Fans of the magical side of Marvel Comics can rejoice as Agatha All Along has finally arrived to delve deeper into this promising storyline.
Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s releases since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame have been wildly divisive, one of the most universally appreciated additions to the canon has been Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. Hahn stole the show in the first half of the series, seamlessly fitting into each era of television history it emulated, until she was revealed as one of the main antagonists.
By the series’ end, the Scarlet Witch stripped Agatha’s power away, and her psyche was trapped inside her own body, believing she was still living in a television world. But as Agatha All Along quickly establishes, the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have weakened the spell on Agatha.
The first episode of Agatha All Along, streaming now on Disney+, feels like a direct continuation of WandaVision, borrowing its spot-on imitation of a well-established TV genre. In this case, it’s true crime and police procedurals, with Agatha believing she’s a rogue detective caught up in a murder mystery. While the show plays in this mundane genre’s sandbox—right down to another perfect title sequence homage—it subtly catches the viewer up on the larger events and introduces new characters.
“To its credit, Agatha All Along has avoided the most egregious of MCU clichés and provided a sufficiently spooky story so far.”
It also sets the tone for the rest of the season, highlighting Hahn’s masterful performance. It’s clear, as she absolutely nails every scene with 110% conviction, that she adores the role, whether she’s playing a cliché cop or manipulating her fellow witches.
Naturally, Agatha claws her way free of Wanda’s spell with some intervention from Joe Locke’s Teen (whose true identity will surely be one of the series’ core mysteries) and Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal, a rival witch with bad blood for our unlikely antiheroine. There’s instant chemistry between Hahn and both co-stars, with Plaza especially shining in this setting.
Like WandaVision, Agatha All Along can feel like a slightly different show with each new episode. By the second episode, the fake TV show motif disappears—though later episodes maintain some of that spirit, embracing certain cinematographic choices to evoke thematic vibes. This distancing is a smart move on Marvel’s part; it carries the spirit of this corner of the MCU without leaning on it as a crutch, and by the midway point, it truly feels like its own show. However, it remains just connected enough to the previous series that some of the early humour won’t resonate if you haven’t met the inhabitants of Westview, New Jersey.
Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Debra Jo Rupp round out Agatha All Along‘s cast as other disgraced magic users (or, in Rupp’s case, a supposed magic user) whom Agatha recruits to help her traverse the Witches’ Road and recover their powers. The interplay between the ensemble helps them feel like a true “coven” before long. Hahn moves around them all as both protagonist and enigma, keeping Agatha’s true motives and feelings inscrutable.
To its credit, after watching the first four episodes of its nine-episode season, Agatha All Along has avoided the most egregious MCU clichés and provided a sufficiently spooky story that suits its source material. Yet, along the way, it may inadvertently foster the sort of over-speculation that soured viewers on WandaVision, especially when it comes to the true identity of at least one main character.
In a similar vein, I have to wonder what sort of relevance it will ultimately have to the larger MCU—though, does it need to have a bigger impact on upcoming tentpoles like the next Avengers movies? The answer is no. Agatha All Along might go down as a relatively self-sufficient story about magic, and in this age of impossible fan expectations and overstated promises of inter-universe connectivity, an isolated, tangential adventure sounds welcome.
The road so far has been an enjoyable romp through the darker side of this on-screen universe, and I’m looking forward to seeing what lies in wait for Agatha All Along‘s unlikely coven in its season finale on Halloween.
