REVIEW: Agatha All Along – Season 1, Episode 5, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”

Television Reviews

If “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” makes anything clear, it’s that Agatha All Along didn’t have to be this bad. There are some decent concepts in this show, the cast is made up of good actresses, and the setting has tons of potential. But they’re all wasted; the concepts are never explored in any interesting way, the cast is left floundering with (mostly) bad dialogue and what I have to assume is terrible direction based on their line delivery, and the Witches’ Road is nothing more than an inanimate set, sitting there collecting dust while the coven traversing it gabs on about useless nonsense. For a studio desperate to sell its audience on diversity and inclusion, Marvel could have gone the extra mile (which should be the standard rather than the extra mile – and it used to be) and delivered something that drew people in. Instead, we’ve got this consistently deteriorating placeholder of a series.

Agatha and her coven meet trouble on the Witches’ Road but are quickly drawn into the next house for the next trial. This time, they’re in a teenager’s slumber party in the late 80s/early 90s, replete with a Ouija board for summoning spirits from the beyond. But who’s the specter haunting the ladies, and is it the real threat the ghost or one of their own?

I hope I made that sound more interesting than it actually is. “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” starts off with a lot of promise, as a series of animals scurrying through the dark, enchanted forest that surrounds the Witches’ Road reveal themselves as the Salem Seven (whom I admit to mistakenly calling the Seattle Seven a few times). They made it into the magical realm at some point, and much like they did in our world, they’ve been taking their sweet time hunting Agatha so the show could happen. It’s very strange when they appear, and you see how fast they are, too; they move with lightning speed to make them look creepy, but they’re also somehow too slow to be an actual threat to Agatha or the coven. And when they finally catch up with the coven, they’re so ineffectual that Teen simply knocks one out with a tree branch they’re using to craft makeshift broomsticks. When they encounter another one, they just fly right through her. Wow, how will our heroes ever survive? Marvel has really given up trying to deliver an effectual villain; I know they’ve always had some problems in that area outside of a few really good ones, but they were never this bad. At least Whiplash gave Iron Man some trouble, and Malaketh killed Thor’s mother.

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At any rate, Agatha and the coven construct broomsticks (replete with an obnoxious rant about female domesticity from poor Patti Lupone), and they fly away from the Salem Seven but are quickly drawn to ground by the Witches’ Road as they approach their next trial, which is another house because I guess this is the formula. When they walk in, they’re dressed in the sort of raggedy clothes people use as pajamas because they’re at a slumber party, and here’s another example of how Agatha All Along keeps dropping the ball. This is a great set-up; it’s feminine, but it has the potential to be a lot of fun, with great jokes about the logistics of slumber parties, how girls act during them, what the dynamics of different girl pairings are, and stuff like that. There’s even a Ouija board, which is perfect because it was a staple of sleepovers and parties in that era, and it ties into the mystical setting of Agatha All Along. But “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” ignores all of this and just has them act like they’ve been throughout the show, which is inconsistent and random, changing with whatever the writers mistakenly think will be funny.

That character inconsistency is becoming an even bigger deal as Agatha All Along unfurls. None of these women has a distinct personality or characterization, and that includes Agatha. They act differently from scene to scene, as if the writers have a bunch of personality types on note cards taped to a board and throw darts to see which one they’ll use for any given moment. Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is the worst; she’s nothing like she was when she was introduced – when Plaza was allowed to act like an actual human being – and is now just kind of nuts. There’s no rhyme or reason to her actions or dialogue. I assume they’re trying to convey that she’s crazy, but even crazy people have some kind of consistent personality or character. For example, when they’re flying through the air on the broomsticks, and the Witches’ Road begins pulling them down, they’re all worried and screaming, even Agatha, but Rio just laughs maniacally. What the hell is this? Isn’t she here for a purpose? She seems like she has intentions with Agatha, even though it’s hard to figure out what they are. Someone like that wouldn’t welcome death. But anything for a laugh, I guess. (Not that any of it actually generates a laugh, of course.)

