“Agatha All Along” seemingly debunked one fan theory in Episode 4, stating outright that Teen is not actually Agatha’s son, as Kathryn Hahn’s witchy character had begun to suspect. But how much should we really believe that?
After all, the episode, now streaming on Disney+, also revealed to fans that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) is definitely Agatha’s (Hahn) ex. Given that Rio wanted Agatha dead just a few episodes ago — so she says — it could just be a trick. Then again, the longer running theory is that Teen (Joe Locke) is actually Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) son.
Obviously, showrunner Jac Schaeffer won’t give up the answer to that mystery just yet, but we did prod her on it in our latest episodic breakdown interview. We also got some details on what a possible future for these estranged women might look like.
It’s that time again folks. Down the road of “Agatha All Along” Episode 4 we go.
Once again, let’s start with the vibes. We got ’70s vibes in this one. So, why ’70s vibes?
I gotta say, if there’s any criticism of my leadership on the show, I try really hard not to, like, shoehorn a good idea into something. I’m like, “If it works with the larger vision, then it deserves its place.” We were always going to do like a Fleetwood Mac, ’70s, psychedelic, no matter what. If the show had been a spy thriller, I would have found a way to get Agatha in that headband, with the floaty chiffon wings. It just was always in the cards.
I had huge dreams early on that there would be a massive musical number every single episode, and that’s where we had to have more discipline than that. Not just in terms of the scale and production of it, but like, it needs to actually make sense. But this idea of the witchiness, specifically of that era, of the sort of late ’60s, ’70s, those artists at the time who sort of embraced a kind of fanciful, fantasy, magical, sinister thing, felt so right for our show, but for Agatha, specifically.
Just an opportunity to have her be the front man in a situation felt so necessary. And then when we came up with the concept of the ballad, that it was the spell that opened the road, it made me think of like “El Cóndor Pasa,” the Simon and Garfunkel song. The idea of artists taking folk songs and making them into pop songs.
So it was like, oh God, this is a way to do this that has more sophistication than what we were doing in “WandaVision,” where we were, like, doing the title sequences. Which, not to diminish the work there, but this sort of is a deeper bake, I would say.
So that’s part of why we built out the Lorna Wu character. But then, of course, in building out the Lorna Wu character, that was all about the utility of who was Lorna Wu to her daughter? What does it all mean for Alice? That’s really where it comes down is like, we can put these actors in incredible wardrobe and give them an incredible song, but at the end of the day, what’s the emotion of it? And it all comes down to Alice.
And before we get into her, I want to stay on that wardrobe a little longer. Specifically Kathryn’s outfit. It’s a very deep, deep V and I was so excited about it, because in Episode 1, you have her going full nude, and she’s so comfortable in her body. I want to know what kind of conversations you guys had about this. How much was it like “Agatha is comfortable in her own skin, of course she’s gonna show off her body”? Were there conversations?
For Episode 1 there were, because it was Kathryn’s idea to do the nudity there, and it was entirely rooted in character. It was entirely rooted in Kathryn saying, “I just don’t think Agatha would take the time to put on a robe.” She does not care. Naked, clothes, like, she loves a good outfit, but she is, as you say, so entirely comfortable in her body. And it’s not — Agatha doesn’t have the sort of pedestrian thoughts of, “I look hot,” she just, she has a body. It does the job for her. She uses it in the way she wants to use it in the moment she has a desire.
It’s like beyond confidence. It’s something I find so inspirational, and so — I mean, I think Agatha also knows the limitations of a mortal body and wants to transcend that as well, you know? Yeah, I love her whole “This is me, aren’t I spectacular?”
But as far as this episode, I don’t remember having any conversations about how revealing the costumes are or not. Daniel [Selon, the costume designer] has a very beautiful process with each performer. When they do fittings, the fittings are very long because he does such a deep dive and has so many questions. And they play. They just mostly play.
And so I would imagine that they just talked and talked, and came to a consensus, all of the actors. Because they were all so thrilled in their looks. They were so, like, prancing around, and sashaying around, and twirling, and you could just see they all felt incredible.
