Agatha All Along: does Wanda's death break Agatha's spell?

The first two episodes of Agatha All Along gave me X-Men '97 levels of fun. I think Jac Schaeffer has built a rich, layered mystery packed with Easter eggs about witchcraft and the MCU, and I hope she gets her flowers for this show. Agatha All Along (2024) stars Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza and Joe Locke.

I was nervous going in. It didn't go so well for the person who created The Acolyte, and the end of that show was awful; even I couldn't defend it. After these episodes, I was confident that recent history would not repeat itself. I had seen the first four episodes at the time, and I was careful not to give away anything from episodes three and four.

Why I think Marvel didn't need a two-episode premiere

I don't think Marvel needed to drop two episodes at first. One would have been enough, and there's almost too much here to digest. I think they did it because they wanted to wrap things up by Halloween. My answer to that is to start earlier, but they didn't, so the show got a double debut and a double ending, which I guess is a nice trick and treat under the circumstances.

Maybe some people needed the second episode to be sold on the show. Either way, I wouldn't have aired two episodes to start with.

How Agatha and Wanda are alike, down to their lost sons

The most interesting thing to me in these two episodes is how much Agatha and Wanda are alike. Purple and red even sit next to each other on the color spectrum, since purple is blue and red, and I have a new theory on Teen that works with that. Both women have been victim and attacker. Both are famous but also vilified. Both have found themselves lost in TV hallucinations.

And here's the kicker: both have lost sons. That, to me, is what pulls it together. In the comics, Agatha was the nanny for Billy and Tommy, but I wonder if Teen could end up being a mix of Wanda's and Agatha's sons, Billy and Nicholas Scratch. I would allow it, because I think that's very clever.

At the very least, the loss of her son is clearly why Agatha has a soft spot for Teen. Someone has also bewitched him so she can't learn anything about him, which fascinates me as much as it does her. Does that look like an M on his mouth, for Maximoff? If someone has gone to that much trouble to hide him from her, he must be valuable, so she keeps him around.

Wanda's death breaks into Agatha's Westview crime show

The first episode is about Agatha breaking out of Wanda's spell with the help of her ex lover Rio and her potential surrogate son, Teen. I think it's funny they all call him Teen. Agatha has been trapped in the spell for three years, and WandaVision came out three years earlier, in 2021. I love stuff like that.

For just the past few days, she's been acting all true crime because Wanda has died. The show makes it clear Wanda is dead, and Elizabeth Olsen herself sort of confirmed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live, though she said, being a witch, who's to say she can't come back to life. I like where that's going.

Wanda's death breaks into the spell in multiple ways, starting with a dead body that prompts a whole Mare of Easttown style hallucination, complete with its own opening credits where the townspeople get billing. My favorite joke was based on a Danish series, and I'd love a promo for that show; Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany could pull off Danish. They did a very good job mimicking Mare of Easttown. I believe they chose it not only because the episode calls for a murder investigation and they want to stay TV based, but because they're picking shows that typically have female leads.

Many of you told me to read James Robinson's Scarlet Witch comic, and it's not bad. In the early issues, it's Wanda who investigates murders, so clearly Jac Schaeffer was inspired by it. Here they flipped it around, and Wanda's death is the one being investigated.

The Multiverse of Madness clues: the Darkhold, Mount Wundagore and the library card

Sam Raimi and Michael Waldron couldn't be bothered to watch WandaVision or even read the scripts, which of course had not been completed when they started putting together Multiverse of Madness, and I'm never going to forget how horrific that turned out. The movie had its moments, but it was pretty awful what happened. Elizabeth Olsen even threw a little shade at them on Kimmel. While they didn't bother with Jac Schaeffer's work, she checked out theirs.

Wanda was crushed by the Darkhold castle, just as in Multiverse of Madness. The soil under her fingernails is from Eastern Europe: hello, Mount Wundagore. Her clothes mirror how she looked in many of that movie's sequences. Then there's the library card, and it turns out the book is the Darkhold. The author name highlighted there matters to me. Chthon wrote the Darkhold, and I'd heard he might be the villain in a Wanda movie, if they got to make it. Is this name an alias for him, or a disciple? After WandaVision, Jac Schaeffer said she was trying not to include misleading things anymore, so she wouldn't have highlighted that name unless it was important.

