I’ll wholly admit to being skeptical about the decision to launch a spin-off of the exceptional – and, frankly, best MCU television series to date – WandaVision centered about Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness when it was announced. I mean, what was there to say about the character, whose revelation – and snappy song – was such an integral part of Wanda’s personal journey in that series (and, also a key facet of the only real disappointing element of the show, the not-so-epic battle between Wanda and Agatha that rushed us to a resolution of sorts that wasn’t really “resolved” until the very disappointing Multiverse of Madness) that hadn’t already been said? But after watching the first two episodes of the series, I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. Agatha All Along has turned out two excellent installments with interesting characters, fun performances, and a relatively simple story – something most MCU series fail at – that appears to be totally uninterested in “redeeming” Agatha as a villain and very interested in letting her simply be the morally bankrupt character we loved from WandaVision – just with much more personally at stake this time around.
The Mare of Easttown-inspired opening – wherein Agatha is convinced she’s a “lady cop with an unstable personal life” – was a lovely tie-in to WandaVision (and I fully cackled at the faux credits, which said the fake series was “based on the Danish series WandaVysion” – a brilliant TV deep cut allusion to how so many dark detective series from the early aughts were lifted from Scandinavian dramas). It was fitting that Wanda’s mind control spell would place Agatha back in some TV-inspired haze. And the revelation that all the other Westview citizens simply went along with whatever series Agatha thought she was in for the past three years says a lot about them as neighbors – although since they all seem to recall precisely what Wanda did to them, I guess it was probably pity that she was still caught in that spell? But the death* of Wanda broke the spell, allowing our gal to emerge as vengeful as ever. Or, rather, to allow her to emerge so that all her enemies would have the ability to track her down and extract their revenge.
*While Wanda appeared to die in Multiverse of Madness – from a temple falling down on her and crushing her after she destroyed every copy of the Darkhold across the multiverse, as was confirmed in this series – I liked the little wink thrown in by the show that perhaps Wanda won’t stay dead. After all, with all the multiverse shenanigans coming in upcoming MCU films, I can’t see them letting the Scarlet Witch sit on the sidelines indefinitely.
Chief among those antagonists is Rio (a spectacular Aubrey Plaza, who may be making her first MCU appearance, but who was also so darn good in the FX series Legion – check it out if you haven’t), who certainly seems to have a lot of history with Agatha. Now, just what their past relationship might be we don’t yet know, but boy, I was certainly getting a vibe that there was some deep, dark, tragic romantic entanglement back in the day between the two, before Agatha did something to sever their bond. I mean, Rio is her black heart?* Come on. My only hesitation in officially labeling it as a past romantic entanglement gone bad is Marvel’s horrific track record when it comes to running away from any type of complex queer relationship. But man, do Hahn and Plaza have chemistry for days, so I really hope the series isn’t afraid to lean into it and make it main text rather than simply hint at it and then tell the audience they were seeing things.
*Of course, there’s a Marvel possibility for the black heart references – Blackheart is a character within Marvel with a connection to another very important character that we all thought was going to be a part of WandaVision. That’s right, Blackheart is Mephisto’s son – or, in the case, perhaps a daughter. So, is Mephisto involved in this story? We’ll see.
Speaking of main queer text, Joe Locke’s Teen* is just an absolute delight. The audience surrogate – as in the character who knows a base level amount of information on what is happening but still needs other characters to explain just what is going on – he’s charming, kind, and someone we can genuinely root for. Something that is very necessary when our other two central characters – those would be Agatha and Rio – are darker and lean very much into the territory of anti-heroes (or, really, plain villains depending on the situation). Having Teen as our “good” guy in the story allows those around him to be less savory in their actions, which means we don’t have to hope for Agatha to suddenly grow a conscious (although she does seem to have one – it’s just mostly focused on how she can protect herself). And that will make the show all the more fun.
*Making it so that Agatha can’t hear Teen’s name or hear his backstory – although the bit we did get was that he was born in Eastview – makes the character all the more mysterious. The main belief is that he’s some manifestation of Wanda’s son, Billy – who ultimately grows up to become Wiccan, an openly gay superhero who has magic-like powers. That’s a pretty easy revelation and one that would rock Agatha a bit. So, I’m not totally sold on it, even if it would be pretty cool to have him in the MCU. That would also beg the question as to where his twin brother was, though.
The rest of the cast – the epic Patti LuPone, Debra-Jo Rupp, Ali Ahn, and Sasheer Zamata – have all been uniformly excellent (even if I suspect Rupp’s Sharon isn’t going to last very long on The Road). A buddy traveling story is a great framework for a story and when you have clearly constructed characters – the exposition in episode two was both necessary and not overwhelming in its revelations – it makes it all the easier to understand who everyone is and how they will work together to complete the tasks ahead. You don’t always need to be super cleaver in your writing, especially when establishing a story, to get your point across. We already know enough about Agatha that we didn’t need a rehashing of just who she is – and the information provided for those who never watched WandaVision or who just forget about it in the last three years was just enough to introduce the character and her unique situation – and the series made great work of laying out the new characters and the reason Agatha needed to get to The Road. It worked, we understood it, and with the cast put together here, we believed it.
It’s definitely too early to declare Agatha All Along a success – creating the story and laying out the central conflict is one thing, continuing to craft an interesting story that makes use of the whole cast and still allows us to see our central character grow over the course of the series is another. But boy, is it off to a great start. Hahn is a true star, and this series is making use of all her talents. And combine her with Plaza? Yeah, that’s a great pairing. The series has an incredibly deep bench, smart writing, and an interesting story to tell – one that, after the initial expositional dump, doesn’t really rely all that much on past MCU knowledge as well, which is a place a number of MCU shows have stumbled in the past. I’m definitely hooked on this one and holding out hope we get another winner.
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