A fun, contained Marvel show

The first half of the first episode of Agatha All Along is absolutely terrifying, but not on purpose. The show it spun off from, WandaVision, was a loving homage to television sitcoms, with each episode based on a different decade of American TV. The gimmick worked, for the most part, not just because of its cleverness, but because of the writers’ clear respect for and understanding of the history of television. Because of its unique setup, Marvel did a big pre-release push that laid out the basic conceit of the show, specifically highlighting the different decades and intentional callbacks. Viewers knew what they were getting into with WandaVision, even if they didn’t understand the metatextual purpose of the homages at the start of the series.  

With Agatha All Along, the messaging hasn’t been nearly as clear. Actor Joe Locke told Total Film that “every episode has a different classic horror/thriller film that it is basing itself off,” but the phrasing of that is ambiguous, and it’s not a point that Marvel has pushed particularly hard. Still, there was always a chance that Agatha would try to mimic WandaVision stylistically. The setup, after all, was kind of perfect for a re-do. 

Each of WandaVision’s nine episodes digs a little deeper into what, exactly, is going on. Eventually, we learn that after the death of her partner, Vision (Paul Bettany), Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) created an illusion around the town of Westview, New Jersey, trapping all the residents in a collective delusion, one marked by the tropes of the sitcoms Wanda took comfort in as a child. The “episodes” are what she’s broadcasting to the outside world, and watching those episodes is how the government agency S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division) comes to understand what’s going on inside what they call the “Westview Anomaly.” Also inside the Westview Anomaly is Wanda’s neighbor, Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), who isn’t quite as innocent as the rest of the residents trapped in Wanda’s illusion. Agnes, it turns out, is actually Agatha Harkness, a legendary witch who came to power during the Salem Witch Trials. She’s trying to insinuate herself into Wanda’s life so she can steal her power, a task she ultimately fails at achieving.  

After the Anomaly falls apart and Wanda defeats Agatha, Wanda places her under a spell in which she can’t remember her life as Agatha. As far as she knows, she is and always has been Agnes, a small-town resident with a penchant for nosy neighbor gossip. So, if Jac Shaeffer, who created both series, had wanted to, she could have easily treated Agatha All Along as WandaVision 2.0, with a woman trapped in a delusion, living out her life via half-remembered bits of pop culture that got stuck in her brain. 

And in the first part of Agatha’s first episode, “Seekest Thou The Road,” that seems to be exactly what’s happening. Except, unlike with WandaVision, this homage—to Scandinavian true crime—is ham-fisted and awkward, filled with lines so jaw-droppingly bad that you have to wonder if this is an intentional satire or if something has gotten terribly lost in translation. “I’ll try to be more cheerful for you next time, Herb,” Agnes says in the opening scene. “But right now, this unidentified woman lying dead in a creek has just got me down in the dumps.” Hahn laboriously pronounces creek as “crick.” Dialogue like that, presented as it is without context, would lead you to believe that if WandaVision was The Munsters, a pointed social commentary that knew exactly what it was doing, Agatha All Along is The Snowman, a paean to cinematic ineptitude that sails right past “so bad it’s good” and lands firmly in “so bad everyone involved should be ashamed” territory. 

The metatextual ambiguity that served WandaVision so well has the opposite effect here, as the show opens with Agnes, a detective newly returned to the police force after being suspended for punching a suspect, meeting Herb (David Payton), another Westview resident and apparently a fellow cop, at a crime scene. There’s a woman in the woods, dead from blunt-force trauma, but not from falling: She was crushed by something big and heavy, though her body looks oddly intact. Her face is conspicuously covered by the hood of her sweatshirt, which is similar to what Wanda is wearing in the WandaVision finale, except this hoodie is blue instead of red. Something is a little off here, and it’s not helped by the fact that Agnes and Herb are referring to each other by their Anomaly names, not their real names. We know that Agatha was under a spell at the end of WandaVision, so is this just a delusion she’s living in now? As fake credits for a show called Agnes Of Westview roll, punctuated by a title card that reads “Based on the Danish series WandaVisdysen” and a version of Agatha All Along’s original song, “The Ballad Of The Witches’ Road,” that sounds an awful lot like the original rendition of Tom Waits’ “Way Down In The Hole” that accompanies the second season of The Wire, all signs point to yes.