Anywho, they’re all trapped in a slumber party, and they use a Ouija board to commune with the other side. It seems like “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” is trying to make the identity of the spirit talking to them a mystery, but it’s handled too poorly to work. At first, it appears to be Sharon Davis, who died two episodes ago, and she speaks to them by possessing Agatha. But it ends up being Agatha playing a prank, which… why? Agatha is here on serious business, trying to get her powers back, but she makes ridiculous, time-wasting jokes like this? Not only is it stupid on its face, but it doesn’t feel like the Agatha of the first couple of episodes, much less the one from WandaVision. This nonsense out of the way, the spirit of Agatha’s mother appears in ethereal form; the previously-on segment reminds us that Agatha’s mother led the coven that tried to kill her, but Agatha ended up stealing their powers and killing them instead. Here, her mother warns the new coven that Agatha is dangerous and will kill them all and suggests they all leave and let her kill Agatha as she begins to possess her daughter. And honestly, this makes sense; Agatha has shown nothing but self-interest the entire time they’ve been on the Witches’ Road, and Sharon Davis has already died because of it. But Alice decides to save Agatha by using her powers (which she’s never used before because this show loves to be random) to force Agatha’s mother from her. However, Agatha pulls the same trick she did on her old coven and siphons off Alice’s powers, which kills Alice as it did the old witches.

This is where everything gets even weirder; there’s somehow another spirit in the room, and Teen jumps to the Ouija board to ask who it is. It turns out Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son whom she sold to Mephisto, is present as well, and he begs Agatha to stop hurting Alice in a child’s voice. So, Agatha does stop, but Alice is dead. This opens the exit, indicating that Agatha passed the trial. So… what the hell is going on? Rio deduces that this was Agatha’s trial, but she doesn’t seem to learn or accomplish anything. If she had stopped in time to spare Alice, especially if she had to forfeit Alice’s powers, that would have made sense. But she didn’t; she took the powers and killed Alice. It’s a complete 180 from what the previous trials were about; those had Alice and Jennifer having to use their powers to overcome a fear or character flaw, like Jennifer’s hesitance to use her abilities and Alice’s resentment of her mother. Agatha just does what she always does and is rewarded for it. Moreover, she says she isn’t the one who killed Jennifer and took her power despite her seeming to possess said power. Oddly, though, she only mildly protests that it wasn’t her. This is another example of how strange this show is and how poorly acted the characters are; if Agatha really didn’t do this (which I assume she didn’t, no matter how little sense that makes), wouldn’t she be desperately trying to convince what’s left of her coven that she’s innocent? Regardless, they’ve lost faith in her because anyone with a functioning brain would, and suddenly, Teen possesses Jennifer and Lilia and has them throw Agatha into the sinking mud, then has them follow her. (Rio has disappeared for no reason because this show is dumber than an empty box of crackers.)

How’d he do that? Well, that’s one of the good points about “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power;” it does reveal a few things. For one, Teen is Wanda’s son, which is solidified when the Scarlet Witch crown appears on his head at the end. Agatha deduces this, but how is unclear because stuff just happens on this show. We don’t know what he’s up to or why he seemed so genuinely betrayed when Agatha killed Alice, but that’s okay; I understand holding that till next week. We also learn who the Salem Seven are: they’re the children of Agatha’s mother’s coven, and they’re after Agatha because they want revenge for what she did to their moms. Why did they wait hundreds of years to find her? I have no idea; they seem to have been a thing for a while because they’re feared by witches. (Why would they be feared by other witches if their beef is specifically with Agatha?) I’ll also give this episode credit for a couple of funny lines amid the cringe. And, once again, I’m glad that Agatha is being kept a bad person and that the show acknowledges it. I suspect that will change before it’s over, and I wish her personality would be consistent and that Kathryn Hahn would play her straight instead of constantly being wacky. Agatha All Along is a bad show, and “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” is another dip in quality from a rapidly falling series.

Let us know what you thought of “Darkest Hour/Wake thy Power” in the comments!

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