling feeling when something familiar suddenly appears strange or alien. The feeling around the uncanny is one of uncertainty and doubt.
When Wednesday first met Goody, she made an expression of confusion and unease at the fact that she was seeing herself, but was not herself.
https://i.redd.it/4qj9f2muwyjh1.gif
With Tyler, the Hyde's transformation and design are weird because it looks human, but at the same time, it's not. It's grotesque and goofy at the same time. And character-wise, it is Tyler's fragmented self that can either be external or internal--something that has often been the subject of debate and speculation among fans and haters, because we have to ascertain which one is speaking...is it Tyler, or is it the Hyde?
And that's literally the concept of the uncanny.
We see aspects of Tyler that are familiar to us, but sometimes they become distorted and made strange, and we can't quite tell where Tyler ends and the Hyde begins. The writers and Hunter are victims of their own success.
Likewise, Thing is human, but at the same time he's not...because he's literally a sentient hand. Anyone who meets him for the first time is spooked. And the show depicted the "fragmented self" of Isaac in the climax scene, where Morticia and Gomez were speaking to Thing, and Isaac could not wrap his mind around his own right hand having agency.
The idea of his right hand being sentient is still an unfamiliar and unsettling feeling for him. He is confused by what is happening when Thing starts to fight back. It's the uncanny once again. It's his literal right hand, yet it's acting strangely on its own.
And like what Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud said about the Double, Thing continued Isaac's existence beyond the grave, but at the same time, it played a hand in his second death (pun intended).
>"From this shadow-superstition, some scholars believe, developed the belief in a guardian spirit, which in its turn is closely related to the double-motif." -Otto Rank, Der Doppelganger
As mentioned earlier, the doppelganger was historically seen as a spiritual double, and the show took this literally with Goody as Wednesday's spirit guide.
But at the same time, they did the reverse of Freud's quote.
>"For the double was originally an insurance against the extinction of the self...having once been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death." -Freud, discussing Otto Ran's The Double
Wednesday was stabbed and almost bled to death because Crackstone thought she was Goody. So we have a tick mark on the "harbinger of death" part of the Double.
But then, later on, Goody saved her life by giving up her spirit and entering through Wednesday. So we have another tick mark on the "protector against death" part of Rank's and Freud's description of the Double.
So now, Goody is quite literally an internalised Double of Wednesday, while the Hyde is Tyler's externalised Double.
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Here's a famous painting of Romantic doppelgangers by Dante Gabriel Rossetti titled How They Met Themselves (1864). It depicts medieval lovers encountering their glowing doppelgängers in a gloomy wood at twilight.
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Related posts:
If Dante Gabriel Rossetti sounds familiar, it's because he is mentioned in Wednesday's Library: Wuthering Heights
A Byronic heroine is the female counterpart to the Byronic hero, though she is considerably rarer in literature. She is typically independent, rebellious, intelligent, emotionally intense, morally complex, flawed, proud, uncompromising, and alienated from the world around her. She rejects conventional social expectations, carries some form of darkness or suffering from her past, and often embodies existential doubt, melancholy, cynicism, or a fierce, brooding defiance. Most importantly, she is not a passive romantic object. She possesses her own desires, agency, and power.
In other words, pretty much everything about Wednesday's character (and Catherine's).
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There are different subtypes of the Byronic hero across literature and media, depending on their primary motivations. A few examples include:
The Brooding Lover - the classic brooding, bad-boy romantic lead, such as the love interests commonly found in shojo manga, as well as Heathcliff and Mr Rochester
The Vengeful Outcast - the alienated figure whose suffering drives him toward revenge, such as Heathcliff and the Count of Monte Cristo
The Anti-Hero/Vigilante - the morally ambiguous figure who pursues justice outside conventional morality, such as Batman
The Monster - the dark, alienated, and often misunderstood figure who exists outside the boundaries of society or humanity, such as Dracula and Frankenstein's Creature.
The Byronic hero often overlaps with the anti-hero and villain because his moral ambiguity makes him difficult to classify as either wholly good or evil, giving rise to the Hero-Villain archetype, which exists somewhere between the two.
So far, we've got Monster Tyler, Vengeful Outcast Tyler, and Brooding Loverboy Tyler…maybe we'll hit the jackpot in Season 3 and get Vigilante Tyler.
