All along, Agatha has been making us care about Marvel again

I lost faith in superheroes. That was all of us. Just look at the box office, where stories with new characters are liked Madam Web And The crow bomb. And even superheroes who have become famous in recent years are faltering. Joker: Folie à Deux failed despite its predecessor making a billion dollars worldwide. Even Venom: The Last Dance had a mediocre opening weekend and failed to top any of its previous installments.

Marvel Studios, the longtime leader in cinematic superheroes, is no exception. Last year, I and many other cultural critics lamented the demise of the MCU after 2019 Avengers: Endgame. The studio produced mediocre television series on Disney+, while its films, The miracles And Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniafell far short of expectations in cinemas.

Read more: How Marvel lost its way

To its credit, Marvel Studios produced the only superhero hit of 2024: Deadpool and Wolverine. But as this film continually reminds its audience, Disney had to bring a 56-year-old Hugh Jackman out of retirement and literally bring his character Wolverine from the grave to make the head-turning film. After spending the last five years convincing its audience of new characters, Marvel seems to have all but given up.

Instead, they are resurrecting old power players. Robert Downey Jr. will return to the MCU in future Avengers films not as Iron Man, but as Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom. Disney and Sony appear to have finally found a low-key Tom Holland for a fourth Spider-Man film. Disney+ will even show the biggest superhero show of 2025 on television Daredevil: Reborna semi-reboot of the popular Netflix series, whose last season debuted in 2018.

Read more: Why Robert Downey Jr.'s surprise return to Marvel might work – and why it might not

In the midst of this superhero crisis came Agatha all the timea charming show that should be the model for future Marvel TV films – and why not? A WandaVision Spinoff featuring the most marginal characters in Marvel's toy box, Agatha was a fun Halloween diversion that, much like its predecessor, revealed some deep emotional truths.

The show that pleases WandaVision was created by Jac Schaeffer and initially seemed explicitly intended not for Marvel fans, but for witch fans. The film made the most of its charming leads, Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza, who flirted with each other over dead bodies. Hahn's villainous Agatha formed a circle and began wandering down a dark, twisted version of the Yellow Brick Road. Each episode involved some sort of test that the witches had to pass and an associated costume change. It may not have been clearly connected to the larger MCU, but who cares?

And then something interesting happened. In the second half of the season Agatha all the time turned its attention away from a fun but ultimately shallow premise and dedicated each episode to a specific character. Suddenly, Agatha broken open and revealed its depths.

As it turned out, it was the protagonist of the series not Agatha all the time, except for Billy Maximoff, played with impressive nuance by Joe Locke. For everyone who missed it WandaVision (And you've probably been very confused by the recent episodes of Agatha If so, here's a quick summary: Wanda Maximoff is a very powerful witch who created a fantasy world after the loss of her lover, Vision. In it, she and a very vivid Vision live together in a cozy suburb behind a white picket fence with twin children Tommy and Billy. Eventually it turns out that Wanda is controlling the minds of the entire town in order to live out her fantasy and escape her grief. She eventually gives up her power and “kills” her imaginary family in the process.

In a late season episode of Agatha all the timewe learn that the magical Billy survived when Wanda destroyed her fantasy world by finding a nearby body to inhabit: his soul awakened in a teenager named William, who had just died in a car accident. Billy's struggle to clarify his identity as a mystical being while posing as a normal teenager was surprisingly touching. It reminded me of a popular show in this genre, Buffy, used horror tropes to explore the complications of growing up.

Another episode was dedicated to Lilia, a witch who lives non-linearly, played by the great Patti LuPone. Jumping back and forth in time made for a confusing episode that finally made the viewer understand why Lilia seemed so “crazy” and built sympathy. It's the kind of character work that helped Lilia's sacrifice to save the other witches end with a slap in the face rather than a shrug at the end of the episode.

