After playing for few weeks, the finale of this series from Marvel Cinematic Universe was released two days ago. I started watching on Wednesday and finished it last night. Without further ado, here's more on the series.

Brief Story Line

Three years after the events in WandaVision, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, A Bad Moms Christmas etc) who was trapped under a spell in Westview, was able to free herself after meeting with a witch called Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza - Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The White Lotus season 2 etc). Agatha who lost her magic later agreed to cooperate with a teenager referred to as Teen (Joe Locke - Heartstopper TV series etc) to go to the Witches' road where they could get their wish after completing certain trials.

To travel the road, a new Coven was formed with the addition of other witches Lilia (Patti LuPone - American Horror Story anthology series etc), Jen (Sasheer Zamata - Woke TV series etc) and Alice Wu (Ali Ahn - The Diplomat TV series etc). To complete the coven, Agatha 'enlisted' the help from her old neighbor Mrs. Hart/Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp - That 90's Show TV series etc) to join in their quest. As imagined, all things went sideways during their trip.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

When I heard that Marvel Studios were planning to create a series based on the character Agatha Harkness, I was actually quite surprised. I know that many people liked her in WandaVision but having an entire show of her was a bit puzzling for me, especially when there was still so many other characters that could be explored. Anyway since I never missed out on any series released in the MCU, I still gave this a try.

Turned out the first episode was kind of intriguing and I thought it was kind of interesting, especially with the humor and those sarcasm remarks by Agatha. Subsequently though I was getting less interested as the series focused more on the witches' trials that was quite fun at first but lost its charm after a while (at least for me). Not until the middle of the series where there was one shocking revelations that it got exciting for me, supported by an episode that showed the story from different angle. 

The last two episodes provided some kind of resolution which was pretty satisfying to me. Although the finale was a bit unexpected, but it was still OK. From what I read, this was a limited series which meant it should be pretty conclusive. However, the last scene could be interpreted differently and possibly opened up to another story arc that could be dived into later (or possibly referenced in future). The series was created by Jac Schaeffer who also directed TiMER and the writer of The Hustle and Black Widow & WandaVision.

The whole series had 9 episodes with duration of roughly half hour to almost 50 minutes. So it would not take a lot of time to finish it in one go. It had some special effects but not that much and little action. As I said above, the trials were OK at first but later on it just felt too weird for my taste, plus there were a bit too much singing as well. The cast in particular Kathryn Hahn was great, while the rest were pretty decent with Debra Jo Rupp still providing her usual comedic nature. There were few more support cast such as Paul Adelstein ( The Menu etc) and Maria Dizzia as Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan respectively and one person that might surprise viewers. It looks like critics were impressed by the series and seems pretty well received by audience too.

Overall this was a series that would please people who prefer good story and some drama with a little bit of music. However since the lead character was a witch and the focus was on her quest/story with little reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general, I was not totally into this series even if I liked the humor and that major surprise in the middle. Once again it felt like just another one to cross from the list for me. But if you are those kind of audience who felt the positive attributes/praise from critics as important feature, then likely you would enjoy this one. Just a warning though that the story also had LGBTQ+ elements which might not be to the liking of conservative viewers. So I will just leave the option whether to watch this or not to you.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars