After a few years of uneven Disney+ series, Marvel Television is finally returning to where everything began, and its newest series is wickedly enchanting. Between Kathryn Hahn’s return as the delightfully unbothered Agatha Harkness and the world’s return to WandaVision’s Westview, Agatha All Along revives the genre-bending antics of its predecessor. She assembles its own charming cast in this week’s thrilling two-episode premiere. The dastardly debut contains plenty of highlights — not the least of which is witnessing Hahn’s supernatural chemistry with Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal onscreen — but one thing the series does especially right is double down on Westview’s history of iconic Marvel songs with its addictive hymn, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.”
Created by Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez, the song follows up its series’ namesake with an ode to the occult at the end of Agatha All Along Episode 2, “Circle Sewn With Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate.” After gathering three fellow witches and Debra Jo Rupp‘s unsuspecting neighbor with the help of Joe Locke‘s Teen, Agatha leads her newly-minted coven in a chanted rendition to unlock the Witches’ Road and regain the powers she lost at the end of WandaVision. With Marvel’s horrifying Salem Seven attacking Agatha’s house at the same time, however, it’s difficult to focus on all the nuances of the witches’ ceremony, so what’s really going on in the MCU’s latest harmony?
‘Agatha All Along’s Newest Song Is an Anthem to Marvel’s Supernatural Side
In a general sense, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” operates as both a plot device and a standalone piece of lore in Agatha All Along. As far as we know, the song’s recitation is the only way to unlock its eponymous pathway, though Ali Ahn‘s Alice Wu-Gulliver also dismisses the song as a gateway to a cult her own mother helped popularize with her previous rendition. This context confirms for the audience that the ballad possesses a long cultural history, while the song itself reiterates the basic circumstances surrounding the path back to Agatha’s powers. The first verse promises “glory shall be thine” to the true coven that walks the path, the second underscores the importance of marching forward despite the loss of coven members, and the third emphasizes the “wild and wicked” dangers that await those who walk the road, the same dangers that also allegedly took the life of Alice’s mother.
Each verse therefore reaffirms what we know about the road from Agatha and the Teen’s comments throughout Episode 2, specifically that the road grants power to those who walk it — as Agatha is said to have done previously — but can only be traveled with fellow witches and takes the lives of those who don’t succeed through “many miles of tricks and trials.” The first verse’s invocation to “Gather sisters fire, water, earth, and air” also establishes that covens require witches of various specialties to walk the road, which gives Agatha’s coven reason for concern after her decision to noticeably exclude Vidal’s green witch in favor of Rupp’s Mrs. Hart. Thematically, however, the harmony emphasizes the idea of supernatural sisterhood by building momentum with its repetitive chorus, embracing its ritualistic beat in the catchiest example of how Agatha All Along expands the supernatural side of Marvel’s in-world history.
“The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” Hints at a Greater Mythology in ‘Agatha All Along’
Aside from its relevance to Agatha’s story, the ballad also drops several references and cryptic hints about the future of the series. The song’s mention of “Mother, Maiden, Crone” at the end of its second chorus marks its second most high-profile allusion to Hecate, the Greek Goddess of magic often represented in the three aforementioned forms, which is depicted earlier in the pendant Agatha discovers at the start of Episode 1. The song’s connection to this triple theme is also enhanced by the fact that the ballad has three verses and three choral sections, while its visual descriptors likewise evoke the unsettling aesthetic typically associated with witchcraft. With the song’s dark woods, wooden shrines, ominous fate, and reversal of wrong with right, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” seems primed to pull Agatha All Along deeper into the darkness of magic than Marvel has gone since WandaVision.
The song’s second verse, in particular, also hints at several possibilities for the show’s most mysterious characters. The line “I hold death’s hand in mine” could foreshadow a recent fan theory that Aubrey Plaza’s Vidal is actually Mephisto’s daughter, especially considering the palpable tension between Rio and Agatha. At the same time, the phrase “Familiar by thy side” calls back to Locke’s mysterious, tight-lipped Teen, who is similarly described earlier in Episode 2. Theories about the latter’s true identity aside, however, Agatha All Along’s ballad ultimately adds a new chapter to Marvel’s supernatural tradition while simultaneously serving the show’s overarching plot and mythology. The melody both explains the lore behind the Witches’ Road while also hinting that its characters must tame their fears in order to survive, setting up plenty of formative challenges for Marvel’s newest coven in the weeks to come.
Agatha All Along is currently streaming on Disney+. New Episodes air every Wednesday night.
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