Do you think Patti LuPone could explain who Tony Stark is? Does she know anything about the multiverse? Could she cobble together three facts about Kang the Conqueror? Or the difference between Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel? Does she know Wanda Maximoff and how she became Scarlet Witch? Has she watched The 4000? WandaVision?
Like the likelihood of Patti LuPone appearing at a Madonna concert, the answer to all of the above questions is no, never, or definitely not.
LuPone will tell you herself that she has no idea how anything in the Marvel Universe works. That makes her perfect for Agatha all the time, where she plays the crazy fortune teller Lilia Calderu. It may seem counterintuitive, but the fact that even one of the stars of the series lacks basic Marvel knowledge shows how easy it is to get into the new WandaVision Spinoff. It’s an absolutely silly teaser for the spooky season, even for non-Marvel fans.
Viewers need very little background knowledge to understand the show. This gives the series a serendipitous narrative buffer that allows everyone involved a little more creative freedom to show us how the craziest 400-year-old witch to ever haunt the planet got back into her groove. It’s a journey that takes us to a parody of Mare by Easttowna scary game with Bravo’s Real Housewivesa tongue-in-cheek riff on The Wizard of Ozand so many strange places in between.
Agatha is more interested in producing witchy nonsense than sticking to superhero seriousness. Each episode is packed with spells, potions and magic rather than reminding you what the Avengers are up to. It creates a weird, spooky world in a way that Marvel’s usual series rarely allows.
Everything you need to know for Agatha is that Agatha Harkness (Kathyrn Hahn) is a sorceress who took on the very powerful Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), also known as the Scarlet Witch, and lost. Wanda stripped her of all power, erased all memories, and condemned her to live in a town called Westview, New Jersey. Agatha’s career is in tatters as she is stuck in the suburbs with no magic and no identity.
Its lowest point is where Agatha all the time records.
Thanks to the help of Teen (Joe Locke), a character who is named “Teen” because he cannot pronounce his real name due to a spell that was triggered by the death of Wanda Maximoff (see: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Agatha breaks out of her trance. Like anyone living a life of quiet desperation in suburban New Jersey, she realizes she must regain her powers. And to do so, Agatha must gather a band of witches – a fortune teller (LuPone), a potion brewer (Sasheer Zamata), a protection mage (Ali Ahn), and an earth magic sorceress (Debra Jo Rupp) – to find the “Witches’ Way” and pass its various trials.
A group of misfits walking down a road and having to help each other along the way? This is a reverse version of another very famous story about a road, an evil witch, a group of new companions, and a pesky redhead where everything is thrown into disarray. Unfortunately for her coven, Agatha is very into backstabbing. Fortunately for her coven, everyone knows Agatha is backstabbing. Getting to the end of the road requires teamwork and keeping Agatha under control – things that neither Agatha nor her coven seem capable of.
When Agatha all the time was greenlit, Marvel mania was still riding high on the back of 2021 WandaVisionthe potential for a multiverse of parallel timelines and worlds and the promise of a new era of Avengers. The controversy surrounding Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence allegations and a string of mediocre films completely derailed that momentum, but the checks were already signed and filming completed for Agatha in May 2023.
Agatha doesn’t have to cover the framework for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the series doesn’t feature a character who plays a major role in Marvel’s larger plans. That could all change, but for now, don’t expect Tony Award-winning LuPone to break out of his Iron Man suit to take on Doctor Doom (as fantastic as that sounds). There also doesn’t seem to be any grand plan for Hahn’s Agatha to team up with any of the existing Avengers.
Without the pressure of being an integral part of Marvel design or having the characters save the world (as is the approach of so many Marvel projects), showrunners Jac Schaeffer and AgathaThe creative team of was given a little more freedom to create a show of their own liking, reflected in the show’s penchant for silly musical moments and numerous costume changes. In an episode later that season (critics were given four episodes to review), the women are trapped in a Nancy Meyers-style seaside mansion, complete with poisoned wine and a treacherous luxury bathroom.
The only predictable thing about the series is that not everyone in the coven will make it to the end, and no one, not even Agatha, is guaranteed a happy ending. Maybe all the witches will turn against Agatha. Maybe Agatha will once again betray the witches who trust her. For once, anything could happen in a Marvel series, and that’s a charming possibility.
