Series Review: Agatha All Along, will it be boring and more of the same?
The eleventh television series belonging to phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally premiered, being a spin-off of the WandaVision series we expect a lot from this and the continuity of its story.
Agatha All Along aims to continue showing that world of witchcraft and supernatural things with a touch of humor, something that may seem new and fresh but has more depth than we can see at first glance.
Showrunner Jac Schaeffer is now and again in charge of continuing to develop these characters with a new plot and subplots that share continuity with the franchise films in this vast universe.
While stage 5 has not worked as well as we expected, that plan that began with Agents of SHIELD in 2013 is far away, followed by Agent Carter 2015, Inhumans 2017, Runaways 2017, Cloak & Dagger 2018, Helstrom 2020, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…? and Hawkeye in 2021, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law in 2022 and finally Secret Invasion and Echo in 2023 and 2024 respectively, these series and miniseries have had their ups and downs, needless to say, Marvel Studios and Disney have had their problems to keep all this going.
What is the Agatha All Along miniseries about?
Three years after being trapped in the town of Westview, New Jersey, and following the end of the WandaVision miniseries, the witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) escapes from her confinement and her spell with the help of Teen (Joe Locke) a goth teenager who wishes to face the trials of the legendary Way of the Witches, now and without their magical powers Agatha and this young boy form a new coven of witches to face the trials and Agatha’s old enemies.
3 years have passed since we met this unique character in the WandaVision series, since then we expected these studios to do the same and keep it at the same level and the results that their streaming series have had have not been what was expected and much less good.
We were left with Agatha Harkness being trapped under Wanda’s spell in Westview at the end of the series, where, without knowing it, she acts as the protagonist in a series of another genre, a police series that makes clear humorous, elegant, and fun references to True Detective, we could think that from this point things would improve for this character to explore more alternate and imaginary realities and this is not the case.
Here we see that Agatha has formed a new coven recruiting a motley group of worn-out allied characters among which are the Sicilian fortune-telling witch Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), the potions expert and supposed beauty influencer Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), a guardian witch Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), a mysterious warrior Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp).
With a cast like this, we could expect something from good to very good, it is noticeable that they do what they can with what they have channeling their respective abilities with that natural comic and magical style giving this a new more personal and more exaggerated style as we had not seen before in the MCU, it is something that wants to look like Hocus Pocus but it did not turn out as they expected, Agatha’s personality is that of an elegant and visually attractive woman who seeks to know again who she is and what she can be capable of.
The tone they have given it after these 3 years that have passed is light and simple, however, we are not facing a series of more than 20 episodes nor is it interested in exploring beyond what it intends and promises, in short, it faces the characteristic curse that there is now in Marvel series and that is to emphasize a story about the character without going into depth or explaining anything, demonstrating with this that this work is completely unnecessary and filler to remain moderately current in the interest of an audience that increasingly expects more and that increasingly ends up more disappointed.
The two available episodes go from point A to point B without much interest, they comply with their own established rule, characters that until now have very little development which hinders the flow of the story, it develop subplots that are even simpler, funny, vulgar, inclusive, fun but lacking depth and that “something” that we look for that makes it more serious and more interesting, it is clear to us that this is neither so captivating nor so mysterious, this manages to feel more like something apart that without the reference of its origin could work more along the lines of witchcraft and comic horror.
As a spin-off/sequel to WandaVision, this series is responsible for filling some very big shoes and more than living up to it. WandaVision is still considered one of Marvel’s best television projects that emerged as a new proposal within this universe after the events of Avengers: End Game with much more potential to want to expand everything they have done, giving them the importance that each one deserves so that in the future all of this continues to be part of a meta-story.
