Down the Witches’ Road

After a stint where Marvel wasn’t releasing new Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. products for a time so as to let audiences have a break and relax without all the “homework” the studio was mandating to keep up with their universe, we’re now back in the MCU grind. The studio gave us Deadpool & Wolverine, was a massively successful film that only tangentially related to the main MCU, but the hits will keep coming quickly with Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* both getting teased and ready for release soon. And, on top of that, Marvel’s television output has picked up once more, with the release of Agatha All Along, the much teased spin-off of WandaVision that, well… did anyone actually ask for this?

Okay, I know that sounds harsh, and I’m going to review this premiere fairly on its own merits, but before we get into that I do have to wonder just who was really itching for this show. Don’t get me wrong, Kathryn Hahn is brilliant as dark witch Agatha Harkness, and if any character from the MCU television shows deserved to be brought back it was her, sure. But when you have Marvel admitting they went too hard on the television production, putting out too many hours of TV that no one was watching, do we really need a spin-off of a television show that was, in effect, rendered moot by a later movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, that already dealt with the fallout for Scarlet Witch?

Without Wanda Maximoff for this Agatha series, what we have is a villain in search of a story… which is appropriate since that’s the actual plot of this series. Agatha, trapped in TV Land (but not the literal cable network TV Land) has to break free and then regain her power, all while dark, magical forces are coming for her to make her pay for all the evil, nasty things that she did (which we only got to hear about because she’s existed for 400 years and, also, Marvel really loves to tell instead of show). And, in the end, we have to decide if we care about any of this or not… and I feel like “not” is going to be the answer for a lot of us.

The whole reason why Agatha Harkness deserves her own series is because Hahn was a scene stealing delight on WandaVision, turning her villain into someone, frankly, more compelling than the heroic leads of the show. Bringing her back, in some way, makes sense as no one is going to be upset having more Kathryn Hahn. Bottom line, this is the reason for Agatha All Along. More Hahn makes everything better. But I do wish they could have come up with a story that was more compelling than what this premiere teases. She’s a villain, and either the show is going to simply have her go through the motions to get her powers back so she can be a threat somewhere else (which makes this a story that could have occurred off-screen and no one would have cared) or she’s going to suddenly find her inner hero and become a better person which, well, then wouldn’t make her the Agatha Harkness we all love. There’s no real story here, that I can see so far, that makes for a compelling watch for this series. The investment proposition simply isn’t there.

In the series, Agatha (Hahn) is living within a show purposefully parodying Mare of Easttown called Agnes of Westview. She’s a cop in a small town, hot on the trail of a murderer after a mysterious body is found in the middle of the woods. But something isn’t quite right. She keeps seeing things she shouldn’t, and her FBI consultant (Aubrey Plaza) keeps saying things to her that give her moments of pause. Her life is wrong, she can feel it, but somehow she can’t quite put her finger on just what it is… not without a little push.

And then, suddenly, she’s breaking free from the illusion. She finds herself back in her own house, in her own body, in control once more. It’s been three years since Wanda trapped her in that mental prison after stealing all her power, and now Agatha wants it back. Not just so she can battle with Rio Vadal (Plaza) but also so she can fend off the advances of a dark coven of witches that want to kill her. With the help of a mysterious teen (Joe Locke), Agatha has to pull together an unwilling coven of witches and open a gateway to the Witches’ Road where, at the end, they’ll gain the things they most desire. For Agatha that’s just one thing: power.

The best part of the show is Kathryn Hahn, of course. She’s a charismatic lead who absolutely revels in playing Agatha Harkness. This is a delicious, malevolent character who doesn’t give two fucks about anything, and Hahn plays her with aplomb. If ever an inveterate villain could work as the lead for a story, it’s because Kathryn Hahn is here for that lead role. She’s fantastic in all the various versions of the character she’s forced to play across these two premiere episodes, “Seekest Thou the Road” and "Circle Sewn with Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate", and absolutely carries every scene she’s in all on her own.

That’s great, but it’s also a problem for the show because they don’t really have anyone else that can rise to Kathyrn Hahn level on the series. Joe Locke is fine as the teen, but he’s a McGuffin, and the show treats him as such. He doesn’t get a lot of character work to do and that leaves him limited. He’s still better than the other witches the show gathers – Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, Ali Ahn as Alice Wu-Gulliver, and Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu – because while the actress can be great (elsewhere, in other shows and movies) the series doesn’t give them much of anything to do. They’re all empty characters put there to clearly do one job each before, in some way, the show disposes of them. That’s already clear before they even hit the official road of the series.

In fact, of all the characters introduced, only Plaza’s Rio Vadal can hold a candle to Hahn’s Agatha. That’s, of course, because she’s played by Aubrey Plaza who never half-asses anything. If you were to tell me you needed to cast a dark, vindictive, sarcastically evil witch, there’s absolutely no one else that would hit my list other than Aubrey Plaza. She can play her character with as much ease as Hahn brings to Agatha, and the screen lights up when the two are playing off each other. So it’s a pity that she’s barely in the first episode and missing entirely from the second. The show needs more of her, and while I’m sure she’s coming in later episodes, her absence is sorely felt in episode two.

And all of this is for, what? A journey along a road where, I would guess, each episode has one of the witches perform a task before then getting eliminated some time after because they are no longer needed? The bones of the story are obvious and while I hope this isn’t the case and the show has more creativity than that, we have to consider two things. First, nothing that we’ve seen in these first two episodes indicates a deeper and more nuanced story than what I’m expecting and, second, this is a Marvel TV show and their output is, very rarely, deep or nuanced.

In the end, then, we’re left with a rather shallow show (especially once we escape the amusing Mare of Easttown parody, which I legitimately enjoyed) that seems set on a very linear, very basic path all the way to its end. All of it led by an unrepentant villain who really only has two directions she can go with her arc, one of which would invalidate everything we know about her character and would kill the whole reason to enjoy her in the future. When put like that, it’s hard to see the appeal of this series at all.

Is having Kathryn Hahn back enough for a show all on its own. No, not really. I am very happy she gets paid and that she continues to work, so that’s nice. But this premiere at least doesn’t show us anything that breaks the Marvel streak of their MCU Television projects being anything more than light and empty homework for the dedicated fans, and something that can be skipped by everyone else in the viewing audience. And that isn’t going to help Marvel’s case that the MCU should be appointment viewing at all.

Agatha All Along is slight but amusing. In a world where MCU oversaturation is already an issue and fans just aren’t buying what Marvel is selling, slight and amusing just isn’t good enough anymore.