Maxance Vincent
Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episodes one and two of Agatha All Along.
So far, I believe the disappointment that has stemmed from audiences with Marvel’s latest television series, Agatha All Along, has been that it doesn’t feel like a direct aesthetic companion to its first streaming effort, 2021’s WandaVision. And while that series started out surprisingly bold in its rehaul of the traditional MCU sheen in favor of a pastiche of 1950s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms, it quickly fizzled out into uninteresting and nonsensical territory. Who remembers when Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) told Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), after imprisoning an entire town and holding them hostage, “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them?” You can’t get any lower than that…and yet, no one knew how low it would get for Marvel in the wake of this series.
That’s why I was pleasantly surprised with the first two episodes of Agatha All Along, titled “Seekest Thou the Road” and “Circle Sewn With Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate.” Both directed by WandaVision showrunner Jac Schaeffer (who is also the creator of this series), they plant the seeds for a promising exploration of the spookier side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, after much talk was made of its upbringing, either implicitly in WandaVision and directly in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Werewolf by Night.
The first two episodes don’t reveal much in terms of its larger story but posit the show interestingly, first through a well-paced and shot callback to HBO’s Mare of Easttown (aptly titled Agnes of Westview), in which Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), still trapped inside Wanda’s spell, is a police officer uncovering a criminal conspiracy revolving around a dead body she found in the Westview woods. The cold, clinical aesthetic strangely evokes the methodical work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but none of what we see is real. It’s all in her head, which is exposed when witch Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) arrives inside Agatha’s “show” as an FBI agent.
Agatha begins to experience disconcertment, which occurs in a compelling but ultimately disappointing way when she literally ‘peels back’ all of her façades to fully break away from Wanda’s spell. I understand why it was done this way, but it was also far too on the nose in its seemingly unwarranted callbacks from WandaVision. In fact, the only intriguing callback from that series occurs in the return of familiar characters that populated Westview, who have developed trauma from having their minds hijacked by Wanda. The house she used to live in with Vision (Paul Bettany) is gone, but its foundations have been vandalized.
It’s difficult to see how this series will develop this aspect because the bulk of the show is centered around Agatha gathering up a coven of witches comprised of Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), Alice-Wu Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), and a stand-in for the Green Witch in Sharon Davis (AKA Mrs. Hart, played by Debra Jo Rupp) to walk the Witches Road in search of power. Agatha wants her witch-driven powers back so she can fight Rio, who, when she awakens from her trance, doesn’t waste any time in attempting to kill the witch. But Rio believes it is tedious to do so when Agatha is powerless, allowing her to walk with her new coven and find what she needs to fight again.
Unsurprisingly, Plaza is fantastic and immediately intrigues through her character, setting up a fun antagonist to develop. However, she does not show up in the second episode, leaving her arc in limbo. The fight scene gives us a taste of how Schaeffer and subsequent filmmakers Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Monteiro will approach action in Agatha All Along, which seems better-looking (and staged) than the dull, by-committee images of WandaVision’s climax. Though there aren’t enough of them to properly judge their quality, even if by its second episode, it gets noticeably spookier when Agatha and her coven open up the gate to the Witches Road in an eerie musical number (songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez return) that’s less showy than WandaVision’s “Agatha All Along,” but far more effective (and funny too, with Debra Jo Rupp’s Sharon bouncing along once she figures out its lyrics).
Really, the only glaring flaw in its first two episodes is the presence of Joe Locke, who portrays “Teen.” While the performance isn’t a big issue, the path he seems to be on feels increasingly telegraphed. The audience likely knows his identity, which isn’t hidden effectively. Perhaps that’s the point – we’re meant to know who he is, except for Agatha, which adds a mystery for her to uncover. However, since we have more significant knowledge, the overall mystery surrounding him falls flat. But I’d be happy to have my expectations subverted in a meaningful way and let the series play out on its own before entirely judging this aspect of the series.
There really isn’t much “story” in the first two episodes of Agatha All Along. It’s all meticulously setting up Agatha’s ‘reawakening’ (done surprisingly well) until the second episode focuses on the assembly (heh) of her coven. It’s a bit rushed, but tantalizing enough to make me excited to see what Marvel has in store for us as the show begins to wholly lean into the supernatural hopefully in a spooky, but in a fun way (understood the reference? I can do this all day…).
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along are now available to stream on Disney+.
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