<i>Agatha All Along</i> Rings in Spooky Season With an Absolute Blast of a Premiere

It’s been three entire years (how) since we’ve checked in on Agatha and the Westview crew. So how has time—and terrible magic—been treating her?

Recap: “Seekest Thou the Road”

Agnes O’Connor (Kathryn Hahn) stars in the gritty detective show Agnes of Westview. She’s brought off her suspension to work on a case that only she can solve, the murder of a young woman who was crushed in mysterious circumstances. The woman had a library card on her with no name, which Agnes brings to the library, seeking help from the local librarian (Emma Caulfield), who is reticent to aid her. The library card is for one book that was stolen, and a search for the other copies at the library leads Agatha to a burned wing of the building; she can’t find a copy of the book.

The case has Agatha shaken up, and she’s instructed by the Chief of Police (David Lengel) to work with “the Feds” on this case, being Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), who she can’t stand. Vidal prods at Agnes’ memories and seems strangely intimate with her, asking if this is really how she sees herself, but she leaves Agnes to solve the case herself. Later that night, Agnes is looking at the name of the mysterious library book and realizes that the first letters of each word in the title spell out DARKHOLD, but she stops herself before she can finish writing it. The Chief tells her to go home as it’s nighttime. In Agnes’ house, she wanders around moodily, lingering on a room for a child who is no longer present. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Vidal, who wants to hang out and eat pizza.

As they talk, Vidal asks Agnes if she can remember why she hates her, and Agnes searches her memory and finds that she can’t. Agnes tells Vidal that there was a car wreck nearby where the body was found, and she believes the cases are connected, but she can’t figure out why. There’s a noise and Agnes runs upstairs to find a young man breaking into her house (Joe Locke). She chases him down and brings him to the station, where Vidal offers to supervise an interrogation. The kid seems starstruck to be in Agnes’ presence and tells her that he knows whose house he broke into. When she accuses him of being involved with the murder and tries to show him pictures of the crime scene, he’s confused—they’re only pictures of flowers. When she looks toward the one-way mirror, he’s confused again—it’s a painting. He begins chanting a spell and Agnes locks him up for the night, heading to the coroner’s office.

Initially there’s no body, but she recalls the body, it appears, with the library card attached to the toe. A name fills in: “W. Maximoff.” Vidal is suddenly there and encouraging—if she remembers Wanda’s name, she should be able to remember her own. The card fills in the with the name “A. Harkness” and Agnes, now becoming Agatha again, begins to strip away all of her old disguises used here and throughout WandaVision. At the end she peels off the last layer of clothes and awakes naked in her house the next morning. She rushes outside to talk to Herb (David A Payton), who admits that she’s been acting weird on and off for the last three years. When Agatha brings up that Wanda did this to her, he reminds her that no one in town really says her name anymore.

Agatha heads inside and puts on a robe, finding the Teen in her closet. Rio Vidal shows up and they have a drag out fight, in which Agatha insists that Vidal wait until she’s got some of her power back so Vidal can enjoy killing her. Vidal insists that she’s Agatha’s “Blackheart,” and that it doesn’t matter anyway because the Salem Seven will arrive to kill Agatha by sundown. She leaves.

Recap: “Circle Sewn with Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate”

The Teen tries to get free, telling Agatha that he wants to travel the Witches’ Road. Agatha begins to entertain the idea when she realizes that the Teen is the one who broke her out of Wanda’s spell, that he’s a big fan of hers, and also that some form of magic has been cast on him—no one can ever hear him when he explains who he is or gives him name, and he doesn’t know this. Agatha knows that in order to travel the Witches’ Road, they’ll need a coven, and makes the Teen drive her around. The Teen’s boyfriend calls while they’re driving, and Agatha explains to him that within any three-mile radius there is always a group magic enough to form a coven; they simply have to make sure they find the right ones.

They arrive at the shopfront of a fortune teller named Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) and Agatha tests her. Though the soon-to-be-evicted divination witch initially seems unremarkable, she reveals great power and age (she’s over 400), and also appears to be in an argument with a force no one can see. She unwittingly writes down the list of Agatha’s coven in a fugue. Lilia refuses to join the coven—despite her name being on the list—as she knows Agatha’s reputation, but Agatha tells Lilia that the only way she can absorb power from other witches is if they attack her. The Teen gives her Agatha’s address, where they’ll be meeting tonight. Next they arrive at a wellness shop owned by Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), who is being sued for her less-than-effective wares. The potions witch has lost her power, and getting it back would help her legal troubles go away. She’s also not interested in joining up with Agatha, but the Teen gives her the address.

Agatha says they’ve only got one more name on the list, and when the Teen insists that there were four, Agatha eats the list so he can’t look at it. They go to the mall where Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), daughter to a very powerful music witch, is working as a security guard at Hot Topic. Agatha gets the protector witch fired by tricking her into tackling the Teen for shoplifting, but she’s also not interested in joining them and promptly leaves. The Teen and Agatha get set up for the coven’s arrival at her house, and the group arrives, wondering who their fourth earth witch will be. Lilia says that the fourth name on the list she produced was simply a black heart, which upsets Agatha. She insists that she knows who the fourth witch is and rushes down the street to find Sharon Davis (formerly known as Mrs. Hart), and asks her if she wants to come to a party.

