Welcome back to the blog readers. As you may know already, Marvel Television has been a bit hit-and-miss recently. Although I am getting into What If...?'s (2021-24) second season (2023), I have not seen Echo (2024) yet, but I have been excited for this series mainly because I absolutely love Kathryn Hahn. WandaVision (2021) was (and continues to be) Marvel's best series so I had a certain expectation for this series. But what would I think of the series as a whole? Would I enjoy my trip down, down, down the Road or would Death's hand be in mine? Stick around to find out.
Agatha All Along was created for television by Jac Schaeffer, who also served as showrunner, and is based on characters from Marvel Comics. Schaeffer also directed some episodes of the series, with additional direction coming from Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero. The series stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Debra Jo Rupp, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Okwuli Okpokwasili, Patti LuPone, Evan Peters, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. In the series, set three years after the events of WandaVision, Agatha Harkness finally breaks out of the spell she has been in with the help of a goth teen who seeks the power of the Witches' Road. Now powerless, the two decide to put together a new coven to walk the Road while contending with Agatha's past.
NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the series.
As I mentioned at the top, I have not really been keeping up with Marvel Television since Loki (2021-23) ended, but I was hoping that we could continue the comeback that Marvel was hoping to be on. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) was an absolute riot and definitely will be a top 10 film of the year, Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* (both 2025) look really good, and I think that Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, and The Fantastic 4: First Steps (all 2025) all have promise. But I am happy to report to you guys that this series was an absolute delight to watch. The performances (especially from Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, and Aubrey Plaza) are all endearing and relatable, and I love how we were able to harken back to WandaVision in terms of twists and turns that we wound up getting.
I first want to start by talking about the performance of Kathryn Hahn and the character she plays in Agatha Harkness. I want to start by talking about her performance in WandaVision because I think that series kind of dictated her performance in this series. In WandaVision, Hahn showed flashes of an interesting character as we got a bit of backstory for the character, but she was far more engaging as "the nosy neighbor Agnes." But in this series, however, we learn more about Agatha like what makes her tick and what she is really after. And the one thing that separates Agatha from the rest is that even though we do gain some sympathy for her in this series, she is still presented as a bad person through and through. Hahn is clearly having the time of her life in this role, where she gets to lay loose and go to town. Between the animosity Agatha shares with the other witches to the reveal that it really was Agatha all along, I was really enthralled with Hahn's performance all the way through. She knows how to level emotion with real ruthlessness when it counts, and I appreciate her for being able to balance these two very different sides of the same character (similar to a future Emmy nominee that I will discuss in a future review on this channel). If she returns in a future Marvel project I will be so giddy because I can no longer envision anybody else playing this wicked (the apropos pun was definitely intended) character but her.
The next performer I want to talk about is Joe Locke who plays William Kaplan and Billy Maximoff (I did say I was using spoilers in this review and this was revealed a month ago so this is on you if you were spoiled here). Joe Locke is a kid from the Isle of Man who was mainly a stage presence, but this series is only his second screen performance (along with the critically acclaimed coming-of-age series Heartstopper (2022-)). So seeing him in the originally announced role of "Teen," I was nervous seeing a rookie be given such a heavy character. But the kid endeared me to him, I was absolutely charmed by his performance. When Locke plays William Kaplan, I see the embodiment of innocence and lost opportunity in terms of this character. But when he plays Billy Maximoff, I see the embodiment of confidence and autonomy. Billy is the more interesting character because there are elements that make this character intriguing, such as the true limits to his powers based on the big reveal in the finale. But Locke has such a command over this character when he is playing it, and I think that is some real skill for someone who has only two screen credits. I definitely think we will be seeing this character again, and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
The final performer I want to talk about is Aubrey Plaza as Rio Vidal / Death. Anybody who isn't anybody knows who Aubrey Plaza is, and how awesome she can be when given the right role. Just look at the opposite reception to two of her most recent projects: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) was my third worst film of 2023, and Megalopolis (2024) will be a top five worst film of this year (and her character was downright atrocious). So it suffices to say that Plaza needed a big win after those non-memorable roles. And I think the character of Rio Vidal was exactly that: a massive win not just for Plaza, but for us as well. Speaking of someone having the time of their lives in their role, she was having a devilish good time letting loose playing the oddball love interest of Agatha. Just the giddy joy she portrays when riding a broom or partaking in a séance or just causing unmitigated chaos, Plaza's Death is a force in the MCU that will be talked about for a long time.