In the final two episodes of the series, which aired together on the eve of Halloween, Agatha finally revealed her origin story. Centuries ago, we see Agatha in labor, pleading with the physical manifestation of Death (played by the dizzying Aubrey Plaza) to buy time for her dying son. Death, her ex-lover, grants her some time but warns her that none of the mortals can escape their final fate. When Death finally takes the boy, Agatha fears that she will meet her son in the afterlife and does everything she can to avoid her own death.

Agatha runs a centuries-long deception in which she convinces other witches that they can gain powers by walking down a made-up path called “Witch Street” (the setting of the entire series) in order to steal their powers, live forever, and thus escaping her eventual confrontation with her child in the afterlife. It is only when Billy accidentally creates a fantasy about Witch Street – similar to how his mother created her delusions about suburban life – that a coven of witches actually takes the dangerous path.

The final episodes are full of twists: the road wasn't real; Billy becomes the superhero Wicca; Agatha sacrifices herself and returns as a ghost; Billy is able to find a corpse to put his twin brother Tommy's soul into. (Luckily the show spared us the Tommy stunt casting.)

But the biggest trick of Agatha all the time is that the show used its extended time on the small screen to make us empathize with Agatha and Billy. As Billy and Agatha's ghost sets out to find Tommy, we're not just looking forward to seeing another random fetch quest. We delve into Billy's emotional journey as he reunites with his family.

Read more: All future MCU films announced in Marvel's major revamp

When WandaVision It premiered in January 2021 and was something of a miracle. The first Disney+ show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was nothing like the films that came before it. Each episode looked at a different era of the sitcom – from Bewitched To Modern family. But Schaeffer was most interested in character development. The audience had seen Wanda lose the love of her life Avengers: Infinity Warbut Vision's death was little more than a footnote in this film. Thanos, Vision's killer, doesn't even remember who Wanda is in the sequel. Avengers: Endgame.

WandaVision took Wanda, one of the few female Avengers, seriously. The series was more interested in her inner turmoil than her powers. That in itself was a gift afterwards Avengers: Endgame staged an eye-rolling stunt where all the superheroines team up to fight a villain for five minutes. (Were the men just taking a breather?) WandaVision gave the character the space and time to struggle with his grief and commit unspeakable acts in the process. It was nuanced. It was fun.

Unfortunately, it ended in a pretty boring CGI fight with different colored sparks flying from the characters' hands. This commitment to a boring final act heralded a wave of Mediocre – okay, miserable – Marvel shows on Disney+, that sort of thing The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight And Secret invasion. These series were so convoluted and full of McGuffins that they were incomprehensible. What was billed as sprawling stories that could delve into the souls of characters who hadn't gotten their due on the big screen failed to keep audiences interested in these superheroes. A Ms. Marvel A television show, for example, did not captivate the audience The miracles.

Worse, Wanda fell flat on the big screen Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Director Sam Raimi (who said he never saw it WandaVision) ignored much of her development on this show. Her character came across as a crazy mother willing to murder and mutilate to reunite with her children, a somewhat sexist motif that failed to capture the emotional nuances of the character constructed on television.

But with Agatha all the timeIt seems the folks at Marvel have realized that Schaeffer has tapped into something that few others in the comic book genre have. They're not the only ones. Some actors have noticed audiences' superhero fatigue and it takes a trusted name like Schaeffer to attract them to these projects. In a recent interview, Plaza told me about her decision to join the MCU: “The wonderful thing about it was the least appealing thing about it, because I'm hesitant to become part of this machine.” It was only sold because of Schaeffer's involvement. “I haven't watched much Marvel television, but I watched WandaVisionand I felt like, wow, this goes beyond the Marvel tropes and is kind of elevated.”

After Agatha all the timewouldn't it be surprising if fans wanted to see Billy on the big screen almost as desperately as they wanted to see Doctor Doom. Schaeffer seems to be one of the few superhero writers who understands that emotional revelation is far more compelling than CGI magic. We can only hope that their influence continues to grow.