‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 1 Recap: “Seekest Thou The Road”

One of the instantly cool things about Agatha All Along is how deeply it embraces the strange energy and emotional displacement of WandaVision, the chaos magic-fueled Marvel series from whence it came. When we are reintroduced to her character, Kathryn Hahn is not exactly the centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness. Not even close. She’s not even Agnes as we knew her, Wanda Maximoff and Vision’s sitcom-style nosy neighbor. In a riff on what WandaVision wrought, Agnes is now a loose cannon detective in Westview, New Jersey and the star of a small screen murder drama complete with its own moody credits sequence. The single Agnes is a woman whose professional life is inextricably linked to her personal demons. (“Based on the Danish series Wandavisdysen” go the credits lit in blues and blacks, in an even stronger nod to the TV trope it’s riffing on.) But as she investigates a crime scene – mystery victim, scarlet hair, green eyes; who could it be? – this constructed world begins to waver, like an old television’s fading cathode ray tube. This Agnes, and her projected murder show reality? They are the remaining stressful fragments of Wanda’s lasting hex on the town of Westview and Agatha Harkness herself.

But Agnes will soon become Agatha with a little help from her “friends.” It’s immediately electric when Aubrey Plaza appears alongside Kathryn Hahn in Agatha All Along. But Plaza’s not quite her character yet, either. Instead she’s “Agent Vidal” of the FBI, who’s more intrigued with Agnes than anything regarding the case. “Is this really how you see yourself?” Vidal asks with a sweep of the detective’s messy office and a mischievous upturned eyebrow. “Do you remember why you hate me?” 

Agatha has a ton of fun building its flat-surfaced fake reality, and even more fun acknowledging how it will tear it all down. Obviously Rio Vidal is not a federal agent but a witch, a formidable warrior witch at that, and she’s got a history with Agatha Harkness that stretches into legend. The Darkhold is a key part of that history – you know, that crazy powerful magical tome, acquired by Agatha and taken by Wanda, that figures heavily into the dimensional flights of the Dr. Strange sequel – but so is the combative but close connection shared by Agatha and Rio. Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza trading barbs and suggesting a history of intimacy: more please!

Another step to the unboxing of Agatha Harkness is a kid with black eyeliner and a chain wallet currently known only as Teen. (In another ace casting move for Agatha All Along, this is Joe Locke of the acclaimed Netflix teen drama Heartstopper.) Their first meeting is wrapped up in the spell of selective memory that’s afflicted the entire town of Westview for three whole years. But as Agnes’s crime scene photos become flowers, and the two-way mirror in her police interrogation room is replaced by an oil painting, and the kid chants in Latin and proclaims his wish to “walk the witches’ road” with Agnes in her true form – he’s an avowed fanboy who might as well be writing breathless witch stuff fanfic as we meet him – the WandaVision layers are finally purged. With her imprisoned mind freed, so are her inhibitions, and a neighbor’s gotta tell her naked ass what Rio Vidal only hinted at: Agnes has been Agatha all along.

“I got mugged. She took every bit of power I had, and left me with household appliances.” Agatha Harkness has shaken off the husk of Agnes. But the Wanda Maximoff Experience has also left her powerless. If she can depart the suburban blah of Westview and indulge Teen with a trip on the witches’ road, it just might provide a route back to being an empowered and truly witchy woman. But wait a second. If the kid is real, and all of her neighbors are real and not just characters in her murder drama existence, then that means Vidal is also real. And with that realization her counterpart appears in all her black-clad warrior witch glory. “I’ve missed you,” Rio Vidal says with a curved blade close to the throat. “I hate you,” Agatha responds, and it’s clear they’ve got hundreds of years of bad blood. But what else do they have? Because what’s also clear is that this isn’t the first time they’ve been up close and personal. 

With the various misses Marvel has racked up with its recent small screen efforts – better to say nothing ever again about Secret Invasion, its ninth attempt to catch MCU fire in a TV bottle – it’s easy to forget that WandaVision was the first-ever television show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a really really good one. That series had a lot of Marvel signifiers, of course, and the usual connectivity to the studio’s other projects. But it also fostered a distinct irreverence and interest in weird that hasn’t really surfaced elsewhere, save for the occasional streak of crazy in Loki. With WandaVision creator and writer Jacqueline “Jac” Shaeffer aboard Agatha All Along as writer/director/showrunner, the series is already channeling what made Wanda refreshing and strange. It has a silly streak, too, with Kathryn Hahn able to play Agatha both with “Curses!” villain energy and an unexpected sweetness, particularly in her chemistry with Joe Locke as Agatha warms to Teen’s presence. And it’s going to go even more places, as the frame of a hexed Westview is left behind and a new team – a coven, in the parlance of witches – rises around Agatha and Teen. A show is doing something very right when it doesn’t even have to bring in the legend Patti LuPone as a nearly 500-year-old witch with a chip on her shoulder until its second episode.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.