Agatha All Along (2024) – First Four Episodes Review

Quick Thoughts – Agatha All Along is a unique limited series that allows Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza to showcase their abilities in a big budget Marvel show. The quality of the show comes nowhere near the excellence of WandaVision (which is a hard ask), but it’s a fun quest and a nice diversion from recent world ending MCU stuff (for the first four episodes at least). 

One of the best things to come out of WandaVision was the popularity of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), a cheeky witch with a great theme song who played the foil to Wanda Maximoff (Elizbeth Olsen). Hahn knocked the role out of the park and was rewarded with her own MCU show with WandaVision writer Jac Schaeffer stepping up to work as the director and showrunner. The nice thing about Agatha All Along is that since it’s an offbeat spinoff it doesn’t have to be a self-serious VFX smash-em-up, and instead relies on practical effects, cavernous sets, and a wildly selfish witch who occasionally walks around with no clothes (people are making a big deal of it) and uses others to get her powers back. 

Much like WandaVision, the show kicks off as a show within a show. This time, Agatha is stuck in an episode of a detective program that seems a lot like the AMC show The Killing (an adaptation of the Danish show Forbrydelsen), where she plays a hard-nosed (and often suspended) detective who is investigating the murder of a Jane Doe. Her investigation brings her across returning characters from WandaVision, and eventually an FBI agent played by Aubrey Plaza. The fake show ruse doesn’t last long as we learn that Agnes is still being affected by Wanda Maximoff’s spell (three years later) and is brought out of her spell fog by a mysterious teenager (Joe Locke), who is mysterious because a curse literally prevents the teen from saying their name or share any personal details. About three-quarters through the first episode the detective show gives way to the actual show, which makes the fake cop program seem pointless. WandaVision episodes resembled classic sitcoms because Wanda watched them as a child and returned to them while coping with the loss of Vision, but it seems like Agatha All Along plays with cop show tropes for 30 minutes for no reason other than to remind viewers of WandaVision.

When Agatha wakes from her detective procedural spell, she’s attacked by fellow witch Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), and told that coven elders will soon be on their way to kill her (she has MANY enemies). Before she’s killed by coven elders, the almost powerless Agatha puts together a makeshift coven of loner witches so she can attempt to complete a plot convenient task that will get her powers back to full force. The convenient task is completing the perilous Witches Road, a trail that is split up by deadly tasks that leave many dead, but awards finishers with what they are missing. The witches (and one random non-witch) joining her on her journey are Iilia Calderau (Patti LuPone), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp), Agatha’s neighbor who will soon be in way over her head. Together, with the unnamed Teen, they escape to the Witches’ Road and go on a very dangerous yellow brick road. I don’t want to spoil anything else, just know that episodes three and four feature wine drinking, musical numbers and Aubrey Plaza having fun. 

What’s nice about Agatha is that she doesn’t want supreme power or to demolish half the population. In Agatha All Along, her main goal is to not be killed by the dozens (hundreds) of people she’s pissed off during her hundreds of years on earth. Don’t expect gigantic action, global intrigue or a massive budget. Go into Agatha All Along expecting a good time with cool actors who are clearly enjoying themselves. Schaeffer has said that the tone of the show is “Kathryn Hahn,” and she’s absolutely right.