The library books burned because the Darkhold burned in Multiverse of Madness, when a woman among Doctor Strange and Wong's disciples sacrificed herself to destroy it. And while Wanda's name is revealed on the card first, Agatha is then revealed as the person who took out the Darkhold before her. So good.

Why not show Wanda? They make it clear the body with scarlet hair is hers. Not wanting to pay Elizabeth Olsen might be part of it, but I also think they know how much we want it and don't want to go too fast. I'm starting to have a lot of faith in Jac Schaeffer, so I think it's a good tease you can trust. As for why Agatha is afraid to discover it's Wanda, when it would mean she was free, I think it's because she knows they're similar. If Wanda can die, can Agatha?

Aubrey Plaza's Rio sees Agatha the way Agatha sees herself

I don't think Teen knows about Wanda's death. He's an Agatha Harkness stan, which would be crazy awkward if he turns out to be Billy. But Rio knows, and she's come for her ex lover. The hallucination scenes between Hahn and Plaza are amazing.

You can see how Agatha views them both. She's a scruffy loner, down on her luck, with very low self confidence, while she sees her ex as the sexy, cool, collected FBI agent with all the answers. Rio finds this fascinating, because even after knowing Agatha for hundreds of years, I don't believe she's ever seen her like this. She's seeing how Agatha sees herself and how Agatha sees Rio, and that's clearly not how Rio sees her. I think she's also seeing a formidable witch, something she admired and found attractive, suddenly weak and at the mercy of another witch. That affects her because she's clearly still very much in love with Agatha.

There's great eye acting from Aubrey Plaza in particular. She never says it, but it radiates off her that Agatha is in the spell and she isn't. Rio gently pushes, asking whether Agatha has traveled around a lot, and backs off when it seems to push a little too hard.

Nicholas Scratch, Lorna Wu's ballad and Joe Locke's Teen

Before Teen came Nicholas Scratch, Agatha's son, after whom she named her rabbit, Señor Scratchy. Seeing his room with its moon theming, which comes from witchcraft, was very moving. I also found it interesting that they focused on music, with Lorna Wu's famous song, the Ballad of the Witches' Road. I think music has always been tied in with magic and witchcraft, but I think the show makes it a strong, deliberate connection. In the comics, Nicholas Scratch also took over a small town himself, just as Wanda did. Jac Schaeffer is not a comic book fan, I don't think, but I respect her for doing the homework.

For those who don't know Heartstopper, this is Joe Locke. I love his American accent, since he's British. His delicate smoky eye seems heavy handed straight on, but when he lifted his head and I saw his under eye, I wanted to know what brush they used. He also gets great lines, like telling Agatha she wants the respect of her peers and a fulfilling home life but is fresh out of both, and, when she calls something ironic, "I think you mean iconic."

How Rio and Teen help Agatha claw out of the spell

In the interrogation scene, Wanda's spell starts to fall apart, and we discover we've never left Agatha's house. The crime scene photos show her front yard, the interrogation room is her living room, and that painting hangs there. She even had a pretend car, which drove her to the morgue to confront Wanda's body.

I think Rio and Teen worked together to break her out. Teen gets it, but Rio and Agatha clearly will have to learn that it's better to be in a coven than to act solo, and I think that's what this show is about. As the saying goes: "get your girls and your gays and let's go."

Rio is the one who encourages Agatha to claw her way out. They gave it away in the trailer, but it played really well. I loved the runup, when she says there are two Jane Does in this mystery, Wanda and Agatha, two names to uncover, because again, they're the same. Kathryn Hahn is phenomenal throughout and sells tearing through the spell, which ends on a great Pleasantville, Frankenstein style image. Agatha is free and naked, reborn, which I think is clever. Shout out to MVP Herb, who drops his groceries, for his comedic timing. I like how the residents are used as a fun, effective callback to WandaVision that doesn't overshadow the new story.

