After months of marketing and numerous jokey title changes, Marvel’s WandaVision spinoff starring Kathryn Hahn’s breakout villain, Agatha Harkness, has finally arrived at Disney+ and we’re here to discuss its first two episodes.
Following her defeat at the end of that series, however, the Scarlet Witch has since trapped Agatha in her own television-inspired delusion. Instead of Wanda’s world of familiar sitcom tropes, the de-powered Agatha has found herself trapped inside an extremely well-observed pastiche of small town police procedurals starring a fuckup detective. Heavily riffing on Mare of Easttown, True Detective, Coroner, Wallander, The castle, Lily hammeretc., Agatha—now back to being “Agnes,” stars in her own series, Agnes of Westview (said to be “based on the Danish series Wandavisdysen”, which is cute)—replete with its own opening credits sequence and bluesy theme song.
Being the star of a detective series, Agnes/Agatha needs a murder to solve, and she’s presented with a red-haired “Jane Doe” who died of blunt force trauma after being crushed by something big and heavy. In our first overt reference to witch media, Agatha’s partner (Herb from WandaVision) notes the victim is “really, most sincerely dead” following her mysterious accident (or maybe not-so-mysterious to anyone who caught Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness—but we’ll get to that later). Among the items recovered at the scene are a torn page from a library book and a pendant resembling the one worn by Agatha in WandaVision.
Following up on this first lead, she pays a visit to her (extremely busy and crowded) local library, where Emma Caulfield’s Dottie now works. It’s here she learns the page hails from a book titled Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning and Debate—the first letter of each word obviously being very significant—by “Andrew Ugo” (a anagram of Wundagore, the mountain that squished the Scarlet Witch) and wasn’t checked out, but in fact stolen three years ago, roughly around the time WandaVision concluded. When she checks the Natural Sciences section of the library (where plenty more copies of this apparently highly sought-after volume can be found, we learn), Agnes/Agatha discovers all those copies were somehow destroyed in an extremely isolated fire. This intel comes from a weird, unnamed character played by Prison Break’s Paul Adelstein (according to IMDB, this guy’s going to appear in seven more episodes of the series, so start theorizing which fire and brimstone-related villain he may-or-may-not eventually be revealed as).
As the episode unfolds, more facts emerge related to the case: namely, 1) a “microbial sediment” cultivated from beneath the victim’s nails is said to have originated from somewhere in Eastern Europe; and 2) no footprints or drag marks of any kind were discovered around the body, as if it simply materialized, ex nihilo. So baffling is the case, Agnes/Agatha’s boss (Harold from WandaVision) has called in an outside specialist, FBI agent Rio Vidal, played by Aubrey Plaza; she and Agnes/Agatha apparently have history with each other, and her presence is not welcomed. Vidal looks around Agnes/Agatha’s disheveled office and asks, “is this how you really see yourself?” suggesting she’s fully aware of the spell cast at the end of WandaVision.
Returning home, Agnes/Agatha solemnly enters an empty child’s bedroom belonging to her apparently late son, Nicholas Scratch, who won an award for “best vocals” in a children’s choir. Her vigil is interrupted by a visit from Agent Vidal, who comes bearing pizza and beer. While discussing the case, Vidal asks, “Do you remember why you hate me?” but the moment is undercut by a burglary-in-progress upstairs. The swiftly apprehended thief is revealed to be Joe Locke’s goth-kid “Teen,” who, while being interrogation, states he was looking for something called “the Road.” A third time, the moment is undercut as the crime scene photos he’s presented with shift to ones of well-maintained lawns and gardens, just as the two-way window of the interrogation room morphs into Zuccarelli’s painting MacBeth Meeting the Witches. Clearly, something is amiss in this reality as Teen begins to threateningly chant at her in Latin.
The incident causes Agnes/Agatha to rush to the morgue and investigate the body of the crushed Jane Doe, which, to the surprise of no one with a shred of media literacy, belongs to Wanda Maximoff. Agent Vidal then appears to confirm what we knew all along: that Agatha is trapped in the spell of a dead witch, and her only salvation is to “claw herself out.” Agnes tears at her clothes, revealing a series of costume changes, before remembering she is indeed the sorceress Agatha Harkness. The now fully nude Agatha takes to the streets of Westview, where she learns she’s been living in the neighborhood against her will as a true crime-obsessed shut-in for the last three years.
Luckily, however, her pet rabbit Señor Scratchy is still alive. Also, the teenage burglar of the illusion is now a hostage in her closet, and Rio Vidal is actually a rival witch out for revenge against an unrevealed slight. Following a sexually charged battle, in which Rio states she’s prefers Agatha “horizontal… in a grave,” we learn multiple parties are out for her blood now that the curse has been lifted, including “The Salem Seven”—a coven of black-shrouded witches we meet in episode two.
