Agatha All Along is the first MCU show in a while where the tone came right back to WandaVision, and man, I’ll tell you what, I’m refreshed to see a show I’m actually looking forward to. The first two episodes have dropped, Mrs. Know-It-All is with me on this one, and there’s a lot to get into.

We’ve been looking forward to this ever since we heard it was even a thought in the MCU. And it’s funny, because it has sort of a pseudo troubled production. I say pseudo only because there were a million and one names. It was Agatha and the Coven of Darkness, Agatha and the Return of Agatha, Son of Agatha, I don’t know, whatever. Then it came out that it was all part of a clever marketing thing. You know what? I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sure. The show has been amazing.

Mrs. Know-It-All went in really nervous and didn’t know what to expect. It was the trailers that got her excited, and what the trailers alluded to is what we just saw in these first two episodes.

Right Back to the WandaVision Era

The MCU has obviously had a troubled recent past. Agatha harkens, no pun intended, back to the WandaVision era, and I feel like we’re seeing that era again. By era I just mean right off the heels of Endgame. What you ended up with in WandaVision was, I thought, a really good bridge between what the movies were supposed to be in the MCU and what the series were supposed to be. Then everything kind of went off course somewhere. This felt like the tone came right back.

I’m not going to go blow by blow, but first thing out the gate, the show starts with this very true crime feel, and they even call it out in the show. Mrs. Know-It-All loves procedurals, and for her it was something you’d see on Law & Order.

And then we realize the body in that case is Wanda. They’ve kind of alluded to it even in the trailers. The guy even says it when they’re walking: she got into an accident, she was crushed by something heavy. As we all know, Wanda is crushed at the end of Multiverse of Madness by one of the giant statue things.

Wanda Stuck Her in a TV Show

The real twist to all of this comes when Agatha is finally woken up. Joe Locke’s character, who they just call Teen, shows up. She arrests him.

“What were you looking for in my house?”

“The respect of your peers and a fulfilling home life. But you were fresh out of those.”

He starts casting a spell, there’s all this stuff going on, and finally she wakes up with the help of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal. And she’s stark naked. She’s woken up and the reality sets in.

I think Wanda put her in that TV show scenario. But only her. Because when she walks up to the neighbor, almost in her birthday suit, he’s basically telling her we’ve lived here for like three years and you’ve always been kind of weird. You started to go through this weird true crime phase, so we just kind of said, hey, whatever, leave her be.

I thought that was so interesting. Oh my god, Wanda stuck her in a TV show. I thought it was a neat take.

Agatha Without the Trappings

I love Kathryn Hahn’s take on Agatha now. When she was first revealed in WandaVision, she’s very much the villain and she’s very in control. Here she wants to be that, but she’s got no powers. So she’s having to be nice to people she doesn’t want to be nice to, and you really get to see who Agatha is without the trappings. She’s actually very smart. I think we’re going to learn that she’s really smart, and I think that just makes her doubly dangerous.

One thing people had a problem with when they introduced her in WandaVision was that she didn’t look anything like Agatha in the comic books. Well, the one we’re seeing now, that’s what she looks like. The only difference is in the comic book she has white hair. But she wears the little bird pendant brooch, she’s got the white blouse, she’s got the jacket thing, and I’m sitting here like, this is a brilliant take on the character.

I have a prediction. By the end of this thing we’re going to see her with white hair, and she’s going to be the fully realized, actual Agatha again.

Putting the Coven Together

Then she has to bring them all together, and this is Mrs. Know-It-All’s thing. We actually once had a TV show we were putting together that was going to be about witches in a more contemporary, modern light, so it was really cool to see them do this. There are different types of witches. There are ones who are really good at divination, and they needed a green witch, which I thought was kind of funny given who they got for the green witch.

Mrs. Hart doesn’t realize she’s a witch. I don’t know if the door would open if she wasn’t. Which is funny, because Agatha just sort of pulled her out of the air. She’s a gardener, she’s whatever, because it was a heart on the page. Mrs. Know-It-All pointed out it could just as easily have been a black heart, meaning Aubrey Plaza’s character. She’s credited as Rio Vidal, but there’s a lot of speculation that she’s Morgan le Fay. I don’t know where I land one way or the other, but she’s definitely a mortal enemy of Agatha.

The Deal With Teen

When Teen tries to say his name, there’s a weird thing that happens. She asks who he is, he answers, and she can’t make out the name. When he starts giving his backstory, same thing. Whatever’s going on, it’s filtering.

