Agatha All Along Trailer is Surprisingly Dark… Until It Isn’t

Television

Another set of witches is preparing to bedevil Disney+. Today, Marvel released a trailer for Agatha All Along, the upcoming WandaVision spin-off that’s had more title changes than it does characters. Agatha All Along finds Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) escaping the magical mind prison Wanda locked her in and recruiting other witches to build a new coven and do evil witchy stuff or something. Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone, Joe Locke, and Sasheer Zamata also star in the miniseries, with Debra Jo Rupp returning from WandaVision with Hahn. Jac Shaeffer, who wrote two episodes of WandaVision and co-wrote Black Widow and Captain Marvel, serves as the series’ showrunner. Agatha All Along debuts on Disney+ on September 18, 2024, and you can see the trailer below:

I’m as skeptical of this show as the next guy, but I have to admit the Agatha All Along trailer isn’t half bad. I like the idea of Agatha being trapped in the same TV show world of WandaVision, and the opening clips of her navigating a True Detective type of series are well done. I also like her taking the forms of several of her WandaVision appearances as she tries to escape, especially the 50s sitcom neighbor. This was one of the best aspects of WandaVision (which I liked quite a bit until it lost every ounce of morality at the end), and although I’m sure they’ll have to move on, I’m glad Agatha All Along is incorporating it at the beginning. I also like that they seem to be going dark with this (for Marvel), or at least trying to; the imagery of dark fairy tales is a nice change of pace for the MCU, with demonic creatures around every corner and the more disturbing elements of witchcraft as the focus. Agatha Harkness, as portrayed on WandaVision, is not exactly Glinda, and this is an opportunity to do something new by making it clear that the main character is not a good guy (“I’m not looking for right-minded witches”), something they should have done with Loki.

But I’m not sure this is an accurate representation of Agatha All Along based on other aspects of the trailer. The final moments that feature what I assume is a possessed girl doing the inverted walk from The Exorcist and other movies are creepy… until it’s drowned out by the characters all talking over each other in what sounds like a desperate attempt to make at least one jokey line stick. This is one of the problems Marvel has had lately; they don’t know when to pull back with the humor like they did early on. This makes me wonder if the dark tone of much of the trailer is a smokescreen and the show will devolve into fluffier Marvel fare, which would be a real bummer. The same is true about the one guy in Agatha’s coven, who appears to be a flamboyant gay stereotype. This can be funny, but again, it doesn’t fit with the darker tone the trailer otherwise sets. You don’t want a scene of scary magic spells to ward off a bloodthirsty demon undone by jazz hands and an exaggerated lisp. But overall, I’m genuinely surprised at the promise this trailer shows, and it made me understand why they’d make a new show centered on what seemed like a throwaway character. I’m not betting on success with Marvel right now – I think even a Vegas casino would cut me off out of sheer pity if I did that – but I’m willing to give Agatha All Along a “maybe.”