WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for Wednesday season 1!While Wednesday doesn’t explicitly reveal how Ms. Thornhill knew the Nightshades’ snapping code to enter the library, her sinister plan hints at how she discovered the secret. In Wednesday season 1, episode 2, Wednesday Addams stumbles upon a statue of Edgar Allen Poe, which features a series of riddles written on a book. Wednesday solves the problem and realizes it says to “snap twice” – a nod to The Addams Family’s iconic theme song – which opens a chamber to the secret Nightshades Library. Despite only being known by past and current members of the student society, Nevermore’s normie teacher Marilyn Thornhill, A.K.A. Laurel Gates, uses the code to enter the library in Wednesday episode 3.
Since Laurel was already teaching at Nevermore for over a year before Wednesday Addams arrived, she had likely been spying on the outcast students and discovered their secretive entrances to the library. She also may have happened upon Poe’s statue and solved the riddle, which is exactly how Wednesday accessed the private location. On the other hand, Wednesday’s “Ms. Thornhill” may have already known about Nevermore’s secret society and library containing valuable documents through the Gates family’s mission. The Nightshades Library allowed Christina Ricci’s Wednesday character the information she needed to resurrect Joseph Crackstone, so she could have known the library’s access point and snapping code before her arrival.
How Wednesday Hinted At Thornhill's Real Identity
Thornhill mysteriously knowing the Nightshades snapping code, despite being a normie, was a big clue that she wasn’t who she claimed to be. Wednesday’s season 1 finale revealed that Marilyn Thornhill was actually Laurel Gates, the sister of Garrett Gates and descendant of Joseph Crackstone, who vowed to rid the world of outcasts. Alongside the snapping code, another important clue to Ms. Thornhill’s secret identity was the theme she chose for the Rave’N dance. According to Enid, Thornhill was on the dance committee and wanted this year’s theme to be “relevant,” so she cleverly chose “extinction,” which she related to the climate crisis rather than her true mission of extinguishing Nevermore Academy's outcasts.
There were also various inconsistencies in Thornhill’s story throughout Wednesday season 1, such as how she told Mayor Walker she ordered a “daily matcha latte” at the Weathervane, yet when she “met” Tyler, he recited her order as a “double cappuccino.” Ultimately, Christina Ricci has made a name for herself playing sinister characters – beginning with Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family 1990s film series – so it seemed inevitable that her character in Tim Burton’s TV show would feature a shocking twist. The former Wednesday Addams being the big foe that the new Wednesday Addams had to overcome was too poetic for the Netflix series to pass up, and it certainly paid off in the finale.
Why Snapping Twice Was So Important In Wednesday
There are plenty of tributes and callbacks to The Addams Family projects that came before sprinkled throughout Wednesday season 1, with the double snapping being the most significant to the story. Snapping twice is notably associated with The Addams Family sitcom’s theme song from the 1960s, and since Wednesday doesn’t follow past adaptations in reusing the iconic tune, Netflix’s show found another way to incorporate its famous finger-snapping. The Nightshades’ code wasn't simply a clever way to feature Christina Ricci snapping twice again; it played an important role in expanding on the family’s history at Nevermore Academy and giving the double snap a functional purpose in Wednesday’s murder mystery.