What a thrill-ride Agatha All Along has been! Marvel Television ensured that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be entertained this spooky season, offering up pure delight with the bewitching series that has turned out to be a remarkable success for the studio.
Not only has the WandaVision spinoff show continued the ongoing story of the MCU, it has appealed to a wide variety of audiences, bringing in TV fans who loved the original series and general Halloween fans, who were thrilled to see some good old-fashioned witchy content. Releasing it during the spooky season has proven to be genius, as the mysterious show has racked up impressive viewing figures - which is even better for Marvel Studios considering it has been the cheapest Disney Plus series produced by them yet.
Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness shines in the adventure show, which sees the ancient witch and the coven she reluctantly formed head out on a journey into the unknown, walking the Witches' Road in a bid to claim what they want the most. For Agatha, it's the power that was taken from her when she battled the Scarlet Witch in Westview. For Teen, it's answers about his life and who he really is. And for all of them, it's also about reclaiming their power; not just magical power, but their their own power, their agency.
The beauty of Agatha All Along is that every episode has offered up something unique and different due to the variety of the trials that the coven has experienced on the Witches' Road. It also makes it a fun exercise trying to rank each of the episodes, because they have all been so unique. But, like Agatha Harkness herself, we love a challenge; and with that, let's walk the Witches' Road ourselves, and decide which of the MCU and Disney Plus show's episodes are truly the best of them all.
9. "Seekest Thou The Road" (episode 1)
You know it's a good sign of how a show did if its first episode is ranked towards the bottom of the list. That's not a slight on the standard of the premiere but more-so an acknowledgement of how the show continued to build upon that foundation throughout its run. And that right there is how we'd like to honor the first episode of the series, because the show's foundations were strong because of it.
Taking inspiration from WandaVision, "Seekest Thou The Road" opens with Agatha still trapped in her "Agnes" persona that she attempted to use to outwit Wanda Maximoff - and thus, she was trapped in her very own detective-like TV show. But the Scarlet Witch's Hex was no longer up, so she wasn't changing based on the decades and nobody else was under the spell either; so Agnes was simply an eccentric Westview resident that the neighbors tried to be kind to during a very strange episode.
She thought she was a police detective solving the murder of a woman in town, so the residents played along with her. That is, until a visit from Teen (and apparently Rio) set in motion a chain of events that woke her up. And with that, Agatha Harkness was back.
While the first episode moves relatively slow compared to the rest of the series, that was very much intentional. Like WandaVision, it took its cues from television itself, paying homage to detective shows like Mare of Easttown and True Detective and it wore that look very well. The twist that all of the detective work was taking place in Agatha's head was very well-executed, and the sequence in which Agatha clawed her way out of the Agnes persona remains one of the best of the whole series.
This one was released along with the second episode, with both serving as a two-part premiere, and that was an extremely effective decision. As a standalone episode, it doesn't function as a premiere quite as well, but it's still a strong opening to the show.
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