It’s a relief, then, that the dialogue becomes more recognizable as intentionally bad as the episode finds its groove. (“Eat my ass, Chief,” Agnes tells her boss when Aubrey Plaza’s FBI agent, Rio, shows up unwanted and unannounced.) And it’s even more of a relief when, roughly 25 minutes in, the true-crime pretense is dropped completely. Agnes finds a boy (Joe Locke) trying to break into her house, and as she interrogates him, he breaks the spell that she’s been under. She tears off her clothes, shedding the Agnes persona and emerging once again as Agatha, who immediately marches outside in broad daylight to demand an explanation from Herb (whose real name is John), not caring at all that she’s completely naked. This is the Agatha that I came for, full of chaotic charisma with a complete disregard for the feelings of anyone around her. It’s a relief we didn’t have to wait long to get here.

John explains that it’s been three years since the Wanda incident, and Agnes had mostly been a decent neighbor in that time despite her lack of boundaries. But for the past few days, it seemed like she was living in some sort of true-crime fantasy world, and everyone around town was humoring her in the hopes that she’d eventually snap out of it. When Agatha returns home, she tries to use her powers, but they’re gone, stolen by Wanda. She grabs her rabbit, Señor Scratchy, and tells him, “I got mugged, Mister. She took every little bit of power I had and left me with household appliances. We’ve gotta get back on top.” It also turns out that her interrogation of the kid who broke into her home was more of a kidnapping, and he’s tied up in her closet. 

Agatha doesn’t have time to deal with that, though, because Rio, who is not an FBI agent but a fellow witch, shows up, seemingly intending to kill her. From their flirty, familiar banter, it’s clear these two have history, though it’s not yet clear what that is. The episode ends with a fight scene between the two, and it mostly feels obligatory, but Plaza and Hahn really sell the connection between their characters. Agatha convinces Rio not to kill her yet. After all, it won’t be nearly as fun as it would be if she had her powers back. Rio leaves, but warns Agatha that there are others coming for her: The Salem Seven, who’ll be there by sundown. Apparently, they’re bad news, because Agatha looks spooked. 

By the end of “Seekest Thou The Road,” Agatha All Along somewhat surprisingly makes a good case for its own existence. It’s got the vibe of the early seasons of Netflix’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones, telling a story that recognizably takes place within the MCU but isn’t worried about proving it with constant references and a plot that exists only to be shoved into a larger narrative. Agatha All Along seems content to tell a smaller story, off to the side of the MCU’s usual big super-heroics and overarching narrative, about a woman reclaiming the power that’s been stolen from her. 

When Marvel first announced the Agatha spinoff three years ago, it felt like a bad idea, reactionary in a way that Marvel had never been before. Sure, Agatha was fun in WandaVision, and she quickly became a fan favorite, but that’s not enough to support an entire show. Did Marvel even have an idea for what the show would be about, or did they just green light “a show about Agatha Harkness” and hope to find a halfway decent story somewhere along the way? It felt like the second one, and the three years between WandaVision’s end and Agatha All Along’s premiere only added to that feeling. Maybe that’s why I didn’t give it much grace at the beginning. But I’m happy to admit that I was wrong and even happier that the message was delivered with all the bluntness of a naked Kathryn Hahn yelling at her very polite neighbor for the unspeakable crime of trying to be nice to her.

Episode two, “Circle Sewn With Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate,” functions mostly as a “getting the gang together” installment. Agatha’s rushing around, trying to get the hell out of Dodge before the Salem Seven show up when Locke’s character reasserts his presence, hopping out of the closet and getting Agatha’s attention. Surprisingly, he’s not mad about the whole kidnapping thing. He’s a witch, too, and he sought out Agatha because he needs her help to reach the Witches’ Road, which is a sort of testing ground for witches. “The road will give you the thing you want the most if you make it to the end,” he says. He knows she’s survived the road once before because he’s an Agatha Harkness superfan, but she writes him off initially. “I don’t know where you heard about the road, but it will kill you,” she tells him. “It didn’t kill you,” he responds. “Well, I’m exceptional,” she fires back, adjusting her hat. That exchange alone is worth the price of a Disney+ subscription.

His argument that the road can restore her power still doesn’t persuade her. But when she finally asks his name, the audio cuts out and a black scribble appears across his mouth. She asks again, and the same thing happens. This, apparently, intrigues her enough that she lets him tag along. Notably, Agatha doesn’t mention the issue to him. In the absence of a name, she takes to calling him Teen. 

