Home Uncategorized 21 Shocking Behind-The-Scenes Facts That Will Completely Change How You See ‘Agatha All Along’

21 Shocking Behind-The-Scenes Facts That Will Completely Change How You See ‘Agatha All Along’

Uncategorized doly · January 24, 2025 · Comments off

The swords in Episode 7’s “Death’s Hand in Mine” were real.

There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for Agatha All Along!

Jac Schaeffer speaking, wearing a floral-patterned dress, gesturing with hands. Background is abstract with soft lighting

js-subbuzz__attribution ">Marvel Entertainment / Via youtube.com

“No matter what character or what world, there was always, you know, ‘And then, in Episode 104, Agatha comes in…’ and [President of Marvel Studios] Kevin [Feige] said, ‘Should we be doing a show based on Agatha?’ And then it became, ‘Why aren’t we doing a show based on Agatha?'” she said in Marvel Studios’ Assembled: The Making of Agatha All Along.

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Jac told CBR this marketing ploy was designed to “fool” the audience in a fun way. “I never come from a place like, ‘I want to mess with people.’ I’m like, ‘I want this to be fun, like let’s make this fun.’ And people love a mystery and to decode — I do, too. We weaved complex things because I’m so lucky that Marvel has this fanbase who were up for the puzzle,” she said.

“With the titles specifically … very early in the room, we were like, ‘What would Agatha be up to?’ We had all different ideas like, ‘Can we take over the Disney+ platform?’ ‘Can we mess with the tiles?’ — and through witchcraft; it’s her being witchy,” she continued.

“The titles just delighted us because we came up with so many. We were very deliberate because when you look at the order of them, they become increasingly absurd. So it was the design that the early ones would seem real. For me, Coven of Chaos is when it starts to tip because it does sound like a real show, but it sounds like a really bad show, and that’s where I was like with the fans, ‘Stay with us.'”

Kathryn Hahn with windswept hair stands in a dark room holding a rabbit. She is dressed in a casual, dark top. The setting appears mysterious and eerie

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“When I got the call, it was the summer after we aired; I was in shock,” Kathryn said in a Capital FM interview. “We were shooting Glass Onion, and we were on a break, and I couldn’t tell anybody, but I did tell Leslie Odom Jr. — I love him so much. And to his credit, he never told a soul. So it felt really good to be able to blurt it to somebody because I was like, ‘I have to tell somebody this!'”

Joe Locke seated in an interview setting for a Marvel-related program, "Agatha: All"

BuzzFeed UK / Via youtube.com

“Marvel is very thorough. They want to make sure they cast the right person. It was a long, old slug. I did a lot of auditions. I think Marvel is such a big thing; it’s not just one person you have to say yes. So many people need to agree to cast you, which is good. You always want the right person to get the right part,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed UK.

Sasheer Zamata in a TV scene wearing a checkered shirt and large hoop earrings, engaging in conversation with two others

Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com

“And maybe they could; maybe it’s a vibe I’m giving off that I didn’t realize. But I’m so glad that they saw whatever they saw and decided to let me join the team,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.

Scene from a TV show with figures in a forest; a person in a cloak stands in the foreground holding a glowing object

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For instance, when Billy blasted Lilia and Jen off the Witches’ Road, the movement was to emulate one of Wanda’s arm gestures from Avengers: Age of Ultron.

“In the script, it was written as ‘with a familiar-looking hand gesture, Teen swipes Agatha off the Road,'” he recalls.

7. Every single effect on set was “almost wholly practical” in the show, from the Witches’ Road to the monsters each of the actors interacted with to natural elements like a practical mud pit and fireflies. “We really wanted to be authentic to old Hollywood filmmaking techniques,” executive producer Mary Livanos told IGN, with Jac crediting Mary for the original idea. “WandaVision was a celebration of the golden age of television and the celebration of sitcoms,” Livanos told Variety. “[In Agatha All Along,] we’re really honoring the craft of filmmaking and the golden age of fantasy and horror.”

Film crew shoots a scene in a forest with actors in period costumes and intricate set design. Camera equipment and crew members are visible

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For instance, head of streaming, television and animation for Marvel Studios, Brad Winderbaum also told the Verge, “There wasn’t a single green screen in sight on [the Witches’ Road] set.”