For a premiere, Agatha’s pilot spends most of its time in the world of Agnes of Westviewtherefore presenting an issue I had with the sitcom hijinks of WandaVision. Its send-up of detective shows is accurate to a fault, and so isn’t exaggerated enough to be parody. Instead, it’s a pitch-perfect example of the very genre its satirizing. While the series understands it can’t attempt to deceive its audience this time around, it remains committed to the bit as a way to reintroduce audiences to the cast of Westview and the new world order of Agatha taking on the duty of a series lead—and it works, mostly. If Marvel television is this talented at mimicry, then perhaps the MCU should focus more on unexpected genre-mashups than the company’s overtly faithful and continuity-obsessed projects of recent years.
Episode two begins right where the first left off, with “Teen”—who, due to some sort of spell he’s under, cannot reveal his true name to anyone—asking Agnes to take him on the Witch’s Road, a wish-granting spiritual battery of tests we find out was detailed in a hit single from the 1970’s. It turns out Teen is fan of Agatha’s various witch-doings and believes she’d be the perfect partner to compete the gauntlet with and come out on the other side. (Teen, we learn, craves power.) As he’s the one responsible for freeing her from the spell she was under—and because a cabal of witches is now after Agatha, who currently has no powers at all—she has nothing to lose. If they’re going to do it though, they’ll need a coven, and the episode reveals its theme: a “getting the band back together” story in the vein of The Blues Brothers or Ocean’s Eleven.
As we learn from Agatha, in any three-mile radius, there will be “a collection of witchy-enough people” to form a coven, and so the first candidate is Madame Calderu, a fortune teller played by Patti LuPone. Calderu, however, quickly reveals herself to be the real deal and is reluctant to team up with a witch as infamous as Agatha Harkness. Unfortunately, she herself is facing eviction from her floundering business and, like Agatha herself, needs more “power”—or at least money and social clout—to get out of it. With one witch in the bank, Calderu uses her psychic powers to uncover the names of four more conveniently located witches, and we’re off.
Next on the list is Jennifer Kale, a potions expert played by Sasheer Zamata, who, due to the binding spell she’s been under the last century, has turned to expertise to the skincare industry. Like Calderu, she’s facing legal trouble from a few of her products burning the skin off her customers’ faces. Though she also has a troubled history with Agatha, after Teen reveals that if convicted, Kale would be facing a life sentence in prison, she reluctantly agrees to join them on the Road. Just to rub it in, Agatha steals one of her jade eggs before she leaves, quipping “you’ll know where to find it.”
By extreme coincidence, the next candidate is Alice Gulliver-Wu (Ali Ahn), a “blood/protection” witch and daughter of the musical artist responsible for releasing “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” in the ’70s. Unbelievably, we’re told her mother’s band, Lorna Wu and the Coral Shore, sold 40 million copies worldwide of the song, which would place it somewhere between the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” in terms of popularity. Despite her mother’s success, however, Alice is working security at the MCU’s equivalent of a Hot Topic and becomes the next coven member after Agatha concocts a scheme to get her fired from work.
Now ready to embark on the Road, the newly assembled coven protest they’re still missing a “Green Witch,” which Agatha doesn’t believe she needs. Apparently, the final name of the list was simply a “black heart,” echoing a comment from Rio Vidal in the previous episode. It’s apparent she’s the necessary final member of the band, but the reluctant Agatha, crumbling to her coven’s wishes, instead recruits WandaVison‘s Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) to be the final member, because she keeps a nice garden.
With all their eggs finally in a row, the group ritualistically performs a rendition of the song that allegedly sold 40 million copies, opening a door in the floor of Agatha’s basement—however, it takes a minute, providing Agatha with just enough time to debase each member of her coven, sowing further discord in the group. Luckily, their escape hatch (to what’s likely certain death, we’re reminded) happens in the nick of time, too, as the Salem Seven she was warned about have descended upon the house.
So, after two very different table-setting episodes, Agatha All Along is only just now finally ready to become whatever the hell it plans on being for the next seven episodes as the witches face the trials of its genre-bending Road. What that may look like, I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to see.
A few concluding thoughts on these first two episodes:
- I’m not sure what the impetus was for the coven to remove their shoes before traversing the road, either, as that detail wasn’t recounted in the lyrics of the world’s most popular song.
- Seriously, we’re led to believe a progressive folk song containing the lyrics “blood and tears and bone, maid and mother crone” somehow sold 40 million copies? Twice as many as “We Are the World”? What, is Comus’s First Utterance the equivalent of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
- Agatha’s Doctor Who-esque new costume at the end of episode two is pretty terrific. Love the flowing blue-green coat.
- I believe episode one provides us with the second naked butt of a title Marvel character following Thor’s in Love & Thunder.
- The show’s end credit sequence is interesting for its various references to witches in media—for what its omits as much as what it includes. Apparently, Disney’s deal with Sony allowed the use footage of Fairuza Balk in The Craftbut had to fake the opening titles to Bewitched—which a quick Google search confirms the company does indeed own. The inclusion of Lisa Simpson wearing a witch’s hat is also bizarre—she doesn’t spring to mind as immediately as, say, Sabrina the Teenage Witch (not featured here) or Maleficent (also bizarrely absent). What gives?
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