Locke has the unenviable task of trying to keep up with Hahn as they rush around trying to put a coven together for the spell—it’s actually a song they need to sing together, called “The Ballad Of The Witches’ Road”—required to summon the road, but he rises to the occasion. Fans of Heartstopper won’t be surprised, but Agatha All Along is just his second professional acting role, and it’s a feat to match wits with a veteran like Hahn this early in his career. He plays Teen with an outward guilelessness that doesn’t quite mask the fact that he’s keeping secrets. Agatha might not care what he really wants from the road—he claims he knows a lot about witchcraft but lacks power and thinks the road can supply him with it, but that feels like a half-truth at best—but I certainly do. And even when Agatha asks him where he’s from, only for him to launch into a monologue that neither she nor the audience can hear, that feels more like her testing the limits of his weird silencing spell and not a question asked out of genuine interest. 

The first stop on their witch-gathering tour takes them to Madame Calderu’s Psychic Readings, where Lilia (Patti LuPone) isn’t quite making enough money fleecing the public with false fortunes to cover the rent. She’s a real witch but is content enough to live as a pretend one, even though she’s about to get evicted. And she’s certainly not interested in “covening up” with “the single most infamous witch on the continent” in order to walk the road. But something is clearly plaguing her, as evidenced by the random scream she lets out for seemingly no reason, and she eventually agrees to help, giving Agatha and Teen a list of four witches they’ll need to recruit. 

That leads them to Jen (Sasheer Zamata) and Alice (Ali Ahn). Agatha apparently has history with Jen, and it takes Teen’s intervention to get her on board. Alice doesn’t believe in witchcraft or the road at all, but her rock-star mom recorded the most famous version of the ballad before dying under mysterious circumstances. Agatha wants Jen to be their potions witch and Alice to be their protection witch, while Lilia will serve as the divination witch. All they’re missing is a green witch, but Agatha avoids the question when Teen asks about the last name on the list. Agatha tries to convince the coven that they don’t need a green witch, but they’re all insistent that they do, so Agatha ropes her unsuspecting neighbor, Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp), who went by Mrs. Hart in WandaVision, into pretending to be their green witch. Apparently, Agatha really doesn’t want to deal with whatever green witch was actually on that list. 

As the sun sets and the Salem Seven show up, the coven begins singing the ballad. It’s a cool scene of five badass women singing a spooky witchy song together, and it’s punctuated by effectively creepy shots of the Salem Seven drawing closer and closer. Even without a proper green witch, they still manage to open a door to the road, and they all escape through it just in time. It’s surprisingly economical storytelling for a Marvel TV show. Often, even at just six to eight episodes long, these series feel bloated, like there are maybe two hours of content stretched to fill eight. In “Circle Sewn With Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate,” the pace is downright brisk. In just 40 minutes, we’ve gotten a whole coven together and motivated them to perform a complex spell that requires everyone to work together. With only four episodes remaining and several trials on the road to get through, Agatha All Along seems like the rare MCU show that won’t outstay its welcome. Next week, the road awaits, but for right now, let’s all just soak in the prospect of going on a Wizard Of Oz-style adventure with a witch coven led by Kathryn Hahn. 

Stray observations

• • Hello and welcome to The A.V. Club’s coverage of Agatha All Along! I’m excited to dig into these episodes with you all. 
• • Those bizarre episode titles are lyrics from the ballad. The creative team must’ve been pretty confident in an original song to make it so central to the story. Like everything else with this show, it’s much better than I would have expected.
• • Lilia says the final name on the list wasn’t actually a name—it was just a black heart. At the end of episode one, Agatha tells Rio, “You don’t have a heart.” Rio responds, “Yes, I do. It’s black and it beats for you.”
• • In Agnes’ fantasy world, it’s heavily implied that she had a child who died. His name, as evidenced by a plaque in his room, was Nicholas Scratch, not Nicholas O’Connor (Agnes’ last name) or Nicholas Harkness. The name “Nicholas Scratch” for Agatha’s son comes straight from the comics, but it’s also worth noting that “Nick Scratch” is one of Mephisto’s pseudonyms, and one of the biggest theories about WandaVision while it was airing was that Mephisto would turn out to be the villain. Obviously, Mephisto never appeared in WandaVision, and Schaeffer claimed she didn’t even know who Mephisto was when she wrote the series. 
• • That scribble across Joe Locke’s mouth when he says his name sure looks like a capital M to me, but maybe it’s a random design.
• • Lilia mutters “three of pentacles” to herself for no discernible reason as she hands the list of witches to Agatha and Teen.
• • If this show existed purely for the one-liners, I’d still be unreasonably happy with it. Patti LuPone’s delivery of “Beat it, Harkness!” is going to live rent-free in my head for the next week.
• • As she’s getting the coven together, Agatha is followed first by a crow, then by a rat.