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SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the premiere episode of Marvel‘s Agatha All Along.
Agatha All Along has officially arrived. Read on for a full recap of the premiere episode, and if you need a refresher on what happened with Agatha Harkness in the MCU up until this point, Deadline has a refresher here.
When the episode begins, Agatha is in Westview, living a life as a detective for the police department. Episode opens with her driving to a secluded spot in the woods, where a body has been discovered. She’d been on probation for “punching a suspect” but was put back on the force for a case only she can solve.
A woman has been found with blunt force trauma to the head. As Agatha is surveying the scene, she discovers a broach, which she pockets rather than turning it over for forensics.
Cue a procedural-esque intro for a fictional show called Agnes of Westview, which is what Agatha appears to be trapped in since Wanda left town.
After visiting the crime scene, she goes to the library to drop a library slip found with the body off with a “Ms. D Jones,” aka Dottie, played by Emma Caulfield. Turns out, the book was stolen three years ago, belongs to the natural sciences department. Agatha goes in search of the book, hoping for some answers, only to discover that all the copies have been burned.
Back at the station, she’s told that soil samples under the nails of the body don’t match that of the place where she was found. In fact, they only match a sediment found in Eastern Europe — far from her town of Westview. Enter Aubrey Plaza as a federal agent, who the chief of police would like Agatha to work with to solve the case. Needless to say, she’s not thrilled.
After a tense (and eerie) interaction, Agatha goes to a pawn shop to get the broach inspected, dating it back to the 1700s. During the inspection, she discovers the broach is actually a locket, and inside is a small chunk of hair.
Later that night, Agatha is studying the name of the book that was stolen from the library, titled “Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning and Debate.” As she begins to uncover that the title forms the acronym “DARKHOLD,” she’s cut off by the chief of police, urging her to go home for the night.
Shortly after arriving home, a knock at her door reveals Aubrey Plaza’s agent Rio Vidal is there to spitball about the case. Or, at least that’s what Agatha thinks, but when she says she has a lead in the case, Vidal says she’s there for something else. Regardless, Agatha explains that a car crash in Eastview might lead them to the suspects. As she’s pondering, Vidal begins to interrogate her, asking, “Do you remember why you hate me? Are you hiding evidence?”
Before that can be sorted, Agatha hears a noise upstairs and discovers a burglar in her home. She runs after him, chasing him through the streets of Westview before she finally catches him after he’s hit by Agatha’s neighbor, played by Debra Jo Rupp. Who is this mysterious burglar? Joe Locke’s Teen.
At first, she gets nowhere when she tries to interrogate him, but finally he tells her he’s come in search of “The Road.” She tells him: “I was on a road this morning. It led to something pretty awful.”
This makes her think he could have something to do with the murder she’s investigating, but he insists he was in bed, asleep at the time they suspect it occurred. When she slams photos of the body on the table, aggressively trying to jog his memory, they suddenly turn into photos of a flowerbed. When she looks back to the two-way mirror where Vidal had been, it’s turned to a painting. And then the teen is reciting an incantation. So, she throws him in a jail cell for the night.
Instead of going home, Agatha goes to the morgue to ease her mind about the photos and remind herself there is still a body. When she approaches the body lying on the table in the morgue, a new library slip appears in lieu of a body tag, revealing a name: “W. Maximoff.”
Agent Vidal appears out of nowhere, letting Agatha know that Wanda has trapped her in Westview. But now, she’s gone, and she’s taken all of the copies of the Darkhold with her. That’s when Agatha begins to “claw her way out” of the character she’s been forced to play since Wanda left her there. When she finally emerges, she’s the grayscale version of Agness that audiences met in WandaVision — and that’s when the library card reveals that, before Wanda had the Darkhold, it was owned by none other than…Agatha Harkness.
Now that Agatha remembers who she is and the power she is meant to hold, all bets are off. She’s suddenly back in her home, completely naked and livid. She rushes outside without clothes to question her neighbor about how long she’s been in Westview. It’s been three years, he tells her.
With her wits about her again, she tries to wield magic, but discovers she’s powerless. She heads downstairs, clearly looking for something in her basement, but all she finds is a rabbit.
There’s a thud upstairs, which upon further inspection, reveals to Agatha that she actually hadn’t been questioning the Teen in the police station but had actually just locked him in her hall closet.
And if he’s real…that means Aubrey Plaza’s character is as well. But she’s not the antagonistic federal agent, she’s actually the Green Witch, and she’s come for blood. The pair go toe-to-toe for a few moments before Agatha convinces Green Witch to wait until she’s got her powers back for a rematch, rather than exact revenge when she’s so helpless.
Looks like Agatha better figure out how to get her powers back…and fast. There are other witches out there praying for her downfall, including the ominous-sounding Salem Seven, which Plaza’s antagonist warns will come at sundown.
The episode ends as Agatha remembers she’s still got the problem of the Teen to deal with as well, realizing she’s going to have her hands full on this quest.
