“Agatha All Along” creator and star on that Hart-felt character fate: 'This show has teeth'

Showrunner Jac Schaeffer and actress Debra Jo Rupp talk about that big episode 3 moment.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Agatha All Along episode 3, "Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials."

Agatha All Along isn't like your run-of-the-mill Disney show, or even Marvel show, for that matter. The third episode made that overt when, in the final moments, the coven of witches diminished by one.

Debra Jo Rupp's Mrs. Hart did not make it out alive of the first trial on the Witches' Road, which isn't something you typically see from family friendly Mouse House fare. But according to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, this element became fundamental to the series.

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"It was so important early on when we figured out we're doing the Witches' Road, we're doing this coven, the hilarious idea that we would bring a normie along," Schaeffer tells Entertainment Weekly. "Debra Joe Rupp is a comedy genius. She can't not be funny, but we do horror-comedy on the show. This show has teeth, and in the later episodes it goes to really dramatic places. It was important to signal that, it was important to make it clear that we're not messing around, that people die in this show."

The first trial on the Witches' Road presented the coven — Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the mysterious "Teen" (Joe Locke), Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), and Mrs. Hart — with a "water" challenge. The witches found themselves inside an oceanside mansion with "rom-com second-chance-at-love vibes," as Teen put it. They each drank from a bottle of wine, which signaled the start of the trial. The wine was poisoned, and so it fell to Jennifer to rely on her knowledge of potions to create an antidote before they all succumbed.

Even though each of them drank the life-saving brew she concocted, Mrs. Hart drank a lot more of the tainted wine than the rest of them. It was ultimately not enough to save her from death. Now... does Mrs. Hart actually stay dead? Will they somehow be able to revive her?

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"It's high stakes," Rupp herself tells EW in a separate conversation. "But I think the beauty of this is that you may think you know where it's going, but you don't really know because each episode is unique."

Schaeffer loved the moment, as it became a way to depict the entire spectrum that Agatha All Along encompasses. "That we are theatrical, campy, broad, all the spectacle, all the fun, all the winking, all the meta," she explains, "but that underneath it all, there is real grit to the story. There is real meaning to it. I also think that is part of Agatha's personality; she can do all the flamboyance, but she'll cut you. It felt disingenuous to not really go there."

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New episodes of Agatha All Along premiere on Disney+ Wednesday nights.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.