Time moves differently in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. That tends to happen when your franchise releases roughly seven projects in a year — and though Marvel is working hard to make its release slate slightly more manageable, it’s still getting harder to account for everything that’s happened within the MCU lately. Even relatively great stories like WandaVision — which is only three years old somehow — feel like they took place ages ago, such is our capacity for retention. And that leaves spinoffs, like the newly released Agatha All Along, with something of an uphill battle.
How do you bring audiences up to speed without assigning any “Marvel homework”? Can a spinoff continue its story when it’s seemingly so removed from the thing that started it all? Agatha endeavors to answer all this and more in its two-episode premiere — and though it takes a second to ease back into this world, the series does manage to summarize years of MCU history without too much effort.
