Agatha All Along Recap: ‘The Road’ Less Traveled
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Sept. 18, 2024
Agatha All Along Recap: ‘The Road’ Less Traveled
By
Caroline Framke,
a freelance TV and media critic
who has been reviewing TV and explaining how media shapes the world we live in for ten years and counting. Formerly Chief TV Critic at Variety, her byline can also be found at Vox, The Atlantic, The A.V. Club, and more.
Circle Sewn with Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate
Season 1
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
Agatha All Along
Circle Sewn with Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate
Season 1
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick
After spending most of the Agatha All Along premiere inside an entirely fake episode of “true” crime drama, “Circle Sewn with Fate, Unlock Thy Hidden Gate” shows us more of what the series might look like down the road (pun intended; I’ll rein it in eventually). Agatha needs to get her powers back ASAP before the so-called “Salem 7” tracks her down and tears her apart — and much like Velma Kelly, she can’t do it alone.
This is extremely annoying for Agatha, a loner of legendary proportions. She’s such an iconic figure among witches, in fact, that her teen stowaway reveals himself to be a diehard fan who knows such “an egregious amount” about Agatha that he took it upon himself to jailbreak her from Wanda’s spell.
Agatha’s impressed. If this kid could break the Scarlet Witch’s magic, she reasons aloud, he’s no ordinary kid. He also seems physically incapable of telling her who he is or where he came from, though he doesn’t seem to realize that his mouth appears as an eerily stitched squiggle to Agatha whenever he tries. That gives Teen (as Agatha calls him) a certain level of intrigue. Still, his most convincing point is that Agatha’s plan to physically outrun an almighty cabal of witches without any powers of her own is the kind of stupid move that usually ends up in a stupid death.
And so they go on un petit road trip in the hopes of picking up a few witches, the better to summon “The Road.” As per the breathless Teen, the Road will give anyone who makes it to the end “the thing [they] want the most.” For Agatha, who’s been down that Road before, “the thing” is her powers (a.k.a. her “purple”). Teen says he wants the same, but whether you believe him or not may depend on who you think he is, so TBD. Freed of their characters’ grim demeanors from the premiere, Hahn and Locke make a compelling odd couple; in another version of this show, their search for witches could’ve made up half the season.
But Agatha has no time to lose, and so in a bid to blaze through to the episode’s necessary end, their coven recruitment feels more accelerated than is perhaps convincing. Though they only have mere hours to find four other witches who could also use a magic road to solve their biggest problems, New Jersey apparently has plenty of desperate witches to hit up before sundown. (Having grown up in Jersey, this surprises me more than it probably should.) As we learn in each of their introductory scenes, Agatha’s new crewmembers all essentially have the same problem: They’re broke. Not even witches, it seems, can escape the relentless clutches of capitalism.
First, there’s Lilia, a strip-mall psychic who at first plays dumb to match Agatha’s attempt to go undercover as a Southern mom. But Lilia is both sharper than she seems and played by Broadway legend Patti Lupone, so Agatha’s not about to get away with an unconvincing performance. Hahn and Lupone are immediately so funny together that I truly would’ve been happy to watch them throw shade and magic at each other for the remainder of the episode. It’s no surprise that Teen, locked into this magic mission enough that he’s ignoring his boyfriend’s calls, feels the same; he practically levitates with glee watching them spar.
Agatha’s reputation as a selfish power stealer once again precedes her, and Lilia wants no part of whatever she’s cooking up, even though she could use a windfall of good luck to stave off her piling bills. Too bad, then, that Lilia’s Divination powers conjure up a list of potential local coven members — with Lilia’s own name right at the top. Inconvenient for Lilia, but, ya gotta say, how incredibly convenient for Agatha and the series as a whole! It makes sense that Disney+ dropped the first two episodes together with all the setup they have to do for the journey to come. To their credit, the exposition dumps only occasionally grate, in large part thanks to brisk directing and near-instant chemistry between its actors.
With Lilia reluctantly on board, Agatha and Teen set off to get the other witches in line. They find a “magic-bound” Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) in her boutique store hawking probiotic candles, a pretty steep drop-off for a supposed potions master. Like Lilia, she’s not thrilled to realize Agatha has walked through her door, and not just because she’s scaring off customers by loudly yelling about “the Sisterhood of the Traveling Kegels.” (An unleashed Hahn is a perfect Hahn.) “I haven’t seen you since I made a really pointed effort to never see you again,” Jennifer seethes through a tight smile, which Zamata imbues with a flash of real menace. This should set off alarm bells for the No. 1 Harkness Stan in the room. Instead, Teen pulls out his phone and reminds Jennifer of the slew of impending lawsuits against her, planting the seed that the Road could lead her to a more solid route than defending wholesale Goop in court.
