Well, it's official, Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness and Aubrey Plaza's mysterious Rio Vidal were canonically lovers prior to the events of Agatha All Along. While the premiere teased their romantic connection ("It's black, and it beats for you"), the fourth episode outright confirmed it, with upper thigh strokes, Rio telling the coven that she once betrayed a woman she loved, and the pair sharing an almost-kiss in private – and it's not something I ever expected to see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...
As a queer, longtime fan of the franchise, I'd kind of given up on the idea of it representing people like me beyond a throwaway line or moment, like Loki saying he likes a "bit of both" in his Disney Plus show, Nikki dating app-swiping on men and women in She-Hulk, and Phastos' blink-and-you'll-miss-him husband in Eternals. Hell, I'm still not over Tessa Thompson promising that newly appointed Asgardian king Valkyrie would find a queen in Thor: Love and Thunder, only for that to be reduced to her drunkenly telling Korg that her ex-girlfriend died fighting Hela. (Worse, too, because Thor: Ragnarok had already hinted at this with a slow-mo flashback, but apparently it wasn't okay to make it explicit back then).
In the four episodes released so far, Agatha All Along has a few similar instances; Teen's "boyf" calling his phone and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) joking about wanting to get Rio's phone number. With its campy central character and that cast, I anticipated such hints, but the spooky show takes things even further, sneaking a lesbian love story into the tale, much like how Mike Flanagan did with his underappreciated Netflix series The Haunting of Bly Manor. A queer lead, whose same-sex relationship is intrinsic to the plot but in a way that doesn't feel othered or like a diversity box-tick? I genuinely didn't think Marvel had it in 'em.
Released in 2020, Bly Manor follows Dani (Victoria Pedretti), a young American woman who moves to England, and takes a job as a nanny at a secluded countryside estate. There, she strikes up a fast friendship with the precocious children she's set to look after, as well as cook Owen and housekeeper Hannah. But it's her romance with gardener Jamie (Amelia Eve) that acts as the backbone of the story. It has ghosties and scary moments, sure, but The Haunting of Bly Manor is mostly focused on love and how, even if it's fleeting, it's worth the sorrow that comes with losing it. It's not about Dani being gay or learning to accept her sexuality, which many titles centered on queer characters are; Jamie could've easily been a man. But she wasn't. It feels the same with Agatha All Along.
Okay, so one could argue that if showrunner Jac Schaeffer and the writers always intended to give Agatha a romantic relationship in the series, it'd pretty much have to be woman, given the nature of covens and how the series revolves around Agatha's walking the fabled Witches' Road. But it's still refreshing to watch a genre show where the queerness feels lived, and baked, in; where there's so much else going on that there's no room for a tired 'coming out' narrative.
"People keep describing it as the next level of representation," Joe Locke previously told 12DOVE. "We have had these incredible shows which have put queerness to the front of the characters and the plot, and now it's like great, we can have queerness as just [a] part of them."
That fact that Rio and Agatha's interactions are undeniably charged with desire is similarly important, too. Much has been said about the MCU's sexlessness of late, as it ditches even the slightest hints of romance (Pepper and Tony,Thor and Jane, and Peter and Gamora spring to mind) in favor of action-packed, save-the-world plots – and even then, the pairings rarely puckered up. Agatha and Rio, affectionately dubbed Agathario by fans, haven't smooched (yet) either, but with exchanges like, "Admit it, you prefer me…" "Horizontal?" and "If you want to be in control, you can be", and "I have a scar" "No, you don't", the bubbling sexual tension is already threatening to boil over.
All of this hasn't gone unnoticed by viewers, who have been sharing their excitement online in droves. "If you had asked me a month ago what kind of ship I would've liked to see on television, my answer wouldn't have been half as amazing as Agathario is," one fan wrote on Twitter. "They're more than I could've ever hoped for. Beautiful, heartbreaking, witchy, sapphic love."
"In tears. I don't think I've ever known what it feels like to be respected and cherished as a queer person fan of a major series by showrunners AND actors… crying," said another.
"Marvel Studios, I'm sorry for [the] unsavory things I said about you in the past. I wasn't familiar with your gayme," joked one more, while a fourth wrote: "I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE THIS IS REAL LIFE I AM SHAKING."
#AgathaAllAlong rio touched agatha’s upper thigh, admitted that she loves her, and then agatha almost kissed her??? IN THE MCU???? LIKE THIS IS REAL AND CANON? pic.twitter.com/JHFzyyCTCTOctober 3, 2024
Our collective shock and excitement feels particularly joyful, and Schaeffer, Hahn, and co's obvious commitment to celebrating the LGBTQ+ community especially commendable, when you aknowledge the backlash that such stories still get in 2024 – be them queer or simply female-led. When my five-star Agatha All Along review was posted on social media, it was met with countless comments suggesting that I was paid by Disney, that the show was terrible actually, and that it was deliberately, provocatively woke.
Earlier this week, Variety published a report that revealed certain studios are looking into bringing in 'superfan' focus groups to help them avoid sparking toxicity through some of their major franchises. Executive producer Brad Winderbaum noted that Agatha All Along has the best continuation rate of any Marvel series to date, which refers to the viewers who carried on watching the show after its opener. It's clearly going down well. But if a system like that was introduced while it was being developed, might it have even been made at all?
"I'm so proud," Hahn recently told Entertainment Weekly when asked about the show's queerness. "This is what a large portion of the fans want to see and have looked to be represented in these huge movies. They're a huge part of these movies in this genre's audience, so it just makes sense. And also, it makes it that more rich."
"The people that I was lucky enough to assemble on the show, both behind the camera and in front of the camera, so many members of the community, so many people motivated to tell these stories and to infuse the show with joyous, dark, resplendent queer energy," Schaeffer told the same publication. "I am thrilled. I feel honored. It is my deepest hope that it is embraced as the love letter that it is." From where I'm sitting, there's no questioning that.
Agatha All Along episodes 1 to 4 is now streaming on Disney Plus. Keep up to date with our Agatha All Along release schedule.
For more on the wider MCU, check out our guides to all of the upcoming Marvel movies and shows and how to watch the Marvel movies in order.
