Josh Reviews Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along picks up the story of Agatha Harkness several years after the events of WandaVision.  Agatha was trapped in her suburban housewife “Agnes” persona by Wanda at the end of that show, but following Wanda’s death in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, the spell has been corrupted.  When we first find Agatha here in this show, she’s now trapped in an entirely different persona: that of a tough detective in a Mare of Easttown type of show.  She’s broken out of that spell by the arrival of a young teenager who is himself bound by a spell that masks his true identity.  “Teen” convinces Agatha to assemble a coven to find and successfully traverse “the Witches’ Road”, at the end of which they will each receive what they most desire.  Agatha wants her powers restored, but she has a terrible habit of killing her coven in order to get what she wants…

An Agatha-centered spin-off of WandaVision, starring Kathryn Hahn, was announced three years ago, back in November ’21, not too long after the end of WandaVision earlier that year.  I’ve been a huge fan of Kathryn Hahn’s forever, and I loved her performance as Agatha in WandaVision, but I was a bit surprised by the decision to have this character be the center of a new show.  Agatha has always been a relatively minor supporting character in the comics; could this character really support her own show?  And the history of comic book spin-off film/TV projects centering on villains has always been pretty spotty.  (Think about disasters such as the Catwoman and Elektra movies back in the day; more recently, there are all the Sony movies based on Spider-Man villains, not a one of which has looked remotely interesting to me.)  And then the project got delayed by the strike and other hiccups, and now three long years have passed.  Meanwhile, Disney CEO Bog Iger has been making statements that there will be fewer Marvel TV shows on Disney+… an Agatha show felt to me like it could have been a fun minor-key show when it was just one of many Marvel TV series, but what asked to basically carry the year for Marvel live-action TV on Disney+, I worried this was a mistake.

Color me surprised and impressed that I loved Agatha All Along!  Is this a story that NEEDED to be told?  Maybe not.  This could still be considered a “minor-key” side-story.  It features few if any connections to the wider MCU, and there are certainly many other characters and storylines that, had I been charting out the MCU’s fourth and fifth phases, I’d have preferred they focus on rather than this.

But!  Without the burden of heavy MCU connectivity, show-runner Jac Schaeffer and her team have crafted a beautiful show that I loved!  Agatha all Along is a fun adventure story; it’s also a moving character piece, it’s a great genre yarn about witches, it’s a fun fantasy and a funny vehicle in which an ensemble of terrific actors can play and be silly.  It’s beautifully well-crafted, in which all of the story threads are important and are woven together as the series unfolds.  And it builds to a moving ending that has me eager for this story and these characters to continue.

What more could I ask for??

Kathryn Hahn is a terrific actor and a comedic genius.  She scored as Agatha on WandaVision and she effortlessly carries this show as the headliner.  This show was always alive and entertaining whenever Ms. Hahn was on-screen as Agatha.  The clever writing and structure of the show allowed Ms. Hahn to play a number of different versions and colors of Agatha, and she knocked each and every one of them out of the park.  I loved how the show allowed us to grow to like Agatha and to understand her, while also never losing sight of the fact that this is a villainous character!  (That’s not how she’s often depicted in the comics, but that is how she has been played in the MCU.)  Ms. Kahn is so playful and funny in the role, and also so often delightfully mean!  (She might be at her funniest when Agatha is at her meanest.  Is that possible?  This is a great performance.)

Ms. Hahn is surrounded by a wonderful ensemble.  The great stage actress & singer Patti LuPone plays Lilia, a 450-year old witch, originally from Sicily, with powers of divination and fortune-telling, particularly by use of tarot cards.  What fun casting!  Ms. LuPone is wonderful as Lilia, weird and sweet and, eventually, wise.  Sasheer Zamata plays Jen, a potions expert now reduced to selling creams and concoctions that don’t work because decades ago she was “bound” and lost access to her powers.  Jen is funny, but there’s a simmering rage beneath.  (Her final big argument with Agatha is a doozy.)  Ali Ahn plays Alice, a “protector” witch whose mother recorded a famous version of the “Witches’ Road” song which plays an important part in the show.  I loved the way we slowly got to know Alice.  Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Legion, Megalopolis) plays Rio, Agatha’s ex-lover whose past is mysterious.  Ms. Plaza is delightful as always, charismatic and sassy.  Debra Jo Rupp (who will forever be Mrs. Weir to me, from Freaks and Geeks) returns from WandaVision as Sharon Davis.  Ms. Rupp is so, so funny in this role, and I was endlessly amused by the running gag of the confusion over her name.  (Sharon was “Mrs. Hart” under Wanda’s spell back in WandaVision, and there’s a great joke in which, at a dramatic moment late in the series, Agatha has no idea who another character is referring to when they mention “Sharon Davis”.)  I love each one of these women, and the show does a great job at exploring their characters and mining both drama and fun from the way they each bounce off of one another.

