Move over gritty crime dramas. The season of the witch is upon us!
Disney+ debuted Wandavision spin-off Agatha All Along last night, and in keeping with the tone of its predecessor this supernatural Marvel entry kicked off its story in a different genre altogether.
We are introduced to Anges of Westview, an earthy, no nonsense detective cut from the same cloth as heroines from such shows as Mare of Easttown, The Killing, and Broadchurch. This rain-soaked, blue-toned show within a show even has its very own opening credits, and we are told is adapted from Danish crime series Wandavisdysen.
Agnes, fresh from probation after decking a suspect, is called to the scene of a murder. A woman’s body has been found in the woods, but in typical prestige crime drama style it looks like she died somewhere else and was dumped in the forest, leaving local police with very little to go on.
A sleep-deprived, coffee-swilling, flannel-wearing Agnes gets to work, snapping on the latex gloves, searching for clues, putting in overtime at her desk, and snarking with her colleagues, and Kathryn Hahn is so damn good in the role, we almost forget we’re watching a Marvel series.
But a sharp reminder comes in the form of Aubrey Plaza’s FBI Agent Rio Vidal, who by appearances seems to share a fraught history (and a ton of sexual tension) with Agnes that the latter can’t quite seem to remember. In fact there’s a lot Agnes can’t seem to recall, and Vidal’s playful probing soon brings her to doubt the nature of her own fragile reality.
Of course, what the audience knows (at least the ones who tuned into Wandavision originally) is that Agnes — Agatha — is trapped in Wanda Maximoff’s distorted spell that conjures a series of comforting TV genre tropes in which Wanda, Agatha and the entire town were previously trapped. But with Wanda now gone, and all copies of the powerful Darkhold with her, Agatha is left to linger, powerless, in yet another TV fantasy land.
Events are pushed along by the appearance of an intruder in Agnes’ house — a mysterious young man with magical abilities of his own. However when Agnes brings him downtown for an interrogation he uses magic to start to break down the walls of Wanda’s spell. A set of gruesome crime scene photos are shown to be a collection of flowers from the garden outside Agatha’s house. The two-way interrogation mirror is actually a portrait, and the holding cell that Agnes locks her young charge in overnight is actually just a closet.
However it’s Vidal who finally tears the illusion apart, showing Agnes that there are in fact two bodies in the morgue. One, with red hair spilling out from under a sheet, is Wanda Maximoff, and the other is Agatha herself. These two pieces of “evidence” are enough to show Agatha the truth.
Dawning realization causes her to strip her clothes, with each layer also shedding a different persona from Wanda’s original spell. It’s a triumphant and well executed scene that ends with a naked Agatha, now fully returned to her senses (minus her magical abilities), angrily confronting her frightened neighbors. The chief of police, a local librarian, and others are all previous prisoners of Wanda’s vision. Used to finding themselves in different genres from time to time they decided to just roll with the latest craziness, we guess.
Enraged, Agatha returns to her house to confront her own prisoner only to be waylaid by Vidal who is intent on killing her, now that the spell is broken. In the ensuing fight both realize Agatha, without her powers, is no match for her opponent. She manages to convince Vidal to stay her hand for the moment.
“This is undignified,” Agatha persuades Vidal. “Don’t you want me at my best? Let me get my purople back, and then come and find me.”
But it appears Vidal is not the only one who wants to see Agatha dead. Agreeing to leave her for the time being, Vidal warns her the Salem Seven are on their way to Westview. Cut to credits.
This latest entry in Marvel’s Disney+ library is just as exciting and fresh as Wandavision before it. Hahn and Plaza are confident, funny when the moment calls for it, and vulnerable at unexpected moments. Both share crackling on-screen chemistry, and it will be interesting to see the history behind their enmity unfold in future episodes.
Although I would have loved to see the crime drama confusion storyline linger over episodes to come, the show clearly has a story it wants to get on with, and a slew of new characters to introduce in episode 2, which sees a motley collection of witches setting out to face the trials of the legendary Witches’ Road.
We can’t help but want to tag along for the ride.
Agatha All Along premiered on Disney+ on September 18, with two back-to-back episodes. The next five episodes are being released weekly until October 23.
The final two episodes will hit our screens on October 30 just in time for Halloween.