Agatha All Along Review: Marvel's WandaVision Spin-Off Is Neither Funny Nor Spooky Enough to Work

The wit and originality of WandaVision is largely absent from Agatha All Along, a spin-off that sends the witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) on a quest with a new group of companions. The series is ostensibly a dramedy with horror elements, but the jokes are weak, and the scares are nonexistent. Judging by the four episodes made available to critics, its creative team don't really know what to do with their brash and self-absorbed title character, who was much more entertaining as Scarlet Witch's antagonist.

While you don't need to watch WandaVision to understand Agatha All Along, it's clearly aimed at WandaVision fans. Overseen by the same showrunner, Jac Schaeffer, it opens with a similar parody schtick, introducing Agatha as "Agnes," the detective protagonist of a small-town crime drama. Like the ensemble cast of WandaVision, she's forgotten her former identity and is now trapped in a world of TV tropes. 

The crucial difference is that while WandaVision thrived as a genre-savvy sitcom pastiche, Agatha's faux-gritty intro isn't interesting in its own right. It may offer some well-observed callbacks to Scandi-noir dramas like The Killing, but ultimately we're just waiting for the real story to begin. This turns out to be a Wizard of Oz-inspired journey through something called the Witches' Road, assembling a coven including potion-maker Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) and fortune-teller Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone). They're joined by Agatha's new sidekick, a goth kid known only as "Teen," played by Heartstopper's Joe Locke.

There's been a lot of speculation among Marvel fans that Teen is actually Billy Kaplan, a witchy superhero best known for his role in the Young Avengers comics — and for being Scarlet Witch's son. If this turns out to be true, I can see why fans might object to Disney's adaptation. 

Teen shares some obvious similarities with Billy — he's a gay, dark-haired aspiring witch — but in practice he's squarely in a sidekick role. His defining trait is stanning the older witch characters, tagging along through a constant barrage of insults from Agatha. This show has been labeled the gayest Marvel project yet, but while that's probably true (including some sexual tension between Agatha and her frenemy Rio, played by Aubrey Plaza), it still isn't sharp enough to handle self-aware queer humor. At present, Teen mostly exists to provide quips and fanboy exposition for the witches' backstories. 

3.5

Agatha All Along

at Disney+

Like

• Aubrey Plaza is reliably fun as Agatha's flirty antagonist

Dislike

• It squanders the horror-comedy potential of its main cast
• The comedy pastiche elements are nowhere near as amusing as WandaVision
• It's a drearily unimaginative take on witchcraft and magic
• It prioritizes a boring quest narrative over basic entertainment value

Like Tom Hiddleston's Loki series, Agatha All Along suffers from a Disney-shaped obstacle: Can you turn a villain into a sympathetic protagonist without sapping their amoral charisma? In this case, the answer may well be no.

In WandaVision, Agatha's appeal was twofold: Kathryn Hahn's comedic talent plus Agatha's gleefully shameless brand of villainy. But in Agatha All Along she doesn't get to do anything particularly bold or subversive, and the writing isn't funny enough to let Hahn shine. Paling in comparison to Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Hocus Pocus, it squanders Hahn, Plaza, and LuPone's capacity for big personality.

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Unlike WandaVision's stylish production design, Agatha doesn't offer much in the way of visual flair. After hyping up the Witches' Road as a deadly nightmare realm, the reality is more of a bland soundstage forest. There's also a dearth of decent physical comedy or (with one brief body-horror exception) interesting magical effects. More damningly, the exposition scenes are played straight, with characters just explaining the next side quest while standing around. Surely no one enjoys this many lore dumps. We do get a couple of musical scenes (love it!), but they're vocal-centric montages rather than true song-and-dance numbers.

For the past few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has embraced its magical side. Outgrowing the military sci-fi phase of Iron Man and Captain America, we've recently seen more stories about witches, sorcerers, demigods, and so on. Agatha and (potentially) Billy Kaplan are obvious choices for a TV spin-off, but so far this show doesn't give them much to work with.

Three years on from her WandaVision debut, I'm not intrinsically invested in Agatha regaining her powers. Nor do I care about the thinly characterized supporting cast. Their quest unfolds like a series of predictable escape room challenges, dogged by a frustratingly basic brand of magical world-building. The cast have talked a good game about the thematic link between witches, queerness, and anti-establishment rebellion, but those ideas aren't present on screen in any meaningful way.

Airing weekly until Oct. 30, Agatha All Along is meant to be a spooky Halloween release. In theory, it targets a healthy market for comedy horror, but it's a far cry from Beetlejuice or Hocus Pocus or The Addams Family. Rather than crafting better jokes or deepening Agatha's role, it tries to keep us engaged by dangling calculated mysteries over future episodes. Who is the Teen? What's the backstory between Agatha and Rio? It's a cynical type of storytelling, and one I only tolerate in comic book adaptations with higher entertainment value. Maybe things will pick up in the latter five episodes, but for now, Agatha All Along has very little to offer. 

Premieres: Wednesday, Sept. 18 on Disney+
Who's in it: Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Patti LuPone, Ali Ahn, Debra Jo Rupp, Aubrey Plaza
Who's behind it: Jac Schaeffer (showrunner and director), Gandja Monteiro (director)
For fans of: Aubrey Plaza and WandaVision, but only if you lower your expectations
How many episodes we watched: 4 of 9