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Related:
Tyler as a Gothic Hero-Villain
Wednesday and Tyler are written like classic literary romance
This is the skin of a serial killer, Bella
A repost because Reddit removed the first one for some reason.
>“The maturity of the show and of the characters is evolving as time goes by, in a very natural way,” Sutherland says.
I love this and Jenna's interview confirms that the show will have darker and more mature themes as Wednesday grows 🖤 the future is bright!
He just knew she needed him to solve the case. She couldn't even deny it and said nothing.
And this is also one example of how Wednesday is an unreliable narrator. She tells Thing (and us) in ep 201 that she doesn't need help, but she's always using her connections and nepotism powers to get what she wants.
The joys of having a ship patterned after classic lit…the parallels are built into their dynamic
My two unreliable character babies
*remind me
Left: Lucifer (2020) by Federico Ferro / IG: federicoferrophoto
Middle: The Adversary! (Devil): 'Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched' (1876) by Sir Joseph Noel Paton
Right: Fallen Angel (1847) by Alexandre Cabanel
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Non serviam ("I will not serve") is a phrase traditionally attributed to Lucifer, said to have been spoken in Heaven as his declaration of refusal to serve God.
I was raised by Inuyasha. Nothing gets buzzier than being the love rival to your own reincarnated doppelganger.
Sixty-five years ago today, on 11 August 1961, the name "Wednesday" was revealed for the pigtailed Charles Addams character in The New York Times. The name had been given to her by toy manufacturer Aboriginal, Ltd., after the nursery rhyme "Monday's Child".
Wednesday was first introduced to the public in a Madison Avenue shop window, with the Wednesday doll released during the first week of September 1961.
If you're interested in learning more, I wrote about the Wednesday doll and her brother Irving (now Pugsley) in more detail here.
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Happy Name Day to our Princess of Woe!
But like, imagine if Wednesday was High Fantasy and the Hyde is a mutant dragonseed.
"Some of Your Parts: We Help Make You Feel Whole Again", the name of the support group Thing and Agnes attend, plays on the maxim that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", an idea associated with Aristotle's discussion in Metaphysics of how a unified whole differs from a mere collection of its individual components. The irony of the support group's name becomes clearer as the season progresses, when we discover that Thing's "whole body" possesses a personality very different from his own. Putting Thing back together with Isaac does not simply "complete" him but creates another person altogether: Isaac with DaVinci powers.
If you've been following me for a while, you know I love bringing up Magritte when talking about the Addams cartoons and the show. For me, Professor Orloff's encouraging words, Agnes's predicament, and the disembodied parts all come together to create a conceptual parallel with René Magritte's Le Paysage de Baucis (Baucis's Landscape), 1966.
"Wholeness is not to be equated with completeness", says Carl G. Vaught in The Quest for Wholeness, and I find this quote a compelling way of understanding Magritte's painting.
A quick bit of background on the painting: Magritte wanted to paint "the emptiness between a hat and a man's suit" without suggesting "the invisible man". He was careful with his choice of title to avoid any association between his idea of invisibility and H. G. Wells's 1897 novel The Invisible Man.
"What don't you see? / H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man" episode 202
In the painting, we see a figure who is physically incomplete: its facial features float independently between a bowler hat and a suit, while the head and body that would normally bring them together are conspicuously absent. Yet this fragmentation does not stop us from seeing a person. Magritte separates the face from the body without separating it from personhood. The figure is physically incomplete, but it is not necessarily unwhole.
The painting challenges the idea that you have to be physically complete to be whole. Even though Magritte's figure may be dismembered, we still see a person. And I think this gets to the heart of what Professor Orloff is trying to tell the group:
"You can't see yourself as an appendage."
The title of the painting refers to the myth of Baucis and Philemon from Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which the elderly couple are transformed by the gods into trees. Their human forms disappear, but they remain Baucis and Philemon. In other words, a person can lose the form we recognise as human without ceasing to be themselves.
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Like the sentient disembodied parts, which have been severed from the human body and the organ systems that would ordinarily sustain and integrate them, Tyler is also missing something essential to what we might conventionally think of as a "complete" life: a support system.
The difference is that what has been taken from Tyler is not a physical part of his body, but the network of people that should surround and sustain him. He has no mother, has no father, no stable home, no friends, and has little reason to imagine a secure future. In this sense, Tyler is socially and emotionally disembodied. He exists, but without the systems that are supposed to help a person exist well.
