“Agatha All Along embraces the same clunky writing tendencies as so many other MCU shows and movies, but it is buoyed by its talented ensemble cast and Kathryn Hahn’s terrific lead performance.”
Pros
- Kathryn Hahn’s astonishing star turn
- A likable cast of supporting characters
- A delightfully spooky sense of fun
Cons
- Multiple forced exposition dumps throughout its midseason episodes
- A potentially repetitive episodic structure
- A tired, tonally out-of-place focus on overcoming emotional trauma
Once upon a time, the television side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seemed shiny, new, and surprisingly promising. That time seems like a distant memory now — even though it was only three years ago. In early 2021, WandaVision ended the MCU’s pandemic-enforced yearlong break and ushered in what seemed like a new era for the multimedia franchise. A cross between a character-driven superhero story and a love letter to television history, WandaVision really wasn’t like anything else that Marvel Studios had made before. Equal parts funny, tragic, and form-breaking, the series encouraged theory-crafting and kept viewers entertained on a week-to-week basis, all while spotlighting a performance from Elizabeth Olsen that felt spell-binding and genuinely revelatory.
For a brief period, WandaVision made the MCU’s future seem brighter than ever. That promise hasn’t just dimmed since then but altogether burnt out. It is nonetheless admirable to watch Marvel’s latest TV offering, Agatha All Along, try to rekindle it. Across its first four episodes, the WandaVision spinoff does its best to both call back to the past and carve a new path forward for itself and its witchy characters. While the series reminds one in its best moments of WandaVision‘s clever, tongue-in-cheek sense of formal fun, though, it also can’t escape many of the flaws that have dragged down other recent MCU efforts. It’s an odd mix of old and new, lively and clunky, and it is kept afloat by a group of actors who — in an increasingly rare occurrence for the MCU — actually seem like they want to be here.
In what has to be one of the most playful and economic bits of MCU storytelling in years, Agatha All Along spends its opening minutes simultaneously answering fan questions, cracking jokes, and creating clear threads between it, WandaVision, and 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This extended prologue, the details of which are best left unspoiled, sees WandaVision and Agatha creator Jac Schaeffer operating at a level of confidence as a writer that feels immediately refreshing. Unlike the cockiness of Deadpool & Wolverine, which is used to cover up some of the most inelegant storytelling in the MCU’s history, Agatha All Along‘s confidence is mostly earned, too. This is a series that — even when it is contorting itself to look like another — knows exactly what it is.
There are long (excuse the pun) spells in Agatha All Along‘s first two episodes in which it seems content to let itself and its lead, Agatha Harkness (a commanding Kathryn Hahn), have as much fun as possible. The sense of narrative space in these sections has become hard to find in the MCU, and so Agatha All Along feels, at first, like a much-needed change of pace for its franchise. Things get uneven and a bit wonky, however, once the series is forced to abandon its initial, laidback cool in favor of more on-the-nose plotting and MCU-flavored action. It isn’t long before Hahn’s Agatha has awoken from the spell that Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff trapped her in at the end of WandaVision. When she does, she’s horrified to discover that her magical powers are gone. Unfortunately for Agatha, that leaves her vulnerable to the vengeance of all of her many witchy enemies.
With nowhere else to turn, Agatha is forced to walk the legendarily dangerous Witches’ Road to try to get her powers back. In order to do so, she must assemble a coven of similarly desperate witches to walk the Road with her. These kooky eccentrics turn out to be Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), a divination witch who has grown tired of making pennies reading other people’s fortunes; Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), a sorceress and potions master who lost access to her powers years ago; Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), a burnout “protector witch” who is haunted by the death of her magical witch mother; Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), a dangerous witch who shares a shady history with Agatha; and Sharon Davis (returning WandaVision star Debra Jo Rupp), a normal human woman living in Westview whom Agatha coerces into walking the Witches’ Road with her. A mysterious, magic-obsessed goth drifter known only as “Teen” (Joe Locke) also convinces Agatha to let him tag along for the ride.
At the end of the Witches’ Road lies a well of wish-fulling power that Agatha and the members of her coven will be able to divide up. That is, of course, if they can survive the trials that lie between them and their prize. These tests are custom-fitted for each coven member, and they require them to overcome — through often zany means — the traumas of their past. Stylistically, these pit stops give Agatha All Along a chance to change its look every episode and focus on a different member of its supporting cast. They also require Schaeffer and her writers to do a lot of telling instead of showing, which results in otherwise endearingly funny characters like Ahn’s Alice and Zamata’s Jennifer explaining the details of their backstories — sometimes while we are also seeing them visualized onscreen.
Agatha All Along‘s trials, therefore, feel clunkier than the rest of the show. They force it to frequently leave its Witches’ Road set behind as well, which is beautifully rendered by the series’ production team and suits Agatha All Along‘s spooky story better than any of the Road’s supernaturally conjured prisons. These detours are, frankly, less fun than everything else Agatha All Along has to offer. The series works better when it is letting its actors joke, wander, and — in certain instances — sing together. Its writing and characterizations are crafted at an over-the-top pitch that perfectly suits actors like Ahn, Zamata, Plaza, LuPone, and Hahn.
Zamata and LuPone, in particular, prove to be formidable scene stealers over the course of Agatha All Along‘s first four episodes, and their introductions provoke some of the series’ biggest laughs. They are the standouts in what is one of the best supporting casts in recent MCU history. That said, Agatha All Along is primarily held together by Hahn, who manages to turn a Marvel-produced superhero show into yet another well-deserved showcase of her many talents. The actress easily slides back into her WandaVision role — leaning again into Agatha’s theatrical villainy while also giving her more emotional depth than her last TV series was willing to provide.
As Agatha, Hahn is believably fierce and yet tender, maniacal and endearing. The actress’ comedic skills have seemingly only sharped over the years, and even when she’s sharing the screen with a capable performer like LuPone, Hahn never lets you doubt who the spotlight belongs to in Agatha All Along. Its lackluster action and stretches of forced, in-your-face exposition frequently drag the series down, and it lacks — perhaps a bit inevitably — both the elegance and freshness of its parent show. The biggest thing Agatha All Along ultimately has in common with WandaVision is that its greatest strength isn’t its welcome sense of humor or ever-evolving style, but its central performance.
Like Olsen before her, Hahn has taken an expensive addition to an already unwieldy franchise and made it her own. That’s a magic trick worth celebrating — even if Agatha All Along frequently struggles to live up to its star’s greatness.
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along are streaming now on Disney+. New episodes premiere weekly on Wednesdays. Tech Reader was given early access to the series’ first four installments.
