Who Is the Stalker in <i>Wednesday</i> Season 2? The Answer Comes With a Twist.

Spoilers below.

In season 2, part 1 of Netflix’s Wednesday, our favorite titular outcast (played by Jenna Ortega) finds herself embroiled in another mystery at Nevermore Academy. After saving the school from Joseph Crackstone, the town of Jericho’s resurrected anti-outcast founder, Wednesday Addams’s new investigation comes courtesy of a cloaked stalker and, unironically, a murder of crows. This mysterious figure and their homicidal birds remain elusive until their identity is revealed in episode 4, right before a cliffhanger sets up the second half of the season, which drops on September 3.

So, who exactly is under the hood? Before we answer that, let’s rewind.

In the mid-season finale, Wednesday and Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) infiltrate Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital, where several outcasts purportedly receive treatment. Some of the patients include Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), a shapeshifting Hyde who was admitted after wreaking havoc at Nevermore the year prior; Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci), Tyler’s former handler and the mastermind behind Crackstone’s resurrection; and Slurp, a zombie that Pugsley Addams (Isaac Ordonez) previously zapped to life by accident. The facility is run by chief psychiatrist Dr. Rachael Fairburn (Thandiwe Newton) and her executive assistant, Judi (Heather Matarazzo).

Wednesday—hellbent on preventing a vision that suggests she’s responsible for her best friend Enid’s (Emma Myers) impending death—followed clues that led her to Willow Hill. Earlier in the season, a local private investigator named Carl Bradbury was killed by a flock of eye-gouging crows. The former sheriff and Tyler’s father, Donovan Galpin (Jamie McShane), tells Wednesday that he and Carl were working on a case that could affect all outcasts, including his son. But that’s all the information Wednesday could get from Donovan before he suffers the same fate as his P.I. friend.

Further complicating things, Wednesday’s psychic abilities, which she harnesses with the help of a spell book from her ancestor and former spirit guide, Goody Addams, stop working. Her mother, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), confiscates the book, fearing that her daughter will go mad, as her psychic sister, Aunt Ophelia, did when they were younger. It’s a valid concern, considering Wednesday starts experiencing “psychic exhaustion,” which comes with the side effect of black tears. (Worth noting: Aunt Ophelia was admitted to Willow Hill after succumbing to severe psychosis, distinguished by black tears streaming down her face. She then mysteriously went missing.)

With her powers gone, Wednesday begrudgingly enlists the help of her Nevermore peer Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton), a starry-eyed devotee with the ability to turn invisible. It turns out that Agnes has been stalking Wednesday and sending attention-seeking messages. However, this is a bit of a smokescreen; Agnes isn’t the cloaked crow-commander but rather a superfan eager to prove her worth by helping solve the central mystery. This means Wednesday has another, more threatening, stalker on her hands—someone who’s using a deadly one-eyed crow to keep her under surveillance.

Wednesday and Agnes’s joint efforts lead to breakthroughs in the case: Wednesday finds a collection of old obituaries for outcasts who were patients at Willow Hill, and they’re all somehow linked to the name Lois. With the help of her stony-hearted grandmother (Joanna Lumley), Wednesday discovers that the outcasts’ deaths were faked, and a man named Augustus Stonehurst falsified their cremations and death certificates.

Upon further investigation, Wednesday learns that Augustus was a “normie,” someone without supernatural powers, and a science teacher at Nevermore before becoming the head doctor at Willow Hill several years ago. He also had a daughter for whom he built an aviary in Iago Tower, a now-abandoned Nevermore site. After having a psychotic break, Augustus was admitted to Willow Hill as a patient, where he remains—a “plot twist worthy of Poe,” Wednesday remarks.

All signs point to shady dealings at the psychiatric hospital. That brings us to the mid-season finale when Wednesday and Uncle Fester uncover a secret quarter in Willow Hill, where the outcasts from the sham obituaries are imprisoned. The duo confronts the cloaked prowler, who is finally revealed to be Judi, Augustus’s daughter.

She explains that Augustus started experimenting on outcasts to extract their powers and give them to normies. This is part of a program called L.O.I.S, which stands for “Long-term Outcast Integration Study.” Judi, who was born a normie, was a willing subject and received the ability to control crows. Once Augustus mentally deteriorated, she took it upon herself to continue her father’s twisted work.

Uncle Fester harnesses his electrokinesis, knocking out the hospital’s power and unlocking all the outcasts’ rooms and holding cells. To say that all hell breaks loose is an understatement: While some of the imprisoned outcasts attack Judi, who makes a run for it, Slurp feasts on the brains of whomever he can subdue, including Augustus. A vengeful Tyler, who notably threatened Enid earlier in the season, transforms into a bloodthirsty Hyde, impales Marilyn, and hunts Wednesday.

After a chilling staredown, Tyler presumably throws Wednesday out of a window, and she lands on Willow Hill’s front lawn, bloodied and unconscious. Tyler escapes into the night, suggesting that Wednesday might have inadvertently cleared the way for Enid’s death, the very tragedy she hoped to forestall.

We’re left with several questions. Is there a physical therapist out there who can help Wednesday recover from that brutal fall? Where did Judi and Tyler escape to? Is Marilyn really dead (she’s proven to be quite resilient)? What exactly happened to Aunt Ophelia, and is she the key to restoring Wednesday’s visions? We’ll have to wait and see what comes of the chaos when the second batch of episodes arrives next month.