Photos: Getty Images/Courtesy Netflix

Good news for fans of “The Addams Family”! On Wednesday, Netflix announced that Jenna Ortega will be playing Wednesday Addams in their upcoming live-action series, “Wednesday”. To make things more exciting, the new series will be directed by Tim Burton.

Jenna Ortega took to her Instagram page to celebrate the new role. She posted a picture of herself with the script for “Wednesday”.

https://twitter.com/jennaortega/status/1395046950391533572?s=20

She captioned the photo: “New chapter. Hope I can do Wednesday Addams justice.” We’re more than confident she will. At 18-years-old, Ortega has already amassed a large fandom for her prolific resume. The young actress of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent has starred in everything from “Jane the Virgin” to “You” to “Elena of Avalor” to, most recently, “Yes Day“.

Previously onscreen, only Anglo actresses have taken on the role of Wednesday Addams. The casting of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday is an exciting departure from the established norm. But the change is a welcome one, especially since Wednesday’s father, Gomez Addams, is Latino.

Based on Twitter’s reaction to Jenna Ortega’s casting, Netflix and Tim Burton made the right move.

A lot of times, the internet (and especially certain fandoms) are very territorial over how they want their beloved characters to look.

While some people looked to Christina Ricci’s version of Wednesday Addams as GOAT, they were looking forward to see Jenna Ortega’s take on the character.

Of course, some fans immediately started fan-casting Gomez Adams. Naturally, they were brainstorming the perfect Latino actor to portray Gomez.

https://twitter.com/zeglian/status/1395100236155035652?s=20

Whatever the rest of the cast ends up looking like, we’re happy that Netflix has cast Jenna Ortega in a role traditionally played by non-Latina actresses. We hope that they continue their work towards equitable representation onscreen!

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