But Tyler's fragmentation is not only external. Throughout the series, we have also followed him through a succession of identities, each one adding another layer to an already fractured sense of self. He has been:
Tyler the barista
Tyler the Normie
Tyler the delinquent
Tyler the Sheriff's son
Tyler without a mother
Tyler who turns out to be half-Outcast, half-Normie
Tyler the Hyde
Tyler the serial killer
Tyler the slave
Tyler the prisoner
Tyler the fugitive
Tyler on the verge of death because he has no master
Tyler the orphan
He is a broken boy from a broken family. Yet despite all these fragments, he is still Tyler.
This may also explain why Tyler was able to embrace his Hyde more readily than his mother did. His Hyde and his human side are not two separate people; they are two sides of the same Tyler. The Hyde is another fragment of an already fragmented identity, but it does not make Tyler feel less of himself.
Like Magritte's invisible figure and the disembodied members of Orloff's support group, Tyler is another instance of how fragmentation does not necessarily mean unwholeness. A person can feel divided, broken, or incomplete without ceasing to be whole. Brokenness does not necessarily diminish a person; it can simply be another way of existing.
In that sense, the disembodied parts and Agnes's predicament are an inverse take on disability, both visible and invisible. Being missing a body part, or having a body that works differently, does not make someone any less of a person. You don't have to be physically "complete" to be a whole person, and being incomplete doesn't make you any less whole.
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More disembodied René Magritte paintings (left to right): The king's museum (1966), The White Race (1937), Baucis's Landscape (1966), The White Race (1937)
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In case you missed it, I talked more about the Addams cartoons and the characters inspired by René Magritte's paintings here.
Addams characters and their Magritte parallels: Xavier / La Clairvoyance (1936); Thing / One Night Museum (1927), Cousin It (1991 Paramount Pictures) / Pan, God of the Night (1954)
"There's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror." -Stephen King
If morbidity is Wednesday's natural state, then her mirrored counterpart must be monstrous.
I think Wednesday's engagement ring should be a diamond knuckle-duster...a perfect symbol of their lethal love.
Shakespeare's Sonnets are divided into two major sequences: the Fair Youth (Sonnets 1-126) and the Dark Lady (Sonnets 127-152). Sonnet 144 serves as the turning point, bringing the two figures together for the first time as the poet's "two loves" and foreshadowing the betrayal and disillusionment that follow.
In Sonnets 137 and 149, the poet expresses profound self-loathing over his obsession with the Dark Lady. He knows she is cruel, gloomy, morally flawed, and undeserving of his devotion, yet he remains helplessly in love with her. In Sonnet 137, he blames his eyes for mistaking falsehood for beauty, while in Sonnet 149 he condemns himself for continuing to serve the very woman who wrongs him. He does not hate the Dark Lady because he loves her; he hates himself because he cannot stop loving her.
>"Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes
That they behold and see not what they see?" (Sonnet 137)
>"Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?
On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon?
[...]
What merit do I in myself respect
That is so proud thy service to despise,
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind." (Sonnet 149)
Sonnets 153-154 serve as coda poems that retell the myth of Cupid's torch. In the story, one of Diana's nymphs steals Cupid's torch while he sleeps and casts it into a cold spring, hoping to extinguish the fire of love. Instead, the water absorbs its heat and becomes a medicinal hot spring, renowned for curing physical ailments.
Seeking relief from his lovesickness, the poet visits the hot spring, only to discover that no earthly remedy can cure the fever of love:
>"But found no cure. The bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire--my mistress' eyes." (Sonnet 153)
Cupid's flame is rekindled in his mistress's eyes, proving that love's fire cannot be quenched by water or medicine. Physical illness may be cured, but true romantic passion is a permanent fever with no remedy.
The embodiment of summer, yet more beautiful and more temperate. So perfect is his beauty that he surpasses the season, and it is immortalised in poetry.
Sonnet 18
>Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
[...]
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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Sonnet 20
Beautiful like a woman
>A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
He is gentle and sincere
>A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
Bright-eyed and captivating
>An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
He possesses a woman's beauty and a man's form (Androgynous beauty)
>A man in hue all hues in his controlling...
I've always said Hunter looks like he stepped out of a Bouguereau painting. He has the kind of soft, androgynous beauty Bouguereau gave his Cupids.
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Sonnet 127
Dark-haired and dark-featured
>But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
Raven-black eyes that appear mournful and compassionate to the poet, even as her cruel heart torments him with disdain.
>Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
Sonnet 130
Dark, ordinary eyes rather than radiant, sun-like ones
>My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Black, wiry hair, and grayish-brown complexion
>Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
Heavy gait
>I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
Sonnet 144
>Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
Morally ambiguous and seductive, the Dark Lady tempts both the poet and the Fair Youth toward moral corruption.
>The worser spirit a woman colored ill.
To win me soon to hell my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil...
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Anyway, since we're talking about Shakespeare, it's worth mentioning that the original Addams cartoons are full of references to the Western literary canon. So it's not really surprising that Charles Addams himself was often compared to Shakespeare.
As his biography notes, "His work was compared to that of Shakespeare and Poe." (p 5)
And his literary reputation was reflected in the recognition he received, including Yale's Humor Award, an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, and a special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. (p 15)
>"Though he read everything, from Shakespeare to Steinbeck, Hemingway to John O'Hara, his real interest was in people." (p 159)
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My other Shakespeare-related posts:
I've compiled the Shakespeare references in the show here.
Romeo and Juliet 'Prologue' - Wednesday and Tyler version
'A Wild Goose Chase' Addams cartoon
'Antony and Cleopatra' Addams cartoon
Have to post the gifsets separately because Reddit sucks.
Parallel gifsets: Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3
When I think of Weyler, I think of my favourite comfort food. I know exactly what the ingredients are, I know exactly how it's made, and yet I'm still excited every single time because I know I'm about to enjoy something delicious. Only this time they decided to add Tabasco and rum to a neoclassical Gothic revival romance.
As creative and modern as Wednesday is, it still follows classical patterns of storytelling, particularly its symmetrical composition.
The parallel scenes and chiastic writing patterns throughout the show do more than reinforce Wednesday and Tyler as mirror lovers. They're a natural consequence of a story so deeply indebted to the literary canon, where symmetrical structures recur again and again.
Take Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are parallel characters, and their relationship is reinforced by the novel's chiastic structure (A-B-C-X-C'-B'-A').
The first half of the novel builds toward misunderstanding (A-B-C). Darcy's first proposal serves as the central pivot (X). The second half mirrors the first, revisiting those same conflicts in reverse as each misunderstanding is dismantled (C'-B'-A').
Wuthering Heights follows a similarly mirrored structure. The first half centres on the older generation (Chapters 1-16). Catherine's death marks the turning point (Chapters 16-17). The second half shifts to the younger generation (Chapters 18-34), who unconsciously repeat the patterns of their predecessors before finally resolving them.
Or take Jane Eyre, where Rochester's arc mirrors Jane's.
At the beginning:
By the end:
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are both on Wednesday's reading list in Wednesday's Library (2019). It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that Wednesday is written around the same kind of mirrored structure. Pride and Prejudice isn't on the list because it isn't a Victorian Gothic novel.
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But let's back up for a second. What exactly are parallels?
I remember reading a post arguing against Tyler and his dynamic with Wednesday while advocating for Enid instead. It gave me a headache because it was clearly confusing what a foil does in a story with the narrative function of a parallel.
Wednesday and Tyler are parallel characters. More specifically, they're written as mirrors.
Enid and Wednesday, on the other hand, are foils because the story deliberately contrasts them to make their differences more apparent. A foil exists primarily to highlight another character through contrast.
Parallel characters are characters whose stories, personalities, choices, or experiences are deliberately arranged to resemble one another. They don't have to be identical. What matters is that the audience is invited to compare them.
A mirror reflects another character. It is a particular kind of parallel. Mirror characters are alike enough to recognise themselves in each other, yet different enough to reveal what the other lacks or what each might become under different circumstances. That's what Tyler is to Wednesday.
Enid and Wednesday are true opposites (foils) because their preferences and core beliefs negate one another. Enid's aesthetic is a kaleidoscope of colours, while Wednesday prefers black and white. Enid wants to belong. Wednesday considers conformity an affront to her individuality.
Light and darkness are an appropriate metaphor for Enid and Wednesday because darkness is, by definition, the absence of light.
But Wednesday and Tyler are different.
They're better understood as day and night, or fire and water. They may appear opposite, but neither is the absence of the other. Day and night are not opposites so much as complementary halves of the same cycle. Fire is not the absence of water, nor is water the absence of fire. They are parallel elemental forces, each capable of nurturing life or reducing it to ruin.
Wednesday rejects social validation and refuses to belong simply for the sake of belonging.
