‘Agatha All the Time’ Avoided Expected Culture War Controversy

Agata Just went through everything together fantastic episode this weekThis is by far the best episode of the season by fans, but one thing that fascinated me as someone who was brain poisoned viewing everything through the lens of the culture wars in 2024 is that… Agatha completely bypassed the expected resistance.

On the surface, Agatha All Together looked like a show that would absolutely attract such negative attention, a show that almost exclusively stars women and has one male star who is clearly gay, something the MCU hasn’t really seen before except for one of the 37 Eternal heroes. That star could have been Wiccan, a gay character from Marvel comics, but as it turns out, Agatha is also queer, having had a relationship with a woman in the past. The woman who is (spoilers) Death, but still a woman.

The show simply didn’t see any of the widespread response that we’ve seen in other Marvel projects or, more specifically, the recent Star Wars projects. For example, Disney’s The Acolyte created perhaps the biggest firestorm in the history of the universe outside of The Last Jedi. Review bombing, an entire industry built around making hyperbolic YouTube videos about it, and racist harassment directed in particular at its leader, Amanda Stenberg.

This doesn’t mean there are zero There are instances of anti-woke criticism here, but the numbers don’t reflect anything we’ve seen with The Acolyte, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel or others like them. Agatha All Together has a solid audience rating of 81%. Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, critics here may be the harshest, since even 83% is the lower limit of almost all MCU series that have aired. On IMDB, voted entirely by fans, it received a 7/10, which is good in context. The latest episode received a stellar rating of 9.2 out of 10. You can search YouTube for Agatha All Together videos and you’ll find more than just the “rage bait” you’ve seen in other Awakening series.

So how did this happen? In 2024, how does a marvelous Marvel series starring almost all women, with two gay characters, manage to avoid the culture wars that so taint the discourse?

1) The show is very good. It’s just… undeniably good, funny, smart, heartfelt, and at this point, I think you could make a case that it might be the best MCU series, or at least one of the most beloved, like Loki or the series that gave birth to him. , WandaVision.

2) There is no real “canonical” debate here. In the case of The Acolyte, much greater fervor led to much greater excitement about what it did or didn’t do to canon or the nature of the Jedi and the Force as fundamental issues. There are of course some things changed here, like Death being Agatha’s love interest rather than Thanos, but I mean, before this, Agatha was probably the 235th most important character in the MCU, so she works as an ascendant from the raw material without a ton of baggage attached.

3) No disagreements between the actors, no obvious “messages”. The entire campaign against Captain Marvel and specifically Brie Larson for years after this film was based on her comments about wanting a more diverse selection of film critics. She-Hulk, another hated series, had explicit feminist messages throughout its run. No entity was right to do this, but Agatha just… doesn’t have any of it. The cast hasn’t been controversial in interviews, and while the show has a female cast and is particularly weird, these characters just… exist, even though that’s not the main focus of the show.

4) Amanda Stenberg’s harassment in The Acolyte was largely racist. Here, the show’s leads are white, with actors of color playing supporting characters. There is also no racial or gender “swapping” of existing characters, which is often criticized.

While the reasons why this happens, or rather doesn’t happen, may be different and perhaps not what any group wants to hear, the end result is the same: a series led by a woman and queer characters is one of the most popular MCU series. best and avoid the highly divided, politics-based firestorms we’ve seen in so many other similar projects. I hope this trend continues.

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