‘Agatha All Along’ Review: Kathryn Hahn’s MCU Return Is Too Talented to Be This Trivial
For as frustrating as the “WandaVision” finale was, Marvel’s first TV series set in the MCU still managed to do what the studio does best: It teed up what’s next. Sure, escaping her own spell held little bearing on Wanda’s future, whose insulting incarnation in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” repeated character beats from her time in Westview and foolishly killed her off. But what “WandaVision” accomplished, no matter how inadvertently, was leaving its audience with lasting affection for the show’s ostensible villain, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn). Her surprise reveal (via musical earworm) paired with Hahn’s delightfully dastardly depiction gave Agatha the aura of evil without actually forcing her to do anything unforgivable. What did she do? She wanted to steal Wanda’s powers? So what? Good for her! Considering what Wanda did with those powers — enslaving suburban New Jersians so they could act out her favorite TV shows (plus whatever noncanonical sins seen in “Doctor Strange 2”) — Agatha’s attempted theft proved an easily forgiven transgression.
For that (and maybe, sort of, definitely killing a dog), she was cursed to live in Westview forever. Her memories locked away, her powers gone, Agatha would think she’s nothing more than a nosy neighbor named Agnes until her dying day. If the punishment seemed a bit extreme, tipping the scales of empathy away from the series’ unacknowledged actual villain (Wanda) and toward the not-so-wicked witch of the West(view), then “Agatha All Along” is here to right that wrong.
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Picking up three years after Agatha’s imprisonment, the nine-episode limited series from “WandaVision” creator Jac Schaeffer sees her set free, join a coven, and go off searching on an improbable quest to regain her magic mojo. In doing so, the half-hour(-ish) episodes show some signs of growth. For instance, there’s no boring B-plot where government agents run a secret mission to smuggle MCU world-building into Westview. The core narrative also seems well-designed for episodic TV, unlike so many other stretched-out MCU adventures, but there remains a nagging imbalance between what happens and why we should care.
“Agatha All Along,” like “WandaVision,” is too withholding for its own good. Sure, teasing plot twists can lead to thrilling payoffs, but tabling character backstories by treating personal motivations like world-altering secrets doesn’t do this frivolous fantasy any favors. (It also has the unintended side effect of making these awesome witches seem a bit slow on the uptake.) We need to invest in this coven, especially the new members, and if you get halfway through a show and still aren’t sure why anyone or anything matters, then you better be laughing, cowering, or cheering more often than “Agatha” can conjure.
When “Agatha All Along” starts, our surviving victim of the Salem Witch Trials is stuck in a fantasy. Channeling her best Mare Sheehan, Agatha plays the lead of “Agnes of Westview,” a dark-and-gritty detective story where she’s a small town cop investigating the mysterious death of a young woman. The weather is perpetually foggy and damp. The crime is important and personal for Agnes. The locals talk like they’re from Delaware County. (Yes, one of them pronounces “water” as “wooder.”) For Agatha, it’s all very real, even if Schaeffer wisely treats it (for the most part) as a joke. Not only is she parodying a show that’s already been parodied to perfection, but the fake opening title sequence says “Agnes of Westview” is “based on the Danish series ‘WandaVisdysen.'”
Thankfully, this isn’t the first of nine TV spoofs, where each episode is modeled after a different small-screen era. “Agatha” isn’t trying to be “WandaVision,” and her prestige drama dream is soon interrupted by a mysterious goth twink (known only as “Teen,” played by “Heartstopper” star Joe Locke) and a Marty Hart-inspired FBI agent. “Is this really how you see yourself?” Agent Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) asks Agnes, and though she moves on without getting an answer, pretending to care about the murder-durder investigation instead, the question lingers. Of all the TV shows Agatha could get lost in, why does she see herself as a rogue detective obsessing over a dead kid? What wrong from her past does she need to make right? Does it have anything to do with the hermetically preserved room for her (presumably deceased) son, Nicky?
As the ever-helpful FBI agent points out, “it’s a universally acknowledged truth that a lady cop cannot be good at her job and have a healthy personal life at the same time.” But how much of Agnes’ scripted backstory are we supposed to see in Agatha’s actual journey? As the season progresses, parallels emerge, but the connections that could motivate her in reality are kept a bit too opaque. It’s hard to get emotionally invested in someone based purely on presumptions, and her co-stars suffer a similar fate. “Teen” tries to explain who he is and where he came from, but a curse prevents anyone from hearing his words. Vidal is all vibes and exposition, except when it comes to her history with Agatha, which only starts to come out in Episode 4. The rest of the coven — recruited by Agatha in a second episode so lazily executed, it ruins my theory that “putting a team together” stories can’t help but be fun — is either batty or basic. Not even Patti Lupone, as a 400-year-old witch who’s been working too long as a fortune-teller, can extract intrigue from her closed-book of a character.
“Agatha All Along” was developed and shot long before Marvel admitted it doesn’t know how to make television, so it’s a credit to Schaeffer that the series moves as smoothly as it does. Episodes are distinguishable from one another. Their structure is sound, and the path forward clear. Music serves a fittingly elevated role, given the popularity of Agatha’s original anthem, and the two new songs so far — written by Emmy winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez — are still playing pleasantly in my head. That being said, this drama-comedy-fantasy-horror hybrid isn’t committed enough to any of its genres. The stake-less drama I already went over, but the jokes are sparse, the effects are too slapped-together, and the scares are polite. The consistent creative spark needed to boost a serviceable series into something more just isn’t there.
As with many Marvel series, there’s plenty of potential in “Agatha All Along,” but past precedent is working against the final five episodes. Agatha and Kathryn Hahn, who sizzles with zero-fucks energy all by herself, deserve a series of their own. But the story still needs to earn our attention, instead of assuming we’ll keep waiting around for these witches to take flight.
Grade: C+
“Agatha All Along” premieres Wednesday, September 18 with two episodes on Disney+. New episodes will be released one-a-week through the two-episode finale on October 30.
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