They looked great, they should feel incredible!
Yeah! And that was the communication between Daniel and me, was often he would report in on like, “We have choice A or choice B. Patti loves choice A. Patti feels great in choice A.” And I would usually, unless there was some story reason not to, I would usually lean into whatever the actor felt dynamite in, because we all know what it means to really feel great in a fit. It changes everything.
It really, really does. OK, let’s go back to the musical number. I love this version of it. But I’m curious, you mentioned wanting to do a musical number every episode, was there ever any kind of consideration of doing a new song for this episode?
It was always that we were gonna stay with “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.” And the reason being because the song is the spell, and from the very beginning, we wanted this show to be a spell, you know? That was the reach was like, how do we make a whole show a spell?
All the Songs in 'Agatha All Along'
And so, to me, this song, it gets into your body because you’re hearing it so much. And you’re hearing it in the score. From the very top of the show, you’re hearing Agnes humming it. But I also think then there’s something ecstatic about hearing new iterations, because then you can hear the changes, because the changes are all significant.
If you listen to the lyrics of the Lorna Wu version, they have enormous bearing on Alice’s story. So no, I never considered another song, because it just would have felt, to me, off the spine. It would have felt like a gimmick, rather than something that is an enhancement of of the path we’re already on.
Well, and also, you had to give Aubrey Plaza a chance to be part of this song. She wasn’t part of the Sacred Chant. You had to let her get in on
this one.
Absolutely. On drums. I will tell you, one of the questions that we had moving into it was, we knew that Kathryn needed to be the front man, right? That was always going to be the thing, but it is Alice’s moment. So squaring that took some conversation.
And where we landed was, you know, Alice is obviously very, very hesitant at the top, and so through the course of the song, we’re watching her step into her power. So Agatha, who is less hesitant or, not hesitant at all, she comes out swinging and does her whole lead singer vibe.
But Agatha intuitively understands how these trials work, right? She leveled Jen up [in Episode 3] when Jen started to panic. Agatha showed up as the reluctant mentor when Agatha’s neck is on the line and everybody else’s — same here. Agatha throws to Alice because Alice is the one who has to transcend in order to save them all.
That’s the other thing. You really build up in this episode Agatha as this almost anti-hero. When we meet her way back in “WandaVision,” she’s just all about power. When we get back to her in this show, she’s about getting her power back. Power is always what drives her. And then through episodes 3 and 4, you pull the layers back on her; you have to give people a reason to care about the most hated witch. How did you go about deciding what points to make her more lovable?
Yes, to your point, we need to sort of see a little bit more of her humanity. [But] the vast majority of the time when you see her humanity, it is still in service of her larger agenda. Like when she helps put Mrs. Hart into the oven, it’s just because Teen makes the point that if they don’t take her, it could screw them all.
But you also — I think what we did try and carve out are the micro moments of her caring. You know, when Lilia comes out of her hallucination and is vulnerable for a second, you see that on Agatha’s face, you see her give Lilia a moment. She doesn’t just come right out with a zinger. She pauses for a second.
You also see, you know, one of the spaces we really wanted to highlight is Agatha’s concern for Teen, despite herself. That like, when push comes to shove, there’s real worry when he gets thrown through the glass in the sound booth. That panics her, and she actually doesn’t go over to him, because it’s too terrifying.
Yeah, it panicked me too!
(Laughs). And in the subsequent scene, when they put him on that tree stump, which, by the way, that was writer Peter Cameron’s idea, was to have a tree stump that, like, he called them a witchy ER team. He said it in the room. I’m like, “I don’t know how we’re gonna — this is what we need, is the witchy ER team. Solid idea. Thank you, Peter Cameron.”
But [Agatha] kind of coming undone in that moment, that was a conversation, even in post, because Kathryn gave us levels there. And I leaned into her distress, because it’s so few and far between in the show, and it is meaningful, I think, to see her so concerned for this child.
