Agatha All Along Will Do to Witch-Adjacent Pop Culture What WandaVision Did With Sitcoms

Showrunner Jac Schaeffer’s latest Marvel Disney+ series will lean into style and self-awareness, much like her previous project.

Much like how WandaVision would homage a different sitcom format with each new episode, Entertainment Weekly reveals Agatha All Along will play with the varying portrayals of witches in pop culture. However, according to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, “We’re a little squirrelly with it.” The EW article explains that after Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) breaks free from the spell Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) used to bind her at the end of WandaVision, she forms a coven with Patti LuPone’s “divination witch, Lilia Calderu; Sasheer Zamata’s potions expert, Jennifer Kale; Alice Ahn’s protector witch, Alice Wu-Gullive; Aubrey Plaza’s warrior witch, Rio Vida; and Debra Jo Rupp’s Westview resident, Mrs. Hart” to walk the Witches’ Road, “a mystical realm that presents its visitors with a series of trials” that resembles the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz. If Agatha’s coven fails these trials, they die—but if they succeed, their “deepest desire” will be granted to them. Talk about high stakes, high rewards, right? As the Witches’ Road also possess a sense of humor, each “trial” will see our offbeat Marvel heroes outfitted in new costumes reflecting different witches of stage and screen. According to Schaeffer, one episode will see the coven dressed as “a Fleetwood Mac-style band.” How does she justify this, you ask? Well, “we’re in ‘Season of the Witch’ and that kind of thing. It doesn’t have that same abundantly clear thread, but it was our system to be able to pull that fun into the show.” Later in the piece, Schaeffer reveals another episode will homage Practical Magic, noting, “that’s my personal brand of ladies in their coastal grandma chic that are backstabbing and duplicitous and fighting for spots at the private school. Those are witches. That’s a coven.” If visual homages to Stevie Nicks and Nicole Kidman seem to strain the definition of “witch” to you, the outlet promises a separate trial will see “the cast dressed as ’80s summer campers messing with a ouija board in their bunk house.” That’s more like it… Schaeffer’s self-described “system” for determining which witches to reference “casts a wider net” than she originally expected. “The world building expands. The first idea was that they would have these trials as witches,” the showrunner explained. “In early days, the tests were sort of like, there’s a fire trial, there’s a water trial. But then, how do we get the illusions in there? How do we get the pop culture in there? Real talk: how do we get the wardrobe and the production design in there? So that was the trick and the guiding light.” I guess we’ll see what she means when Agatha All Along premieres September 18 on Disney+. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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