Agatha All Along Will Do to Witch-Adjacent Pop Culture What WandaVision Did With Sitcoms

Much similar however WandaVision would homage a antithetic sitcom format with each caller episode, Entertainment Weekly reveals Agatha All Along volition play with the varying portrayals of witches successful popular culture. However, according to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, “We’re a small squirrelly with it.”

The EW nonfiction explains that aft Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) breaks escaped from the spell Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) utilized to hindrance her astatine the extremity of WandaVision, she forms a coven with Patti LuPone’s “divination witch, Lilia Calderu; Sasheer Zamata’s potions expert, Jennifer Kale; Alice Ahn’s protector witch, Alice Wu-Gullive; Aubrey Plaza’s warrior witch, Rio Vida; and Debra Jo Rupp’s Westview resident, Mrs. Hart” to locomotion the Witches’ Road, “a mystical realm that presents its visitors with a bid of trials” that resembles the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz. If Agatha’s coven fails these trials, they die—but if they succeed, their “deepest desire” volition beryllium granted to them. Talk astir precocious stakes, precocious rewards, right?

As the Witches’ Road besides person a consciousness of humor, each “trial” volition spot our offbeat Marvel heroes outfitted successful caller costumes reflecting antithetic witches of signifier and screen. According to Schaeffer, 1 occurrence volition spot the coven dressed arsenic “a Fleetwood Mac-style band.” How does she warrant this, you ask? Well, “we’re successful ‘Season of the Witch’ and that benignant of thing. It doesn’t person that aforesaid abundantly wide thread, but it was our strategy to beryllium capable to propulsion that amusive into the show.”

Later successful the piece, Schaeffer reveals different occurrence volition homage Practical Magic, noting, “that’s my idiosyncratic marque of ladies successful their coastal grandma chic that are backstabbing and duplicitous and warring for spots astatine the backstage school. Those are witches. That’s a coven.”

If ocular homages to Stevie Nicks and Nicole Kidman look to strain the explanation of “witch” to you, the outlet promises a abstracted proceedings volition spot “the formed dressed arsenic ’80s summertime campers messing with a ouija committee successful their bunk house.” That’s much similar it…

Schaeffer’s self-described “system” for determining which witches to notation “casts a wider net” than she primitively expected. “The satellite gathering expands. The archetypal thought was that they would person these trials arsenic witches,” the showrunner explained. “In aboriginal days, the tests were benignant of like, there’s a occurrence trial, there’s a h2o trial. But then, however bash we get the illusions successful there? How bash we get the popular civilization successful there? Real talk: however bash we get the wardrobe and the accumulation plan successful there? So that was the instrumentality and the guiding light.”

I conjecture we’ll spot what she means erstwhile Agatha All Along premieres September 18 connected Disney+.

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