Wednesday first appeared in a 1944 issue of The New Yorker. The image at the left is the first comic she was ever in, albeit obviously unnamed at that time. That type of comic was creator Charles Addams' stock and trade. Seemingly everyday occurrences with a dark twist to them. A matronly woman at the the information booth in a department store asking where they keep "blunt instruments." A bathroom in which you can see a man brushing his teeth in the mirror... but there is no one in the room to be a reflection of in the first place. A well-dressed man and woman on a street corner just in front of an open manhole with a ladder leading down, and the woman says, "Well, here's where I say good-night." Addams' comics were never titled, and featuring just random characters at least as often, if not more often, than the ones who would later be known as the Addams Family. In fact, they were never named at all in the comics -- none of the characters were named until the 1964 sitcom. Indeed, Addams offerred little by way of character to Wednesday in the comics. She was generally macabre in the same way her whole family was, but beyond that, all that Addams really gave her was a basic visual.
The television show introduced the entire family's names, and well as present the iconic theme song. (Curiously, I've seen a number of reaction videos to the 1991 movie and many of the reactors note that they're familiar with the song but have never seen the show!) I did watch the show in syndication as a kid. I suspect that was my first introduction to the characters. While they had appeared in Hanna-Barbera cartoons in 1972 and 1973 and those would have theoretically been more "current," I think those were largely out of circulation by the time I was old enough to watch them. Their depictions there were visually much closer to Addams' comics than the live-action actors, and I recognized that upon first seeing them, so I must have read some of my dad's collections by then. Despite the visuals returning to something more like the comics, the tone was closer to the 1964 show -- sanitized almost beyond recognition. There was no dark humor at all, much less full-on gallows humor. Most of the jokes from the first episodes revolve around a visitor being scared/surprised to see a taxidermied, two-headed tortise or a whetstone with an axe lying next to it in the living room.
Wednesday, up until this point, had little by way of characterization. She was barely utilized in the comics, and the show had her set at only six years old. (Actress Lisa Loring was indeed six when she started appearing as Wednesday.) Consequently, she's largely treated AS a six-year-old, generally just playing and going to school. Her "weirdness" was largely just by way of being unfazed by anything her family did. Much of what would become Wednesday's character came from the 1991 movie.
Christina Ricci was ten when production for the movie began, old enough that she couldn't be dismissed as a more-or-less generic background character. The writers amplified the deadly nature of her and her brother's "games" and Ricci brought a lot of nuance to the role, particularly with her line deliveries. Audiences recognized and embraced the updates, seemingly appreciating the additional ascerbic wit that would never have made sense for a six-year-old, and Wednesday was given much greater prominence in the 1993 movie.
Subsequent iterations of the character followed the success of Ricci's version. A 10-13 year-old Wednesday became the norm across multiple outlets: a direct-to-video movie (1998), a live-action TV show (1998-99), and a Broadway musical (2009-12). Even the 1993-93 animated show, which again returned to character designs more closely resembling Addams' original cartoons, made Wednesday taller and slightly more mature as did the 2019 and 2021 animated movies.
It is perhaps Melissa Hunter's unlicensed Adult Wednesday Addams web series that next expanded the character's potential. In keeping the character a child, there had been some restrictions on what topics might be addressed. Not out of any real taboos, necessarily, but a 10-year-old Wednesday would simply not have experienced, for example, puberty. She would not have had much experience out from under her parents' protective wings. Even her formal education would be relatively rudimentary. Hunter, then, offerred the idea of how a character like Wednesday would act in more adult scenarios. Which, interestingly, gets back to Addams' original ideas for his comics. Just instead of a general weirdness or sense of the macabre, it's a specific one unique to Wednesday.
While Hunter ran into some trouble for using the character without the legal right to do so, she highlighted the no-tolerance-for-bullshit approach to the character that began with Ricci. Whereas the Addamses in general went against the status quo, their approach was largely one of, "We're just going to do our own thing regardless of your opinion of us." Wednesday was more active in her rejection of the status quo. She not only rejected it, but would point out to others why the status quo is bullshit. And if they didn't listen, she'd make them. While younger versions of Wednesday did that, Hunter brought in those additional topics that could not reasonably be addressed by a child.
(I'll add here, for the sake of completeness, that Lisa Loring did return to the role of Wednesday when she was 19. There was a largely-forgotten Halloween with the New Addams Family made-for-TV movie in 1977 that brought back the cast of the 1964 TV show. She's not afforded much to do beyond make an appearance unforuntately, and the movie not surprisingly follows the sanitized version of the TV show anyway. So it does almost nothing to add to her character.)
This is where the current version of Wednesday, as portrayed by Jenna Ortega comes in. They seem to have recognized the potential in aging up the character and applying the bullshit-intolerance applied to conventions and emotions that come with greater maturity. Again puberty, formal education, stepping out from your parents' direct influence, etc. Not quite adult themes, but ones that certainly resonnate with a more adult audience. Although the addition of more 'conventional' monsters like werewolves and gorgons is a bit removed from most interpretations of the Addams Family proper, it still harkens back to Addams' original comics which did include many such references.
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