“Without revelation people run wild, but one who follows divine instruction will be happy.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s been a little while since I’ve gotten to do something like this. Part of the blame for that lies with my own schedule of late. The other part of the blame doesn’t fall on me, though. There just hasn’t been a whole lot from the other side that has furnished me the opportunity. The opportunity for what? Another media review! It’s fun Friday, and Marvel has finally released more content onto Disney+ for us to talk about. This time, appropriately enough given the season, it was all about witches. There were broomsticks and cauldrons and cats and spooky locations and more than a little of the occult. Let’s talk about Agatha All Along, Marvel’s first attempt to take a page out of Sony’s playbook and make a series in which the hero is a villain. And, fair warning, if you haven’t seen the series yet and plan to, don’t read on. I’m going to spoil all the big reveals as we go.

Marvel has released a lot of content since they got their legs under them almost 15 years ago now and created the MCU. I’ve lost count of the number of feature films, and now there’s a growing library of small screen releases. Only two of those have gotten a second season so far (Loki, whose second season was an incredible, Gospel-soaked ride that I reviewed here, and What If?…, which I may have reviewed, but I can’t find it). This one probably won’t join those ranks. Why I start here, though, is to give you the reassurance that there’s not a whole lot you need to watch before you binge this one. And the required viewing is really, really good.

Agatha, the titular character of the series was the main powered villain in the Wandavision series (which was good enough to warrant two reviews here and here). While it was Wanda (who officially became The Scarlet Witch by the end of her series) whose power was the controlling force in the series, Agatha appeared at the end as someone trying to steal her power (killing her in the process), and not at all understanding that she was in way, way over her head. Now, what Agatha was doing in Westview in the first place to get caught in Wanda’s hex Marvel avoided even trying to explain (and if that doesn’t make any sense, you’ll have to go watch Wandavision), but they needed a villain, and so there she was.

What Marvel perhaps didn’t expect is that Agatha would get a strong enough reaction from the fans that they felt it worthwhile to give her a series all to herself. She stepped into a larger role in the MCU by way of a path broadly similar to that of Harley Quinn, the Batman villainess who started as a Joker henchman and grew to get two solo feature films before the Joker even got one (the recent sequel to which was apparently incredibly awful).

As for the series itself, it was…okay. It was fun…mostly. The production values were high. The writing was mostly really good. The acting was really pretty good, especially from Kathryn Hahn who plays Agatha. The other main character, Billy Maximoff, one of Wanda’s twin sons (see: Wandavision), was played by Joe Locke. He was just average. You never really got the sense that he was totally into the character. That’s really too bad because I suspect he’s the one reason the series was created in the first place, and the one character we will see again in other Marvel properties. What I mean is that Agatha All Along turned out to be little more than an extended origin story of the Marvel superhero, Wiccan, who is a member of the Young Avengers, most of whose members have been introduced in various other Marvel properties, and I expect we will see them all starring in a film together someday, but probably not until after Doomsday.

In making the series an extended origin story for Wiccan, the whole thing felt like a bit of a bait and switch. Agatha is a Marvel supervillain. She always has been. Her shtick is that she steals the power from other witches, killing them in the process. Apparently, she’s been at this for a very long time going back to the Salem days. I can’t tell if doing this increases her own power level, but I tend to think not, because the penultimate episode suggested she’s done it a lot. If each witch she consumed added to her own power, she ought to be nearly unstoppable by now. But she’s not, so they must not.

Essentially, though, Agatha is a serial killer whose path of carnage stretches back for centuries. She dupes unsuspecting witches into attacking her using a con she made up called The Witches’ Road. Once they do, she absorbs all their power and they die. The trouble for me (you know, beyond the murder) is that there isn’t any point to it. She’s not apparently gaining anything. Marvel never really explained why she did it. She shows absolutely zero remorse for it. She winds up sacrificing herself to Death (who also turns out to be her girlfriend…there were only homosexual romances in the series as both Agatha and Billy are gay) to save Wiccan in the end which was apparently an attempt to make her some kind of a hero, but she comes back as a ghost almost immediately, so the sacrifice didn’t seem to mean very much, and she still showed no remorse of any kind for her actions, so the rehabilitation fell flat.