Agatha is left with household appliances, and Westview remembers Wanda

Back at square one, Agatha has no power and, as Rio says, no agency. Even her lair is gone, though her fat little bunny is still there. She says she's been mugged, all her power taken, leaving her household appliances. It's a joke, but I think it's also a reversal of feminism: she's sent back to the home as a 1950s housewife, which many 1950s housewives viewed as a prison. I think the show is making strong points about women, subtly, and I hope that works out for it.

Wanda's shadow remains in the real Westview. Residents remember what she did but try not to talk about it, which doesn't stop someone writing evil witch in red on the property Vision had bought for them. I think that makes Agatha angry and sad, because she's been called evil too, and she understands Wanda's loss. I loved seeing her back in purple and back in the Bewitched house, a very nice touch from Jac Schaeffer, who is clearly a Bewitched fan. I think the end credits sequence is fantastic, with Disney and Fox references because they don't have to pay extra for those.

Rio's return and the Salem Seven

Then Rio attacks, in the coolest looking witch outfit I've ever seen. I used to own a pair of black boots I loved, and they weren't as cool as hers. Usually Aubrey Plaza would play the Agatha role, but here she reminds me of Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy, a performance I hated because that's not what Poison Ivy is supposed to be like, yet for some reason I like it on Plaza. Her fight with Agatha is very sexy.

Rio points out Agatha is vulnerable as a newborn, Agatha says only physically, but the tear in her eye says different. I love the joke when Rio says many people want Agatha dead, to burn, hang or drown, and Agatha asks whether there are no new options, a joke about the ways witches have been killed for centuries. We also learn Rio has a power Agatha can't absorb, or it would kill her.

Who else wants Agatha dead? The Salem Seven, with a brief callback to Wanda's creepy movements in Multiverse of Madness, one of the only good things Raimi added to the lore, and I think Jac Schaeffer liked it too. They seem entirely covered in black magic. Rio and Agatha call a truce, and Agatha feels she convinced Rio that she'd want her at full power. I think Rio still loves her, and I love the parting line, "I do have a heart, it's black and it beats for you," before Rio licks Agatha's hand and heals it.

Building the coven for the Witches' Road

The second episode assembles a coven, which is always within a three mile radius of a witch; even if they aren't the most powerful, together they will be. I think the show deepens the mythology of Wanda's corner of the MCU in a way fans will embrace, though at the time we'd yet to see how it would do. Every witch has a brooch, even fake witch Mrs. Hart. Agatha finds hers in a hallucination with the maiden, mother and crone, and I liked her joke asking where the working professional woman is. Whose hair is in her locket, Nicholas's, Rio's or her own? Another mystery. Agatha is the only one who has walked the road and lived, but they're all desperate for what it promises. Haven't they heard the fable? You get what you need, not what you want. I love that they've all reached the end of the roads they're on.

The coven is intentionally diverse in ethnicity and age. Patti LuPone gives her all as Lilia Calderu, a roughly 450 year old divination witch. When we meet her, we learn that Agatha is infamous, and that Agatha can only take a witch's power if that witch blasts her with it. Sasheer Zamata's Jennifer Kale is a bound potions witch who, after about 100 years, runs a health and beauty line that accidentally hurt people, hence lawsuits. I love that Teen can get hardcore. Alice Wu-Gulliver, a protection witch from the James Robinson run, is story wise the most interesting, though I think her performance is the most lackluster. Here she's an ex police detective whose mother, Lorna Wu, disappeared on the road after singing her version of the Ballad, whose lyrics give the episode titles. The Lopezes of Frozen fame wrote it, and while I don't think it's at that level, it's close, and its harmony means the group must work together.

Lilia's vision ends with a black heart, which points to Rio, but Agatha recruits her neighbor Mrs. Hart instead, and Debra Jo Rupp makes the gag work. The road's entrance is well designed, enough that the D23 walkthrough should be embarrassed, and if this show is a hit, I hope the theme parks make a true effort to build it. Teen runs down first as the Salem Seven break in, and they all take off their shoes to connect to the earth. Seeing all those shoes left standing as they walk down the road was a very nice image.