Neurodivergence at Nevermore - Slayage 2026

    Once upon a time, the police department right here in Normal, Illinois arrested Fernando Fingertips, a disembodied yet animated and sentient hand commonly known as Thing to his family, the Addams'. With his status as an isolated appendage, Thing doesn't have what we'd call a brain. (We, like Wednesday’s roommate Enid, will ignore questions about how he drinks, or sees since he also has no mouth or eyes). This makes him, by very definition, neurodivergent (i.e. diverging from typical neuro-function), and is just a part of why he fits in well with the Addams family and many of the people at Nevermore. 

    The Netflix series Wednesday has a lot of AuDHD coding, especially for the title character. Some Buffy characters do, as well, though not necessarily Buffy herself. In addition to that similarity, both series are about a kick-ass teenage girl who starts a new school after being expelled for causing chaos at her last one, then gathers a small group of outcast friends and, with their help, fights against dangerous paranormal creatures. Buffy and her friends have to hide these activities, masking heavily around their schoolmates and teachers because Sunnydale High wasn't designed for the outcasts. Nevermore was. When Wednesday Addams first arrived at Nevermore, she was not just walking into a safe space for Outcasts and isolation from the Normies. She was walking into a microcosm of what a primarily neurodivergent community could be. 

    A quick search for autism and Wednesday Addams or Buffy’s Anya Jenkins will bring up fansite articles, blog posts, Reddit threads, and other results. Both are commonly seen as autistic-coded (by the autistic community as well as many neurotypicals) and for many of the same reasons. Both have trouble connecting to others socially, can follow social scripts if they want, but are often considered rude or distant with a blunt manner and literal interpretations, and each has a variety of other aspects of a stereotypical autistic presentation. But most autistic people, especially girls and women, don’t fit those stereotypes. Many see Anya as the most obviously autistic of Buffy characters, and some cite Cordelia as a more sociable yet just as blunt presentation. Personally, I identified more with Willow, the bookish, nerdy girl who didn't know how to act "normal", had very few friends, deep interests, and a different view on the world. And once I found out in my 40s that I'm autistic and started learning more about it and understanding the spectrum of it more, I realized Willow is autistically coded, too, but wouldn't likely be viewed that way by allistics. They don't see the full spectrum. 

   

     Imagine the autism spectrum as the gradient square in your computer color selector, and each of us has our own little spot on it, our own hex code. Autistic actress Chloe Hayden known for playing an autistic character in Heartbreak High says in her TED talk “Your hex code of autism represents your strengths, your struggles, your likes and dislikes, your habitat, where you are in life at the moment, and how society perceives you, amongst a million other factors. Just as no color is more or less than another color, no autism is more or less than another autism.” With the spectrum covering a wide range of traits and presentations, those less stereotyped characters that match our own presentations of autism allow us to see our neurodivergent selves reflected back at us through some aspect of these beloved characters. Chloe Hayden and Utah State scholar Camille Basset both discuss the need for more varied, intersectional, and blatantly stated representation. This will come when we have actually autistic creators making these shows and films, and bringing with them intersectionality of women, Black people, physically disabled people, LGBTQ+, Latino, Indigenous, Asian, and more. 

    While we wait for accurate and verified representation in media, many of us see ourselves in “othered” characters—the aliens, paranormal creatures and fantasy figures who don’t fit into the “normal, human” world. Unfortunately, it means the neurotypicals watching get reinforcement for their feelings that ND people are somehow not really people. In an essay on Evolving Representation of Autism on Television, Jill Wurm points out that this lack of nuance limits the audience’s understanding of autism, “adding to marginalization and stigmatization when a neurotypical person is faced with an autistic person. . .that does not fit the representation. . .on television.” That limited view of autism furthers the judgment on those who don’t match it, reduces the accessibility of the world around us, and increases refusal for accommodations. 

    Wednesday’s autistic coding is seen in her strict routines and schedules, struggles to understand social norms, seeming out of touch with her emotions, yet has deep ones, unaware of how she impacts others (and often confused as to why), dislikes crowds and attention, slow to make friends but then very loyal, laser focus for her work, fascination with “weird” stuff, and general “not fitting in” ubiquitous to the Addams family. Camille Bassett's thesis on the importance of intersectional autistic representation asserts "Because Wednesday embodies many traits of autism, she has the potential to add to the relatively sparse landscape of autism representation and impact how Autistics are viewed, regardless of whether she is an explicit or accurate depiction." 

    Likewise, I believe Enid's characterization has the same potential impact on how ADHD is viewed. Enid’s ADHD coding is seen in her stimulation seeking (dance, kpop, bright colors, social activities, fuzzy clothes, mani/pedis, etc), her scattered thoughts jumping subjects quickly, and forgetting things like her driver’s ed form. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria would explain why she didn’t want to talk to Ajax in season 2, and got so upset when she thought Wednesday didn’t want to be friends anymore. Enid being late to wolf out lines up with how many ADHD/autistic kids are ‘behind’ in one aspect or another of development. 