Mrs. Know-It-All thinks everything out of his mouth is a lie, and that somehow Agatha is being told by magic that he’s not right. That’s why she’s decided to keep him around.

There are a lot of people who think he might end up being one of Wanda’s kids, somehow matured or whatever else. And there are other people who think he’s a character in the comics called Wiccan, a male witch type character who wears a supervillain suit and all that. Mrs. Know-It-All has seen the speculation about the thing that goes over his mouth. It looks like a squiggle line, but it could totally be an M, which would be like Maximoff. She thought the first time it was a squiggle and the second time it was an M. I could see that.

The only other thing I could think of is that Agatha is all new to this all over again. She’s trying to get some of it back, or she has part of it back, or some of the nuances of it. So her filtering out lies comes through as deafening, instead of hearing the lie and knowing it’s a lie.

Seriously, Ladies, Look Down

In the second episode the coven has finally been put together, and the way they did it, I thought it was really good. They get together to sing the song. She hits the bell, the whole bit. But she’s not alone. The Salem Seven, who are like witch bounty hunter assassin people, are coming after her, whether she’s broken rules or whatever. So they’re singing this while Teen is upstairs closing the windows, trying to keep them at bay. At one point Agatha’s trying to piss off the other witches to get them to hit her, so she can absorb the power.

And then they look down and there’s a door that wasn’t there. Mrs. Hart is the one who looks down. We both thought it was silly that nobody looked down sooner. Seriously, ladies. You’re standing over a pentagram.

What I didn’t realize until they showed it in the end credits is that the town of Westview is a giant pentagram. How did I never notice that? In WandaVision I always thought it looked like a circle she had created around the thing. It might have been that shape and I just didn’t notice.

By the end of the episode they’re on the road. She takes her shoes off, which I thought was interesting, and they all follow suit. Then she tells them she never doubted them for a second. Man, Agatha is so dirty. She’s back.

The Wizard of Oz of It All

You have the road. You have all these pieces that feel very Wizard of Oz, which obviously had witches in it. I could see them making those tangential connections, if nothing else just so we as fans go, oh yeah, that makes sense. And as Mrs. Know-It-All put it, Dorothy did meet three characters on the yellow brick road.

They also dropped a clip that wasn’t in the first two episodes. They find themselves in a particular kind of parlor, and Ali Ahn’s character, Alice Wu-Gulliver, is familiar with the place. She says the legend is that the road will take its form based on them. Mrs. Know-It-All’s read is that it’s how people perceive them as witches, the people around them. So that’s where we get the Wizard of Oz type, I’m assuming, which tells me that’s probably Mrs. Hart.

Who Gets Off the Road Alive

I asked Mrs. Know-It-All what the over/under is on any of these other witches getting out of this alive, and she thinks they all are. Wow. She’s only two episodes in, and her thing is she knows it’s supposed to get scarier. There were some really great jump scares, and it’s creepy, but not scary. If it gets scarier, then they might die. If they keep it MCU, she thinks they might actually make it. And if not, it’ll just be Agatha and Teen.

I don’t see it that way. Just from what I’ve seen and what the trailers have shown, remember, Agatha has already been down this road once and survived. What she got out of it was the power she had, which was super strong. Maybe you can only do it once, or maybe she has to ask for something completely different this time. I have a feeling she’s going to end up sacrificing the others, or trying to, or something’s happening with the rest of them. I don’t think this is becoming an ensemble.

Mrs. Know-It-All told me I’m probably right. She just likes to be the optimist.

The Verdict

Agatha All Along Episode 1 is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, and Episode 2 is an 8.5. Mrs. Know-It-All and I actually agree 100% on both. A solid eight for the first one.

Episode 2 is the one people online didn’t like for some reason, and I think I know why. There was a very large chunk of that song. I saw one guy who was worried: is this another hidden musical? As if somehow musicals are ashamed of being musicals. Stop it. With Wicked, you knew exactly what was going on.

Why eight and a half? My immediate knee-jerk instinct was to go nine, because I loved where it went. But we’ve got to have some place to go. That was ultimately Mrs. Know-It-All’s suggestion, and I agree with it. The first episode was really good. The next one built on it, and it was just as good and a little better.

Baby Know-It-All is watching this one with us as well, and I’ll give you her rating when the time comes. I may go dig up some of the Agatha Harkness comic stuff too and get some information out there. Maybe do a Know-It-All Files or something.

I’m so glad we’re back in new stuff territory.

Tell me what you think Teen’s deal is, and whether any of this coven makes it to the end of the road. I’d love to hear your speculation and fan thoughts. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.