Is it possible to have sympathy for the devil? It’s a question that’s often asked of movies or TV shows featuring villains as their protagonist, and it’s a question that’s also often, but not always, made irrelevant as the villain spends their time fighting villains. Venom (2018) featured a monster that doled out PG-13 off-screen violence against murderers and other monsters, Black Adam (2022) killed bad guys and fought heroes.
Agatha All Along, the recent TV show spin-off to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, named after the Billboard charting hit single from its predecessor Wandavision (2021), asks just that question. At its center is Agatha Harkness, a witch who had, previously on Wandavision, lost all of her magical powers to Wanda Maximoff in a sky bound CGI slugfest. She lived, but was left behind in a state of limbo, trapped in the town of Westview as a side character sitcom persona.
The story in Agatha All Along isn’t about her trying to become a better person, or reconcile herself over the things she’s done, but to get her powers back, all to the format of the hero’s journey. For Agatha, her call to adventure is the sudden arrival of a mysterious teen with an interest in the witch’s road (complete with its own chart topping single, which is actually a pretty good song on its own). It is a place of trials and tribulations, but the witches that survive the dangers of the road would be granted anything they wished for. It’s a setup that much less complex than Wandavision’s attempt at juggling Wanda’s sitcom hell with returning MCU characters, leading to a more straightforward quest that becomes bogged down by repetition due to expectation.
Several of the episodes toward the first half of the season find themselves moving their characters from one trial to the next, each trial finding itself under the same pattern:
What is everybody wearing now?
What is the trial?
Start the timer!
Everyone must go on their separate ways so that we can learn small things about their characters!
Solve the puzzle!
Where is the next trial?
It’s a format that eschews plot complexity in favor of more character focused storytelling. There are a lot of great moments for characters, with the exception of the Salem Seven, a group of mysterious villains who look mysterious and behave mysteriously and are written out of the storyline before they’re in danger of receiving depth. The show doesn’t escape that repetition until the fifth episode, when a sudden character revelation changes the flow of the story, and especially the show’s spectacular seventh episode that emphasizes narrative payoff.
Agatha isn’t alone in this search for power: she’s joined by a coven of surprisingly easy to find local witches, all of whom have an interest in walking down the witch’s road. Joined by a protector, a potion’s expert, a divination witch, and returning Wandavision resident Sharon, they utilize supernatural aid to cross the threshold and move onto the challenges and temptations of the witch’s road. It’s a fun mix of personalities pitted against Agatha’s overt extroversion. Aubrey Plaza especially chews up every set she’s in, and Patti LuPone’s performance is given an exceptional chance to shine.
The show has a bit of a Hocus Pocus (1993) vibe for a slightly old crowd. Its take on witches and witchcraft is often fun, sometimes playful (eye of newt is simply an old, colloquial name for mustard seed), and sometimes mind bending in its various manifestations. There are costume changes to go along with each trial that are for the most part a decorative choice over a functional one. There’s an episode that takes place in a facsimile of a 1970s era recording studio that revels in the costuming as well as a more stylistic cinematic direction, but that’s the exception over the rule.
It’s the second half of the show that really stands out in comparison to the first. There are still trials to complete but the plot is not satisfied with just moving from one trial to the next, breaking away from the trials to delve deeper into who the characters are and where they came from. The Hero’s Journey is completed in full, but despite any attempts at atonement and change the show doesn’t forget that Agatha has been a villain all along, and really hammers home the monster she has always been.