I do want to take some time and talk about the story of Agatha All Along because I feel that there will be interesting nuggets to discuss. There are elements of this story that advance characters forward and introduce us to some new concepts and ideas. The first of the ideas I want to talk about is the one that introduces the idea of exactly how powerful witches can be in the MCU. We saw in WandaVision how powerful Wanda Maximoff was when she used her grief and the chaos magic she had been brewing up to create a house, a Vision, and a sitcom-like town where everybody bent to her will. In this series, we see her son Billy doing the exact same thing but with the Witches' Road. Turns out, we learn that the Road started off as a walking song between Agatha Harkness and her son Nicholas Scratch, but she turned it into a con to steal the power of other witches. Furthermore, Billy used some sort of magic (I assume it was chaos as well) to make the previously fake Road real. I do not think we are done with this character, especially after that finale, so I think we will get an answer to that question (hopefully) sooner rather than later.
The next idea that I want to talk about includes the fact that Agatha fell in love with Death herself. I mean, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense that this happened because Agatha is technically a serial killer. And this show reminds you that despite them painting her as sympathetic at times, Agatha Harkness is still an asshole. Just look at the evidence presented in the series. All the witches she killed to keep her girlfriend off her and her son's backs, the fact that she was going to kill Alice, Lilia, Jen, and Sharon Davis in her basement, the fact that she was ready at the drop of a hat to turn Billy over to Rio so she can get out of dodge. Besides, they did not tell us directly that Agatha and Rio met over corpses (although it is hinted at and teased), but I choose to believe that. And I will bet you that the corpses Jen thinks they met over were her original coven in 1693. Just a possibility, if we ever get an actual sequence of them meeting.
I want to end this review by talking about the original song that we get in this series and the different iterations of it we get. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez return from WandaVision to write this original song, titled "The Ballad of the Witches' Road." In the show, it is the Ballad that is sung to summon the Road, which we later learn is just a con to steal witches' power. But the versions of the song we get are all absolutely awesome. In the order we get them, we get:
A folky "True Crime" version in the premiere episode "Seekest Thou the Road" performed by Matthew Mayfield while Agatha is in the distorted spell that acts as the opening credits for the fictional series "Agnes of Westview";
The "Sacred Chant" version that is performed by Hahn, Zamata, Ahn, LuPone, and Rupp to summon the "Road" in Agatha's basement;
A rock version listed as "Cover version" performed by Hahn, Zamata, Ahn, LuPone, Locke, and Plaza in Alice's trial where she must overcome her generational curse;
That same rock version labeled as "Lorna Wu's version" performed by Korean singer Seomoon Tak that acts as Lorna Wu's version of the Ballad that in storyline Lorna wrote for her daughter Alice to protect her from said curse and that Billy listened to to inspire him to seek out Agatha and walk the Road;
A version that is performed by child actor Abel Lysenko listed as "Nicky's version" that in storyline act as a walking song that Agatha creates with her son Nicholas; this version becomes the legend of the Witches' Road;
Another version of the "Sacred Chant" version listed as the "Agatha Through Time version" that Kathryn Hahn sings with various witches throughout her life; in storyline this version is used to reveal the fact that the Witches' Road was never real;
Another version of the "rock" version that is called the "pop" version that is performed by American indie band Japanese Breakfast that plays over the credits of the finale episode "Maiden Mother Crone;"
and a "Score version" that is an instrumental by series composers Cristophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas.
I am in love with each version of this song, and hope at least one of these versions gets nominated for some kind of Emmy.
In conclusion, Agatha All Along combines wonderful storytelling with engaging characters to conjure up a major win for Marvel in an era when they need as many of those as they can get. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.
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