The third recruit is Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), a “protection witch” turned mall-security minion who’s already annoyed her boss enough that it takes about 2.5 minutes for Agatha to get her fired. As the group’s resident Mysterious One, Alice doesn’t get much to do yet besides glower through brightly dyed bangs, but Agatha’s efficient enough to let us know that her thing might be trying to figure out “what happened to Mommy.” It’s a vicious little line that Agatha barely registers as such, a moment that caught my attention in the same way her shrugged declaration that “babies are delicious” did. Most sequels/prequels/reboots/spinoffs about villains tend to conclude that, deep down, the villains aren’t that bad. Maybe they’re just wounded and lashing out. Agatha Harkness’s origin story, however, is that she very literally sucked the life out of both her coven and her mother in exchange for more power. It would be tricky to pull off in the grand scheme of things, but it’d also be much more interesting if Agatha All Along doesn’t end up serving a more typical redemption arc.
So even if this “I’m building a team” episode goes too fast to give us much insight into these characters beyond their basics, it does give us more of a glimpse into who Agatha is — not just a witch, but a person. In WandaVision, we only saw her as either the ribald “nosy neighbor” archetype of Wanda’s sitcom world or a cackling villain pushing her over the edge. What this episode does best is convey the overlap between the two that comprises Agatha’s true personality. Laser-focused on her own powerful prize, Agatha deploys a charismatic combination of charm, annoyance, and hostility that swings from hilarious to horrible and back again. I liked the premiere’s crime-drama pastiche well enough, but I have a feeling it’ll be way more fun watching Agatha (and Hahn) lean into slapstick bitchiness as she embraces her true wicked self.
On that note, let’s take a moment for poor Mrs. Sharon Davis, once again roped into a witch’s story of self-discovery against her will. Debra Jo Rupp has long been one of TV’s most reliable and unique comedic presences, but her pleading delivery of the line “If you won’t let us go, just let us die” at the end of WandaVision sold the depth of horrors that Wanda accidentally unleashed on Westview like no other. It makes total sense that she’d balk when Agnes calls her by the name Wanda forced on her; it makes a lot less sense why she wouldn’t immediately leave Agnes’s basement once the witching hour kicks off. It’s not her fault that Agnes would rather sacrifice a bystander than call her ex-girlfriend–archrival for help! Let Sharon go! (…Unless her “green thumb” is, in fact, a clue to her being a lowkey practitioner of Earth Magic, in which case carry on, I suppose.)
Once Agatha has all her witches in a row — each a Marvel character in her own right from across the comics now here to represent earth, wind, and air — the summoning of the Road begins. It won’t shock anyone who’s seen WandaVision or glanced at Agatha’s cast list to learn that the spell must be sung. The premiere already teased “The Ballad” (written by returning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) as Detective Agnes hummed it on her way to investigate a dead body. Now we get to hear the lyrics, which double as an incantation and potential road map (sorry again) for the season to come. This episode’s pertinent stanza:
Seekest thou the road to all that’s foul and fair,
Gather sisters’ fire: water, earth, and air.
Darkest hour, wake thy power, earthly and divine,
Burn and brew with coven true, and glory shall be thine.
Down, down, down the Road, down the Witches’ Road,
Circle sewn with fate, unlock thy hidden gate.
It’s not as meme-ably catchy as “Agatha All Along,” but the Andersons have once again written an earworm of a song to act as a hook for the show. It’s also undeniably effective to juxtapose the coven’s singalong with the arrival of the shrouded Salem 7, who are not for me. Ringwraiths who move en masse with cracking bones in 1.5 speed? No, thank you! Once again, Teen and I are in agreement. He makes a panicked break for it out of the living room from their literal clutches and down, down, down the stairs that have indeed appeared in Agatha’s basement, ready to take them all “to glory at the end.”
• Hahn line read of the week: Despite the many contenders from Agatha’s exaggerated “undercover” personas, the nod still goes to her faux-oblivious “whaaaaaat?” when Lilia (correctly) accuses her of baiting them into blasting her so she can steal their powers.
• Teen referring to Agatha’s Salem years as one of her “eras” begs the question: Has Teen made a Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” T-shirt feat. Agatha, and if not, why not?
• Giving Teen an actual “boyf” is more of an Explicitly Gay Moment™ than I was expecting from Disney+, tbh! Interesting.
• “Who’s this? Another child sacrifice?” [Eye emoji]
• If Disney World doesn’t introduce the Salem 7 to the Haunted Mansion this year, corporate synergy has truly lost its touch.
• The Road is a “shoes off” operation? Good thing Agatha didn’t recruit Carrie Bradshaw, am I right?
• So who do we all think Teen is, then? My bet: He’s somehow related to Agatha’s missing son … or Wanda’s? Discuss!
Agatha All Along Recap: ‘The Road’ Less Traveled