Agatha also apparently had a son who died young, but even that storyline really didn’t humanize or justify her actions in any way. She was a murdering sociopath before she had him. She convinced her girlfriend, Death, not to take him just after he was born. She loved him a lot, but his presence in her life didn’t result in her pursuing a better path through life. Instead, she used him as an accomplice as she continued conning and murdering witches everywhere they went. Then, when death did come and take him several years later, she continued her pattern. We’re supposed to believe that her unwillingness to let people see this more tender side of her is what led her to not correct the awful stories that she traded her son’s life for her own power, but again, she was a murdering sociopath before, during, and after his life, so the whole storyline felt contrived and decidedly unearned.

As I watched each episode, while I enjoyed them all, I kept looking for a reason to actually care about the series and the characters, and I just couldn’t ever quite find one. I kept watching, waiting to see some kind of a larger reveal that was going to decisively connect the thing to the larger MCU in some way, and it never delivered. Yes, we got Wiccan, Death (who probably won’t appear anywhere else except perhaps in Doomsday), and the first official mention of Mephisto (who we will likely see take on a bigger role in the upcoming Ironheart, but I don’t make that prediction with much confidence), but that’s about it. All the other characters saved one died, and the one who lived never really rose above supporting cast.

For me, the series is emblematic of the problems Marvel has had ever since End Game. End Game completed an absolutely incredible storyline. It was arguably one of the most ambitious film journeys in the whole history of movies, and it was done well. Really well. And while we are told that Marvel had a plan for where they were going next, I’m not convinced they really did. At least, they didn’t have anything in mind quite like what they spent their time building to and resolving in grand fashion then.

Throughout Phases 4 and 5, Marvel has released a slate of new films and series, but as compared with anything that came before, they’ve mostly been duds. The most successful and most enjoyable were all deeper explorations of storylines or characters from Phases 1-3 (Loki, Wandavision, and Spider-Man: No Way Home). None of the new characters they’ve introduced have been very compelling or well done. And the whole thing has felt like it hasn’t really been going anywhere or building to anything like literally every film in Phases 1-3 did.

Now, some of that isn’t Marvel’s fault. They had plans to build toward a grand Kang the Conqueror story arc with the Multiverse at the center of things, and several of the films were building toward that. But Jonathan Majors turned out to be an abusive boyfriend, and so they rightly dropped him. And, rather than casting someone else for the character (which, admittedly, would have been really difficult as Majors had done a tremendous job creating the villain), they found themselves having to make a last second switcheroo to something new. Instead of looking forward for this, though, they looked back and hired Robert Downey, Jr. to play Doctor Doom, and contracted with the Russo brothers (who directed Infinity War and End Game) to direct his two part introduction. This allowed them to continue to build on the Multiverse storyline, but it struck many fans as an act of desperation to recapture their past mojo. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited for those films because I trust that team to produce something worthwhile, but the whole thing still feels like it doesn’t know where it’s going. Agatha All Along was merely a microcosm of this larger drift.

A few thousand years ago, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrote that “without revelation people run wild.” The King James version of that is “where there is no vision, the people perish.” That’s not as good of a translation on linguistic terms, but it captures the idea well. When we don’t know where we are going, our lives don’t go anywhere. Actually, that’s not quite true. We do go somewhere. We go in search of a vision that will give us clear and compelling purpose. We need purpose. We need meaning for our lives. Without it we drift aimlessly, flitting from one thing to another in search of something that will give our lives a real purpose.

The trouble is, most of the things we flit to don’t get the job done. They afford only short-term purpose at best. At worst, it is an entirely made up purpose that can’t and doesn’t last for very long. And when it runs out, we have to make up something else to fill the new gap in our souls that’s just a bit larger than it was before. The gnawing sense of desperation this leaves in us gets heavy over time. We were made for eternity. Until we connect with a purpose that is eternal, we’re not ever going to find ourselves as complete as we know we need to be.

There is a place to find this purpose we seek, though. We were made in the image of an eternal God who is good. He made us to be in an eternal relationship with Himself, glorifying Him and using the gifts He has given us to care for His creation in ways that reflect His character and purpose to worship Him in all that we do. When we reconnect with Him, we will find the purpose and meaning that we need. Or, as Solomon put it, the “one who follows divine instruction will be happy.” If you want to experience purpose like you have perhaps always longed for and never quite found, let me invite and encourage you to consider the God who made you and longs still to be in a relationship with you. You can find the on-ramp to that relationship in Jesus, and you can meet Jesus in the Gospels and in His church. Pursue that path if you aren’t already on it. You will be glad that you did.