‘Agatha All Along’ just broke the most impressive Rotten Tomatoes record of Marvel’s Phase 5, and this is not a drill

Agatha All Along was a winner all along. After a worrying start in terms of critical notices and fan reactions, the Kathryn Hahn-fronted, Halloween-coded MCU series managed to gain more and more steam as it rolled through its nine-episode season. Now that the show is wrapped — with word on a second season still unspoken — the dust has settled on its reception, and we can officially say it’s broken a Phase Five record on Rotten Tomatoes.

This week, Agatha All Along reached 83% on its Tomatometer on the reviews-aggregate site. This means that it is the number one most popular live-action Marvel series to come from the franchise’s current phase. It has now narrowly beaten out Loki season 2, which sports 82%. That was it’s only close competition, given the tepid response to Echo (60%) and the implosion of Secret Invasion (44%). Even better, Agatha managed a double-whammy of a win. It’s also currently rating at an equal 83% on its Popcornmeter — for audience scores — which means it’s the most popular Marvel Phase Five show with both critics and fans.

Many honorary coven members out there couldn’t agree more with how things have turned out for Agatha, as “deserved” was a word commonly thrown around in the replies to the good news. It’s fair to say the show — based on a character who’s never even had her own comic book run before — has “exceeded expectations.”

Of course, there are Loki loyalists out there who are admirably defending their guy.

Alternatively, some argue that, although Loki‘s season 2 finale was peerless, Agatha might’ve been more consistent across its episodes.

Others refrained from comparing the two and just offered their congrats to both “great” shows. What is this? A non-confrontational response from a Marvel fan? Somehow call the TVA because we must be in the wrong timeline.

One clear takeaway from Agatha‘s success is that “we need more magic in the MCU.” You listening, Marvs?!

But we all know the real power at work in Agatha. As one replier put it, it was “the power of lesbians.”

To be entirely accurate, Agatha is not the highest-rated Marvel show of Phase Five period, as the acclaimed animated anomaly that is X-Men ’97 still ranks above it — the first season of this past spring’s sequel series sports an almost perfect 99% critics score and a similarly superior 94% audience score. Given that X-Men ’97 isn’t technically set within the MCU, however, Agatha still thoroughly deserves its props.

One thing Marvel will no doubt taken away from this is that they don’t need to bust the bank to make something good. Costing a shocking slim (for Marvel) $40 million, Agatha is the cheapest MCU Disney Plus series produced to date — that’s not even a fifth of the ginormous $250 million price tag that the egregiously overspending Secret Invasion carried. Somebody needs to buy Kevin Feige a blank cap and then write this on the front: “High-budget ≠ high quality.”