Agatha All Along review: witchy fun

Agatha All Along is Marvel Comics second foray into television series entertainment following the big success of WandaVision. It takes the character Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) on a witchy, supernatural adventure of escapist fun. NO spoilers here.

Agatha All Along is a Marvel show with all kinds of connections, Easter eggs, and tie-ins to the larger Marvel universe. I’m not going to talk about any of that because knowledgeable Marvel fans have already published ample episode by episode information about how everything connects.

Instead, let’s look at some of the fun and entertaining aspects of this witchy adventure quest.

When the story begins, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) is still trapped in a spell created by Wanda Maximoff. She snaps out of it about the time a neighbor’s kid, known as Teen (Joe Locke) through most of the episodes, shows up wanting Agatha to take him down the witches’ road.

The witches’ road is a myth among witches. If you gather a coven and go down the road (here it isn’t a yellow brick road but a yellow leaf road) you will find what you want. The lore is based on an ancient song.

Agatha doesn’t have a coven. Nobody wants to be in a coven with her because she kills her covens and steals their powers for herself.

The only way Agatha and Teen can organize a coven is by going to witches who have lost their powers and promising that they can regain their powers by going down the road together. She signs on Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata) a potions expert, Alice (Ali Ahn) a protector, Lilia (Patti LuPone) a seer, and her poor unsuspecting neighbor she calls Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp). Rio (Aubrey Plaza), who is obviously Agatha’s ex-girlfriend, tags along most of the time.

They form a coven, sing the witches’ road song, and Teen shows up to lead the way. Like any good fairy tale, there are trials along the journey. Each trial happens in a house (or castle). No matter how filthy and beat up the women are when they reach a house, once they are through the door they are clean and in amazing outfits. The houses and time periods of the costumes are a run through time in the same way WandaVision episodes showed different eras. Both were a big treat in this series.

Completing each trial is perilous and dangerous. Will everyone survive the road? It’s always a question. And if they do survive, will they get what they want at the end? Just in case you have not been obsessively reading about each episode and its twists and meta Marvel meanings, I’m not going to spoil things by answering that. Well, I will drop a hint. Not everyone makes it intact. Another hint. No everyone is who they seem to be at first glance.

These actors are so wonderful. Joe Locke is terrific. Patti LuPone shines like the queen she is. Kathryn Hahn is convincingly wicked. The sets and special effects were well done giving every actor lots of room to ham it up wonderfully.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” which is sung again and again without ever growing old. Lyrics from the song were used as episode titles.

All the directors were women: Rachel Goldberg, Gandja Monteiro, and Jac Schaeffer.

Marvel hinted in numerous of its properties that characters were queer. We don’t often see evidence of it. Here we see Teen kissing his boyfriend. We see Agatha and Rio kissing – unfortunately not in a good way – although it’s clear they have done that in the past. Maybe it’s because this is made for TV and not the 15 – 35 bro demographic of most blockbuster Marvel productions, but Marvel finally put some slightly LGBTQ content on a screen. Mere crumbs, but more than they’ve done before. While I’m praising Marvel, I also appreciate the mature women who are kicking butt in this series.

Will it help you understand what’s going on if you watch WandaVision first? Yes.

Disney+ is streaming Agatha All Along with every episode available now. Expect more from these characters, because they are having a very good time being witches.