Another Rebranding and Delay for the Wandavision Spinoff
Agatha: Darkhold Diaries is the new title for the Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off series starring Agatha Harkness.
Due to production strikes and Disney’s new streaming strategy, the premiere of the series has been pushed back to Halloween 2024.
Its success on Disney+ is vital because the spin-off is seen as Marvel’s most pointless effort because it may struggle to sustain relevancy.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off show formerly known as Agatha: Coven of Chaos has been renamed and given a new premiere date as a result of the strikes being experienced by the Writer’s Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
With her unassuming exterior and her more heroic Marvel comic book origins, Kathryn Hahn’s scheming sorceress Agatha Harkness was the show’s standout performance and unexpected antagonist, pulling off a musical villain reveal that snared newcomers and diehard Marvel fans alike in the limited Disney+ series Wandavision. After the success of WandaVision, which received a Grammy nomination for its wicked musical number “Agatha All Along” and received overwhelmingly positive fan reactions, a spinoff was announced under the working title Agatha: House of Harkness.
The spin-off series, originally titled Wandavision but renamed Agatha: Coven of Chaos prior to filming beginning in November 2022, has been dogged by premiere delays as a result of a company-wide schedule shake-up caused by Disney’s ongoing strikes and changes to the company’s streaming strategy for the Disney+ platform. According to Deadline, the premiere of the series has been pushed back from 2023 to sometime in the run-up to Halloween 2024. The article also revealed that the project got a new name: Agatha: Darkhold Diaries.
This is the first official mention of the new title, however, the shift in publication date can be linked to the larger shifts occurring and was easily predicted. Hollywood actress Aubrey Plaza, who plays a villain in the Hahn-led spinoff, announced the new title on social media with a banner reminiscent of The Princess Diaries, complete with a Disney-style Marvel Studios logo. It wasn’t the first time a mock logo like that has been shown on set, so nobody took it too seriously, but it looks like the brand has finally been settled on.
Though the reasoning behind the name change is probably unimportant, the fact that it has come at the same time as the series being delayed by almost a year lends credence to the notion that the Agatha Harkness offshoot is Marvel’s most pointless undertaking. The MCU’s overall performance has dropped significantly, and upcoming theatrical releases for the studio are unlikely to improve things because they won’t fit into the new primary arc’s larger plot. It appears highly doubtful that Agatha: Darkhold Diaries will be the vehicle via which the Scarlet Witch and other characters from Wandavision return to the mainline MCU, despite the fact that this has been the subject of much speculation.
Fans can hardly be expected to care about Agatha’s spin-off show now that the MCU has moved on from Wandavision, and it should be noted that the show was already battling for relevancy. Considering this, it looks like Agatha: Darkhold Diaries will have to be flawless for Marvel to succeed on Disney+.