The traumatised Wanda Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch) left chaos in her wake and at least one resident of Westfield hasn’t been the same sense. Trapped inside a reality she never made, one that echoes a detective show, Agatha Harkness is about to be freed by the arrival of a mysterious young boy who is seeking answers of his own about what happens and what happens next.
The teen appears to have mystical powers and wants Agatha to lead him to the ‘Witches Road’ a legendary place that grants travellers – or at least its survivors – the one thing they most desire. Agatha agrees to help, after all it could be the key to getting her full powers back, but to find the entrance to the road, she’s going to need a coven.
But can the group of disparate witches put aside their animosities and even if they can, can the coven trust its members, the Teen or the road itself to deliver?
*spoilers*
There was a lot riding on Marvel’s WandaVision when it debuted on Disney+ in January 2021. Yes, there had been other Marvel tv shows. (Netflix has launched the likes of the hugely-popular Daredevil, followed by the likes of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and the luke-warm Iron Fist – and their eventual team-up as The Defenders – and the ABC network had given us Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Hayley Atwell reprising her Agent Carter). However, the movie magic had climaxed with the ground-breaking Avengers: Endgame and the road-map ahead was now hardly set in stone. With the Disney/Marvel deal blossoming, it was decided that a majority of Marvel output would now head towards one outlet, the newly-minted Disney+ platform, advancing their subscription efforts.
WandaVision, albeit after some delays, turned out to be the first series out of the gate (beating the original plan of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier because of the COVID delays) and the reviews were good but mixed. There were top-notch stars: Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany (reprising their roles of Wanda Maximoff and Vision) supported by the likes of Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, Evan Peters, Randall Park and Debra Jo Rupp and high-concept ideas leaning into different eras of television domesticity. The elements tied in to the events post-Endgame and a beguiling, self-aware mystery to keep viewers interested if not always completely satisfied. Pacing would become a recurring problem for the Marvel/Disney+ output and WandaVision’s nine episode run suffered from a little padding, sky-high expectations and a somewhat morally-compromised climax.
Thematically and pragmatically, Agatha All Along… has been the true follow-up to WandaVision and like many of the Disney+ shows, it seeks to have both connective tissue between what was and what will be and its own identity. Standing apart from a lot of recent Marvel fare, it picked up the various suburban strands of the previous series (the ones that weren’t severed by Wanda’s further demonisation in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness). There’s action, mystical battles, more than a smattering of SFX and even more a sense of self-awareness, but don’t look for conventional superheroes or city-wide set-pieces. The budget, well-used though it is, is apparently far less than some previous avenues and is channeled into vibe and atmosphere rather than scale.
It was smart to have the nine episodes of Agatha All Along… run in the weeks up to Hallowe’en, book-ending its run with double-episodes for the first time. While a viewer will always have some benefit from having knowledge of the comics’ mythology, the source material here was complex enough that the series has to somewhat simplify it for the more casual viewer. But without a firm idea of how we left things in WandaVision, it’s likely viewers would have been on the backfoot at the start of Agatha…
There’s an obligatory quest (Agatha Harkness journeying the Witches Road to reclaim her powers that were stripped away by Wanda Maximoff)) and a mystery (who is the ‘Teen’ – played by Heartstopper‘s Joe Locke?) to pivot around, but the series is powered more by its script and banter, bound up with some knowing, almost reverential nods to mystic laws and fables. Heroes can be fun, but the devil has all the best tunes and there’s certainly more dramatic room to flex with an anti-hero taking centre-stage. Agatha has a murderous history beyond what we’ve already seen and she would gladly sacrifice her fellow travellers to win her prize. Hahn imbues all of this into her performance and is more than happy to switch between almost pantomime-levels of over-reactions (double-takes, prat-falls and maniacal shenanigans) to more cleverly executed quieter moments. Following on from the genre-tv aspects of WandaVision, our first view of her is as a Mare of Easttown-styled detective and it’s kudos to her that we’d probably be more than willing to watch this deeper, darker drama as much as the colourful chaos that follows once the spell is broken.
Critically, both Hahn and the show recognise that we aren’t meant to sympathise with her (or, at least, her methods and lack of guard-rails) but as things progress we can see some of the elements that make her what she is and that proves entertaining in both broadstrokes and broomsticks.
The supporting cast are fun. Joe Locke gives us a bemused character who isn’t even sure of why he’s there himself and manages to act as the conscience of the group for most of the run – with some nice twists and turns as we near the climax. Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, Ali Ahn as Alice Wu-Gulliver and That ’70s Show’s Debra Jo Rupp as the apparently bemused Mrs. Hart all have their moments as the ‘coven’ that Agatha brings together and seeks to exploit. Stage star Patti LuPone completes the coven-ready group and is able to steal scenes but also share them with aplomb as a grand dame witch with her own motivations and back-story, much of which we see in the seventh and arguably best-constructed and performed episode before the finale.
The songs (‘The Witches Road‘ is a guaranteed ear-worm), the jokes, the comics-mythology and the continued snarks… all good fun with some sharper edges and there’s an undeniable visual flourish around every corner. The ending? Well, also like many previous Marvel series outings, it doesn’t quite stick the landing or have the courage of its darker convictions, though it’s decent enough to recommend. The final two episodes have plenty of great moments (the penultimate entry ends in quite a The Usual Suspects way) though tonally there’s an uneven shift between fairly family-friendly material and some very moody, intense and darker, almost horror movie moments. There’s no indication that the ending will lead into a Season Two (though there’s certainly scope for it). However, for those in the know, Marvel has clearly been leaving the road open for a Young Avengers concept. In the comics, its members are the off-spring or younger, alt-versions of existing names and to that end the live-action arm of Marvel Studios/Television has already given us a new Hawkeye aka Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), daughter of Ant-Man, Xochitl Gomez as multiverse-jumping America Chavez and, of course, Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani )…and they are soon to be joined by Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a.k.a. Ironheart, following in the steps of the late Tony Stark and other potential heroes. Joe Locke’s ‘Wiccan’ looks to have good company
Some will have liked it more than others and guilty-pleasure though it was, it would be hard to argue it was ground-breaking in and of itself… but in giving us anti-heroes, outliers, LGBT-representation without too heavy-a-hand and marking out an ironic lightness of touch within the darker territories of the MCU, Agatha All Along… may well have become a better general template for further outings in the cinematic universe…
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