SEASON OF THE WITCH

AS MARVEL TELEVISION CARVES OUT A NEW PATH FOR ITSELF, WE SPEAK TO CREATOR JAC SCHAEFFER, PLUS A CAST OF STARS LED BY KATHRYN HAHN AND JOE LOCKE, ABOUT THE MAGIC OF WANDAVISION'S SPIN-OFF AGATHA ALL ALONG

- CLARISSE LOUGHREY

THERE'S NO HIGHER COMPLIMENT TO be paid than becoming the subject of a drag brunch. When clips from a Wanda Visionthemed event in Minneapolis, in which queens high-kicked and death-dropped in the boots, capes and robes of Agatha Harkness and the Scarlet Witch, reached stars Kathryn Hahn and Elizabeth Olsen, they were overjoyed.

"I remember Lizzie being, like, 'Well, we've made it," Hahn tells SFX. "It was the coolest homage." "It was so beautiful and thrilling to have our show celebrated in this way," creator Jac Schaeffer adds. "I could cry thinking about it.

I have thought about that drag brunch most days making Agatha All Along. I wanted this show to be worthy of that type of fandom and adulation." Hahn's Agatha is the Salem witch with a taste for darkness, the one secretly pulling the strings in Wanda Maximoff's sitcom dream, before proudly revealing those strings in a viral theme tune that's now inspired the title of her spin-off series, Agatha All Along. She's self-reliant, imperious and quite a bit wicked, a creation so singular in Marvel's Cinematic Universe that she simply refused to leave Schaeffer's head.

The writer-producer had signed a deal with Marvel Studios to develop new projects and yet, in every pitch she made to its president Kevin Feige, Agatha somehow crept her way in. "I was like, 'And then they get in a car and they find themselves in Westview'," Schaeffer laughs. "Then left turn and there's Agatha and, little did you know, it was Agatha all along!"" So, Feige cut to the chase: why not simply give Agatha her own show? "It felt so obvious to us once he said it," she says. "She was the one."