Agatha All Along’s practical effects were key to bringing its magic to life

Image: Disney Plus / Marvel

To make the show’s spells feel real, showrunner Jac Schaeffer prioritized practical effects over green screens.

While WandaVision featured a smorgasbord of digital VFX, the show’s clever practical effects were a huge part of what established it as one of Marvel’s most imaginatively crafted projects. The use of old-school Hollywood tricks made each episode feel like a different kind of classic sitcom, all while teasing out its major magical twists.

Instead of WandaVision’s references to sitcoms like I Love Lucy and Bewitched, Disney Plus’ new follow-up series, Agatha All Along, pays homage to supernatural horrors like Rosemary’s Baby and The Craft. It tells the story of how parasitic witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) sets out to regain her powers with the help of an unlikely team of friends and enemies. After being freed from a yearslong hex that convinced her she was living in a gritty crime drama, Agatha realizes that her one hope of getting back on top is to put together a new coven and walk the Witches’ Road — a magical dimension only accessible (by song, naturally) to covens of magic users.

Agatha All Along’s premise makes it seem like the sort of Marvel joint that would involve a lot more of the (at times, very iffy) CGI that the studio’s live-action projects have become known for. But during the show’s recent press junket, showrunner Jac Schaeffer and executive producers Mary Livanos and Brad Winderbaum said that, in order to make Agatha All Along feel distinct and like a deep dive into the MCU’s mystical underbelly, they wanted to lean even more heavily into practical effects.

Much of WandaVision’s emphasis on practical effects stemmed from the show’s need to evoke the visual styles of shows from specific decades throughout the 20th century. But Schaeffer saw Agatha All Along as an opportunity to pay homage to the big-screen fantasies that shaped her storytelling sensibilities, many of which were known for their intricate sets and use of puppetry.

“On WandaVision, it was very precise which shows we were [mimicking] but [Agatha All Along] is really kind of broken open. It’s a lot of my personal influences. I’m a NeverEnding Story, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth kind of gal,” Schaeffer said.

There are flashes of witchiness sprinkled throughout Agatha All Along’s premiere, but you can see the otherworldly whimsy Schaeffer’s talking about most clearly in the show’s third episode. “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials” transports Agatha’s coven from a New Jersey basement to the Witches’ Road, where it’s perpetually twilight and the ground comes to life, ready to swallow people up if they aren’t careful about where they step.

Though the Witches’ Road — a realm that features largely in James Robinson and Vanesa Del Rey’s 2016 Scarlet Witch comic series — feels like the sort of glowy, metaphysical place Disney would usually create using Volume VFX sets, Livanos said that Agatha All Along’s effects were “almost wholly practical.” Winderbaum added that, for the Witches Road itself, where much of Agatha All Along takes place, “there wasn’t a single green screen in sight on that set.”

Image: Disney Plus / Marvel Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu and Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale.

Marvel’s past use of green screens and other digital effects has prompted some of the studio’s stars to speak out about how difficult it can be to deliver solid performances while acting in a neon void. WandaVision’s Elizabeth Olsen recently opened up about her own frustrations performing inside the physical nothingness required to bring Marvel’s big-budget projects together in postproduction. But Hahn pointed to the Witches’ Road set as one of the big reasons why working on Agatha All Along felt like an immersive acting experience that didn’t require her “to shake off the outside world.”

“You felt so implanted in this magical place, and because it was mostly practical, it wasn’t something you had to imagine,” Hahn said. “It was like right there, which was very helpful and unexpectedly trippy.”

Because it’s a Marvel show about people casting spells and fighting demons, Agatha All Along still features its fair share of digital wizardry that works to make some of its more action-packed scenes pop. As a fan of stories that highlight characters’ physical transformations, though, Schaeffer jumped on every opportunity to put her witches through a crucible that left them literally “filthy, scarred, and scratched” by the show’s end.

“The cast were such troopers because all of that was real. There’s no adding digital blood and digital mud. These ladies were messed up for a long time. Cold; wet; muddy. Chocolate pudding all over their heads.”