Marvel aired the first two episodes of their newest series Agatha All Along on September 18, 2024. The show features Agatha Harkness, a character introduced in the series WandaVision, who escapes the town of Westview, New Jersey with a mysterious teenager to face the trials of the Witches’ Road. Agatha, who has had her magical powers taken away, and Teen, form a new coven of witches to face these trials while also dealing with some of Agatha’s old friends.
Agatha All Along was first announced on November 12th, 2021 during Disney+ Day under its original title Agatha: House of Harkness. The series then underwent various name changes which included: Agatha: Coven of Chaos, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries and Agatha until the first teaser was released on May 14th, 2024 when the final version of the title was finally revealed. The teaser trailer was released on July 8th, 2024 followed by the official trailer on August 9th.
While the first episodes were released both on September 18th, the following seven episodes were released on a weekly basis on Wednesdays. The 8th episode and the season finale were then released together on October 30th.
With the exception of the recap and the credits of each episode, episode one is 34 minutes, two is 36 minutes, three is 32 minutes, episode 4 is 35, five is 24 minutes, six is 42 minutes, episode 7 is 29 minutes, 8 is 42 and 9 is 33 minutes long. All of the episodes are available to stream on Disney+. The subscription prices are $7.99 with ads and $13.99 ad-free.
The series features a cast including Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness, Joe Locke as “Teen”, Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, Ali Ahn as Alice Wu, Debra Jo Rupp as Sharon Davis, Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu and Aubrey Plaza as Rio Vidal as well as many other actors.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1 starts three years after her defeat by Wanda Maximoff. Agatha Harkness is under Wanda’s spell which has her believing herself to be a police detective under the name Agnes O’Conner. She is in a crime television show titled Agnes of Westview where she is currently fixated on a murder case.
I started watching the show with my mom and both of us agreed that the show started off very randomly. While it made sense in comparison to how it flowed from WandaVision, it was very confusing to understand and hard to figure out where we were in terms of the Marvel storyline. As the episode continues, the audience meets Rio Vidal, an FBI agent who comes to Agnes and helps her remember her true identity and makes her realize that the Jane Doe in the murder case is actually Wanda’s body.
Getting to this part of the episode, the storyline and where it was heading starts to get a little bit more clear and a lot more interesting. I felt that some things were kind of easy to tell without needing clarification or an explanation further along in the episode which was a little underwhelming at times.
When Agatha wakes from the spell, she realizes that her powers are gone and that Rio, who is a fellow witch that Agatha has history with, is there to kill her. She convinces Rio to spare her until she is able to get her powers back but Rio warns her that the Salem Seven will soon come after her.
I feel that this really set up the future of the next episodes and was just the right pacing that didn’t make the episode feel like it was dragging on too long or feel like it cut off too short without much of an explanation.
At D23 Expo Convention in August 2019, Kathryn Hahn was revealed to be cast in the role of Agnes, Wanda Maximoff, and Vision’s neighbor, in the Marvel Studios Disney+ television series WandaVision. In the seventh episode of that series, “Agnes” was revealed to actually be Agatha Harkness. In several different project pitches, Jac Schaeffer, the head writer of WandaVision, suggested that Agatha be included as a part of some of those projects. This, in turn, led her character and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to create a series that centered her as the main character instead. The show had different writers for each episode which I thought to be really interesting especially because each episode flowed very well into each other and never felt like anything strayed or differed from anything that had been done previously. One of the writers, Laura Monti, is well known in the Marvel world and aided in the creation of the acclaimed line that comes during a flashback where Vision from WandaVision, “What is grief, if not love persevering.”
Disney announced within the first week of the show streaming that it had reached 9.3 million views globally. It also became the top television show currently on Disney+ at the time. Brad Winderbaum, who is the head of streaming at Marvel Studios, states that it had the highest audience retention rate of any Marvel series. Agatha All Along has an 84% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is solely based on its 210 critic reviews. The show is currently pending results at 6 different award shows that will take place in the beginning months of next year.