Behind-the-scenes of a fantasy film set with actors dressed as a witch and a mystical figure, surrounded by camera equipment

Marvel Entertainment / Via youtube.com

“We had to make sure we understood the story linearly and be able to track all the sword falls,” Jac told Variety. “The camera had to cross at the exact right time in the exact right place where a sword could fall in the foreground and make the shot. So it was an incredible amount of planning and hard work.”

Two actors in witch costumes perform a scene in a fantasy setting, inside a stone chamber with dramatic lighting and candles

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“Every time a sword drops, it gives the person who sees the sword a heart attack, like you’re jolted every time, and that is what happens to Lilia. She’s jolted over and over again, and it makes her unravel emotionally,” she told Variety.

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“I hired two people because I knew it would be so hard. The writers are Cam Squires from WandaVision, and then our writers’ assistant, Gia King, was such a superstar in the room that I paired her with Cam. They wrote pieces separately and kind of stitched them together, and then we backfilled,” Jac told Variety.

“I remember earmarking, ‘This is going to be a Lilia bop moment,’ and then the actual things that she said changed as we moved through [writing them]. There was only one that we changed on the day. It caused me to have such a sweaty panic because I was like, ‘Will this fit?’ It was the ‘I love you guys’ [from Episode 3]. We realized whatever it was wasn’t going to sync. It’s a little fudge-y in the emotional turn of it, but I think we pulled it out,” she continued.

Set of a snowy miniature landscape with a detailed model house, used in TV or movie production. Studio lights and backdrop visible

Marvel Entertainment / Via youtube.com

“The art department generates a set of blueprints of what the house would be if it were built full scale. We take that blueprint, we enter everything into a computer, and we scale everything down to the scale where we’re working. And then, we dissect all the parts and start assembling them. So we basically hand-cut the pieces that have to be hand cut — like all of the shingles that are covering the house are all cut out of cedar, cut to scale size, and they’re cut by hand,” SFX Supervisor Dan Sudick said in Assembled.

Two people walk towards a dark, eerie castle through a spooky, foggy forest

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

According to an interview with Variety, Brad said, “I can tell you it’s our least expensive show, and I think that was by design. We are looking to make these shows for a responsible cost. Frankly, it gives us a little bit more freedom creatively when we can bring them in at a reasonable budget. Like [Agatha All Along], for example, the show has minimal CG, way less than we’ve ever done before. It’s mostly practical effects, and I think you can feel it in the show.”

Two people seated, one gesturing while speaking. The woman wears a floral dress, the man a dark jacket. Appears to be an interview setting

Marvel Entertainment / Via youtube.com

They also wrote Frozen’s “Let it Go” and “Remember Me” from Coco as well as “It was Agatha All Along” for WandaVision.

Another music fact: Jack Antonoff produced the pop version of the ballad that was covered by Japanese Breakfast.

A woman in a blazer stands in front of a house, adjusting her sleeve. A warning about flashing lights is seen in the top-left corner

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“It was really fun that I got to paint her fingertips black, which was not mentioned [in the script],” he explained to Marvel.com. “It was something that I came up with, and everybody seemed to love. Considering that she always works with the Darkhold, it’s so evil that by touching it, your hands turn black as pitch. That was a really nice detail, and I’m very honored that it was adopted into her look.”

Side-by-side images show a woman looking composed on the left, labeled "Feeling 'in control,'" and disheveled on the right, labeled "Feeling 'out of control.'"

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“She is kind of a woman on the edge,” hair department head Cindy Welles told Marvel.com. “She’s constantly evolving and trying to assimilate with what’s around her, yet she’s kind of undone. It was a great collaboration with Kathryn using her own hair, with a few pieces or wigs here and there for some of the styles that were longer or shorter. But it was like, ‘Okay, this character is going one way mentally, so we have to take her there with her hair.’”

16. As for the rest of the cast, each of their costumes evolved after each trial. Costume designer Daniel Selon said he put Easter eggs in each of their costumes on purpose. “I approach that by planting seeds on the initial costume that you see them in. And by seeds, I mean Easter eggs and sort of the silhouette is established there, and within the framework of that silhouette, we slowly change things like Billy’s blue hoodie slowly turns red once he bleeds into it in episode four. And so you know that is slowly revealing his shift into who he becomes,” he told Variety.

Two scenes from a film: left shows two people indoors; right shows two figures walking towards a castle, each with clothing labeled as "Blue" and "Red."

