Agatha All Along hastened her journey along the ‘Witches’ road’

When Agatha Everything Goes it was first announced back in 2021 as a heavy musical follow-up WandaVisionit was hard to imagine how showrunner Jac Schaeffer could recreate the magic that made the original an inspired piece of storytelling. WandaVisionThe shows within the show and the clever use of physical effects, as well as being a Disney Plus original series, helped set it apart from previous Marvel projects. But Schaeffer also used it WandaVision combining bits and pieces from the franchise’s tentpole films into a coherent story that helps bring the entire MCU into its various eras.

From its first episode, Agatha Everything Goes He went to great lengths to show us that, even though WandaVisionthe lead was killed in the middle Doctor Strange in Various Madnessesthere was still plenty of meat – and perhaps too much – for Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness to chew. The show’s two-part finale is delayed by living up to its title in more ways than one. Although the MCU connection felt shaky in the backgroundWandaVision, Agatha Everything Goes ended in a way that feels right to get (at least some of) the franchise back on track. And with another follow-up series already in development, it seems that Marvel has found these particular stories to be the best ones to knock it out of the park.

This piece contains spoilers about Agatha Everything Goesthe conclusion.

WandaVision he briefly touched on covens back in the 17th century when Agatha killed her mother Evanora (Kate Forbes) and her coven of sister witches. But Agatha Everything Goes digs deeper, introducing characters like Agatha’s ex-lover Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a mysterious youth who can’t share his name (Joe Locke). Because Agatha herself was already positioned as a unique threat to magic users, it was difficult to determine what kinds of dangers awaited this deal as she and a young girl hired the fortune teller Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), the potter’s master Jennifer Kale. (Sasheer Zamata), protective moon Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), and ordinary Jersey woman Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) in their ranks.

But Agatha Everything Goes has established a very clear focus for all its players. The “Witches’ Road” – a place entered by covens singing the “Ballad of the Witches’ Road” – and its ability to grant wishes to those who passed its test gave the witches a reason to work together. And in the same way Agatha Everything Goesposting of Mare of Easttown was a callback to WandaVision‘s sitcom spoofs, the Witches’ Road feels like a great way for the show to emphasize the power of realistic effects.

The road, with all its hand-painted leaves and trees that transformed the set into an otherworldly forest, how hammered home Agatha Everything GoesThe creative team cleverly used their shoestring budget to create magic that felt more real than its predecessor. And Road’s movie-inspired trials to test the witches’ skills gave the show a narrative structure that was similar but different enough WandaVisionto make it appear as if Agatha Everything Goes it was really the second chapter in a trilogy of stories rather than just the conclusion.

As is often the case with TV shows of the genre with large casts, Agatha Everything Goes it occasionally struggled to keep all its plates spinning at the same speed as Agatha’s. Each witch got a chance to shine when dealing with a different case, but some of their backstories — especially Jennifer and Alice’s — felt rushed and left unexplored. Some of the tests themselves were a bit advanced. (Sometimes, witches make an antidote by throwing a bunch of ingredients down the sink.) As unruly as this Agatha Everything Goes at times, however, it was also willing to kill off characters until the very end which helped it become more intense as the season progressed.

There was still the question of what Agatha Everything GoesBig Bad may end mid-season, when Sharon and Alice are already dusted. But all the pieces of the show’s puzzle started to come together in episodes five and six as the young man was revealed to be Billy Maximoff / William Kaplan, one of the Scarlet Witch’s sons, who possessed the body of a dead man.

One of the most impressive things WandaVision it was how it was able to rework some of Marvel’s most-integrated comics Scarlet Witch and Vision into a story that was short and compelling enough to keep former comic readers engaged. Much of Billy’s humor – he and his brother end up having their souls retaken by the demon Mephisto before being turned back into strangers – is much stronger than his spiritual mother. But Agatha Everything Goes he did a quick job of incorporating many of those beats into a memorable story WandaVision‘s “We’re Disrupting This Show,” which cleverly stepped outside of the sitcom conceit.

Unlike Alice and Sharon’s arcs, it was clear at the beginning of that Agatha Everything Goes he was teasing something important about Lilia’s many moments of confusion stemming from her ability to see the future. What wasn’t so clear, however, was that the show was using him to set the stage for a time-jumping episode that would provide important context for some of the more satisfying twists: Rio was actually a death-in-disguise.

Of all the Marvel characters that could appear on the Disney Plus show, it was really surprising to see Death given that, in the comics, he is a cosmic entity often associated with Thanos (and sometimes Spider-Man’s clone). But the arrival of Death also brought an interesting gravity to the whole affair. It added context to the game’s rising numbers and a new layer of intrigue in Agatha and Rio’s romantic past – another beat that could have benefited from more entertainment. Death gave Jennifer, Billy, and Agatha a clearly defined enemy to face as they neared the end of the Road. And while the witches’ final battle against Death wasn’t all that much to write home about, it delivered Agatha Everything GoesHis story and its deep connection WandaVision in sharper focus.

Agatha Everything GoesThe last two episodes reveal that, until Agatha and Billy’s coven sing a song together and build a door, the witch road never really existed. It was just a fairy tale that began in Agatha’s days as a witch and a new mother to her son. Spreading the idea of ​​the Path’s existence gave Agatha an easy way to lure witches into the forest by pretending to open a portal, in order to steal their magic. That was his plan and agreement for today, and he would probably go with it, too. But in the last episode of the show, Agatha returns as a ghost to tell Billy that things went very differently in this scene because of his wish for the witches’ street to become a reality.

That plot point and Agatha’s insistence on staying with Billy as a wise counselor revealed the extent to which it reached. Agatha Everything Goes it was really going on WandaVisionThe story of — to advance its characters and what a Marvel show can do.