Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 1.

Ah, it’s good to be home. And by home, I, of course, mean Westview, New Jersey. It’s been three long years since we’ve visited — and the same amount of time since Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) remembered who she was. If you need a refresher, WandaVision saw Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) put a hex on the town, causing everyone in it to be trapped in a sitcom — well, everyone except Agatha Harkness, that is. A secretly 350-year-old witch, Agatha pretended to be a Westview citizen under her spell in order to investigate what Wanda was doing and how. After revealing her actual identity via an extremely catchy viral theme song (naturally), she attempted to take Wanda’s power but was defeated, with Wanda actually trapping Agatha in the role she played of Agnes, the nosy neighbor.

Agatha Is Trapped in a Detective Show in ‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 1

Agatha All Along Episode 1 picks up three years after that fateful day, with Agatha still physically trapped as the sitcom version of Agnes. Mentally, however, she’s starring in her own show — not a comedy this time, but a gritty detective series, Agnes of Westview, complete with opening credits hilariously stating that it’s “based on the Danish series Wandavisdysen.” (Who among us hasn’t enjoyed a Scandinavian crime drama or two?) It’s rather fitting, considering the whole of WandaVision saw Agatha trying to piece together who Wanda was, and the first episode sees her slowly put together who she herself really is. If there’s one thing creator Jac Schaeffer loves, it’s irony. If there’s another thing, it’s parody.

And parody it does, playing with all the detective genre tropes. It might not feel quite as effective and sophisticated as the sitcom homages of WandaVision, but it’s still an awful lot of fun to watch Hahn chew different scenery as a rugged, no-nonsense detective. The first scene sees her humming a tune that will soon become very familiar, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road,” while on her way to the crime scene of a murdered woman that we will later discover is none other than Wanda Maximoff — kind of. Like most things in Agatha’s life right now, it’s an illusion. In reality, the Scarlet Witch is presumably still where Multiverse of Madness left her, buried under the rubble of Mount Wundagore, but add that to the long, long list of things Agatha doesn’t know at the moment. The fact the crime scene Agatha visits is in the woods — the same place she killed her entire coven, the same place the Witches’ Road will be — is another stroke of genius, acting as a static setting presenting different challenges Agatha is facing at various points of her life. And her Detective Agnes era has no shortage of difficulties. We soon find out that she has just gotten back from being suspended for punching a suspect, so it’s immediately clear we’re dealing with a regular Elliot Stabler here.

The cracks in the Agnes facade begin to show just as quickly, with Agatha experiencing strange flashes of recognition and confusion upon seeing certain things: the body’s blackened fingers, like what happens after you use the Darkhold, and a locket she finds in a nearby puddle depicting a mother, maiden, and crone, complete with a lock of brown hair inside. “Who are you?” Agatha asks the body. “What happened to you?” She’s asking herself these questions just as much as the dead woman. Hahn is a phenomenal comedic actor, but these tiny blink-and-you-miss-it moments of vulnerability are equally impressive. In some twisted way, you can’t help but sympathize with this scheming serial killer and long for her to be able to scheme and serial kill again.

The citizens of Westview we met in Wandavision are back, though they take on different roles in Agatha’s version of things. Herb/John (David Payton) is Agnes’ partner, while Phil/Harold (David Lengel) is the police chief. He’s still married to Dottie/Sarah (Emma Caulfield Ford), who’s the librarian, whereas Norm/Abilash (Asif Ali) works in a pawn shop. Agatha’s investigation leads her to cross paths with all of them, slowly piecing together her own history under the guise of solving the murder. The checkout card she finds at the crime scene, for instance, sends her to some fire-torched stacks, with “every last copy” of the book she’s looking for (the title of which makes the acronym DARKHOLD) destroyed. The dirt under the victim’s fingernails is only found in Eastern Europe. And, is it just me, but does that flannel shirt she wears look suspiciously like a famous ‘50s dress?

Who Breaks Agatha Out of Her Spell in ‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 1?
Image via Disney+

Along with the Westview citizens we know and love, there are two major new character introductions in the form of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and Teen (Joe Locke). Rio enters Agatha’s life under the guise of being a federal agent, one Agatha immediately hates, though she admittedly can’t remember why. Rio plays along with the detective show tropes — bringing pizza to Agatha’s house and letting her spout theories about a car wreck in Eastview, which could have some connection to the murder — but tries to coax the real Agatha out of her Agnes shell by challenging her with some wink-wink nudge-nudge lines. “It’s almost like she magically appeared,” Rio says of the body. “You’ve lived here your whole life — isn’t that true, Agnes?” she prods at another point.

