I haven’t really watched a Marvel product since Endgame, save for Wandavision and struggling to get through the first season of Loki. However, at the suggestion of my best friend, I watched Agatha All Along. There wasn’t anything I needed to catch up with to get started, and I love Kathryn Hahn. My expectations were on the ground, granted, but this was incredibly good. Like actually really good — so far.
Far removed from Marvel’s cut and dry formula, we have Agatha All Along — in which Agatha Harkness finally breaks free from the mind prison Wanda left her in for three years and must put together a coven to go down the Witch’s Road to get her powers back. Her new coven consists of a very star studded group of witches who have been bound, cursed, or have lost their powers, with cast including Ali Ahn as Alice, Sasheer Zamata as Jen, Joey Locke as Teenie, Aubrey Plaza as Rio Vidal and Patti fucking Lupone as Lilia Calderu. While none of these witches get along, they all desperately want their power back and prove to at least have hearts (though they may be black), and watching a Coven start to unfold over these four episodes really is something. Kathryn Hahn as Agatha is the draft pick of the century. I do not know anyone else who could take on such a difficult character and capture her humor, her cruelty, and even flickers of a softer side so easily and so far she has devoured as the reluctant and power hungry leader of this group.
This show is dark and cool and witchy, something Marvel doesn’t really do all that often. This feels like a show made for the goth girlies instead of just shoe horning in another fucking storyline about another big bad I don’t care about. The thing I like about this show so far is that in each episode, we get these cool new witches who we organically learn about and as a result, start to care about. Each witch has had an episode that allows their particular character to shine, with Episode 3 really bringing focus onto Jen and episode four on Alice. The narrative is great at keeping the intrigue up with the unexplored characters too, which keeps audiences engaged from episode to episode. The stellar cast and tight writing are some of Marvel’s strongest and again, this feels like it’s own thing which I love. As a non-Marvel person, it’s kind of nice to just have a thing to care about without having to learn about the whole universe.
The story also is interesting as it is familiar enough territory for Marvel, a group of rejects coming together, but there’s something really edgy about this that elevates it from something reductive and repetitive. These characters are cool, funny, likable and dark. They’re out for themselves at the end of the day, and I like that each has a particular strength they bring to the coven. This is a love letter to witchcraft and witches, and I really think the writing team is brewing something cool here.
I hope they can keep up with the momentum they have going and make something really worthy of Agatha at the end of the day, all while keeping this spooky vibe. I have seen them lose the steam towards show finales, so my hope is, like Loki Season 2, they make something genuinely powerful that sticks with audiences and reminds us why we love these characters.
That being said I will be adding Agatha to my cosplay list as I eagerly await the next episode.