‘Agatha All Along’ Showrunner Reacts to the Fandom’s Love for AgathaRio [Exclusive]

We’ve shipped a lot of romances in our time, with recent favorites like The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Abbott Elementary’s Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Janine (Quinta Brunson) rising to the top of our chart over the last year or so. But, for Marvel fans, there was one particular standout romance that captivated us in 2024, one that boasted a sexual tension you could cut with a knife — and, in fact, the couple did cut it with a knife. We’re, of course, talking about the centuries-long relationship between Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness and Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal in the Disney+ and Marvel series, Agatha All Along. On top of being an adventure-filled, musical extravaganza, the nine-episode season was overflowing with a will-they-won’t-they vibe between the two main characters that was made abundantly obvious from the title’s debut.

While in attendance at the SCAD TVFest, Collider’s Carly Lane spoke with Agatha All Along’s creator and showrunner, Jac Schaeffer, about the year’s most magnetic couple. Like all great ideas in the industry, the relationship between Agatha and Rio (AgathaRio) started in the writers’ room, where Schaeffer admits she was worried audiences wouldn’t get the intense depth behind the pair’s relationship, telling Lane:

“We did a lot of work in the writers’ room to build the history of these two women. What ended up on the page wasn’t all of that. It was, ‘Where they are now?’ And there were times where we were like, ‘Is it enough? Is it clear?’ Because in our minds, they were married, in some witchy way. And we were like, ‘We need to make that apparent.’”

The Undeniable Chemistry Between Aubrey Plaza and Kathryn Hahn

Even with Schaeffer and the rest of the creative team feeling uncertain about spelling out the couple’s backstory, things quickly fell into place when Plaza came on set. Describing the chemistry on set as “crackling,” Schaeffer said:

“When Aubrey was cast, Aubrey is a force unto herself, but it was really the first time they were on set, and they were opposite each other, and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do anything.’ This is a whole universe unto itself. You felt it on set. It was incredible. It was crackling in the room.”

Then, a major puzzle piece solidified everything that Schaeffer had been experiencing on set, when, during post-production, the pair’s captivating chemistry took over one episode’s storyline:

“When we were in post, [for] Episode 4, where they sing the ballad in Alice’s trial… to me, that episode was about their performance, about being a band, right? And it is, it’s fantastic. But then, once we were cutting that final scene between Rio and Agatha, it was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, this episode is about an almost kiss between these two women.’ It was so powerful when we were in post. Even then, I did not anticipate the fandom just running away with it.”

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.