Agatha All Along is no WandaVision retread: It's loads of clever, campy witchy fun

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https://time.com/7022123/agatha-all-along-review/

By Judy Berman
September 18, 2024 9:00 PM EDT

Ten minutes into the premiere episode of the wonderful new Marvel series Agatha All Along, you might worry that you pressed play on the wrong Kathryn Hahn show. Instead of the powerful witch Agatha Harkness, whom Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff defeated in the finale of WandaVision, her character is Agnes, a mouthy, flannel-sporting, rule-breaking police detective investigating a murder in a prototypical small town. Her condescending foil? An FBI agent sent to keep her in line, played by Aubrey Plaza. It’s giving Mare of Easttown. But what’s really unsettling is the broadness of the performances by Hahn and Plaza, two of the best TV actors of our time.

Those weirdly stiff portrayals are our first clue that Agatha—a WandaVision spin-off from that series’ showrunner, Jac Schaefer, whose first two episodes are now streaming on Disney+—is having a bit of fun with us. Hahn is hamming it up Mare-style because Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) seized Agatha’s powers and sealed her in the same suburban nightmare that had sent the Scarlet Witch hurtling through 20th century family-sitcom clichés for much of the series that bears her name. Who knows how many Strong Female Leads Agatha has been shoehorned into in the three years she’s spent trapped in the TV-trope hellscape that is Westview, New Jersey? Happily, we never find out; Agatha is no WandaVision retread, and its detour into detective-drama hackery is just the first of its many delightful, hyper-culturally-literate surprises.