The spin-off was surely ordained the minute Kathryn Hahn hit her first mark in front of the WandaVision cameras. She played the superhero couple’s nosy neighbour “Agnes”, who was in fact a Salem witch named Agatha Harkness bent on acquiring Wanda’s powers for herself. Hahn’s darkly comic, ineffably compelling performance almost stole the show. It was, for the longtime and well-respected character actor, a star-making part at last.
Agatha All Along, the new nine-part series – from the creator of WandaVision, Jac Schaeffer – picks up just after the final events of the original, which saw Agatha drained of her powers and trapped in the perfect, and therefore hellish, suburb of Westview.
Agatha is an Agnes again when we first meet her – this time working as a police detective (just off a suspension for punching a suspect) on a Jane Doe case. Gradually, as with WandaVision, the walls of this reality break down until it is revealed that in fact she is still in Westview, being warily monitored by her neighbours as she becomes increasingly unhinged. Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), a witch from Agatha’s original coven (which the latter destroyed), arrives to exact vengeance – though she is not allowed to kill her former partner in occult-crime – and tell her that others will be along to finish the job by burning, hanging or drowning. “Really?” says Agatha, by now a battered heap on the floor. “There are no new options?”
With her persecutors due before sundown, there is nothing else for it but to put together a new coven to help her open the portal to the Witches’ Road, which, if anyone can reach the end of it, will restore his or her heart’s desire. In this she is helped by the teenage boy (Heartstopper’s Joe Locke) she discovers she has effectively kidnapped during her detective delusion. He is a huge Agatha fan and has been studying the dark arts. He wants to join her on the journey so that at the end of the road he can be granted magical powers. She doesn’t know his name or anything else about him – someone has enchanted him so that whenever he tries to tell her anything personal, all she hears is silence. Her fellow witches nickname him Teen, which is slightly better than Agatha’s “Random Boy” or “Pet”, though the sweet child seems happy to answer to anything.
Assembling the coven is terrific fun. Everyone has different strengths (divination, potion-making and so on) and reasons for agreeing to accompany Agatha, even though her reputation as a woman as dangerous as she is cantankerous (and no one does cantankerous like Hahn) precedes her. “I haven’t seen you since I made a pointed effort never to run into you,” says Jen (Sasheer Zamata), who has a Goop-ish but unsuccessful wellness store. “How are you? Awful?”
Jen joins the road trip to escape the multiple lawsuits her products have engendered (“Historically, our kind don’t do well in courtrooms”), psychic Lilia (Patti LuPone) to avoid impending homelessness, ex-cop Alice (Ali Ahn) to find out what happened to her missing mother and Sharon (That ’70s Show’s Debra Jo Rupp) because Agatha bullies her into it.
Once they are on the road, the pace picks up as – in true fairytale fashion – their individual and collective trials begin so they can prove themselves worthy of whatever riches lie at the end. Like its progenitor, Agatha All Along subverts traditional tropes and keeps you royally entertained while stealthily filling in backstories and laying the groundwork for increasingly emotional and profound scenes and revelations to come. Only four of the nine episodes were available for review, but I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end we are all crying as hard as we did during the “What is grief but love persevering?” moment of WandaVision.
Although it remains indubitably Hahn’s show – you can’t take your eyes off her as she constantly edges up against scenery-chewing without ever going too far – she is surrounded by excellence. The coven and more peripheral characters (many of whom are returning from WandaVision) don’t have a weak link, and the script is burnished to a high shine and slips seamlessly from comedy to tragedy and back again. There is plenty of action, but plenty of depth too. It’s the perfect show for Halloween season, but an absolute treat any time at all.
• Agatha All Along is on Disney+ now.
