David Farnor | On 19, Sep 2024

Warning: The following contains spoilers for WandaVision.

From Transparent and Central Park to I Love Dick and WandaVision, Kathryn Hahn has long been a star just waiting for a vehicle to fully turn her into a household name. The latter series, a Marvel spin-off from the Avengers franchise, introduced her to living rooms worldwide, and she promptly stole every scene going as Agatha Harkness, a witch in disguise as Agnes, a 50s TV-style nosy neighbour. Now, Agatha All Along gives her a solo outing to reprise the character – and she steals every scene going in this one too.

The idea of cashing in on Agatha’s audience appeal could easily be a massive folly for Marvel, as it chases franchise success and subscriber retention amid a glut of streaming content. An unknown character taking centre stage to navigate a plot that nobody really has an interest in? Arriving off the back of some uneven Marvel outings, the omens aren’t the most promising. That is, until you actually watch it.

We catch up with Agatha once again under the guise of Agnes, as she is living a duped existence in a prison made by Wanda. Beginning with an inspired riff on Scandi crime TV, she’s a downbeat cop working a Jane Doe case without any memory of who she is. Enter Aubrey Plaza as Rio, a vengeful witch, who – together with a teenage would-be witch played by Joe Locke – lead to the walls of this fabricated reality collapsing.

What ensues is a quest to travel down the Witches’ Road, a fabled path that will give anyone who completes it the thing they’re missing. For Agatha, that’s her power – but she can’t travel the road alone. And so she ropes in a ragtag bunch of magical misfits, including a potions expert, Jen (Sasheer Zamata), who is struggling to make a living selling dodgy candles, a divinator, Lilia (Patti LuPone), who is grifting by as a cheap fortune teller, Alice (Ali Ahn), an ex-cop with nowhere else to be, and Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp), who doesn’t really know what’s going on.

It’s a fun bunch, precisely because the cast themselves are clearly enjoying themselves – by the time they’re all bickering and Agatha is attempting to goad them, you’re invested enough in their underdog chemistry, each one as desperate as the next but unwilling to admit it. Sasheer Zamata is particularly fun as the haughty Jen, while Patti LuPone brings an amusing clueless air to her psychic who actually does have gifts.

Joe Locke is entertainingly enigmatic as the teenager who is both amiably earnest in his fandom and unnervingly elusive in his identity and backstory – an understated juxtaposition to Aubrey Plaza’s larger-than-life villain. But there’s no doubting that this is Kathryn Hahn’s show, and she effortlessly segues from poignant tragedy to defiant dastardliness with a bullying cackle and a cunning grin. “Babies are delicious,” she quips at one point, the kind of sinister throwaway line that only she could make funny and chilling in equal measure.

Behind the camera, Jac Shaeffer is as inventive as she was on WandaVision, playing with sound, sets and practical and special effects to keep us disoriented – and, in a standout set piece featuring a catchy musical number, genuinely spooked. Most of all, though, is a feeling of not knowing what’s coming next – something that could have been uninteresting or obtuse, in Schaeffer and Hahn’s hands, becomes intriguingly fresh and new. If the show can channel WandaVision’s knack for balancing emotional depth with upending conventional story beats, Agatha All Along seems destined to be a charming autumnal treat. Either way, it’s worth tuning in just to see Kathryn Hahn work her magic.

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