Tyler, too, becomes estranged from the Normie herd. He grows apart from his childhood friends and eventually rejects the peer pressure that encouraged cruelty toward the Outcasts.
A good literary comparison is Pride and Prejudice.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy are parallels because they are both intelligent, proud, perceptive, and prone to misjudgment.
Elizabeth and her sister Lydia, meanwhile, are foils because Lydia's impulsiveness and lack of self-reflection throw Elizabeth's prudence and self-awareness into sharper relief.
Enid also functions as a foil to Tyler.
As a werewolf, Enid is afforded protections and accommodations that Hydes are denied. Her experiences throw Tyler's exclusion into sharper focus. Both are dangerous Outcasts, yet only one is deemed worthy of belonging.
Enid's function, then, is to make it apparent that Wednesday and Tyler are outcasts even among Outcasts. Even by Outcast standards, Wednesday's family is too kooky and spooky for comfort, while Tyler's very existence as a Hyde places him beyond the limits of acceptance.
Wednesday and Tyler, however, are not written as opposites in that sense. They are different, but alike in all the ways that matter.
Wednesday is incisive, emotionally guarded, and relentlessly logical. Tyler possesses greater emotional intelligence and understands the importance of expressing what he feels.
But their conversations move with the same rhythm of wit and verbal sparring that defines pairings like Jane Eyre and Rochester, Catherine and Heathcliff, or Elizabeth and Mr Darcy.
Like many literary mirror pairs, they are fundamentally alike but become different through the choices they make.
Catherine and Heathcliff are both wild, passionate, and self-destructive. But Catherine chooses society, while Heathcliff rejects it.
Jane and Rochester are both outsiders who long for love and belonging. But Rochester compromises his integrity in pursuit of happiness, whereas Jane relinquishes happiness to preserve her integrity.
Elizabeth and Darcy are both intelligent, proud, and perceptive. But Darcy misjudges others through class prejudice, while Elizabeth misjudges them through personal prejudice.
Likewise, Wednesday dismisses therapy as pointless and resents being forced into family sessions, whereas Tyler values therapy as a healthy way to confront his problems and begrudges his father for refusing to join him.
Despite those differences, they recognise something of themselves in each other the moment they have their heart-to-heart at the Rave'N Dance.
That's the difference between a foil and a mirror.
It's why the writers had to include the body swap episode. Enid only comes to understand the darkness within Wednesday by literally being in her shoes. Tyler, on the other hand, understands it instinctively. He doesn't need to become Wednesday to recognise her, because he simply sees himself reflected in her.
Wednesday and Tyler: Wednesday finds intimacy in Tyler's monstrosity, while Tyler finds belonging in Wednesday's darkness.
>"We're two black-hearted souls ready to pillage the world together." -Tyler
>"You were right. I was attracted to you." -Wednesday
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The idea of mirror lovers goes all the way back to Plato's Symposium, over 2,000 years ago.
According to Aristophanes, human beings were once whole. Each possessed four arms, four legs, and two identical faces joined upon a single body. Fearing their strength, Zeus split them in half, condemning each person to spend a lifetime searching for the other half of themselves.
A twin flame, kindred spirit, or mirror soul is the lost half that reflects one's own nature, so that each person recognises themselves in the other.
>"Each of us, then, is a matching half of a human whole..."
>"Since their natural form had been cut in two, each longed for its own other half..."
Even this myth follows a chiastic structure (A-B-B'-A').
Whole - Split - Search - Whole once more.
The lovers begin as one. They are divided. They spend their lives searching for one another. They become whole again.
Like the novels above, the myth is built upon symmetry. And I strongly believe Wednesday and Tyler are following that same pattern.
They began as one. Then they split.
The show is formulaic, and I say that in the nicest way possible. Following that pattern, the next stage is the search for the other, followed by their reunion.
The Ancient Greek myth of the missing half
🕷️
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I talk more about the show's ring-like writing structure here.
'Seatbelt' scenes mirror pattern
Wednesday and Tyler - Freedom vs Fate
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
When your estranged father just died, but you have to serve your sentence.
The people who worked on this scene had a vision, and they delivered.
"Okay, everyone, this is the scene where Tyler finds out his father has been murdered. Make sure his muscles are taut and glistening with oil while he smirks in disbelief with a smouldering gaze. Remember, people! He's tall, dark, and handsome. Now, chop chop!"
