The two-episode premiere of Agatha All Along has finally arrived on Disney+ to set us on the path down the Witches' Road and whatever madness lies that way, and we're off to a strong start. You can read our review of Agatha All Along's first four episodes if you need any convincing. But right now we're going to take a much closer look at these first two episodes, and we'll break down all the clues and Easter eggs, and what all of it means. With this series being focused on the magical witchcraft portion of the Marvel canon, there's a lot of stuff that's going to be new for most viewers. Warning: The remainder of this article will consist entirely of spoilers for Episodes 1 and 2 of Agatha All Along. Agatha All Along opens back in Westview, some time after Wanda supposedly freed the town and left. But Agatha herself (Kathryn Hahn) is still suffering from the effects of her battle against the Scarlet Witch during the finale of WandaVision--she's apparently a police detective who'd been suspended without pay for some past indiscretion but is being called back in to handle a murder investigation. The victim is an anonymous woman wearing a hoodie and jeans, lying in the middle of the woods after being crushed to death. The only thing the body has on her is the check-out card from a library book, and Agatha finds an old locket not far from the body. She investigates the library to find out about the book--it had been stolen, apparently, and all the library's other copies were burned. And then Aubrey Plaza shows up, posing as another detective, clearly knowing more than Agatha does and amused by her predicament. They have a weird and contentious back-and-forth, but it's interrupted by a teenaged boy breaking into the house. She chases him down and eventually arrests him, and as she tries to interrogate him, her delusion begins to break down--the boy's intervention freed her from her brain fog, and she remembered who she was. Plaza now reveals herself--she's Rio Vidal, and she and Agatha have a very long and, judging by the tension during their scenes, very physical history together. And Rio is out for blood. Agatha manages to get her to back off by reminding her that Agatha's own power is gone and it wouldn't be a fair fight. Rio allows her the chance to regain her power before they fight, but promises to sic the "Salem 7" on her in the meantime. We'll meet these creepy old witches later. And so Agatha makes a plan: She's going to assemble a new little coven, and then that coven will walk the mythical Witches Road, where the thing they're most in need of will be given to them, or something like that. So she and this unnamed teen boy head out on a recruitment mission, and they gather three witches: Lilia Calderu, the fortune teller; Jennifer Kale, the potions master; and Alice Wu Gulliver, a blood witch who's got a very specific reason of her own to walk the Road. And also there's Mrs. Hart, Agatha's neighbor who may or may not actually be a witch. They all gather at Agatha's house, sing a cool song to summon a portal to the Witches' Road, and escape through it just as the Salem 7 assaults the house. But there's no time to relax, because the Witches' Road is going to be just as scary as those old ladies were. But while we wait for that journey to begin in Episode 3 next week, let's go through everything you need to know from the premiere of Agatha All Along, from Easter eggs to story clues and everything else we can glean from these first two episodes. New TV show frame
One of the interesting novelties of WandaVision was that Wanda's spell on Westview made everyone essentially live within a sitcom, and each episode was presented as a different era in sitcom style. Agatha All Along keeps that bit for the very beginning of the series when Agatha is living her fake cop life--but this TV show is a gritty drama called Agnes of Westview, based on a Danish series called Wandavisdysen. This is certainly a nod to the HBO series Mare of Easttown. Wanda Maximoff is the dead woman
We never see her face and she's never named, but the corpse whose murder Agatha investigates is clearly Wanda "Scarlet Witch" Maximoff, and the book she stole from the library is the Darkhold that corrupted her and led to her death in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. At the end of that movie she destroyed the Darkhold and collapsed a building on herself--I'm not sure if this is her actual corpse or just a metaphor, but my read is that Agatha All Along is taking place immediately after Wanda's death, and it was her death that set the events of this series in motion. The Teen
Things really get in gear when this mysterious 16-year-old pops up to try to help Agatha. But we know nothing about him--every time he tries to say anything about himself, including his name, a magical effect prevents Agatha or any other witch from hearing it. There are only two real options for who he is. He's either Agatha's son, who she allegedly traded to Mephisto to obtain the Darkhold in the past, or he's one of Wanda's kids that she had with Vision. We've long assumed it was the latter, but since Agatha's kid is clearly going to be a factor in this somehow, anything is possible. Nicholas Scratch
But we should still take a moment to mention Nicholas Scratch, the name of Agatha's kid as we see on a trophy during one of her hallucinations. Ol' Scratch is not a good guy in the comics, and unfortunately there's nothing in the comics about Agatha sacrificing him or anything--he's just bad the whole time. But he's very likely involved in the events of this series because of the next item. Note: While they share a name, this Nicholas Scratch has nothing to do with the warlock of the same name on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Salem's 7
So these really creepy witches that appear at the end of the first episode have a direct tie to Agatha in the comics--they're her granddaughters, through Nicholas. In the comics, Agatha set up a commune in Colorado called New Salem, and Nicholas took over when she left. Lil Nicky then basically set up a harem for himself and had a whole bunch of kids, including these seven magically enhanced witches who served as his chief enforcers. Lilia Calderu
In the comics, this Romany witch foretold the advent of Wanda Maximoff's power when she was a child, and was among the group of witches that decided to send Wanda to be trained by Agatha. Jennifer Kale
Our potions expert is Jennifer Kale, a witch who doesn't have any meaningful ties to Agatha or Wanda in the comics. But she does, surprisingly, have a weird connection to Deadpool & Wolverine. On Agatha All Along, Jennifer's backstory is that her magical ability was sealed by someone a hundred years before--but in the comics, the person who did it was Headpool, that zombified version of Wade Wilson who doesn't have a body and flies around using a propeller. Alive Wu-Gulliver
This character only has a couple appearances ever in the comics, so we don't really know her that well. But the comic-book version of Alice is a cop who infused her weapons and tools with magic--on Agatha All Along, she briefly alludes to this past. The Witches' Road
Agatha All Along depicts the Witches' Road similarly to how it is in the comics--it's a magical pocket dimension separate from normal reality and only accessible by magic folks. In the comics, Agatha walks it with Wanda, and while there they find the ghost of Wanda's birth mother and they have to team up to prevent Chaos from destroying the place.
|