After Deadpool & Wolverine, I was cautiously optimistic about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite its many flaws, that film managed to overcome the audience’s declining interest in the diluted superhero genre, as its critical and commercial success attests. One project later, we’re already back to square one.
Agatha All Along, like the rest of Marvel’s television slate before it, tells a sluggishly boring story worth no one’s time or ridicule.
The nine-episode, Halloween-themed miniseries centers around the villain of WandaVision, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), who is trapped in a fake police procedural because of a spell cast by the Scarlet Witch. By the end of the first episode, Agatha breaks out of the fantasy and becomes a witch once again. The only problem is she has no powers. So she must lead a coven of witches down the Witches’ Road through a series of trials to get her mojo back.
Besides the show’s title character, only two members of the coven are of any consequence to the plot: a mysterious teenager who at first is unable to share his name (Joe Locke), and Agatha’s ex Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza). As the series progresses, the true identities of both characters are revealed in unsatisfying twists.
The teenage boy turns out to be the son of the Scarlet Witch, Billy Maximoff, whose spirit inhabited the body of a dead person named William Kaplan. Rio is the physical embodiment of Death. These revelations were so predictable that I guessed their identities shortly after the characters were first introduced.
Meaningful character development is also lacking. At one moment, Agatha is a heartless villain, leaving her fellow witches out to dry. By the next, she sometimes looks out for Billy because he reminds Agatha of her son who died centuries ago. (Agatha is apparently hundreds of years old because she drains magic from other witches.) The screenwriters try to make you care about Agatha, but her inconsistently selfish decisions don’t warrant the audience’s sympathy.
As far as the magic system goes, it’s incomprehensible. There are no clear rules as in Doctor Strange, making anything and everything in the realm of imagination possible. Problems are easily solved with the right spell or incantation, providing no tension or stakes. Need to escape from some undead witches? No problem, just grab a tree branch and transform it into a broomstick. Want to lift a curse? Play a song as if you’re in a ’70s rock band, and it’s gone.
The motivation for creating the show doesn’t make much sense either. The only reason Agatha All Along exists is that Marvel fans liked an eponymous song that went viral after its debut in WandaVision three years ago. The spinoff now has its own song called “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road,” which has become similarly popular. Considering the number of times it plays onscreen, it feels like more care was put into composing the tune than writing the script.
It’s difficult to understand why Marvel Studios made the show in the first place, given that it caters to a very niche audience — the targeted demographic being California wine moms, as Nerdrotic puts it. It doesn’t appeal to men or superhero fans, so it’s a project of diminishing returns. (The sole reason I subjected myself to all nine episodes was for this review.) Marvel could have made a supernatural show focused on a more recognizable character like Ghost Rider. Instead, we get a series about a little-known witch most people couldn’t care less about.
In a genre that is supposed to be filled with heroic characters, Agatha All Along certainly feels out of place. Its namesake character embraces nihilism and illustrates female empowerment. It’s possible to make a compelling superhero project with a female lead — Wonder Woman is proof of that. However, Agatha is an unlikable lead. All she does is backstab her fellow witches to benefit herself, and the show expects us to root for her. Why should I care? If the story was as good as The Penguin — a series also about a comic-book villain — maybe it would be more entertaining.
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