This week, Wednesday returned to Netflix for the first part of its highly anticipated second season. The first season introduced fans to this new take on the beloved Addams Family with a refreshing and feminist twist. You see, this time around, what was previously an ensemble piece is instead built around Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) venturing out on her own for the first time at a kooky, spooky, ooky boarding school full of outcasts and weirdos. As is the case with many a coming-of-age adventure story, the first season saw Wednesday making friends well, frenemies solving mysteries, and defeating monsters both figurative and, in her case, literal. But what made it stand out from the pack was that she did it all while behaving badly.In fact, all the women of the school, Nevermore Academy, regularly and unapologetically behave badly. They break curfew, they cheat, they lie, they revel in darkness and some of them even kill. And they invite us to come and cheer their misdeeds along.That tradition continues its sophomore season. Wednesday herself is the antithesis of the gentle, people-pleasing archetype women are frequently socialized to be. She outright refuses to be nice whether to friends, foes, authority figures, or family. She is who she is, unapologetically.Its thrilling its also queer. Not because queerness equates to villainy, but because it makes room for us to buck the prescribed narrative. We live outside the box. Everything we do is radical simply by being ourselves. In that, Wednesday Addams and all the women who both support and defy her also enjoy an innate queerness.That spirit of liberation is not lost on Ortega, who in season two portrays a Wednesday who is somehow even more self-assured in her utter and abject refusal to conform to the norms of, well, the normies.It's nice to see women misbehave, Ortega tells PRIDE of her character and the women of Wednesday. There's so much societal pressure on women in general that it's nice and it's important that we see them as flawed.They play in the gray, she continues. It's so much more interesting than, you know, the damsel in distress or the pretty girl who doesn't say much.For Ortega, Wednesday represents the kind of woman she feels belongs on the screen for other young women to be inspired by because she has so much depth and complexity.It's such a pleasure to be able to do it with characters who are so unapologetically themselves and strong and consistent in their behavior, she shares.Her hope is that young people will see a young woman who isn't afraid to use her voice or stick to her guns.But it's not just young women of today who can appreciate the catharsis of seeing badly behaved women on screen. Its a trope that dates back to the dawn of cinema and the femme fatales who once ruled the silver screen before being forced back into the closet of respectability by the Hays Code in 1934, and for three decades after.In part, that legacy of suppression and the way it forced queer and nonconformist characters into the liminal space of subtext for decades is why Wednesday still feels subversive, even in its otherwise YA-friendly series. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who reprises her role as Morticia Addams in season two with a delightfully expanded presence, credits the series popularity in part to how it celebrates difference and the queerness that implies.I think what the show does ... is that we avoid stereotypes, she tells PRIDE. We spend our lives trying to fit into a perfect box of what's accepted, of physically, how one looks, and how one should be perceived. In this Addams world, it's the polar opposite.We embrace the differences we want, the diversity we want, the inclusion of people who are just different, they're imperfect. That's okay, she adds.For Zeta-Jones, the impact of this message is only compounded by the legacy of The Addams Family, which has been woven throughout pop culture since the 1960s, and how it's become part of our collective subconscious.It's been decades [but] they kind of had a very clear insight into what a perfect family or society should be, which I think is wonderful, she notes.Its also not just the Addams gals who present the audience with complex and badly behaved women. Emma Myers and Joy Sunday also return this season, reprising their roles as Enid and Bianca, respectively.Both girls find themselves at a crossroads in season two for Enid, its of the romantic variety, and for Bianca, its a moral and ethical dilemma about how and when she should wield her power. What makes each of these stories so compelling is that, in the world of Wednesday, there are no easy answers. Both are dabbling in the gray.Enid continues her evolution of empowerment and the pursuit of who she wants and who she wants to be.I'm inspired by Enids ability to just unapologetically be herself all the time, no matter what others are thinking or feeling or telling her to do, agrees Myers to PRIDE.Meanwhile, Sunday is enjoying Biancas journey of wrestling with what it means to be such a powerful woman and what that says about young women who also feel this unbridled power kind of bursting from their seams, she tells PRIDE. It's amazing what that power can do when it's wielded correctly, she teases.Individually, these stories are worthy of note, but together they weave a tapestry of a world that flips societal expectations on its head, lending the entire series an innately queer perspective. Plus, as Ortega agrees, it just feels good to watch women be bad.