Playing a witch with vulnerability

The older Kathryn Hahn gets, the hungrier she is to tell complex and compelling stories about women.

- MARRISKA FERNANDES

Fortunately, the rich and nuanced character she plays in the Disney Plus series "Agatha All Along" helped satiate that appetite.

"I think for so long, the women that we've been able to see characterwise on screens have been kind of smooshed, like they've become either the mother or their experience becomes tangential to the main story," Hahn said in an interview.

Hahn's Agatha was first introduced in "WandaVision," where she masqueraded as nosy neighbour Agnes. She was spellbinding, earning an Emmy nomination for the role in 2021. In "Agatha All Along," which debuts Wednesday, Agatha Harkness has escaped the town of Westview, N.J. She teams up with a teen (Joe Locke) and a coven of witches to face the trials of the legendary Witches' Road and thereby get her power back.

Hahn, who's 51, said Agatha is almost like a teenager who's rebelling. "It's kind of like the second adolescence of a person's life. That's what it feels like, what Agatha feels like."

In the Marvel comics that inspired the series, Agatha never had her own stories. Jac Schaeffer, the showrunner of “WandaVision” and "Agatha All Along," said the character didn't come fully into being until Hahn was cast.