In a world battling against female leads and queer leads, Agatha All Along is a surprised hit.
A spin off series that a lot of Marvel fans that ‘they didn’t ask for’ and wondered what’s the point of elevating some obscure witches in the comics to head a show that was loved by all, and still remains to be one of the best.
But what a lot of people forgot was that, the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe rose from the pages of originally B list superheroes and turned them around into household names and must have movies and comics. And I think this is what Marvel does best, especially when there is no baggage about these characters and they can let their imagination run wild.
Agatha All Along has its story based on the concept of the popular Scarlet Witch comics on the Witches Road, but then turned it around to be about the WandaVision antagonist Agatha Hackness. The names and the premise may be familiar but the story was a completely original story, with twists and turns that sometimes surprised viewers, and sometimes rewarded Marvel theorists and fans.
The show began with the aftermath of the movie Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (which I still think did not do the Scarlet Witch character justice), and it was three years (both in narrative and reality) after Agatha Hackness, played by the brilliant Kathryn Hahn again, being trapped inside a distorted reality spell cast on her. The pilot opened up on the continued spellbound life for Agatha, when two mysterious characters, Teen (played by Joe Locke) and Rio (played by Audrey Plaza) tried to break her out of that spell for different reasons.
As the story progressed, we saw Agatha and Teen gathered a coven of convenience that did not trust or respect each other, and walked the Witches Road to look for the ultimate prize in their hearts.
It was said that the Witches Road was a practical set built inside a huge studio, and it can tell. As the actors rarely needed any acting to look amazed and interact with the environment. I think that’s what practical sets and effects brought to performances. It is always great to have something to interact with directly and being immersed inside the environment. Whether everyone of them could get the ultimate prize is still in question, but the revelation of bits and pieces of information to the audience in a dripping twist manner showed how spectacular the script was. Yes, certainly for some of the reveals, they were theorised, but that did not dampen the impact for the audience, that’s when you know the script and the performances are both on the spot.
The most recent episode about the Divination Witch Lilia played by the great Patti LuPone showed how meticulous the plot was weaved together. This is especially when it was about a life lived out of sequence for over 400 years trying to figure out the purpose while suppressing these time travel mental episodes. I was originally curious about casting Patti LuPone, a great musical theatre legend for this role, as it feels that it is not something that she would do. Then I thought it was because they needed a strong vocal for the title song, which turned out that everyone was right on the job. But episode 7 of Agatha All Along explained why Patti LuPone would wanted to do this series, because the writing and the plot for her character was so good that, when the moments of reckoning hit the audience one by one, and we saw the enlightenment on Lilia’s face as she slowly made sense of her time travelling life with divination episodes, it is too juicy a role to pass on.
There are still two more episodes before the finale. I hope Agatha All Along manages to hit a home run because otherwise I will be so disappointed, especially after the last two episodes, that successfully filled the stage 4 and 5 plot holes with effortless writing and performances.
Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+
