What a crushing disappointment! Agatha All Along is the sequel to WandaVision, which was a work of genius. Wandavision involved the Scarlet Witch and the Vision participating in 1960s style sitcoms, and not really noticing anything was unusual about it. Gradually, however, they start to become aware that they may have ties to superheroes from the 21st century. Agatha keeps appearing in different situations and becomes a woman of mystery. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it yet, but Wandavision was one of the most compelling Marvel works I've ever seen. The Scarlet Witch was a relatively minor character in the Avengers movies early on, but in Wandavision she became a superstar. So I had to watch the sequel, Agatha All Along.
So my expectations were high for Agatha, who we met in WandaVision. The first show was rather good, but it went downhill fast. In Agatha All Along, for some reason Agatha has a different personality than she had when we last saw her in WandaVision. Well, okay... So she meets meets a mysterious young man who dabbles in witchcraft. He too changes his personality from one episode to the next, which is rather confusing. But in any case together they and some friends decide to make a special pilgrimage on the Witches' Road, based on a rumor that something good might await them at the end. Nobody knows what the Road is or why it's there or what the reward is. It's the same plot as the Wizard of Oz.
You know how baseball has unwritten rules of baseball? Well, there are unwritten rules of witchcraft, and the book is very thick. All the witches know about them, but they won't tell us about them. They have these stupid do's and don'ts and rules of etiquette about how to behave or you get zapped from some other realm, and nobody much questions it.
The major problem with the show is that people change their personalities for no reason, week to week. Perhaps the writers thought this would be an interesting plot device, but it just makes the show hard to follow. Maybe they had multiple writers and they argued about how to portray the characters and so they compromised, and each got their chance for different episodes. Who's in charge here, where are we going and who knows what is going on? It's a mess
A basic problem with magic tales is that there are no rules. So, hypothetically, if you have the Wicked Witch of the West fight Agatha, they can zap each other with lightning bolts. "All zapped out, Agatha?" "Ha ha ha, you didn't know I had a magic scroll!" "Oh yeah? Well, I have a magic amulet!" "So what? I have an enchanted sword! Ta da!" ....and so on.
So you go on with the stupid battle till someone gets splashed with a bucket of water and melts. But this is not a plot twist. This is just making it up as you go along who has the last enchantment. We are just waiting on the whim of the screenwriters. This is not creativity. It is just formulaic and one dimensional.
Or you can always say, hey, everything is an illusion, this is not the real world, and have a character wake up and the world vanishes. This happens over and over. Oh, this isn't the real world, either! Poof! It another dream! Nope, this isn't it, either! Wash, rinse, repeat. It is not clever. It's formulaic. Cop out! Not a plot twist.
This is why Agatha is boring, despite lavish sets, beautiful scenery, great camerawork and inspired acting performances. They couldn't quite overcome the mishmash of a script.
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