The Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off the post-Final Fight era in early 2021 with WandaVision , a series that started out interesting and then became less interesting as it lapsed into incoherence, just Like almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe show since. Now, WandaVision ‘s main villain, witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), is back with a little mission of her own — and so far, through the four episodes screened for critics, it’s is one of the funniest and best told episodes.
“Agatha Always” begins with Agatha still trapped in some residual hallucination of Westview – she is a police detective who has been suspended from duty until she is brought back to investigate a murder. The chest is filled with signposts designed to guide Agatha back to reality, much like her centuries-old witch’s locket. Agatha is freed from the vision through the intervention of another witch named Leo Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a mysterious, unnamed teenager (Joe Rourke).
But she has no power and Leo wants to kill her because of some old personal grudge. To avoid the wrath of Leo and a group of witches known as the Salem Seven, Agatha needs to summon a new coven and follow the fabled path of witches, which she believes will help “recover me” of purple,” as she says in the premiere episode.
The first two episodes are all about this setup, and Agas’ recruitment of her new coven, which includes more outcast witches like Lilia Kaldrew (Patty LuPone), who works as a strip joint Fortune teller because she can’t cope with the witch institution; Jennifer Kyle (Sasheer Zamata) is a potions master who now starts making cosmetics because her magic has been sealed away for a hundred years; Lizzie Wu Gulliver (Ali Ahn), a mall clerk who inherited her mother’s witch identity and never really operated as a witch; and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jorup) , she may not actually be a witch, but she’s awesome enough that we’re not too worried either way.
The core cast is very strong and has great chemistry. Hahn and LuPone are heavyweights, but “Saturday Night Live” alum Zamata may be the secret weapon, as she’s almost as good at switching between jokes and drama as Hahn. Ann has a more thankless role, as Alice has been very unhappy throughout her adult life and is more reserved than the other witches, but this helps her convey her weariness better. While Plaza doesn’t become a main character until Episode 4, her exceptional deadpan abilities are a perfect complement to the ensemble, and her sexual tension with Hahn is incredible, in part because they’re both so good at their own Works, in part because the Marvel Cinematic Universe is very comical about any kind of sexual content, so it felt great to have that kind of real human emotion as part of the story.
Once the new coven is assembled, we’ll eventually head to the Path of the Witches, where each episode forces the group to pass some kind of life-threatening trial that will kill everyone if they don’t work together. From this point on, Agatha’s Journey basically follows the structure of an escape room movie, with each attempt being a new room they have to figure out. If this comparison sounds specious to you, consider this: the first trial ended with our witches crawling through an oven while the room they were in filled with water. This isn’t a negative comparison, though – escape room movies are fun and worth taking inspiration from, and Agatha Always does that very well.
But unlike Escape Room, these tests are tailor-made for those who have experienced them, leaving each witch and the mysterious boy in her wake deeply traumatized if they want to move on. It must be faced directly. The purpose of these tests is to first defeat them emotionally and mentally, and then physically by killing them. Considering the kind of people we’re talking about here – the outcasts, the ones who grew up weird and can’t interact with normal people, the betrayed ones, and the ones who are ready for it to be over and they’re just wasting their time until With all this happening – for me, this is an easy group to relate to.
While the cast is excellent, it’s the writing and structure that really make it work. A big problem with the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV productions is the overall lack of storytelling—they can build up some great scenes, but often fail to make those great scenes work as a whole.
Through the first four episodes, Agatha keeps feeling different. It has a lot of setup and payoffs, and foreshadows further developments in the future. For example, Episodes 2 and 3 are filled with little tidbits about Alice and her mom, and then in Episode 4 those details become the focus of their trial. A typical Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show would keep these details to the episodes most relevant to them, but Agatha Always creator Jac Schaeffer and her team of writers were able to do just that in the first half of the season to this point.
Of course, I’m very worried about whether this series will end well – I can’t help but be wary of that common incoherence I mentioned earlier. Across its four episodes, “Agatha All the Time” is well-controlled – with only oblique references to what happened in WandaVision and nothing else from the Marvel Universe. But this won’t last forever. It’s almost certain that Agatha Always will eventually connect to the rest of the Marvel Universe in some way, and it should – the connections between the various parts of the franchise are considered a key draw to the entire endeavor.
But after the chaos of the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the past few years, and with the main series story still in the process of being completely rewritten, it’s not easy to believe that “Agatha All the Way” will stick. Many Marvel Universe TV shows are fun in the moment but completely fall apart by the end. But the foundation laid in the first four episodes is impressive, even though I didn’t Belief Everything will have a happy ending, I at least have a reason to do so hope That may be the case.
