“One of the very first things that Tim [Burton] said when we started was ‘don’t make this funny’,” Wednesday composer Chris Bacon said about the musical direction he got from the series’ Oscar-nominated director and executive producer.

“It’s a funny show, but Tim Burton, he was very serious: ‘Do not play funny music.’ Play them serious,” Bacon added during a panel for the show at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television awards-season concert event. “The same way Jenna Ortega plays it. That makes it funnier if it’s darker, heavier, more serious. Keep it grounded in that macabre fantasy world.”

In Season 2, Ortega’s Wednesday encounters plenty: she contends with a corrupt principal in Steve Buscemi’s Principal Dort, battles her monstrous boyfriend, bonds with mother Morticia, and even dies and rises again.

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“Season 2 was a chance to take what we started in Season 1 and create this language that was quirky but also not too quirky that felt like it could have existed at any time,” says…