Agatha All Along Review: A Supernatural Snoozer Kathryn Hahn Can't Save

"Agatha All Along" is a spin-off of "WandaVision," my favorite Marvel show on Disney+. But the reason I love it has nothing to do with Agatha (Kathryn Hahn). If anything, I enjoyed Agnes, the person she "played" on the show of Wanda's (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision's (Paul Bettany) lives, more than Agatha. So I was skeptical when it came to a spin-off. Obviously, Agatha was a fascinating character: A witch who was hundreds of years old and had harnessed the power of black magic until losing it all to Wanda. But what would they do with this character that could warrant a whole show? Between my lukewarm opinion of Agatha and the diminishing returns of Marvel's Disney+ shows in the past couple of years, I was skeptical. In the first four (of nine) episodes of the show made available to critics, my suspicions were confirmed, with some big caveats.

"Agatha All Along" starts with Agatha in her Agnes persona, and although characters, including the young man who breaks into her house known only as "Teen" (Joe Locke), try to give her hints to break out of it, Agnes isn't taking them. That is until about two-thirds of the way through the first episode, in a spectacular sequence that pays homage to her personas from "WandaVision." After that, the show takes on a more conventional edge a la Marvel's other recent shows — at least as conventional as a show about witches can get.

Agatha convinces Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), the witch who would kill her, to wait until she gets her powers back before she comes for her — because it's more fun that way, I guess. She then proceeds to recruit three witches — Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) — and one woman, Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp, who played "Mrs. Hart" in "WandaVision"), who has no idea what's going on, to travel the Witches' Road with her.

She seems to have multiple goals; one is to steal the powers of her fellow witches. Of course, she also tells Lilia that she can only steal her powers if she's blasted with them, and Lilia warns the others, so that may not work out. The other is to get her heart's desire by traveling the Witches' Road, which is something they may not all survive. And that is where we're left in Episode 4.

The beginning of the first episode, when Agatha is convinced she's a homicide detective, is brilliant. It's moody with desaturated shots and just a hint of things being topsy-turvy. But this is also too much like "WandaVision," so something has to give. But the fact that Agatha has to find all new witches to work with, which requires the show to incorporate their stories, seems like a product of the Marvel machine at work.

I'm not familiar with Agatha in the comic books so I don't know about the Witches' Road, but I'm sure it's in there. However, this is the first time we've heard of it on the TV shows or in the movies. and since Wanda has been part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for quite a while, this seems a bit strange.

There's also how we now have to be concerned with all these other witches' backstories even though we have no reason to genuinely care about them. That said, I was interested in what happened to Alice's mother and Jennifer's absent powers as they go through the trials that the Witches' Road requires. That speaks to how good the actors and the writers, who are led by "WandaVision" and "Agatha All Along" creator Jac Schaeffer, are at making their characters sympathetic. 

Still, it's hard not to resent the mechanics of the plot. The Witches' Road is a MacGuffin of the highest order, and this series, like many recent Marvel shows, does nothing to try to make the narrative more organic to the story. Yes, Agatha is a powerful witch, but she traditionally works alone, so the plot feels forced. And the fact that Rio lets her live in the first episode makes the whole thing seem even more ridiculous.

Despite the aforementioned issues, there are some truly spectacular things about "Agatha All Along." For one, the production values are top-notch. The cinematography, by Caleb Heymann, Jon Chema, and Isiah Donte Lee is fantastic, especially as the characters move through different scenarios, first in the Agnes cop show, then on the moody Witches' Road, and finally in the different houses — the ones I've seen are coastal chic and '70s-era rock star-inspired — that each represent a trial. The lighting even goes so far as to distinguish the different witches' hallucinations when they are drugged in one home. The production design by John Collins — and particularly the costumes by Daniel Selon — make these big swings too, making the whole thing especially enchanting.

The acting also keeps up with these changes. While Kathryn Hahn leads the cast with an assured performance, she's matched by Debra Jo Rupp, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Patti LuPone, and Joe Locke, who each do a great job bringing their slippery characters to life. And as she did in "Legion," Aubrey Plaza as Rio, the most enigmatic witch of them all, can play all sides of a character, including the very creepy, so well that she almost sells the idea she let Agatha live because of some internal character dynamics instead of a script imperative.

I didn't hate "Agatha All Along," but I didn't love it either. Overall, the story is thin and seems too manufactured to capture audiences' imaginations. But I enjoyed the show well enough to keep watching. I'm curious to see what happens next, especially since there's at least one more witch trial that will surely bring a new house with a new setting. Also, they've hinted at something having happened between Agatha and Rio and I'm curious to know what it is. But I'm still on the fence about whether this show is just a bunch of good elements that add up to less than the sum of their parts. Only time will tell.

"Agatha All Along" premieres with two episodes on Wednesday, September 18, and a single episode every Wednesday after that until the two-episode finale on October 30.