When Marvel maniathe exhausting, suffocating takeover that has defined much of the past decade of entertainment began, I don’t think anyone would have predicted that the best performance we’d get in an MCU television series would be from Patti LuPone. It might even have seemed ridiculous that the Broadway legend, who famously sets high standards for the work she chooses, would even be in such a project.

Yet here we are in the days that follow Agatha all the time aired the fantastic ‘Death’s Hand in Mine’, still stunned by her tour de force in that episode.

Agatha all the time is, by my count, the 23rd MCU television series. (Give me at least five minutes to find shelter before I start pounding me with “well, actually!” emails.) The range in quality in those shows is as wide as… The Hulk’s shoulder width? (Look, I’m not a full-fledged Marvel person. I’m trying here.) But there’s no denying that some excellent acting has come out of these series, work that is often dismissed because of its genre – a practice I hate!

The specific subset of what is now the WandaVision-verse, which spin-off Agatha all the time which is now a part of has featured some of Marvel’s best performances. Especially Elisabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn, whose turn was so surprising, wonderfully wild and eerily funny Agatha all the time was initially built around it.

Still, I love that in this universe of wildly popular superheroes and A-list movie stars leading their own shows, it’s a supporting turn from Patti LuPone as a tarot card-reading witch that people are calling the best MCU television performance yet. Give Patti LuPone that Emmy nod, people! (Shockingly and unfairly, it would be her first!) A world where Patti LuPone has no Emmy nominations is not a world I want to live in! What is sadnessbut love is impossible to ever achieve again because Patti has no nomination?!)

(Update: I’ve been reminded that LuPone has a guest actress nomination Frasier. She didn’t win, so if you make this laborious reference to the WandaVision quote: the sadness remains.)

The best episode of the season focuses on LuPone’s character Lilia and reveals her backstory.

The episode jumps back and forth in time, fitting for an episode that focuses on a witch with a talent for seeing the future. Sometimes we are with her as she learns her craft, centuries ago. Sometimes we look back at her confused state of mind for a few seconds.

Despite having just been betrayed by Teen (Joe Locke), her burgeoning kaleidoscope of memories points her to her calling: she must move on to the next trial, help Teen and Agatha and bring Jen (Sasheer Zamata) along to reunite the family. covenant.

The patchwork of flashbacks serves to make sense of her erratic behavior, which was dismissed as yet another crazy fortune-telling. But it also serves to fully establish who Lilia is, a witch who wasn’t sure what her life meant or could mean because it was always presented to her in the wrong order. LuPone is fantastic in these scenes, mourning an existence that may have seemed purposeless, and overwhelmed by her realization, finally, of what that purpose is.

As she reads the tarot card that will save the witches and allow them to continue on The Witches’ Road, she realizes herself. She pulls a Queen of Cups and reveals herself to be an “empathetic, intuitive, inner voice that you can trust.” The Three of Pentacles indicates what was missing: a coven, which she now has. The Knight of Wands represents her past fighting spirit.

Each card is a moving tribute to the power of a witch crippled by self-doubt. LuPone’s portrayal of discovery and emotion is heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, a masterclass in subtlety — all delivered while wearing a cheap Glinda the Good Witch costume that your friend who loves Halloween too much found in a mall costume store has bought. (We can’t go into every plot detail here…)

To say more would be to spoil it. But for a genre overrun with hero’s journeys of all kinds, Lilia’s in this episode is my favorite so far. And for my old gay self to be here waxing poetic about a crazy episode of a Marvel series, of all things? Well, that just reflects the message of the episode itself: never underestimate the power of Patti LuPone.