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

Daniel also said he wanted to approach each character’s costume from the inside out. For example, Agatha wore strong-shouldered, tailored garments. “There is sort of like a presentational quality to her that she’s always like playing a character. She’s kind of giving attitude, and she isn’t necessarily telling the truth, or it seems like she’s not telling the truth. So she’s always hiding something,” he said.

As for Lilia, it was all about the color yellow. “I always wanted her to be in this sort of yellow color palette, which is air and divination and intuition and this sort of magic,” Daniel said. “[It was a] callback to her roots, which was just revealed in Episode 7. We see her as a young girl in 1540s Italy, and that some of the shapes and the color and the details in her costume from that time when she was a little girl have carried all the way through to present-day Lilia. So we always see that there’s something embroidered on her costume, no matter which costume it is, and that there’s similar neckline, and that we keep her tarot card pendant that she had from being a very little girl.”

Two women in fantasy costumes on a TV set; one in leaf-themed attire and the other in a dark outfit with a headpiece

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“With Aubrey’s character, it was sort of about introducing things like green growing life, giving things like plants and leaves and flowers and what happens to those when they die. And so you sort of get this full life cycle of things that are on the costume. The silhouette is the same, but everything is alive and green and growing. And, when she becomes Death, all those things have died and decayed and calcified and become sort of like lava rock and hardened and dark and permanent,” Daniel said.

Person dressed as a fantasy character with intricate horned headpiece and an elaborate collar, sitting in an ornate setting

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“I think Maleficent was early. We need to see Joe Locke with all of that drama,” Jac told Variety. “Also, in this episode, he is feeling himself, and we wanted that on screen. We wanted to see him swanning around in a gown, with the gorgeous headpiece and the full makeup. That is the moment he is at on his arc. He’s got a little nastiness — he’s not taking any of Agatha’s crap. We are running so hard at that. And then Agatha as the classic evil green witch, that suited her, and, of course, our primary cultural allusion of The Wizard of Oz, the book.”

“We decided Lilia would be the classic good witch because, first, Lilia is the hero of the episode. She saves the coven; she solves the trial. But also, she has this contentious relationship with witch stereotypes,” she continued. “We knew she would be appalled at her outfit but that it would ultimately be the most accurate representation of her soul. The reverse was true for Jen. Her hero color is pink. She sees herself as this very femme, very beautiful creature, and she dresses herself as such and behaves as a princess. So, to put her in the crone look, it also felt accurate for where she is in her arc.”

A woman leans toward a seated young man in a cozy, book-filled room, engaging in an intense conversation

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“The ‘poke the bear’ stuff, and the pen clicks were improv, but the rest was all incredible, incredible writing,” Joe told the Wrap. “I was fully breaking; I wasn’t even fighting for my life. I bite my cheeks so much because she’s such a comedy pro. She gives, like, nothing away. And I was just wetting myself.”

Even though you clearly see Joe breaking in the scene, Agatha All Along writer Jason Rostovsky told BuzzFeed that it worked. “It works great in the world as well. I couldn’t imagine watching somebody acting that out and not laughing,” he said.

Person in a casual outfit with a hat, wearing a headset, speaks energetically on a film set outdoors

Marvel Entertainment

Jac Schaeffer directed Episodes 1, 2, 7.

Rachel Goldberg directed Episodes 3, 4, 5.

Gandja Monteiro directed Episodes 6, 8, 9.

Jac had to step in for Episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” after scheduling conflicts opened the spot back up. “I was thrilled,” Jac told Variety. “It was a script that was really close to my heart.”

Young man in casual clothes stands with a ghostly, elderly woman in a dimly lit room, suggesting a supernatural or mysterious TV/movie scene

Marvel Studios / Via Disney+

“I wrote a number of post-credit scenes, as I’ve done on every Marvel project I’ve ever worked on, because it’s the thing that changes the most and goes the longest as a question mark until you’re finally confronted with it,” Jac told Entertainment Weekly. “Ultimately, it was a Marvel decision not to have a tag [end credit] on this show.”

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21 Shocking Behind-The-Scenes Facts That Will Completely Change How You See ‘Agatha All Along’

1. One of the reasons Agatha All Along came to fruition was that showrunner Jac Schaeffer (who was also the head writer and executive producer of WandaVision) involved the character Agatha in some form or fashion in every new idea she developed and pitched for Marvel after WandaVision finished.

