Agatha All Alongside assessment: a wild joyride by way of Marvel’s world of magic

WandaVision’s ingenious method to mixing totally different storytelling genres made it probably the most compelling items of tv Marvel has ever produced. The present turned appointment viewing week after week because it fleshed out its central thriller in a method that was enjoyable to comply with together with. And for some time, it felt like WandaVision’s story was a part of an formidable plan to push Marvel’s movies in an attention-grabbing new course.

Marvel seemingly misplaced the thread of that plan someplace between WandaVision and Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity — a follow-up movie that glossed over the present’s juicy emotional beats in favor of dizzying spectacle and extra explicitly horror vibes. However Agatha All Alongside, Disney Plus’ latest MCU collection from showrunner Jac Schaeffer, appears like an indication that the studio has realized just a few helpful classes from its messy multiversal experiment.

Set just a few years after the occasions of WandaVision and Multiverse of Insanity, Agatha All Alongside picks up the story of its titular sorceress (Kathryn Hahn) at a time when the whole lot about her world seems to be coming undone but once more — albeit beneath barely totally different circumstances. Although virtually everybody remembers what went down the final time witches confirmed up in Westview, New Jersey, the city’s truly a fairly peaceable place the place folks have realized to maneuver on with their lives. 

Whereas of us like Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) have gotten used to scurrying previous the vacant lot the place the Maximoff / Imaginative and prescient household used to dwell, their collective trauma retains them from saying her title out of concern that she may come again. Nevertheless it additionally makes it simple for them to just accept Agnes / Agatha Harkness (Hahn) as an bizarre, if eccentric, girl who’s making an attempt to deal with one thing they’ve all gone by way of. To them, Agatha’s temper swings and insistence on being known as “Agnes” are simply quirky coping mechanisms. However in fact, these are a few of the first indicators of Agatha turning into conscious of the magical jail she turned trapped in when final we noticed her.

Agatha All Alongside looks as if it’s angling for a sluggish burn at first because it drops you right into a WandaVision-esque send-up of crime dramas (reasonably than sitcoms) like Mare of Easttown and True Detective. However the present shortly switches gears in a method that reads like Marvel understanding the present’s want to maneuver previous its predecessors’ impressed gimmick. It isn’t lengthy earlier than Agatha snaps again to her senses with the assistance of former lover Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a magically adept teen she calls Teen (Joe Locke). With all of Agatha’s powers now gone, nevertheless, she has to type a coven and journey on the Witches’ Highway as a way to restore herself to her former glory.

Whereas WandaVision solely actually turned correctly witchy in its previous couple of episodes, Agatha All Alongside dives proper into the magic because it focuses on portray a extra detailed image of who Harkness is and the way witchcraft (which is distinct from Physician Unusual’s complete deal) works. WandaVision alluded to Agatha’s treacherous previous, however the brand new present explores how her centuries-long path to buying energy made her a reviled villain within the witch group lengthy earlier than she ever set foot in Westview.

Sitcom Agnes / Agatha was a spotlight in WandaVision, the place her unhinged power helped promote the present’s conceit and depart viewers guessing as to who was actually pulling everybody’s strings. However Agatha All Alongside offers Hahn much more room to flex and vamp as Agatha’s hunt for a coven leads her to different witches like wellness guru Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), fortune teller Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), and safety guard Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) — all of whom see her as a menace. They know Agatha’s killed members of her personal coven earlier than and that there’s one thing off about the best way that Teen is unable to inform them something about the place he comes from. However the Witches’ Highway can provide every of them one thing they desperately need in the event that they be part of Agatha on her quest.

Although it’s attention-grabbing to see extra of Marvel’s extra “grounded” magical world fleshed out by way of Agatha All Alongside’s new characters, the present has a pronounced “I’m placing collectively a rag-tag staff” vibe that makes its beats really feel formulaic in moments. Teen — a gothy Agatha fanboy Locke performs with attraction and with a noticeably difficult-to-place accent — is supposed to be one of many present’s compelling mysteries. However he’s additionally an viewers surrogate whose inquisitive exchanges with the opposite witches generally come throughout just like the present taking a second to overexplain plot factors that don’t really want spelling out.

Each little bit of worldbuilding lore the present establishes — inside a three-mile radius, there are at all times sufficient “witchy sufficient” folks to type a coven, as an example — is adopted up with a reiteration of why everybody’s following Agatha. Often, it makes the present really feel unsure of whether or not it’s introducing an excessive amount of lore. However when Agatha All Alongside leans into its weirdness and trusts you to piece issues collectively, the collection turns into far more of a spooky joyride that feels reflective of Schaeffer as soon as once more making an attempt to carry a genuinely distinctive power to the MCU.

You may really feel and see this clearly as soon as the gang is definitely on the Witches’ Highway — an otherworldly realm the place they face a collection of trials meant to check their information of magic. Much like the best way WandaVision embodied the kinds of varied sitcoms, Agatha All Alongside appears like an ode (music options largely) to horror classics like Rosemary’s Child and newer fare like American Horror Story: Coven.

Although a few of the trials skew a bit tacky — at one level, the witches combat a generational curse — they every spotlight simply how a lot of Agatha All Alongside’s magic is virtually produced to go with the present’s intricate units. It makes the present stand out in comparison with Marvel’s typical CGI-laden tasks and really feel like a strong instance of the studio prioritizing artwork over whizbang spectacle.

Agatha All Alongside continues to be a late-stage Marvel present, that means that there are moments the place your appreciation of what it’s doing will hinge on how acquainted you might be with the bigger cinematic universe’s most up-to-date occasions. However for viewers who’ve been following alongside and holding out hope for the studio to get again into placing out genuinely bizarre and playful riffs on the comics reasonably than hyping up the subsequent massive occasion, Agatha All Alongside ought to be a delight to look at — particularly as soon as it begins revealing its massive secrets and techniques later this fall.

Agatha All Alongside additionally stars Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Emma Caulfield, David Payton, Kate Forbes, and Asif Ali. The collection’ first two episodes hit Disney Plus on September 18th.