A strange power has drawn a collection of actresses to a quiet cul-de-sac of Disney+. Is it magic? A love of art? Simply a paycheck? The reasons vary, but everyone is here to hang out with Kathryn Hahn and play a witch in Agatha All Along, a sequel series to the streamer’s first (and by far its best) foray into Marvel television, WandaVision.
The series is built around Hahn’s scheming villain, Agatha Harkness, who is, as of the start of Agatha, powerless and trapped in an homage to a TV true-crime procedural that resembles WandaVision’s own genre parodies. In Agatha’s case, we get Hahn’s intentionally terrible Mare of Easttown Pennsylvania accent and an international-licensing joke that informs us this show is “based on the Danish series WandaVision.†But soon, Agatha breaks out of that spell, itself seemingly an aftereffect of Wanda’s magic (she went power mad and then died in Multiverse of Madness, by the way), and then launches into a quest to restore her powers with the help of a teen boy (Heartstopper’s Joe Locke in Limited Too mode), a coven of other witches who are outcasts (and beloved character actresses) in their own right, and a sinister rival witch played by Aubrey Plaza.
The newly formed crew sets out along the “Witches’ Road,†a sort of pilgrimage on a celestial plane that grants your deepest desires, but only if you solve the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire–style tests along the way. These turn into excuses for Agatha to continue WandaVision’s streak of genre send-ups: The first two, seen in the four episodes made available for critics, involve the woolen white-wine opulence of Nancy Meyers and Big Little Lies and the shaggy ’70s vibe of a bickering, Fleetwood Mac-ian rock troupe. Flimsy but enjoyable is the overarching tone here; it’s remarkable how much license Agatha’s creator Jac Schaeffer, who also created WandaVision, has gotten to doodle freely in her little corner of the MCU.
The cast also seems to realize that they’re just onscreen to have fun and go big with their performances, which in turn leads to wildly divergent levels of commitment from all involved. Some are very invested in their witchery. Others appear to have only just read their lines before going in front of a camera. Though given that Agatha works best as a lark, sometimes the more committed the actor, the less successful the performance is in context. So, as the series launches, we’re issuing a preliminary coven report card: Which witches are most locked into their role in Agatha? And are their (universally large) choices working?
Kathryn Hahn (Agatha Harkness)
Witch skills: Currently powerless, but can absorb others’ powers if attacked
Acting skills: Chameleonic, but always with an edge of camp
Level of commitment: She’s committed, but she’s winking.
Does it matter? Hahn had a storied career as a sidekick and best friend before playing lead roles in shows like I Love Dick and Mrs. Fletcher. But while Agatha herself has graduated from nosy neighbor to main character, Hahn still carries the part with brisk ease. She makes Agatha lightly absurd, but unpredictable, full of both pain and delusions of grandeur — a second fiddle whose big mistake was trying to take a witch more powerful than herself.
Patti LuPone (Lilia Calderu)
Witch skills: Fortune telling
Acting skills: Gravitas, ability to hit hard consonants, refusal to blend in group singing numbers
Level of commitment: Minimal
Does it matter? A legend of the stage, Patti LuPone has, by her own admission, never seen a Marvel film and seems to only barely comprehend what is happening in Agatha. This, however, is a good thing! A delightful thing! I would not want her to bother learning about any of this. I love her playing this character as if she is just Patti LuPone herself, except 450 years old and with an implied dark past in early modern Europe. (Personally, I’m praying we get a flashback to Lilia’s life in, say, rural Sicily.) In every one of her scenes in Agatha, you see her react to exposition as if she is, herself, discovering how silly all this is in real time. Bellissima.Â
Debra Jo Rupp (Mrs. Hart)
Witch skills: Does she even have them? Agatha drags Mrs. Hart along to the Witches Road as she assembles her coven, but the show implies that Agatha is only pretending Rupp’s character is a witch.
Acting skills: Deadpan whimsy, sitcom-veteran timing
Level of commitment: Happy, if confused, to be here.
Does it matter? Rupp’s presence in WandaVision contributed to a sense of sitcom verisimilitude, but Agatha mostly abandons that bit, so it appears Rupp’s back in Agatha just because it would be fun to have more of her dotty whimsy onscreen. (I agree!) Rupp’s role is relatively small in the first few episodes, but oh, it would be so fun if she ended up being a big bad.
Sasheer Zamata (Jennifer Kale)
Witch skills: Brewing potions and ointments (other magic abilities currently blocked)
Acting skills: SNL-level grandiosity.
Level of commitment: Has found one good angle to work. Â
Does it matter? Zamata’s character is a parody of a Gwyneth Paltrow–style wellness influencer and Zamata leans hard on that characterization like a good comedian given exactly one (1) game to play in a sketch. So far, there’s not a lot else to Jennifer Kale other than the fact that she’s New Age-y and pompous (hopefully we learn more soon), but Zamata sells that bit, so good for her.
Ali Ahn (Alice Wu-Gulliver)
Witch skills: Protection spells, being a nepo witch
Acting skills: Seething anger, delivering much of the exposition.
Level of commitment: Asked to work hard, maybe too hard.
Does it matter? In the first few episodes, a lot of the emotional weight of Agatha falls on Alice. We’re told that her mother was a famous witch and rock musician (the Stevie Nicks echoes are obvious) who wrote a version of the Witches Road song. But Alice also has a lot of complicated feelings of her own about her mother. This means that Ahn doesn’t get to have as much fun as her co-stars because she has to introduce a lot of the anxiety about motherhood that forms this show’s emotional backbone. It’s a thematically interesting angle for the show to take, but rather thankless material to perform.
Aubrey Plaza (Rio Vidal)
Witch skills: General warrior witchiness; she can throw Agatha around the room, and is also good with daggers.
Acting skills: That deadpan sneer you know all too well.
Level of locked in: Maybe too committed.
Does it matter? Aubrey Plaza has made her interest in witchiness well known throughout her career: She once showed up to a morning TV interview dressed as a “Christmas Witch†to promote a book. Her Agatha character is pretty much just that — Aubrey Plaza being witchy — though there is some intriguing sapphic energy going on between her and Agatha, so far underexplored. It’d be nice to see Plaza, who can push herself dramatically, go beyond the expected here, but so far, this is just an extreme version of a persona that is quite familiar.
Joe Locke (Teen)
Witch skills: Just a fanboy, though there’s probably more to him; a sigil bleeps him out whenever he tries to talk to Agatha about his actual identity.
Acting skills: Extreme enthusiasm for the actresses around him.
Level of commitment: Having the time of his life.
Does it matter? Given the amount of mystery about him, Locke’s character is the most likely to go on to bigger things in the MCU, and you can feel him trying really hard to make a good impression. But considering he’s a young gay guy surrounded by character actresses, Locke is also visibly thrilled to be in the company of these witches, which does lend Agatha a level of infectious charm. Congrats to him on getting paid to hang out with Patti LuPone.