And it goes a long way to build that relationship, because then you see it, minutes later, the rug is ripped out from under her, where Rio is like, “Agatha, that boy is not yours.” And there’s a real distress there. Whose boy is he, Jac? That’s all I want to know.
(Laughs). I know. I know! I wonder. If only there was a way to find out. (Laughs). But I do love how Kathryn played their scene when he wakes up from his injury. One of the gifts of the show is the private moments with Agatha. That we see the concern all over her face, he wakes up and looks at her, and she drops the concern. The mask goes back up. And that’s the talent of Kathryn Hahn.
And in addition to this, you also give her an explicit romantic love. You make it explicit in Episode 4, that Rio and Agatha are exes.
Mhm, yeah.
How did you go about building that piece of the story? Especially because you drop Aubrey Plaza out for two episodes. You bring her in, you set up all this tension, and then she’s gone for a little bit. She comes back, “By the way, we’re exes.” How did you decide how to string that out and build the history?
Well first, early days is figuring out who’s this character? And in Marvel, often that’s the development, of like, “Here is this sort of ball of energy person. So, who is this person in the Marvel space? Who is this person in terms of casting?” Sometimes those things kind of coalesce simultaneously.
And so, once we knew it was Aubrey, it’s like, you got to be careful deploying Aubrey. She’s so powerful, their chemistry is so intense. We’re staging them as antagonists, but also ex-lovers, so they can’t just be hanging out the whole show. To maximize enjoyment and tension, you got to have that like, she’s here, she’s gone, she’s here, she’s gone. So that was very deliberate in that way.
Early in the room, we wanted to populate the show with people from Agatha’s past, because she’s had such a long life, how do we do that? And so that was one of the developments of the Jen character, is this is a person who knows Agatha in one way.
And then early on, we were like, “Well, what about an ex-partner, ex-lover, ex-spouse? What does that look like? What does that look like for Agatha, and who would that person be?” And it was so fun in the beginning, because we were like, literally, could be anyone.
I was going to say, did you have earlier ideas than Rio?
We had conversations, but it was more like, “What would Agatha be attracted to?” And the answer was power (laughs). And who would she come in contact with, who wouldn’t be afraid of her, wouldn’t hate her? Who would be attracted to Agatha? And that was the really delicious conversation.
I know you can’t say, but what is the future looking like between them? Is the rift too deep? I assume we’re going to find out exactly what happened between them at some point. What can you tease, very vaguely, about their future?
What can I tease? I mean, you know, nothing. But what I can say is there’s more. Lots and lots more. More, more, more.
You mentioned that Agatha would be attracted to the power of Rio, of Aubrey Plaza. Rio mentions that she is not a green witch, she is the green witch. So talk to me a little bit about this. Because there’s the Scarlet Witch and now there’s the green witch. Are there more “the” witches that we should be ready for?
What I’ll say is, it was really fun to be like, “What are witches in the MCU?” and to have that conversation, and to pull these performers to embody these roles. And, yeah, it’s sort of — it’s another mystery to unfurl as we move forward.
I will leave you with this one. I want to go back to Rio saying, “Agatha, that boy isn’t yours.” How much do we trust that? Because the one thing that you told me during the junket, the one thing that everyone told me during the junket, was “Trust no one. Everybody here is a liar.” So again, is this one of those things that we’re putting the nail in the coffin, that is not Agatha’s boy? How much are we actually trusting this statement from Rio?
I guess what I would say is, at this point in the show, we’re not even halfway there, there aren’t a lot of nails in coffins, except for Mrs. Hart’s (laughs).
Jac!
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Everyone hates me. I love Debra Jo [Rupp] so much, and I love Mrs. Hart, and we value her. But I mean, I think it’s more about why is Rio saying that to [Agatha] is really, I think, the question. It’s just so much more about their dynamic.
Note: this interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
“Agatha All Along” is now streaming on Disney+, with new episodes dropping on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. PT.
TheWrap will have a new deep dive with Schaeffer for each episode the following Monday. You can check out our breakdown of the first three episodes here.
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