Directed by: Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg, Gandja Monteiro
Distributed by: Disney
Written by Anna Harrison
75/100
For nearly every Marvel Studios show on Disney+, I’ve had the same complaints: why was this made, why does it look subpar, and why is it so rushed towards the end? It became tedious to write those critiques ad nauseam, wracking my brain to think up a different way to package the same thing. I can’t say that “Agatha All Along” did not prompt at least two of those three questions, but unlike its brethren, it managed very nearly to justify its own existence by the end. For the limping, bloody beast that is Marvel Television, this is no small feat—and for this waning Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, it almost made me nostalgic for my days of running an MCU-centric Tumblr blog. (You’ll never find my URL.)
You’ll be forgiven if you forgot most of what happened in “WandaVision,” which enthralled so many of us during Covid lockdown when there was little to talk about except how shitty everything was; while that show quickly ran out of steam, one of its most memorable moments came from evil witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) singing a little ditty called “Agatha All Along” (written by “Frozen” composers Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez). Since it took the internet by storm, Marvel decided to greenlight a television show all about Hahn’s enigmatic and charismatic witch, because of course they did. This occurred at the apex of streaming services’ Covid glutton, when they threw money at anything they could because so many people were forcibly glued to their television screens, and then acted surprised when lockdown lifted and their viewing numbers dropped. Who could have foreseen that?
Regardless, “Agatha All Along” was one of those shows formulated when viewing was at an all-time high and dropped when said viewing—and Marvel’s cultural influence as a whole—was dwindling. That it took me so long to even watch the thing should be testament to the above, but once you get over the fact that this was made entirely due to an unnecessary moment of fame driven by isolation and deep depression in most of the populace, “Agatha All Along” turns out to be the best thing Marvel Television—or even Marvel Studios as a whole—has produced in a while.
We pick up with Agatha three years after the events of “WandaVision.” She is not doing well. Convinced that she is a hard-as-nails detective, Agatha spends her days solving murders that don’t actually exist. Taking a leaf out of “WandaVision”—which showrunner Jac Schaeffer also ran—“Agatha All Along” uses the familiar trappings of television tropes to… advance the story? Just for fun? I’m not really sure, but Kathryn Hahn hams it up enough that I enjoyed it. This delusion only lasts about twenty-five minutes until Agatha runs into an unnamed Teen (Joe Locke) attempting to break into her house. This, along with an encounter with fellow witch Rio (Aubrey Plaza), snaps Agatha out of her curse, though she learns that she no longer has her witch powers. Thus, she and Teen decide to travel down the Witch’s Road, which will give those who survive its trials what they desire most—for Agatha, her powers. For Teen, it’s unclear, though his identity (and thus what he might want) is pretty obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of comic book characters. There’s some nonsense about needing a witches’ coven that doesn’t make sense but does give us Patti LuPone (The! Patti! LuPone!) as witch Lilia, and anything with Patti LuPone playing a witch is good in my books. So Agatha gets her coven (also including Debra Jo Rupp as normie Sharon from “WandaVision,” Ali Ahn as Alice, and Sasheer Zamata as Jen), Teen, and goes down the Road.
What follows is nothing too profound—each witch faces their fears, they become wary friends, it’s all a little trippy, et cetera—but is largely too enjoyable to fault entirely. Like “WandaVision,” the willingness of “Agatha All Along” to play along with tropes (80s slasher movies, hardboiled detective series, et cetera) and gentle self-awareness make even the cheesier moments more palatable. The show is also, perhaps, the most feminist thing to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“Captain Marvel,” despite its feminist aspirations, was full of hot air, and “The Marvels” did little to improve that).
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves—it’s nothing groundbreaking, and the writers seem to think they are more profound than the actual product. But “Agatha All Along” has only one male series regular in Locke, and as each of these witches (and Sharon) travel down the Road, we learn how each has had her power stripped from her; each, in their own way, wants to regain their bodily autonomy. That’s an especially familiar feeling as we go into 2025. (Jen, who is black, gets an added layer of unspoken commentary here.) All four proper witches (not Sharon) have their own arcs, some with varying degrees of success (Alice’s feels too short, but Lilia—with her own Lilia-focused episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine”—could have carried her own series), but it’s still a remarkable feat for Marvel. (The bar is low, okay?) Agatha, especially, is allowed to be thorny and unlikeable—though Hahn’s performance makes her never less than magnetic—in a way that Marvel has often shied from. Even in “WandaVision,” Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) serious crimes get swept under the rug in the name of motherhood, reducing her complexity before she heel-turns in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and becomes a complete villain. But Jac Schaeffer seems to have learned her lesson this time around.
Even more remarkably, “Agatha All Along” doesn’t trip and stumble over the finish line, something that no Disney+ Marvel show (save perhaps “Loki”) has managed to do. And, as the cherry on top, it features some pretty banging songs. Honestly, aside from one really stupid cameo and some less-than-perfect lighting and color grading (par for the course with Marvel), there’s little to complain about with “Agatha All Along.” If only I could bring myself to care about the trajectory of the MCU as I once did.
“Agatha All Along” Trailer
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