For ‘Agatha All Along,’ the Costume Design Began at the End

[Editor’s note: The following post contains spoilers for “Agatha All Along.”]

Most TV shows these days aren’t made so differently from a walk down the Witches’ Road — which is to say, they start shooting before all the scripts are locked and have to forge boldly ahead without knowing what awaits them.

 But “Agatha All Along” had its roadmap ready before production began; the final trials shall be revealed to viewers soon, but costume designer Daniel Selon credits having access to showrunner Jac Schaeffer and the writing team’s full (wanda)vision for why the costumes have hit so hard all along. 

In fact, the characters’ main looks on the road were the direct result of Selon working backward from to create distinct color stories and subtle arcs for each character based on which trials would be designed specifically for them. It was exactly like putting together pieces of a puzzle. 

Of course, some puzzle pieces have trickier shapes than others. Rio (Aubrey Plaza) was, on balance, probably the most challenging of the characters for Selon and his costume team to crack. She is the coven’s Green Witch, but also, as we now know, Death, the Green Witch, and so needed to embody a balance of both life and decay. Selon honed in on the silhouette as a way to accomplish what he needed so that her transformation would be both surprising and inevitable. 

“If you look at all of her silhouettes, they have cutouts and sort of reveal the same part of the sides of her midriff,” Selon said. “We were backing ourselves into where we would eventually go with Death — which, you’ll get a much better look at her soon.” 

Starting with the skeletal shape and negative space as a baseline, Selon and his team could add vein-like root systems and dark but vibrant shades of green into the details of Rio’s road look. Her trial looks, too, whether with sleepover-ready color blocks or ‘70s plunging necklines, were designed to suggest bones even as they brimmed with life. 

“We very intentionally set each character in a specific color story and really committed to it throughout the show so that not only were they individualized but they’re easily identifiable,” Selon said. 

Nothing’s been easier to identify than the Disney Witch looks of the tarot trial in Episode 7, and Selon said that transforming Joe Locke into Maleficent was “delicious,” with the fabrics, leather, and metal studs pretty much crying out to be used on the design — and oh-so-subtly tying our favorite Teen’s spirit with the more martial aesthetic of his mom, the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). 

But the other details that got to shine a little brighter in the Sicilian sun of the past were the ones that Selon put on Lilia’s (Patti LuPone) coat. “I brought a lot of my mom into Lilia,” Selon said. “She was the quintessential art teacher, and she had lots of voluminous clothes and would wear, like, turbans and dangly earrings.” That influence, along with the presence that LuPone brought to the character, made Selon want to give Lilia clothes that would give the character a real sense of history. 

“Her coat was designed with the intention that it was something handed down to her from previous generations of witches in her line. Then I wanted to bring in Easter eggs, because she experiences her life in a nonlinear fashion, which is a very difficult story to tell,” Selon said. “We created our own tarot deck specific to her, and then we took the art from the deck and distilled it down to its graphic lines and made that into embroidery.” 

If you look at Lilia’s collar, Selon put in vignettes from different moments in the divination witch’s life — not even moments from the show necessarily, either, but ones that speak to all that Lilia has done and seen. “There are things that bring out themes of duality because she’s constantly experiencing two things at the same time,” Selon said. 

Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) has had her own moments of duality — at least one of getting to re-experience all of her “WandaVision” costumes all over again — but Selon wanted her trajectory throughout “Agatha All Along” to ground the character in the colors and styles she prefers while giving Hahn enough new aspects to play with. “A lot of the time, she’s got something, whether it’s a shawl or just a skirt or a prop that she can swing around. Putting something in Kathryn’s hands is always a good idea because she can just work it,” Selon said. 

“Basically, from ‘WandaVision’ into ‘Agatha All Along,’ we were able to transmute the color story. It continues to develop, but then where we go with it is a further progression,” Selon said. “It’s an ascension of where we were.” 

The season finale of “Agatha All Along” premieres at 9 p.m. ET October 30 on Disney+.