‘Agatha All Along’ Episode Four Recap: “If I Can’t Reach You, Let My Song Teach You”

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episode four of Agatha All Along.

After a third episode introducing us to the structure the series will adopt in its ‘trials,’ episode four of Agatha All Along, titled “If I Can’t Reach You, Let My Song Teach You,” solidifies it. Sadly, it starts with the funeral of Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp), sealing her fate as the gutsiest narrative decision the show took early on. I understand why it was done, unlike the ‘shock-value’ of killing Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) so anticlimactically in Secret Invasion, but it still does not sit right with me. Oh well, onwards and upwards, I guess!

However, this forces Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven, comprised of Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice-Wu Gulliver (Ali Ahn) and Teen (Joe Locke) to summon a Green Witch replacement. Of course, it’s none other than Rio (Aubrey Plaza) who accepts to join the coven on their quest to walk the Witches Road, as much as she wants to exact a (yet-to-be-developed) plot to kill the titular witch right now. Plaza is having a ball in this show, with a portrayal coded like Wow Platinum in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, charging the character with insatiable sexual energy that implies a past romantic life between Agatha and Rio. 

There’s a palpable sense of tension between the two that slowly exacerbates in the episode, where Rio unveils her plan in front of Agatha, and in its ending scene, where she reveals to her that Teen is not her son. Of course, this was obvious, but how she plays the character so devilishly is enough to keep me intrigued about their relationship. It is bound to develop significantly as the episodes progress, and one will have to see how it will blossom in the trials yet to come.

This week’s trial is focused on Alice, who sees a 1970s house that she does not want to go in. But the road dictates what the witches should do, and they reluctantly enter the house. The aspect ratio, once again, switches to 1.90:1, and the costumes of its protagonists turn into a 1970s rock band inside a recording studio, reminiscent of what Alice’s mother wore. As Rio tells Agatha what she plans to do to the coven once the titular witch dies, Teen plays a record, activating the next trial. All of the coven members become cursed with Alice’s same affliction, leading to her drawing circles around the witches in a decidedly simple but kinetic action setpiece. 

A (well-realized, practical) demon appears a physical manifestation of the curse that has affected Alice’s family. This makes director Rachel Goldberg employ several creative choices that seemingly harken back to Brian De Palma’s Carrie, coupled with not one, but three split diopters, an overabundance of split screen to amplify the tension in its central setpiece, and crash-zooms whenever a character says something insatiably dramatic, or meaningful. This type of juice is welcomed in an era where the MCU has been at its wobbliest from a creative standpoint, especially considering that their last title, Deadpool & Wolverine, contained some of the ugliest photography of any MCU project yet.

The use of 1.90:1 is intelligent, allowing its director to go all-in on the respective aesthetics it parodies. It also helps capture the campy nature of its central musical number, a different rendition of The Witches Road performed by the coven. They realize that the song Alice’s mother recorded is not only a different cover but a protection spell that has kept her daughter alive from the curse. The coven now has the opportunity to protect themselves from the demon and kill it once and for all if they play it correctly. This leads to another fantastic musical number, vastly different from the original Witches Road iteration we heard in the second episode, with a livelier, more dynamic version. It also perfectly captures songwriters Kristen and Robert Lopez’s malleability in playing with several musical genres, as they brilliantly did in WandaVision, and continue to do so here, on a far different scale and atmosphere.

During the battle with the demon, Teen gets severely injured, prompting Jennifer to concoct a potion to heal his wounds, which ultimately saves his life. Of course, we need this character alive because he will be integral to Agatha’s previous battle with Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision. However, I’d much rather get a subversion of expectations than something everyone sees coming a mile away. However, I don’t want to reveal my theory just now for fear of being wrong and not shocking people who have no idea who he is. I’d like to be pleasantly surprised, but let’s see what happens now…

The fourth episode of Agatha All Along is now available to stream on Disney+.