Even in a universe where the dead and/or vanquished rarely stay that way, the return of Agatha Harkness feels especially wild. Although her Marvel Comics inspiration has had plenty to do over the years, she’s not exactly been billed on the same supervillain level as a Thanos or a Dr. Doom. But such was the combined power of WandaVision, Kathryn Hahn’s sharp performance, and one infectiously catchy song that we’re here now, three and a half years after we watched Wanda Maximoff strip her foe of her powers, to find out what happens next.
Since WandaVision’s 2021 premiere launched a new era for Marvel TV, the MCU as a franchise has been through almost as much change as its characters. As the movies have gotten further away from their wildly successful Phase One origins, and as the entertainment industry shifted its entire approach in the wake of both COVID-19 and various labor strikes, the world in which Agatha All Along exists just isn’t the same one that brought us WandaVision. Will Agatha try to tie everything back into the cinematic universe from whence it came, perhaps just in time for Fantastic Four (which gave comic-book Agatha her debut)? Or will this show get to stand more on its own than its predecessor ultimately could?
For the next eight weeks, I’ll be recapping Agatha’s way down whichever road she, Marvel, and showrunner Jac Schaeffer chose. To be up front, I won’t exactly be the deepest of Marvel divers. Still, in my previous life as Variety’s chief TV critic, I reviewed WandaVision, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, and approximately 8 million other series, so I’ll be watching Agatha All Along both within the Marvel TV context of all that came before and on its own merits as a TV show, period. I’ll assume you’ve seen WandaVision already, but not necessarily that you’ve seen or read every Marvel chapter in between. I’ll be watching for references and foreshadowing and reading the recap comments to see if you catch anything I don’t. Let’s crack this case together, shall we?
Alright, enough small talk: time to join Agatha Harkness in the latest magical TV delusion to hit poor Westview, New Jersey, which really deserves a mass vacation after all it’s been through — and, apparently, is still going through.
Whereas WandaVision took its time revealing the source of its uncanny sitcom worlds, Agatha All Along can’t do the same for too long because we basically know what’s going on. Before flying away to embrace her doomed destiny as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda cursed Agatha to an anonymous life as “Agnes.” Now, Agatha appears to be stuck in a bleak crime drama starring herself as Westview’s resident fuckup detective. This week’s case: solving the identity of an unidentified woman who’s “really, most sincerely dead” (to be sung in the helium voice of a Wizard of Oz munchkin, I assume).
While the “Agatha of Westview” credits and Schaeffer’s directing clearly mimic Mare of Easttown, Hahn’s look and performance feel more like Miss Congeniality threw pre-makeover Sandra Bullock into True Detective to have a breakdown. This, to be clear, is a compliment: Hahn has been so good for so long at straddling genre lines in her performances that watching her imbue Agatha’s twisted essence into Agnes’s hardboiled detective schtick is both impressive and very funny. Even in this relatively neutered dream state, Agatha’s real personality bursts through the cracks as Detective Agnes snarls at anyone who dares talk back. Some are familiar Westview faces, like David A Payton’s Herb (playing her weary cop partner) and Emma Caulfield Ford’s Dottie (now a weary librarian). But there’s one new face that immediately throws Detective Agnes off: “Agent Vidal,” the requisite FBI intruder who shakes things up for the local cop who likes things neither shaken nor stirred.
As played by Aubrey Plaza, Rio Vidal is shrewd, sly, and has more than a little spicy chemistry with Agnes. Even though we don’t know her whole deal yet, she’s the first to cut through the Agnes of Westview mirage with just a couple lines. “Is this how you really see yourself?” she asks, looking around the peeling walls of Agnes’s office with barely concealed disgust. When she stares Agnes down with a pointed, “If you want to be in control, you can be,” the foreshadowing is almost as loud as the flirtation. (Why are you booing me?? I’m right!) But Agatha isn’t ready to break her own reality yet, and she sends Vidal and her inconvenient truths packing.
In the meantime, she’s all in on the Case of the Crushed Woman. She goes to the library with a recovered card to track down which book the victim might have been reading; turns out that “Andrew Ugo”’s volume of “Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning and Debate” was stolen three years prior, when definitely nothing else of significance happened. She steals a cameo pendant from the scene of the crime that looks an awful lot like Agatha’s own. Eventually she goes back to her depressing house, which includes the extra-depressing touch of an absent child’s untouched bedroom. According to the drawings and dusty trophies, it once belonged to “Nicky,” a.k.a. “Nicholas Scratch.” (Even a light Google of this should prove revealing, but I’ll hyperlink here for those who’d rather avoid a potential spoiler.)
Agnes barely has time to sink into her beige couch of sadness before Agent Vidal knocks at her door bearing a fresh pizza and TV-trope truism (“Did you know it’s a universal truth that a lady cop cannot be good at her job and have a healthy personal life at the same time?”). They share a beer and a laugh before Agnes returns to “the case,” a thing Vidal could not care about less, especially because the answer has been obvious from the jump. “Do you remember why you hate me?” she asks instead. Agnes blinks, seemingly on the edge of an answer, before admitting she doesn’t. Again, Vidal’s vibe is very “ex seeking closure … unless …?” but since that’s also just kind of Plaza’s specialty, I’m not trying to jump to any conclusion(s I would love to be true) just yet.
