The True Witchcraft of ‘Agatha All Along’ May Be That the Characters Are Allowed to Be Horny
There’s a reason critics (including me) keep reminding readers of RS Benedict’s insightful 2021 essay “Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny”: Because superhero movies and shows keep rolling off the assembly line, made by people who are apparently terrified that the audience might think their characters are recognizably humanoid entities with recognizably humanoid desires (Deadpool, who definitely fucks, being the exception who proves the rule). But it’s possible that some creators working with Marvel have been listening and learning, because if the two-episode premiere of Agatha All Along tells us anything, it’s that the company has finally figured out how to let characters be horny.
The titular Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) was originally introduced into this phase of the MCU in the 2021 Disney+ series WandaVision. Avengers Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) have relocated to the New Jersey suburb Westview for the kind of life that doesn’t require saving the world all the time. But as we watch the couple play out sitcom-worthy storylines (Vision’s bringing his boss and his wife home for dinner and Wanda’s not prepared!) on a sitcom-worthy set, and with sitcom-worthy supporting characters like intrusive neighbor Agnes (Hahn), it gradually becomes clear what’s actually going on: Wanda, aka Scarlet Witch, has used her magic to enchant an entire town so that she could hide there from reality, recasting herself as the heroine in decades’ worth of sitcom scenarios.
Eventually, Agnes reveals herself to be Agatha, a fellow witch who doesn’t respect Wanda’s untutored form of magic, and the two battle in the sky over the Westview town square, as Marvel heroes and villains are wont to do. Wanda lifts the spell for all the townsfolk except Agatha, whose powers she steals, and whom she returns to her Agnes persona, wiping her memory of Wanda entirely.
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Whereas WandaVision brought us Wanda’s versions of various madcap sitcom premises, Agatha All Along opens with a take on a very different kind of show, if one that’s just as recognizable: the pitch-dark season-long crime procedural. Mare of Easttown is referenced in the spoof credits for Agnes of Westview; The Killing gets a nod as the credits also claim it’s “based on the Danish series Wandavisdysen”; and this poster wouldn’t exist if not for the first season of True Detective.
Now Agnes is a detective on the Westview police force, and apparently not a great one: as we meet her, she’s been suspended without pay, only returning to the job because a young woman’s body has been dumped in the woods. Soon Agnes’s chief is ushering in help on the case that Agnes doesn’t want: a federal agent named Rio Vidal. Suddenly an episode that has to this point been as dour as any “dead girl town” show has an unmistakable erotic charge.
Granted, Rio is played by Aubrey Plaza, one of our sexiest actors working today — and you don’t have to take my word for it when this character poster exists.
But in the scene, what seems like typical bickering over jurisdiction is laced with double entendres. When Agnes accuses Rio of wanting to take control of her investigation, Rio purrs, “If you want to be in control, you can be.” Later, Rio shows up at Agnes’s house and they talk, more relaxed. Agnes says she has a lead in the case. “That’s not why I came over,” Rio replies.
As the evening goes on, the subtle signs that Agnes is in a story about magic — the coroner telling her the murder victim is “really most sincerely dead,” Rio joking that Agnes will turn “into a pumpkin” if she travels too far from home — get more insistent. Agnes and Rio end up together at the morgue, where Agnes learns that the corpse is Wanda and Rio tells her how Wanda trapped Agnes in her spell. Agnes grabs anxiously at her collar, gasping that she’s hot. “Yes, claw your way out,” Rio urges, at which Agnes sheds layer after layer of clothes, revealing the Agatha beneath.
When she comes to as herself, she’s back at home, moments before Rio storms in for a fight. There’s no exchanging magical lasers yards apart in the sky this time: Rio’s got to get close to Agatha because she’s fighting with a knife — and with horny challenges like “Do you remember pain? It kind of tickles, doesn’t it.” When Agatha asks how Rio prefers her, Rio shoots back, “Horizontal? …In a grave?” As the combatants get ever closer, Agatha murmurs, “You know you love it — the anticipation.” No one asked me, but: Yes! I do!
In the next episode, once Agatha’s snapped out of Wanda’s spell and joined forces with a fan whose name magic keeps her from hearing — she’s forced just to call him Teen (Joe Locke) — Agatha gets down to the business of assembling a coven. Simply dressed in a button-down, jeans, oxfords and a tastefully neutral patterned wrap, Agatha edits her look to be most appealing to each prospect. Approaching Lilia (Patti LuPone), a local psychic reader, Agatha puts her hair back in a low bun, adds pearls, wears the wrap like a shawl, and speaks in a honeyed Southern accent. For Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata), owner of a Goop-y shop selling dubious wellness treatments, Agatha goes full Laurel Canyon with a casual fedora and messy pigtails. She’s not (necessarily) trying to have sex with these women, but given how effortlessly she code-switches to mirror her targets, she’s not that far off from a witchy pickup artist.
Eventually, Agatha does gather all the witches she needs to join her in singing a spell back at her house. One of them, Alice (Ali Ahn), is the daughter of Lorna Wu, a famous pop star and rumored witch believed to have been lost on the Witches’ Road Agatha’s trying to conjure. I think we’ve all seen enough Fleetwood Mac documentaries to know what happens when highly sensitive people get together to make music, emotions run high, and at least one of them identifies as a witch: People end up getting down in more ways than one.
There are reasons to watch Agatha All Along other than mere prurience: good jokes, for example. After Lilia charges Teen’s debit card for her psychic reading, she lets him know it’ll show up on his bank statement as “Lilia’s Leggings,” but that’s just her side hustle. Jennifer’s not happy that Agatha’s back in her life, and doesn’t pretend otherwise: “I haven’t seen you since I made a really pointed effort to never run into you again. How are you? Awful?” Teen’s attempt to create a festive atmosphere for the coven meeting involves making a “WELCOME COVEN” banner for the fireplace, with a cheerful pentagram drawn in the second “o.” So attention has been paid to elements other than how much at least two of the lead characters definitely want to ravage each other, both violently and sexually, possibly at the same time.
After so many recent Marvel letdowns, my expectations for Agatha All Along were low; this show might not exactly be TV prime rib, but it’s a big step up from the pink slime chicken dinners Marvel’s been serving us lately.