It should also be noted that, right before Rio’s arrival at her house, the show also introduces Nicholas Scratch… sort of. In the comics, Nicholas Scratch is Agatha’s son, and it seems like the MCU may be keeping that lore. We briefly see Agatha peek into a child’s bedroom, complete with a teddy bear and a plaque reading the name. Much to unpack. But that’s not the young boy we really delve into — at least, we don’t think it is. After hearing rustling upstairs, Agatha finds a mysterious goth teenager frantically jumping out of her window and attempting to flee. Not keen to let him get away, Agatha chases him down, finally capturing him after Mrs. Hart/Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) hits him with her car. Teen is incredibly sassy in the interrogation room, and Agatha is, in turn, incredibly violent, even after Rio, who’s looking in on things, warns her to take it down a notch. Teen tells Agatha he broke into her house searching for a road, which Agatha doesn’t understand — just as she doesn’t understand the incantation he begins muttering in another language. Instead, she turns the tables on him, showing him gruesome pictures from the crime scene and demanding to know what he was doing at the time of the murder.

But it turns out there are no gory photographs at all. Rather, Agatha is showing him pictures of flowers. And the one-way mirror Agatha keeps peering at to look at Rio? It’s nothing more than a painting. Frustrated, Agatha throws Teen in a holding cell and heads to the morgue to try to get answers about the body — and she finally does. The name W. Maximoff appears on the library checkout card next to October 13th, and Rio materializes to tell her that Wanda’s gone, along with the Darkhold. “There are two Jane Does in this case,” she says. “You know her name, so what’s yours?” An A. Harkness appears on the spot above Wanda’s name, next to January 21st, and Agatha grows hot, clawing out of her spell — and clawing off all the different decades of clothes we saw her don in WandaVision with it in a pretty sick sequence.

What Is Agatha and Rio’s Relationship in ‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 1?
Image via Disney+

Finally, Agatha wakes up as herself at her house, completely naked and — as she soon discovers — completely powerless as well. This leads to a hilarious conversation with poor Herb/John, who shields his eyes while filling her in on what she’s been up to for three years. For one, she’s been a lot less lucid than she seems to be now — as well as a lot less aggressive. Agatha is, to put it mildly, pretty pissed, calling Westview a “cesspool… where hope goes to die.” She storms down to her basement to discover that, in reality, Wanda’s left her with nothing but household appliances and Señor Scratchy.

She hears a thumping in her closet and discovers the goth teenager from the night before. Oops, it looks like that arrest was actually more of a kidnapping. Realization dawns on her — if Teen wasn’t just a figment of her imagination, then that means Rio wasn’t either. Just then, Rio bursts in, destroying a good portion of Agatha’s house in the process. She’s out for blood, immediately trying to stab Agatha, but Agatha’s scrappy, holding her own for a bit despite being powerless. We learn a lot of interesting tidbits throughout this, let’s face it, extremely homoerotic fight sequence: Agatha hid behind dark magic for many years, Rio can’t kill her because she’s “not allowed” for some reason, and Rio has a black heart that beats for Agatha. These two are going to be deliciously toxic fun to watch together. Agatha convinces Rio to let her regain her power before trying to kill her again. After all, murdering her in this state would be undignified, and she loves it when Agatha’s powerful. While this may be true, Rio reminds her she’s far from the only one who wants her dead, and she’s sending the hungriest ones — the Salem Seven — after her come sundown.

‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 1 Is Fun but Unnecessary
Image via Disney+

Don’t get me wrong, this is an entertaining pilot episode. Watching Hahn ham it up will never not be a blast, and the writing remains clever with all the Easter eggs scattered throughout. It will no doubt be an even more enjoyable watch after the entire show airs, as I can all but guarantee there is foreshadowing and hints going on in every frame we haven’t yet picked up on. But as fun as it is, it also feels a little unnecessary — at least at the moment. The sitcom satire worked so well in WandaVision because it was a continuing theme with a natural progression, but Agatha All Along will almost certainly not have that same kind of payoff with the detective show. Dedicating 10 minutes or so to it as a callback gag might have made sense, but spending a good chunk of the pilot in this fake world seems like a slight misstep in terms of pacing. It’s almost like when a story ends with, “And then it was all a dream.” It will likely work better for people who are less familiar with Agatha’s character and hazier about the events of WandaVision, as there will be a level of mystery and surprise that’s not there for fans who know the show well.

As it stands, Episode 1 feels more like a prologue than a pilot, and no matter how much of a good time it is, one can’t help but be anxious for the real story to start. The show begins in earnest in that morgue — when Agatha finds out who she is — and while the buildup to get to that isn’t all for naught, we could’ve gotten there a little sooner without losing anything. Then again, Agatha was trapped in Westview for 36 months — 26 minutes doesn’t really seem so bad in comparison.

New episodes of Agatha All Along drop every Wednesday at 9 PM ET on Disney+.

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