Shifting the paradigm with Wednesday Addams: An intersectional analysis of the first (Autistic) female Latinx detective

For centuries, Autistic people have been portrayed in media through two dehumanizing stereotypes, the robot and the superhuman savant. Together, the robot and the superhuman savant combine into one of the most popular hybrid stereotypes to appear in media: the detective. Past detectives have been almost exclusively white male characters, a longstanding pattern that erases Autistic women and people of color, among others. In 2022, however, Netflix’s spinoff series of The Addams Family, Wednesday, brought to the screen the first-ever female Latinx detective. This study is a thematic analysis of Wednesday as a character, the autism stereotypes she reifies as a female detective, and the intersectional facets of her identity for an understanding of her significant contributions to autism representation.