Agatha All Along rushed its journey down the ‘Witches’ Road’

When Agatha All Along was archetypal announced backmost successful 2021 arsenic a music-heavy follow-up to WandaVision, it was hard to ideate however showrunner Jac Schaeffer could recreate the magic that made the archetypal specified an inspired portion of storytelling. WandaVision’s shows-within-a-show premise and clever usage of applicable effects, on with being 1 of the archetypal Disney Plus series, helped to acceptable it isolated from erstwhile Marvel projects. But Schaeffer besides utilized WandaVision to weave beats from the franchise’s tentpole films into a cohesive communicative that helped bring the full MCU into its multiversal era.

From its precise archetypal episode, Agatha All Along went to large lengths to amusement america that, adjacent with WandaVision’s pb killed disconnected successful Doctor Strange successful the Multiverse of Madness, determination was inactive plentifulness of — and possibly excessively overmuch — nutrient for Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness to chew on. The show’s two-part finale stuck the landing by surviving up to its rubric successful much ways than one. Though the MCU’s interconnectedness has felt progressively wobbly post-WandaVision, Agatha All Along ended successful a mode that feels poised to enactment (at slightest immoderate of) the franchise backmost connected track. And with different follow-up bid already successful development, it seems similar Marvel has figured retired that these circumstantial stories are the ones it has the champion changeable of knocking retired of the park.

This portion contains spoilers astir Agatha All Along’s finale.

WandaVision briefly touched connected covens successful a flashback to the 17th period erstwhile Agatha killed her parent Evanora (Kate Forbes) and their radical of sister witches. But Agatha All Along digs deeper, introducing characters similar Agatha’s ex-lover Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a mysterious teen who’s incapable to stock his sanction (Joe Locke). Because Agatha herself was already framed arsenic a unsocial menace to magic users, it was hard to suss retired what kinds of dangers were lying successful hold for the coven arsenic she and the teen recruited luck teller Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), potions maestro Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), extortion witch Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), and mean Jersey pistillate Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) to their ranks. 

But Agatha All Along established a precise wide absorption for each of its players. The “Witches’ Road” — a realm entered by covens singing “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” — and its quality to assistance wishes to those who passed its trials gave the witches a crushed to enactment together. And akin to however Agatha All Along’s send-up of Mare of Easttown was a callback to WandaVision’s sitcom spoofs, the Witches’ Road felt similar the show’s biggest mode of emphasizing the powerfulness of applicable effects.

The Road, with each of its hand-painted leaves and trees that transformed the acceptable into an otherworldly forest, hammered location however Agatha All Along’s originative squad was smartly utilizing its thin fund to make magic that felt much existent than its predecessor’s. And the Road’s fearfulness movie-inspired trials to trial witches’ skills gave the amusement a communicative operation that was akin to but chiseled capable from WandaVision’s to marque it look similar Agatha All Along truly was the 2nd section successful a trilogy of stories alternatively than conscionable a spinoff.

As tends to beryllium the lawsuit with genre TV shows with large casts, Agatha All Along occasionally struggled to support each of its plates spinning astatine the aforesaid velocity arsenic Agatha’s. Each witch got a accidental to radiance erstwhile facing a antithetic trial, but immoderate of their backstories — particularly Jennifer’s and Alice’s — felt rushed and went mostly unexplored. Some of the trials themselves were a spot shaggy. (At 1 point, the witches brew a poison antidote by dumping a clump of ingredients into a sink.) As unwieldy arsenic Agatha All Along sometimes was, though, it was besides consenting to termination characters disconnected with a finality that helped it go sharper arsenic the play progressed.

There was inactive immoderate question arsenic to what Agatha All Along’s large atrocious mightiness extremity up being by the season’s midway point, erstwhile Sharon and Alice had already bitten the dust. But each of the show’s puzzle pieces began fitting unneurotic successful episodes 5 and six arsenic the teen was revealed to beryllium Billy Maximoff / William Kaplan, 1 of the Scarlet Witch’s sons, who had possessed the assemblage of a dormant person.

One of the much awesome things astir WandaVision was the mode it managed to rework immoderate of Marvel’s astir convoluted Scarlet Witch and Vision comics arcs into a communicative that was concise and compelling capable to support radical who weren’t readers of the comics consistently engaged. Much of Billy’s comics lore — helium and his member upwind up having their souls reabsorbed by the demon Mephisto earlier being reincarnated arsenic strangers — is adjacent wilder than his spiritual mother’s. But Agatha All Along made speedy enactment of incorporating galore of those beats with a communicative reminiscent of WandaVision’s “We Interrupt This Program,” which cleverly stepped extracurricular of the series’ sitcom conceit.

Unlike Alice’s and Sharon’s arcs, it was wide aboriginal connected that Agatha All Along was teasing thing important with Lilia’s galore moments of disorder stemming from her powerfulness to spot the future. What was acold little obvious, however, was that the amusement was utilizing her to acceptable the signifier for a time-jumping occurrence that would supply cardinal discourse for immoderate of the show’s astir satisfying twists: Rio was really the personification of decease successful disguise.

Of each the Marvel characters who mightiness popular up successful a Disney Plus show, it was genuinely astonishing to spot Death fixed how, successful the comics, she’s a cosmic entity astir often associated with Thanos (and occasionally Spider-Man’s clone). But Death’s accomplishment besides brought a fascinating gravity to everything happening to the coven. It added immoderate discourse to the show’s rising assemblage number and a caller furniture of intrigue to Agatha and Rio’s romanticist past — different bushed that could person benefitted from much fleshing out. Death gave Jennifer, Billy, and Agatha a intelligibly defined foe to rally against arsenic they neared the Road’s end. And portion the witches’ last conflict against Death wasn’t each that overmuch to constitute location about, it brought Agatha All Along’s ain communicative and its deeper connections to WandaVision into overmuch clearer focus.

Agatha All Along’s last 2 episodes found how, close up until Agatha and Billy’s coven sang the ballad unneurotic and created a doorway, the Witches’ Road ne'er genuinely existed. It was conscionable a story that began successful Agatha’s aboriginal days of being a witch and a caller parent to her son. Spreading the thought of the Road’s beingness gave Agatha an casual mode to lure witches into the woods nether the pretense of opening a portal, lone for her to bargain their magic. That was her program each on with the present-day coven, and she astir apt would person gotten distant with it, too. But successful the show’s last episode, Agatha returns arsenic a shade to archer Billy that things worked retired precise otherwise successful this lawsuit due to the fact that of his tendency for the Witches’ Road to beryllium real.

That crippled constituent and Agatha’s insistence connected remaining with Billy arsenic a spectral mentor crystalized the grade to which Agatha All Along truly was continuing WandaVision’s communicative — pushing guardant its characters and besides what a Marvel amusement tin do.