spoilers

Who is the Teen?

These two episodes do one thing and that’s finally reveal who the ‘Teen’ is. It’s a big revelation and more meaningful if you’re familiar with the back story of both Agatha and also the Scarlet Witch. It might be that you’re watching this show only because you’ve already watched these shows but I think it’s a big ask to write yet another series that relies on you having watched everything else to make sense of it.

Look, I’m really not sure what to do with Agatha. It’s got lots of elements I love – the female ensemble, the open and explicit presence of a young gay man (a proper Twink) and a more whimsical approach to the MCU.

Yet I can’t get away from the fact that it’s a complete mess. Is this because the original story involved Kang and they’ve been left with having to recut it? Who can say. What I can talk about is the chronic lack of service Katherine Hahn’s receiving, the underwritten material, the relying on camp when reaching for poignancy and the bizarre tone shifts between camp, horror (often good bedfellows) and emotional manipulation and snarky humour.

Episode 6 in particular has a lot of stuff that should lend depth to the story but comes off as tick box exercises for people studying an MFA in creative writing. Flashback – check. Backstory – check. Slice of Life to establish character – check. The problem with all these elements is that if they’re just elements that don’t add to the story then they should not appear. We have Teen’s backstory that involves a Bar Mitzvah but instead of this extraordinarily strong identity informing both his view on life but also how he carries himself through the rest of the story, what we really have is a nominalist protestant approach to the world. Sure, it’s a default, but it’s not authentic and only underscores just how vapid the world building and the story is.

There are mitigating factors as to why Teen’s Jewish identity is less important later on but for it to appear only in Episode 6, not to be foreshadowed and to also then not be referenced again afterwards? Like I say, it’s a tickbox exercise and as a consequence a net negative to the overall experience when it should have been both a focal point for our understanding of that character but also in terms of how the story would develop thematically.

As for Agatha. She seems to only be happy when talking about the people she’s killed. It’s very edgelord without any of the interesting bits that made her compelling in WandaVision. This lack of coherency is a big problem that’s like a toothache all the way through the series so far.

I enjoyed the first five episodes despite their flaws (cheesy writing, cringe tropes and absolutely no consequences for people dying) but by the end of episode 6 I’ve kind of had enough.

It’s left me wondering if this is an MCU problem or an Agatha problem and I think it’s mostly an MCU problem. We have an unnecessary cameo, call backs to a series that crashed its denouement into a brick wall and resulted in a film (Multiverse of Madness) that doubled down on its misogyny rather than do something interesting with its unfortunate antagonist delivering a message that only mature men can be proper heroes. Ugh.

The need to fit within that awful framework means that Agatha has had to code switch between its own frames of reference and the MCU so much that the tone has bounced around like a Duracell Bunny (other brands are available) on speed.

Verdict: Is it still watchable? Just about. It’s not offensively bad – which is a higher bar to get over than you might think. There remain elements which I love (have I mentioned how much I love the female ensemble?), but let me do the hard work of watching the rest before you invest any more time in this show.

Rating? 5 pointless easter eggs out of 10.

Stewart Hotston