Very early in her WandaVision spin-off series, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) begins to suspect that the world she lives in might be more limited than it seems. Oh, sure, moment to moment, her hometown seems normal enough, if not an awful lot like a Mare of Easttown fake. But she increasingly feels like she’s missing the bigger picture.

She is right, of course. Halfway through the premiere, she discovers that she has fallen into a magical trap that gives her the illusion of freedom, while in reality she is kept within strict boundaries.

This is, not coincidentally, a bit like what it feels like to watch a new Marvel project these days. Viewed as a standalone entity, Disney+’s Agatha Always Already (or at least the four 40-minute episodes sent to critics) could be a pretty promising new adventure, with an amiable cast and a cheeky sensibility but also plenty of room to grow. But choppy pacing and relentless back-pulling make it ultimately more convincing as an exercise in brand extension than as a spellbinding adventure in its own right.

Just like his ancestor, Agatha Always Already comes from Jac Schaeffer, who borrows from himself the trick of leaning on pop culture tropes. But the murder-mystery-style opening is a bit of a red herring. The new saga draws more often from the long history of TV and movie witches, starting with a Yellow Brick Road-esque quest: After she loses her powers in the WandaVision finale, Agatha decides that the only way to get them back is to travel a metaphysical path known as the Witch’s Road. Since the rules of her profession (and those of entertainment television) forbid this lone wolf from flying alone, she sullenly forms a coven.

Agatha Always Alreadys most effective charm is the cast. Hahn is a sarcastic delight as Agatha, who can switch between grim and mischievous, sarcastic and sincere on a dime. Agatha may technically be a supervillain, but I dare you not to like a woman who responds to a fellow sorceress complaining about her community’s reputation for poisoning apples and stealing babies with an expressionless, “Babies Are delicious.” In the words of Teen (Heart-warming’s Joe Locke), her mysterious fanboy-celebrity sidekick: “Name a worse bitch.”

Hahn enjoys fizzy chemistry with all of her co-stars, but she’s especially sparkling opposite her arch-nemesis Rio, played by Aubrey Plaza as one of her signature intimidating yet strangely magnetic weirdos. And while it’s hard to put too much stock in buzzy soundbites about Agatha Always Already Considering it’s the “gayest” Marvel film yet – we’ve probably heard that before – it’s true that their scenes together in the first four chapters are laced with a lot of juicy sexual tension that I can only pray pays off in the next five chapters.

The rest of Agatha’s skeptical crew includes the legendary Patti LuPone, who seems to be having a good time as the kind of boho witch you might find under a “PSYCHIC” sign in a mall; Sasheer Zamata as a more modern potion maker who peddles jade eggs and supposedly organic skin care to Goop types; and Ali Ahn, who rounds out this collection of creepy-lady archetypes with a Hot Topic vibe, though she’s actually an ex-cop who’s the daughter of a cursed musician. And then there’s Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp, returning from WandaVision), who may not be a witch at all, but does fit the cliché of the “nosy neighbor” that Agatha once pretended to be.

As you might expect from such a large cast, it’s a joy to just hang out among them. That they all hate Agatha, for seemingly good reasons, only makes it more enjoyable. I could watch episode after episode of these women snapping at each other as they reluctantly put aside their differences to overcome whatever fantastical obstacle came their way that week. And that’s what this show is, sort of. While The Witch’s Road physically manifests as a forest path lit in drab, airless CG, its true nature is a series of trials, each tailored to an individual witch and her own look.

One goes full Nancy Meyers-core, dropping the gang into a luxury seaside cottage and dressing them in tasteful neutral knits as they race to reverse the hallucinogenic effects of a strange toxin. Another transports them to a lavish ‘70s rock star apartment, filled with instruments and sparkly outfits so they can have a preternaturally obligatory jam session. The logic behind each aesthetic isn’t always clear, but it’s amusing enough of an excuse to give the costume and production design teams (led by Daniel Selon and John Collins, respectively) plenty of runway to shine.

It’s the actual story that is often hit and miss. By franchise expansion standards, Agatha Always Already is thankfully light on lore, easter eggs, or references to the “multiverse” so far. There’s no no of that — it would be nice if, say, the question of Teen’s true identity (presumably as a future Young Avenger or something) didn’t so consistently overshadow the more present-day concerns about who he is as a person and what he means to Agatha. But the project mostly avoids feeling like one of those Marvel stories that exists solely to set up other Marvel stories.

Unfortunately, it also doesn’t feel like a show that needs to exist for its own sake. It’s not so much that all of its flaws point back to Marvel, but more that it feels like a show that hasn’t figured out what it’s doing yet, other than expanding on successful IP. While it has potential, the character-driven ensemble dramedy could be He seems to be hampered by the need to speed up the story and by the realization that Agatha must be the main character.

So the scripts rush through the backstories of the supporting players, brushing aside the details of the lore and favoring big, splashy moments over intricate world-building. On that last point, this show does love itself a musical moment, even managing to deliver a real earworm of a portal-opening ballad courtesy of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. But Agatha Always Already lacks the patience and curiosity needed to truly bring the story to life.