    Many autistic kids also have trouble making friends. Some desperately want to, while others are more focused on their special interests or prefer solitude and don’t make friendships a priority. Willow seems to only be friends with Xander and Jesse at the beginning of Buffy and often shows the social awkwardness that is frequently associated with autistic girls, sometimes the loner and sometimes as the manic pixie dream girl stereotype. Wednesday seems to have no friends at her normie school and is slow to connect with Enid or anyone else at Nevermore. Most of the time it’s quite clear that her lack of close friends is negligible in her list of concerns, though she does tell Bianca “honestly sometimes I wish I cared more.” I can’t help but wonder though – is that because she genuinely wants connections and caring more would help with that, or because she knows others want her to care more? 

    Where we see those attempts at friendship in action is Pugsly and Agnes in season two. They show two of the common approaches neurodivergent teens take when struggling to make friends; Pugsly in how he tries a few times and then mostly keeps to himself, and Agnes in how she mirrors the intended friend, thinking they’d want a friend just like them. Many autistic teens struggle to connect with people, and unfortunately when some go undiagnosed, they try to mask so much to be like the Normies, that they can’t even connect with other autistic people. For example, season one Eugene was just being himself, and thrilled when he could count Wednesday as a friend. Season two Eugene wanted to hang on to the popularity, so he started masking, which is why he rejected Pugsly’s friendship at first—Pugsly didn’t fit the mask Eugene had created for himself. In Agnes’ case, she was the one masking. She tried so hard to be just like Wednesday, but it backfired. Only when Enid convinced her to be herself could she actually begin to connect with them. The same is true for AuDHD people, outcasts in the real world. When we let the mask down, we are more likely to have the random moments of shared interest or similar humor style or frustration with small talk that often lead to autistic friendships. Buffy and her Scooby gang developed that partly through shared traumatic experiences, but also because they were all being -more or less- their true selves in a school where everyone else was trying to fit in. Nevermore as an entire school provides space for the Outcasts to take off whatever masks they might wear because everyone there knows everyone else there understands being “weird.” 

    I wish I’d had a space like that in my teens when I was the weird one. In my 20s I finally started finding my people, like my own gang of Scoobies who became a safe space where I can ease the mental and emotional load of interacting with people, because they won’t judge me for asking them to turn off the clicky haptic sounds on their phone, or when I suddenly infodump about Buffy for a half hour. Finding out in my late 40s (like many others, especially women in my generation) that I’m autistic explained a lot, and allowed me to be kinder to myself about all the ways I don’t meet neurotypical standards. It also explained that personal Scooby gang since many of those people I felt safe around, who were just as weird but in different ways, were discovering they were nuerodivergent, too. Those of us lucky enough to find such kindred neurotypes are often finding the first people to understand us, to believe certain things we say, or to be understaning when we ask more questions. It’s refreshing, and paralleled at Nevermore because everyone is an Outcast, so they understand each other in ways the Normies don’t and can’t. 

    Much of neurodivergent coding is based on the skills often deemed superpowers by others, or the challenges we face, but being autistic, ADHD, or both isn’t about our strengths or weaknesses. As Morticia said in season 2, “Being an Outcast isn’t about what you can do. It’s a state of mind.” It’s just how our brains are wired, which means it affects everything we do, think, and perceive. It’s very much like being an android or windows device in a world built for Apples. It’s the state of mind Morticia is defending in Gomez there. He may not have powers (anymore), but he’s absolutely got the mindset of an outcast, and even if he’d never had powers, his view of the world and his interests and approach to life are all those of an outcast. 

    Nevermore is full of many types of Outcasts. Many of the students need special accommodations to be around others, especially Normies, but even within their Outcast community. The werewolves have specially built Lupin cages to keep themselves and others safe when they're going to change. The gorgons wear beanies or other hats to keep their snakes covered and avoid stoning everyone in their path (and themselves when they walk past a reflection). Even Wednesday's black and gray uniform is an accommodation for her color allergy. At parents’ day, we see a variety of foods and types of foods on the buffet, indicating that all the different types of Outcasts and their Outcast families have different nutritional needs and the school is doing its best to meet those needs for everyone. Without having their needs met like this, some would get ill from food they can’t digest, some would inadvertently affect everyone around them, and Wednesday would be rashy and itching head to toe. They would all be disabled, at least temporarily, without accommodations. 

