If ever a series could be said to be cursed from the outset, it is Agatha All Along, the latest in a string of thumpingly dire Marvel spin-offs inflicted on Disney+ subscribers. The sequel-of-sorts to 2021’s WandaVision was announced two years ago, with Kathryn Hahn back as saucy suburban sorceress Agatha Harkness.
Confusion reigned from the outset. Initially, the project had the working title Agatha: House of Harkness. That was then changed to Agatha: Coven of Chaos and, later, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries.
In the end, Marvel has played it safe by re-cycling “Agatha All Along”, the catchy (ish) ditty which confirmed Agatha’s villainy in WandaVision. But it turns out that a name wasn’t the only thing the series hadn’t worked out. While Hahn is reliably entertaining, the show is otherwise a mess; somehow both plodding and incoherent. Nor has it any clear idea of how to portray Agatha – she is selfish and scheming one moment, sincere and big-hearted the next.
The negatives announce themselves quickly enough. But Agatha All Along opens on a promising note when Agatha is introduced as a tough, small-town lady cop in a fond parody of grim thrillers such as Mare of Easttown and The Killing. This is a callback to WandaVision, in which Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda processed her grief over the death of her partner, Vision, by hiding inside a simulacrum of a 1950s American sitcom.
The suggestion is that Agatha is following Wanda’s example and taking refuge in the comforting fiction that she’s a TV cop rather than a witch who has lost her powers. But rather than have fun with that idea, Jac Schaeffer’s script quickly casts it to one side, sending a confused Agatha back to present-day Westview, New Jersey.
Three years have passed since WandaVision and Agatha has been awakened by a teen goth played by Heartstopper’s Joe Locke (for underwhelming plot reasons, his name must remain secret). He begs Agatha to accompany him on the Witches’ Road – a esoteric journey through which magic-users can recover their abilities.
A witch needs a coven, however – and so Agatha recruits a quartet of down-on-their-luck fellow conjurers (Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Patti LuPone and Debra Jo Rupp). She must also fend off a former romantic interest played by an over-the-top Aubrey Plaza. Accessing the Witches’ Road, meanwhile, requires a group performance of a mystical song titled The Ballad, which sounds like a cringe-inducing mash-up of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit and Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.
Hahn reprises the screwball gusto that made her turn in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery such a joy. Agatha All Along has fun, too, referencing various “witch tropes” – the country club enchantresses of Witches of Eastwick, Stevie Nicks’ “white witch” era in the Seventies and so forth. And it deserves credit for pushing against Hollywood ageism by casting largely middle-aged female leads. But good intentions go only so far, and not even a performer operating at Hahn’s levels of twinkling charm can bring this moribund affair to life.
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along are on Disney+ now
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