With the group assembled, Agatha tells the Teen to leave them alone while they open the way to the road using the famed song. The group begins to sing and the sun goes down. The Teen notices the appearance of the Salem Seven down the street and tries to barricade the house, but they get in. After completing the song, nothing seems to happen, and Agatha begins to antagonize the group for being weak, saying that only a real coven could have opened the portal to the road. They begin to get angry, but Lilia stops them, realizing that Agatha is just trying to get them riled enough to attack so she can steal their power. Suddenly, a door appears in the floor, and they open it to reveal a staircase. The Teen barrels into the basement and down the stairs, warning them of the Salem Seven, so the group follow quickly, Agatha closes the door just before they can reach her.

The coven arrives on the Witches’ Road and Agatha insists she never doubted them for a second. They all remove their shoes and continue down that path toward power and glory.

Commentary

The thing is, I was skeptical going in. And I should’ve known better because Jac Schaeffer is really very good at what she does. This is exactly what I was hoping it would be? I’m not sure what to do with that. But importantly, this is what you can get when you veer away from the characters and continuity that Marvel is precious about: This show is genuinely fun on its own merits. Sure, there’s a little extra something if you’ve seen WandaVision, but you don’t need it to have a good time here.

After WandaVision had such fun deconstructing sitcom formats, it’s amazing to watch Agatha’s brain shove her directly into a True Detective/Fargo/Mare of Easttown style crime drama and take a few jabs. Kathryn Hahn is walking a perfect line with overacting, sometimes using it to make scenes funny, and sometimes using it to make them more upsetting because the audience becomes more cognizant that she’s trapped.

You get a vibe between Agatha and Vidal instantly—if there’s one thing Aubrey Plaza knows how to do (she can do anything, this is just my favorite), it’s have immediate and visceral chemistry with her female costars. As it’s been occurring more often in her career, I imagine this must feel like an upgrade for her. There’s a lot of gay shit between Agatha and Rio, whatever their history may be, but this series offers up an entire potential history of friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-?? in a single episode and I am dizzy about it. They have a pizza date; Agatha strips out of her disguises until she’s naked in front of Rio; they have a sexually charged fight, ending with Rio licking the blood off her ex’s hand; Rio claims to be Agatha’s black heart before leaving; she’s on Agatha’s coven list despite all attempts to deny it.

Sorry to Ghost Rider fans who might be mad that they’ve changed the character of Blackheart entirely for the purposes of this show: You are wrong. This is better. Go read some comics, or watch the Ghost Rider movie about it. Leave us this.

Because I can’t really understate how long I’ve been waiting for that exact fight scene. The kind that is usually only given to men, and then importantly denied any actual subtext-to-text acknowledgement. They’re straddling each other and bleeding on each other and it’s very erotic on purpose, thanks. (Deadpool and Wolverine made it erotic, too, but wimped out on the subtext-to-text move.)

And the cast flip is very much the same vibe. Here we have the exact layout of the Avengers, but the genders—and ages!—are swapped. Sure, the Teen is younger than Widow, but that serves to underscore the point of how absurd it was to have exactly one young woman on a crew of men who are a-little-bit-to-a-lot-bit older than her. At least the Teen has a comparative reason for his youth (being inexperience and a need for mentors), and he’s not being sexualized for it. This is a given because it’s a teenager here, but again works to underscore that the original MCU superteam breakdown was… pretty icky. And the series doesn’t have to direct our attention to this swap to make the point: Just existing does the work all by itself.

The show is taking a page out of Terry Pratchett’s book, I notice, whether intentional or not—Pratchett’s witch books made a point of using all the “types” in modern witchcraft to make up his covens, parodying things like Wicca and moody black-lace-clad teens in a loving way to showcase the many paths women might take to magic. In his final book, he added a young man into that mix, pointedly the same age as the Teen. Pratchett’s Geoffrey is agender or non-binary in his leanings and the Teen has a boyfriend, so both are queer in some manner or another too, which is excellent: The idea being that witchcraft doesn’t necessarily have to be an all-female discipline, but that there is an intersection of queerness—and therefore oddity and outsider perspective—to witchcraft itself.

So we’ve got the old-school fortune teller witch, the wellness guru witch, and the mall goth witch—who they literally find at Hot Topic. (I snorted loudly.) A very enjoyable coven set, along with Sharon, who isn’t exactly a witch, but is great at gardening! A form of witchcraft unto itself. It plays into that Practical Magic-esque assertion that all women are a little witchy, which can get very woo in certain circles, but is exciting when couched in terms of female power and how women find that power.

Also, I really loved that song. The lyrics were lacking, but the harmonies keyed right into the brain. (And the brilliance of writing into any script on this earth that Our Mother of Musical Theater, Patti LuPone, was pitchy. Thank you for that.)

Shoes off, my friends. Time to walk the road.

Tarot Readings and Witchy Thoughts

• Lots of great little witchy pop culture asides, but Herb’s claim that the body is “really most sincerely dead” has got to be my favorite. (Being the munchkin coroner’s proclamation about the Wicked Witch of the West.) In fact there are a lot of Wizard of Oz cues in that murder case, including the fact that Wanda’s “body” has been crushed by some unknown force—dropped a house on her, perhaps?

• I have so many questions about Agatha accidentally creating these little microverses for herself within the confines of Wanda’s spell—how many TV show constructs has she attempted to insert herself into over the past three years? How does it actually look to the Westeview residents from the outside? Are they obligated to play along in some way, and do they fully understand that they’re being made to do so?

• The swipe at Goop and Gwenyth Paltrow’s hocking of jade eggs for vaginas was *chef’s kiss*

See you next week!