    As Elizabeth K. Switaj says in her essay on Slayerhood as Social Model Disability: 

“While the medical or personal-tragedy model of disability locates disability in the impairment and reduced functioning of an individual body alone, the social model, as its name indicates, considers institutional, structural, and social factors that cause individual needs to become disabilities that interfere significantly with a person’s capacity to participate in social, professional, or educational contexts.” 

     Slayerhood, she points out, is an innate part of every Slayer we meet, and serves as a disability because of how it interferes with them functioning within the larger society. And “the contrasts between Buffy and the other two slayers. . . bear out the role of society and social identity in shaping disability.” Buffy, Kendra, and Faith all share "the burden of Slayerness" but their upbringing and class and cultural differences impact how much that burden affects them in daily life. Kendra’s parents gave her to someone else to raise, much like autistic people who are institutionalized, and the lack of socialization increases the ways in which social structures disable her. Faith is left to fend for herself after her Watcher is killed, which results in her living in a seedy motel room on her own, no parental figures, no close friends, essentially no support system. Buffy, on the other hand, has a loving mother, a father-figure Watcher, and her small group of friends who understand the impairment of her Slayerness and accommodate her needs with research help, freshly carved stakes, battle plans, and more - the type of support system Kendra and Faith didn't have. The type of support system that can make a huge difference in quality of life for a disabled person. And Switaj points out that in spite of the "positive traits of strength and agility, Slayerhood still functions as a disability according to the social model." 

    Similarly, many autistic traits only become disabling in the “real world” where we’re expected to fit in and have no unique needs or sensitivities. In our own spaces, we have more control over sensory input of all types, while in public we can have problematic symptoms triggered by so many things. The situations exacerbate the traits or symptoms, making them debilitating in that space and time, often requiring us to leave the space to deal with those symptoms. Likewise, when Buffy has to lie or be evasive about whatever Slayer duty is pulling her away from something, it’s reminiscent of a chronically ill person or overwhelmed autistic person trying to explain the sudden exit. Especially regarding neurodivergence, it’s often the interactions with a world designed for everything we’re not that actually disables us. 

    The in-world differences between the types of Nevermore students allow us to see the flip side of this. These teens have different aspects of “outcastness” but they are all Outcasts. In addition to seeing a metaphor for the variety and similarities within the ND community, we can take example from how Nevermore handles the students and their needs, and even from the interactions between Nevermore and Jericho, the small town of “Normies” it borders. Normies tend to view them in one of a few ways: a problem or burden, a curiosity, a danger to fear, something disgusting and unwanted, or something to cure/fix. These are all attitudes that many neurotypical/allistic people (including the DSM at times) have towards autism, ADHD, and other types of neurodivergence. The Normies (and Neurotypicals) react with these views because people often fear the unfamiliar. The outreach day and other official school interactions with Jericho during season one were Principal Weems' attempt to bridge the gap and ease the Normies' discomfort. Ideally, familiarity would allow for more acceptance and equitable treatment for Outcasts or Autistics. 

    Jonathan Decker from Cinema Therapy says his big lesson from the autistic coding in Wednesday is that “We [neurotypicals] all think that our way of doing things is the right way, and so we want people to make big changes to be more like us. The power of neurodivergence . . . and accepting them for who they are is, the group is strengthened as a whole by the difference within it, and we play off each other and we help each other to grow.” 

    Marginalized people of all types are often the most aware of the value of diversity in all things, so that seems obvious to us. But if we can get more people to that point, we could truly be strengthened. Gregory Stevenson says in Televised Morality, “Through attention paid to the marginalized and disenfranchised, a society can learn the value of power well used.” Within Nevermore, and the Scooby gang, and within real world ND communities, those differences are recognized, accommodated as needed, and not pathologized. These are spaces or groups built to be accessible to as many people as possible, thereby reducing their disability. Similarly, Switaj mentions that "in the changed world of season 8, slayerhood no longer functions as a disability" because society has adjusted to Slayers and demons. 

    Neurodivergent people function better as individuals when their unique needs are met. Individuals functioning better and working together build a stronger community. Ideally, we can all find our Scooby Gang, a personal group of mutual support like I mentioned before, and more events and businesses are starting to include sensory safe spaces and other accommodations. I just learned that there's an entire university called Landmark designed by and for neurodivergent people, so maybe in time, we'll have more real-world places like Nevermore where outcasts of all kinds can function more comfortably.

    In closing, remember there’s no one way to be an outcast, so don’t assume someone’s a Normie because they’re out on a full moon, or that they’re an Outcast just because they can sing like a siren. Just allow people to be themselves and use whatever they need to get by in a normie world that wasn’t designed with outcast needs in mind. And while you’re in town, keep your eye out for a disembodied hand, since Thing has been known to visit the area. If you’d like, I have copies of his mugshot that include my sources and a link to my paper on the back.