Life’s a Witch: Why I Was Disappointed With Agatha All Along

I started this blog overview of my thoughts before I’d finished Agatha All Along, the MCU miniseries that aired on Disney+ this past fall. More fool me!

I should have seen it coming, because I felt the exact same way about WandaVision, the previous miniseries in this storyline. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me explain the premise.  Also, if you haven’t watched WandaVision but think you might someday, maybe skip on over to a different blog entry, because I can’t really set up this series without… well, not spoiling everything about the previous one, but definitely giving you some information that’s more enjoyable to learn going along with the ride.

Ready?

Okay, so, Agatha Harkness, a powerful witch, ended WandaVision as a powerless witch, and, in this series, she aims to rectify that. Also, everyone is gay.*

Now we’re gonna head into major spoiler territory, because I loved this series right up until the last episode.

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

spoilers

major spoilers last chance

First, why did I like this series from the start? Well, it’s stuffed full of amazing actresses and actors, who all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely. But there’s more to it than that.

I was fascinated by the way Agatha’s character developed. Over the first part of the show, she got to do some interesting things I’d only ever seen male protagonists get to do. She was unapologetically unlikeable. She was selfish. She was cruel. Best of all, she was unrepentant. I liked watching her a lot, but I didn’t like her.

Part of why this worked is because of Kathryn Hahn’s charisma. Watching her play Agatha, the audience trusts that this woman has some psychological consistency, even if we’re not privy to it. Even when she behaves scenery-chewing evilly, we believe she’s doing it for a reason that’s the character’s reason, not the writers’ reason. Until the final episode, there’s enough ambiguity to leave us wondering what’s really going on in her head. We assume that she’s shaping her world to benefit her, and that, if we knew what she knew, everything she does would make sense. Probably not enough sense that we’d agree with it, but enough to understand why she is the way she is.

It also felt refreshing to see an unsympathetic female character who didn’t rely on sexist or facile framing. Agatha has trauma in her past–but it doesn’t redeem her. She isn’t motivated by an absent man. We learn more about her relationship to motherhood as the series continues, but it’s clear that being a “good” or “bad” mother is irrelevant to whether she’s a good or bad person deep down. True, other characters hint to each other and to the audience that she may have committed the ultimate “bad-mother” act, sacrificing a child for her own benefit, but it’s pretty clear that, even if she didn’t, the, like, murders that she’s doing in the present are equally unforgiveable.

Admittedly, just like WandaVision, Agatha All Along doesn’t entirely trust viewers. Episodes include an annoying number of audience stand-ins to lecture Agatha about how bad and wrong she is. The only characters who defend her have equally dubious morals.

Also like WandaVision, this sequel series teased some intriguing themes. Could some aspects of these disparate women’s search for power reflect the messiness of real-world feminism? Could the show comment on the implicit moral of many stories: that only “good” women deserve equality? Could it examine how women both support and sabotage each other and still connect despite messy, incommensurate experiences of womanhood?

I mean, part of the reason why I so disliked how it ended was that I think, yes, the story could do all of those things. Instead, it just… didn’t.**

In fact, spoilery surprise, the series actually ended up being the story of a boy/man! It turns out he was the one whose character was developing this whole time! Because this is basically his origin series!

Please note: male protagonists are great! But not as surprise solo travellers on the hero’s journey. Especially in a series purportedly about a female protagonist that seemed poised to explore relationships between women.

Plus, for some reason, the series really, really, really wants the audience to consider that maybe this young man is just as morally compromised as Agatha herself. Agatha says so, and it’s framed as her telling vicious truths rather than lying to manipulate him. The young man, who up until now, has been the audience’s moral stand-in (even if he doesn’t always live up to his own ideals), agrees with her. But that’s clearly untrue, and the reasons why underscore my problem with how the series ends.

The audience never perceives the young man as being as morally bankrupt as Agatha because his motivations and morals are crystal-clear. What he does makes sense, given that he wants to survive, and he wants the people he loves to survive. Any unequivocally bad thing he does arises out of him losing control of his emotions, not because he’s thought carefully about it. We can empathize with him, because it’s easy to imagine ourselves in his shoes: we have all the pieces of his puzzle, and they all make sense.

In contrast, we do eventually get the pieces of Agatha’s puzzle. And they’re… underwhelming.

The first episode of the series suggests that Agatha sees herself, ultimately, as a force for good, or, at least, for justice: she perceives herself as a violent cop who needs to be bad in order to catch criminals who are even worse. But nothing else in the series supports that view, or that Agatha herself actually believes it. In the end, the series portrays her as a greedy, murdering con artist who just wants power for… what? Its own sake? There’s no underlying purpose, not even the sense that she needs more and more power to survive or to fill some emotional need or even the way an addict needs the object of an addiction. It’s more like, this is what she does because… that’s her nature, which can make sense in real life, but is kind of unforgiveable in a work of fiction in which other characters are granted rich, mostly consistent, inner lives.***

The ending was disappointing enough that it tainted the rest of the series in retrospect. Would I still have watched the show, knowing it would end this way? Sure, Hahn and her co-stars are a blast to watch, and the various set/effect/costume designers are also clearly enjoying themselves. But maybe I would have lowered my plot/coherence expectations a whole damn bunch.

* Free spoiler: NOT GAY ENOUGH THO >:( ****

** Don’t get me started on how Jennifer Kale’s (Sasheer Zamata) arc just kind of got lopped off without any examination of the real-life resonance of a white woman thoughtlessly and selfishly collaborating with the white patriarchy to punish a powerful Black woman. Come on!

*** Not to mention, the con she runs doesn’t… make sense. Like, it relies on people reacting in a specific way when they’re angry, on all of them losing their tempers at the same time, and on three or four people jumping in impulsively with the exact same reaction even though they can see that it’s killing their friends. In fact, it’s such a bad con that, the first time we see Agatha try it (which we know only in retrospect), it doesn’t work because her intended victims immediately see right through her. In fact, at least two of those intended victims are literally incapable of falling for it because they can’t do the thing that would make it work. Like, if she’s gonna be a pure evil double-crosser, at least make her a smart and capable one???

**** OK, but, actual spoiler: it is still “bury your gays” if the only wlw relationship/kiss in a show is literally fatally toxic (and the only queer women are terrible people). Having a cute mlm couple doesn’t change the messaging about queer ladies.