If you’ve had “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” stuck in your head for weeks, well, sorry, but it’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s likely going to stick around for awhile because according to the “Agatha All Along” songwriters, there are indeed more versions on the way.
Fans first got a taste of the ballad at this year’s D23 Expo, when series star Kathryn Hahn and her coven performed it live on stage. In Episode 2 of the Marvel series, now streaming on Disney+, we got the full “sacred chant” version, as we learned it’s a spell that literally opens the door to the witches’ road.
Then in Episode 4, we got two more iterations: Lorna Wu’s version and Agatha’s coven’s cover. It’s also worth noting that there is indeed a “true crime version” early on in the season — but yes, there are still more on the way.
“Yes, there are more versions,” Kristen Anderson-Lopez told TheWrap ahead of Episode 5. “The wonderful thing is, there’s a secret in each version that you hear. There are secrets revealed.”
But she cautions that, while the lyrics themselves do reveal things, the key to figuring out exactly what the reveals are lies in comparing each version of the song.
All the Songs in 'Agatha All Along'
“I think it’s really important to pay attention to the differences,” she said. “What is that thing when, in legal documents, when you get, like, a red line version? You have to compare the old doc to the new doc. That’s really where the secrets come in, is like, what’s missing, what’s added, what’s changed.”
As it turns out, though, the Fleetwood Mac-esque version of the ballad came first. It took Anderson-Lopez roughly six hours to write the whole thing and figure it out as a love song.
“Then for the sacred version, I had to strip away the love song, but I had already baked the sacred version into the love song with certain words,” she explained. “I was on a college tour with our oldest daughter and I couldn’t go on the tour, so I was like in this balcony above this haunted forest at Vassar, which is an all-female school, which I think must have had witches at some point.”
“The fall leaves were coming down, and I had, like, old Wiccan texts also,” the Oscar winner continued. “I was just channeling the haunted forest, and the sun going down, and the Wiccan texts and I just sort of pieced it all together.”
If that sounds a little witchy in and of itself to you, well, Anderson-Lopez and her husband agree. They definitely think some real magic has been happening with “Agatha All Along” and the ballad.
“I do think that music is magic, in that we know how to make it, but we don’t know why it works and we don’t know how it works, really,” Robert Lopez said. “So, yeah, I think maybe we are a little bit witches, because we are certainly looking to cast a spell and that was our main task with this one, to make people feel like these women could perform magic.”
“When we were on the set and they were doing that sacred chant, everyone expected a green puff of smoke and a flash of light,” he recalled. “It was magical.”
Now, what exactly the future versions will be and when they’ll pop in remain unknown. We’ll just have to wait and see.
“Agatha All Along” airs Wednesdays at 6 p.m. PT on Disney+.
Each Monday after the new episode, TheWrap will have an in-depth breakdown with showrunner Jac Schaeffer. You can check out our conversations for every previous episode here.