The show’s writing is extremely sharp.  I was impressed by how well-structured this show was.  There were several moments in the back half in which we learned a secret that totally recontextualized what we’d seen before in a thrilling manner.  It made me so happy to see how well all of the show’s many pieces fit together, and how well-thought-out the show’s structure was.  (I thought the exploration of Lilia’s long life in episode seven — in a manner reminiscent of Slaughterhouse Five or the famous Dr. Manhattan chapter of Watchmen — was brilliant, but then the show followed that up with a The Usual Suspects type of blow-your-mind moment late in the series that was amazing.)  I have often complained about the “mystery box” approach that so many TV shows seem to take these days, in which they hold back key information until the end of the story.  The goal is to surprise audiences, but by not allowing us to understand what characters are doing and why as we watch them on the show, it becomes confusing and prevents me as a viewer to engaging with the characters and the show as it’s unfolding.  There are certainly mysteries here in Agatha All Along, but Jac Schaeffer and her team played those mysteries perfectly.  We understand and can follow the character and stories in the early going; but then as the show unfolds we learn new information that is surprising and thrilling and changes our perspective on what we’d seen to that point.  This is exactly how to do it!

They also nailed the balance between an episodic structure and continuity.  This show tells one big story, and the episodes flow one into another.  At the same time, the writers did a great job of breaking down the story into distinct episodes.  Using the structure of the trials along the Witches’ Road worked beautifully well.  That helped differentiate the episodes, as did the gloriously weird and wonderful costumes the gang found themselves in, each time they stepped into a new trial.  (Seeing Teen dressed as Malificent was so funny.)  Once again, they handled this balance perfectly.

I’m going to move into more details, so here comes a SPOILERS warning.  Stop here if you haven’t yet watched the show!

I was hooked right from episode one, and the brilliant decision to mimic WandaVision by starting with the main character trapped in a TV show.  In this case, it was Agnes of Westview, a note-perfect parody of Mare of Easttown.  I ate this up.  Kathryn Hahn was hilarious as the seen-it-all, tough-as-nails detective with the miserable, lonely home-life.  This was a great hook into the show.

I applaud their willingness to kill off characters!  When people started dying, I was sure they’d all magically be OK by the end of the Road.  But, nope!  Bravo to Ms, Schaeffer and the writers for having the guts not to undo those events by the end.

Speaking of the end, my main complaint about WandaVision was that I felt the finale was poor, dropping the ball and failing to give a satisfying resolution to the show’s storylines.  From what I have read, the end of WandaVision does not represent the original planned ending; the chaos of the pandemic and other issues apparently forced them to significantly rewrite and rework the ending.  I’m not a fan of what they came up with (wrapping up in a CGI fight and totally letting Wanda’s character off the hook for all the horror and misery she’d caused).  I feel like Jac Schaeffer felt that way too and took extra care to stick the landing here.  She succeeded.  The last two episodes work together well and provide a satisfying closure to the series (while leaving the door wide open for more stories).  I loved how episode eight had all the action and tension of a typical season finale, allowing episode nine the space to provide an exploration into Agatha’s past and to explore the repercussions of the events in episode eight.  This worked well.

I loved that the show wound up with Agatha as a ghost!  That felt right, and made this comic book fan’s heart sing, because of course for so many of Agatha’s appearances in the comics (in the Fantastic Four and Avengers comics from the eighties and nineties, and especially the Vision and the Scarlet Witch mini-series), Agatha was a ghost!

I loved the surprise of seeing Evan Peters (who played Quicksilver — Wanda’s brother — in the Fox X-Men movies) pop up in WandaVision (though I didn’t like the revelation in the WandaVision finale that he was just Agnes’ husband Ralph, rather than actually being another multiversal version of Pietro), and I was thrilled to see him appear for a fun cameo scene here!  Mr. Peters was very funny, as always.

I liked the tease of seeing a body that could be Wanda’s in the car crash that “Agnes” was investigating in the premiere (as well as the later connection to the car crash that killed William Kaplan after his Bar Mitzvah).

OK, let’s talk about Teen.  It was clear to me that this young man would wind up being revealed as Wanda’s son Billy Maximoff, the hero Wiccan from the Young Avengers comics.  I was pleased by how that played out.  I liked the flashbacks that explored his background (and how Billy came to be in William’s body).  Wiccan has a super-complicated origin in the comics, but they did a nice job simplifying that for the show.  (Even though it is still a little complicated!)  I thought his Wiccan costume looked PERFECT — so well done!  I was happy that the show made a point of identifying William as being Jewish.  That was nice to see.  Though I wish they’d actually taken a little more effort to present an accurate depiction of his Bar Mitzvah.  They go to the trouble of showing William in synagogue and reading Torah — but then couldn’t be bothered to show Billy actually chanting from the Torah with correct Torah trope (the musical punctuation which is how the Hebrew of the Torah is read in synagogue).  This was so frustrating.  They fell all over themselves to work on accurate Native American representation on Echo, but when it comes to accurate Jewish representation, as usual, Hollywood doesn’t care.  So that was a letdown to me.

A highlight of WandaVision was the wonderful parody theme song music, created by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.  I was delighted that they returned to craft the fantastic, ear-worm Ballad of the Witches’ Road that wove throughout this series.  It was a terrific song, perfectly executed.  (The revelation in the finale of the true in-universe origin for the song was such a great surprise!)

Well, this show was a delight.  I’m happy to have seen it, and I’m happy it exists.  With the exception of Secret Invasion, I’ve thought all of the Marvel Disney+ series were good to great!  They seem to have lost some momentum, but I’d love to see these shows continue, and I hope we see Billy and Agatha again before too long.  (Will it be in Terry Matalas’ in-the-works VisionQuest show?  In an eventual Young Avengers movie?  In a different TV show sequel/spin-off?  I’d happily take any or all of those!)  And let’s get Jac Schaeffer locked down for more Marvel projects right away.  She got this one just right.

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