I don't know how I feel about Agatha All Along!

There is a lot of discourse around the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) at the moment due to a couple of more questionable releases in recent years. With a meteoric rise between 2008 and 2018, Marvel were almost doing so well that I don't think anyone would have really questioned that there was a possibility it might go wrong. On reflection, maybe we should have questioned harder if they were going to maintain their successes. After all, there was an almost universal positive outlook fans had on their releases. Many fans have since pinpointed where they believe Marvel made their biggest mistakes, some perhaps too vocally. For me, it was around 2020 when they made the move to step up the amount of television programmes they were going to release whilst maintaining the same amount of normal releases of films a year. It became too much for fans to keep up with. I also don't think it helped that often in the cases of most of their TV shows at the time, they made the decision not to use a traditional showrunner. Effectively, Marvel started to use the same approach they had for making their feature films on their TV shows and unfortunately, especially if you ask the fans, it didn't really work.

Years later, their reputation isn't quite as strong as it used to be. Films like Ant Man: Quantumania and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness haven't done as well as previous films in the franchise and the almost universal positive outlook fans had is basically the complete opposite when it comes to their TV shows thanks to the likes of Secret Invasion, Ms Marvel and She Hulk (and others) all having quite divided audiences. Don't get me wrong, they've still had their mega hits with Loki being one of the most highly regarded pieces in the history of the MCU but overall, things haven't worked quite as well as they hoped.  Many fans believe that they effectively oversaturated the MCU with these decisions. They've since made the decision, in part to the writers/actors strikes of last year, to slow down how much they are putting out a year. Going back to quality over quantity if you will.  As a result of this decision, we've only seen Deadpool And Wolverine released into cinemas (which did very well) and with Echo and Agatha All Along being the only TV releases.

This leads us nicely into Agatha All Along...

Agatha All Along is set three years after the end of a previous TV show within the MCU, Wandavision. We're currently 6 episodes in and I would say it's definitely a show that you would need to have watched Wandavision to be able to then have any interest in. The story follows Agatha Harkness, the sometime anti-hero sometime antagonist of Wandavision, as she attempts to go down the Witches Road in order to get her powers back. The show also reintroduces some of the other characters from Wandavision that are no longer under Wanda Maximoff's control as well as other witches that join Agatha as part of her new coven.

After putting some thought into how I feel about the show ahead of writing this article, I think overall it's an interesting premise but something still isn't quite landing for me. It's a similar feeling I felt watching previous Marvel TV releases (although I simply gave up with Echo) and I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is. The cast as a whole is doing a pretty good job - it's hard to find any issues with Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness who looks like she's having an absolutely fantastic time throughout the whole show. Similar to broadcasting icons Patti LuPone and Debra Jo Rupp (who returns from Wandavision). In a way, I feel like the show almost comes across as slightly entitled to the idea the audience will care more about the characters then they actually do. It's like they introduce characters such as Joe Locke's 'Teen' with the same attitude as if it's fan favourites like Captain America or Iron man, only fans don't necessarily feel that way. I don't think it helps that the true identity of the character of 'Teen' was solved by most eagle eyed fans before the show even came out. This meant that by Episode 5 when the identity is finally revealed, it feels quite underwhelming to most viewers, at least judging by most online chatter. From a storyline perspective, I think it's following a fairly safe story arc. Whilst there are moments of tension, there aren't really any points so far where you believe Agatha and 'Teen' won't achieve their goals from the start of the show. Although I am hoping this changes over the last few episodes.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Marvel were almost doing so well with the first few phases of their cinematic universe that no one ever expected them to miss with anything they put out and I believe, like many, that this was most likely because they spent all that time building towards the big conclusion of those phases, Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame. I think it was always going to be incredibly hard for them to maintain the same fan excitement post release of these films as effectively they were resetting back to square one. The mishaps from oversaturation after these films definitely didn't help their case but I still feel pretty optimistic they're going to get it back on track. Although like many, I don't know how I feel about Robert Downey JR returning as Doctor Doom rather than as Tony Stark.

Going into the last few episodes of Agatha All Along, I am still intrigued enough to see how it lands but so far, I am yet to see anything or any moments that I would feel like I missed out if I hadn't watched. There's a lot to wrap up in the last few episodes and I'm worried they're going to end up in the scenario of setting things up with no planned pay offs like a couple of other properties have done (I am looking at you Brett Goldstein Hercules).  We shall see what happens at the end of the Witches Road!

3 out of 5.

(Photo by ©Marvel)