The 2 episodes that are already available are:
1. Seekest Thou the Road.
In a crime/police television series titled Agnes of Westview, Agnes O’Connor is a police detective obsessed with the Jane Doe murder case, one night a teenager breaks into Agnes’ house, looking for someone named The Road, Agnes believes he is linked to the murder case and arrests him, Rio Vidal is an FBI agent who along with Agnes realizes that the Jane Doe they are seeing is the body of Wanda Maximoff and that Agnes is the witch Agatha Harkness who has been trapped under a spell, upon breaking free from this Agatha realizes that she no longer possesses her powers and that Vidal is a fellow witch with whom she has a history, Vidal warns Agatha that the Salem Seven will soon be after her.
2. Circle Sewn with Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate.
Her savior reveals that he freed Agatha from the spell and wishes to travel the Witches’ Way where she could regain her power, needing a coven to open a portal to the Way the pair recruits witches Lilia Calderu, Jennifer Kale, and Alice Wu-Gulliver and Westview resident Sharon Davis, while these four witches and Davis perform the ritual to open the door to the Way, the teen sees the Salem Seven arrive and escapes with the coven through the door.
These 2 episodes have a big flaw and it is their narrative, it is clumsy and slow, it wants to take us down an unknown path that promises to surprise us, and knowing this format we know that this will either take a while or it will not happen because it falls back into the comfort zone of leaving everything for a possible “later”
We return to the point of the script, the writers Jac Schaeffer and Laura Donney in these 2 episodes are more focused on cheap and unnecessary feminism than on raising things and giving them a more solid foundation, one that can develop on its own without having to resort to the easy reference that we will see things that are not there and will not be, I am not saying that this is wrong, I say it because it is already a constant that only leads us to boredom, that WandaVision in which week after week there was theorizing about what was going to happen and the absent presence of Mephisto as the great revelation is far away, all this was fun because its script was very well structured and raised things that left us waiting for more to happen, that This doesn’t happen here and I highly doubt it will happen in later episodes.
The fact that there is an inclusive modernity with a moral message that will be discerned in the next 7 episodes makes us understand right away that they are going to apply the already worn-out formula of the villain who redeems herself and who neither the bad guy nor the good guy but the opposite, things that we have seen before and that has not worked, we still don’t understand how a villain is given other villains as antagonists, a lot of blah blah blah about morality and the commitment to oneself to do the right things is precisely what is boring, what takes everything out of rhythm if she is a villain we want to see things that a villain does and not the faults that lead her to rethink things over and over again to make the best decision.
We are facing a new lost opportunity for a character that could become important. Perhaps transcendental for the future of the MCU, and perhaps a new confrontation with Wanda Maximoff is planned, which if so would be redeeming much of the bad they have done or that they continue on the path of failure, wanting to do things to comply but that do not excite anyone.
It is unfortunate how Marvel, the house of ideas, has very bad ones in its streaming series, as these have gone from bad to worse, promising that each one will be the best and most innovative that both friends and strangers have seen, what we have seen and confirmed is that after they closed a very important part of phase 3 they no longer know what direction to take or what to do with their secondary characters, poor planning and lack of originality have made everything become chaos without much sense.
The cast includes Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Debra Jo Rupp, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Okwui Okpokwasili, Patti LuPone, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein and Miles Gutierrez-Riley, actors who have great potential and who we hope will be able to develop each of their characters very well.
In the very particular case of Kathryn Hahn, she has proven to be a very versatile actress with a fun and cynical charisma that makes this character credible. With little, she manages to do a lot and convince us that she is a real witch and a bitch, and this is achieved by doing a good job and understanding perfectly well what her character is like.
agnes-agatha-harkness.gif
The music composed by Christophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas is at a very pleasant level that is sometimes interesting and sometimes just accompanies what we are seeing making itself present in a subtle way, the main theme composed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez has that very interesting simple and choral tone.
In conclusion, Agatha All Along is one of those rare experiments that Marvel has of making its series fail before being released, 2 chapters are not enough to make things clear but they are enough to be able to realize that things can go average or very bad, let’s hope that the result of this is not boring with more of the same.
Agatha All Along is now available on the Disney + platform.