2. There was also a “creative” reason why the title of the show kept changing earlier in the year before it finally became Agatha All Along.

3. When Kathryn Hahn found out that she was going to get her own show as Agatha, she only told one person the truth.

4. Joe Locke’s audition process for Billy/Teen took six months to complete.

5. Sasheer Zamata (who played Jen Kale) loved WandaVision and was asked to audition after filming her standup special, for which she researched witches. When she got cast, she emailed the producers afterward, saying, “Did you know that you hired a witch? Could you tell?”

8. Yes, even the swords in Episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” were practical. According to Jac, they were sharp, made of real metal, and positioned with piano wire to map out each sword’s “fall.”

9. Talking about Episode 7, Jac also said the way the swords drop is supposed to mirror how Lilia views and is “wrenched” through time.

10. As for the writing of Episode 7, Jac said they wrote the episode first and then sprinkled in the “flashbacks” into the earlier episodes to make it all connect.

11. The beach house from Episode 3 was built as a miniature and took three weeks to create.

12. So it may make sense why Agatha All Along is officially the “least expensive show” Marvel Studios has made to date.

13. Songwriters and music producers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote the song “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.”

14. Agatha’s signature makeup style was inspired by ancient Greek pottery and the rock ‘n’ roll band Siouxsie and the Banshees. According to makeup department head Vasilios Tanis, he also thought of dipping Agatha’s fingers in black paint in WandaVision.

17. Rio’s costumes (played by Aubrey Plaza) visually went from “life” to “death” throughout the show.

18. For Episode 7, each “film witch” was tied to a character for very specific narrative reasons.

19. The scene in Episode 5 where Agatha is interrogating Billy in her home was mostly improvised by Kathryn.

20. All the directors were women.

21. And finally, while almost all Marvel TV shows and movies have post-credit scenes, Agatha All Along does not. The reason? Marvel decided to forgo one for a reason that wasn’t provided.

What did you think of Agatha All Along? Tell us in the comments below.

1. One of the reasons Agatha All Along came to fruition was that showrunner Jac Schaeffer (who was also the head writer and executive producer of WandaVision) involved the character Agatha in some form or fashion in every new idea she developed and pitched for Marvel after WandaVision finished.

2. There was also a “creative” reason why the title of the show kept changing earlier in the year before it finally became Agatha All Along.

3. When Kathryn Hahn found out that she was going to get her own show as Agatha, she only told one person the truth.

4. Joe Locke’s audition process for Billy/Teen took six months to complete.

5. Sasheer Zamata (who played Jen Kale) loved WandaVision and was asked to audition after filming her standup special, for which she researched witches. When she got cast, she emailed the producers afterward, saying, “Did you know that you hired a witch? Could you tell?”

8. Yes, even the swords in Episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” were practical. According to Jac, they were sharp, made of real metal, and positioned with piano wire to map out each sword’s “fall.”

9. Talking about Episode 7, Jac also said the way the swords drop is supposed to mirror how Lilia views and is “wrenched” through time.

10. As for the writing of Episode 7, Jac said they wrote the episode first and then sprinkled in the “flashbacks” into the earlier episodes to make it all connect.

11. The beach house from Episode 3 was built as a miniature and took three weeks to create.

12. So it may make sense why Agatha All Along is officially the “least expensive show” Marvel Studios has made to date.

13. Songwriters and music producers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote the song “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.”

14. Agatha’s signature makeup style was inspired by ancient Greek pottery and the rock ‘n’ roll band Siouxsie and the Banshees. According to makeup department head Vasilios Tanis, he also thought of dipping Agatha’s fingers in black paint in WandaVision.

17. Rio’s costumes (played by Aubrey Plaza) visually went from “life” to “death” throughout the show.

18. For Episode 7, each “film witch” was tied to a character for very specific narrative reasons.

19. The scene in Episode 5 where Agatha is interrogating Billy in her home was mostly improvised by Kathryn.

20. All the directors were women.

21. And finally, while almost all Marvel TV shows and movies have post-credit scenes, Agatha All Along does not. The reason? Marvel decided to forgo one for a reason that wasn’t provided.

What did you think of Agatha All Along? Tell us in the comments below.

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