They’re interrupted by a disturbance upstairs courtesy of a masked someone who grabs … something … from Nicky’s room. He parkours off the roof like he’s running late to grab the Parisian Olympic torch, prompting Agnes to chase him through the streets until a car, driven by a flustered Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp), stops him for her.
Cut to: an interrogation room. The burglar proves to be a teen boy in heavy eyeliner (Heartstopper’s Joe Locke) who says he’s looking for “The Road,” a reference that throws Agnes off even if her dormant brain can’t quite latch on to why. She pivots to her crime-scene photos, ready to watch his reaction. Instead of the body, though, the photos just show some well-manicured suburban gardens. In a flash, the two-way mirror becomes a framed painting, Vidal is gone, and when Agnes looks back, the teen is chanting at her in Latin, which can’t be good. Freaked out, she handcuffs him and ends the scene, but the illusion’s crumbling fast.
The implosion accelerates as a confused Agnes storms into the morgue to confront the body. All that’s peeking out from underneath its shroud is a toe tagged with the Westview Public Library card of stamped dates and a long lock of scarlet (get it?) hair. Sure enough, a blood-red name appears on the card next to October 13: “W. Maximoff.”
“How did she die?” Agnes asks Vidal, suddenly back alongside her.
“Wrong question,” Vidal replies, to the relief of everyone who forgot to watch Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness before Agatha All Along. “That witch is gone, and all the copies of the Darkhold with her, leaving you trapped in her distorted spell. But you don’t have to stay there, do you?”
No, no, she doesn’t. Agnes claws off her dirty-dishwater-hued detective costume, along with all her others from WandaVision, my favorite of which is obviously the aughts-era black sweatsuit with “NAUGHTY” rhinestoned on the ass. “There are two Jane Does,” Vidal says. “You know her name, so what’s yours?”
As “A. Harkness” appears in ink above Wanda’s name, the true Agatha emerges, too, naked of any costume. Her concerned neighbor Herb, averting his eyes, tells her she’s been “bitten by the true-crime bug” these last few days, and also that she’s been living there as “Agnes” for three whole years. She’s furious, but I’m just relieved to hear her Westview neighbors somehow didn’t get sucked into Agnes of Westview à la WandaVision, though it’s never explained how or why. A different kind of magic to Wanda’s? Just a full menty B? We’ll see!
Things get even gnarlier for Agatha when Vidal, now decked out in supervillain black, blasts apart her house and comes at her with a knife and curdling smile. They share stab attempts and sexy banter (“Do you remember pain? It kind of tickles, doesn’t it?”) before Vidal reveals the true purpose of her visit: revenge, courtesy of herself and “the Salem Seven.” Rattled, a weakened Agatha argues that taking her out in this mortal state is undignified. “Don’t you want me at my best?” she pleads, to which Vidal retorts, “Horizontal?” and I yell something along the lines of “edlekjrsndkgffsekjnxd” — and all this before Vidal insists her “black heart beats” for Agnes before licking the blood clean off her hand. These women simply do not have a platonic relationship! I don’t make the rules (even if Marvel’s typically sexless heterosexuality eventually probably will)!
Anyway: Vidal lets Agatha walk away for now. But Agatha’s got to figure out a better pitch before sundown — oh, and also deal with the very real teen burglar she’s got stashed in her kitchen pantry. Just another day in the impossibly long life of Agatha Harkness, semi-retired witch and Nextdoor inspiration for the ages.
Much as with WandaVision, it’s tempting to predict the kind of show this is about to be based on its trippy premiere. Having been tricked once before, though, I’m going to call this premiere successfully intriguing while also holding out a bit longer to see what Agatha’s actually all about.
The Snarkhold-overs
• Since the first two episodes dropped today, the discussion of what happens in the second belongs in its own comments section, please!
• Rewatching WandaVision, I was surprised at how little Hahn features before the big reveal, but not by her securing this splashy spinoff anyway. Some of us have been on the Hahn train since she stole How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days from its blonde leads. We’ve been ready for this. LFG.
• Case in point: her perfectly unhinged delivery of “total losERRRRR, or totaaaaaallyyyyy LYing?” You could give most actors 100 takes and they’d never do anything close to what Hahn does there; it’s truly [chef’s kiss].
• Do the other dates on the library card mean anything? Almost definitely! Your time to shine, Easter-egg hunters.
• Shout out to my roommate for tracking down which painting appears over the interrogation-room mirror: Zuccarelli’s Macbeth meeting the witches. Fitting!
• The best joke, or at least the one written most specifically for Vulture recap readers (i.e., people who might’ve watched Scandi crime series like Borgen, Wallander, Lilyhammer, etc): the fact that Agnes of Westview is “based on the Danish series Wandavisdysen.”
• The fake crime show’s theme song was fun, but the twofer of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” over the spooky end credits beat it for me, a person who’s been ready for October since July. Bring on the macabre!