I hopped onto Agatha All Along very late in the game. I’m talking a week before the finale. I’m going to be real: I did not expect much from this show. I just assumed that Marvel was cashing in on the viral fame of the Agatha winking meme that burst out of WandaVision. Everyone had campy fun with Agatha, let’s milk that!
To my surprise, Jac Schaeffer delivered another incredible piece of TV. Anyone who doesn’t recognize her as a Marvel MVP at this point is dead wrong. In the comic book world, sometimes the market is a sea of shit, and then a writer comes along that just crushes a story that shows you the medium/genre is still bursting with potential in the right hands. That’s what Jac Schaeffer is doing. Agatha All Along is like cracking open a good graphic novel and remembering why you love this universe. WandaVision was already something special, and I’ll be damned if Schaeffer and her team didn’t surpass that show. (Kathryn Hahn going all-in with her performance and becoming a top-tier Marvel villain certainly didn’t hurt.)
In a further testament to Schaeffer’s power, my 13-year-old daughter — who is not the biggest Marvel-head, especially at this age — independently asked out of the blue to watch Agatha. She absolutely loved it. Although, she did declare that WandaVision is still her favorite, which is amazing. She was 10 when she watched that, but it clearly stuck. She’s also been hounding me if Agatha will get a Season 2, and there’s some good news on that front.
According to Variety, Marvel is putting Agatha All Along in the comedy categories for the upcoming award seasons, and not as a limited series:
Although the show was conceived as a miniseries, the announcement regarding its category shifts strongly indicates that “Agatha All Along,” which follows the morally complex yet irresistibly charismatic witch Agatha Harkness, could continue beyond a single season.
The Television Academy’s criteria for limited series state: “The program must tell a complete, non-recurring story and not have an ongoing storyline or main characters in subsequent seasons.”
As I’ve stated several times on this site, I’m very dumb. Just after the Agatha finale hit, Variety did an interview with Schaeffer where it seemed like she was less than thrilled with Marvel. There were some responses that hinted she got screwed over in the creative shake-up over Vision Quest, the upcoming Disney+ series that will catch up with Paul Bettany’s chalky version of the character. Schaeffer was involved with that show, but now, Picard’s Terry Matalas is running things.
More notably, Schaeffer seemed to shut down the narrative that Vision Quest is a trilogy capper for WandaVision and Agatha, which made me say, “Ooh damn.” Well, again, I’m an idiot.
A few days later, Schaeffer sat down with Marvel.com where she basically dropped the Agatha wink in regards to Season 2. “I still feel like there’s more road to explore with Agatha as a ghost,” Schaeffer said. “Get ready.”
I’m not a smart man, Jenny, but that feels like a renewal announcement.