The Year Hollywood Rewrote the Witch

Sporting their pointy black hats, potions and flying brooms, witches typically make their on-screen appearances in film and TV during the weeks leading up to Halloween, usually as villainous hags. 

But put down those torches and pitchforks, say the writers of some recent witch-themed movies and TV series. Their characters may use magic, but these are no cackling, cauldron-stirring demons. 

Consider Elphaba, the green-skinned heroine both of the film Wicked, the Broadway musical from which it was adapted and the source novel by Gregory Maguire. Wicked is a reexamination of the Wicked Witch of the West, a character who had a title but no name in The Wizard of Oz. What about her enemy-turned-friend Glinda—also of Wicked—who aspired to be the powerful sorceress that her rival already is? Pop culture knows Glinda by the seemingly oxymoronic title as Glinda the Good Witch.

Or how about that coven of spell-casting, trial-facing women led by Agatha Harkness who walk the Witches’ Road on a dangerous quest in the recent series Agatha All Along?

These are all layered, complicated women whose magical skills make them suspect. 

Creator-showrunner Jac Schaeffer and Kathryn Hahn on the set of Agatha All Along. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel.

“There’s an inherent negative connotation to the word ‘witch,’ and it makes everyone intrigued and titillated,” said Jac Schaeffer, creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Agatha All Along. “Some of the best witch stories are about demystifying that. The reason that I love the witches of this show is because they’re everything all at once. They have the capacity for evil and deception, treachery back-stabbing and viciousness, but they also have the capacity for loyalty, compassion, love, and community. That’s every human.”

Winnie Holzman has been pondering the duality of witches since she first adapted Maguire’s novel into the musical of Wicked. As she considers the treatment of witches in 2024, Holzman harkens to an email she received from The Sophia Institute, a Charleston, South Carolina-based learning organization dedicated to social justice that exists “to foster the rise of the Feminine”:

“Living in this unprecedented time of potentially profound transformation as we are, we are experiencing a necessary breakdown for the breakthrough of a new consciousness, one that carries the feminine and joins it with the masculine and out of that union, a consciousness is forming that is more just, compassionate, wise, and loving, one that unites us in our shared humanity.”

Which, to Holzman, does not sound particularly wicked or witchy.

Wicked co-screenwriter Winnie Holzman. Photo by Showtime.

“It’s perfect because it expresses beautifully and succinctly what I was trying to say when I was first writing the screenplay and, before that, when we were writing the musical,” Holzman said. “I was keenly aware of this rising of feminine power. It was obvious in our world around us that this was happening and creating a backlash.”

In Wicked, Elphaba is teased and bullied over her appearance and outsider characteristics. It’s not until she harnesses her power and threatens the authority of Oz that her mentor, the sorceress Madame Morrible, warns the citizens against “this distortion, this repulsion, this wicked witch.” It’s the first time the word is used, and Holzman sees contemporary parallels in the mob-led villanization and vilification of her story’s heroine. 

“Why were there cries of, ‘Lock her up!’? Why were the lies spread about Kamala Harris so ugly,” Holzman said. “We live in a culture where there is a lot of pushback against a woman who holds power. The whole idea of a witch is a real image that people have always had about a woman who is powerful, who is somehow dangerous, who is somehow subversive, who is somehow going to hurt you.”

Dana Fox, who co-wrote part one of Wicked with Holzman, said part of the story’s appeal was the satisfaction of watching Elphaba step into her power, a feat that she says isn’t easy for women to do on-screen or off.

“There’s this profound relief of watching someone actually doing it,” said Fox. “I fantasize about doing it all the time, and I never do it because I can’t, because I know there will be consequences. I know I will get put into a corner. I will get in trouble. So I try to make it a little more palatable for everyone. I’m going to smile and be nice about it, but I want to do what she does.”

Wicked co-screenwriter Dana Fox. Photo by Jordan Strauss.

Witchy Research

The women of Agatha All Along are conscious of the dangers of living openly as witches, a circumstance which historically could get them stoned, burned, drowned, or otherwise put to death.

“I wanted to literalize all of that as a way to sort of check the box that these are life and death stakes,” said Schaeffer. “To have them tethered to the familiar history of the persecution of witches felt loaded and potent and fun for us.”

Schaeffer assigned the members of her writers’ room various research projects related to aspects of witchcraft like potions, tarot cards and the sinister Salem’s Seven, a group of mutated humans who also appeared in the Marvel comics. The production also employed a real-life witch as a consultant both to the series and to Agatha portrayer Kathryn Hahn.

Prior to her work on Agatha, Schaeffer thought of witches as the stereotypical cackling hags like one might see in horror movies or cartoons. With a long-time interest in science fiction and fantasy, witches or even superheroes she confesses “weren’t on my bingo card.” 

But following her work on WandaVision, the Agatha All Along opportunity enabled her to take a deeper look at witches and witchy tropes both positive and negative.

“We wanted to get into the villainy of witches, but also the beauty and the tribalism ended up being everything I wanted to discuss about what we in the writers’ room referred to as the divine feminine,” Schaeffer said. “We were also writing witches who had been marginalized and who had become disconnected from their power, so we had a lot of conversations about what is the nature of a witch’s power.”

Middle-Schooler With a Wand

And speaking of power, over on Disney Plus, the Russo family has its hands full with a certain middle schooler who creates chaos with every wave of her wand, thereby breaking the rules of the mortal world she is trying to learn and negotiate.

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place creators and executive producers Scott Thomas and Jed Elinoff. Photo by Eric McCandless.

Billie, the young heroine of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, is a wizard, not a witch, but there’s plenty of spells and subterfuge to keep the mortal world from learning who and what she is. The sequel to Wizards of Waverly Place (which ran from 2007-‘12) uses magic playfully and as a means toward Billie learning not only how to harness her powers, but how to live a good life.

Series creators and EPs Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas knew their audience when they tackled the Waverly Place reboot. Their show has monsters and villains and the through-line that Billie needs proper training from Justin Russo—who was one of the young wizard siblings in the original Waverly Place—to keep bad things from happening. This being a family sitcom, there’s less of a threat of Billie abusing her power for dark purposes. Yes, the teen might get into trouble when she tries to magically develop friendships at her new school, but by episode’s end, a lesson is learned.

Thomas, a self-professed horror fan, acknowledges the fascination of characters using magic to grant wishes, exact revenge.

“Movies and TV and books really kind of flirt with that dark side and play with what we would do with that power,” Thomas said. “There’s something very tempting about that.”

Scott and Elinoff maintain that a series like Waverly Place could serve as a gateway show for younger audiences to more mature witch and wizard-themed stories like Agatha All Along or Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, in which the stakes are much higher. Scott also sees the proliferation of shows about witches, wizards, and spell-casters as coming in reaction to turbulent times.

“There’s something about just being able to learn a spell and make a thing happen or gain instant control over a situation by learning magic that is satisfying in times when things are a little bit uncertain,” Scott said. “That might be one of the reasons why we’re seeing so many witch and wizard shows. There’s a sense of closure and of control in being able to just immediately do what you want, to make it happen.”

“If you’re feeling a little powerless in this moment, any of these shows will give you a little bit of catharsis,” agreed Elinoff, “which is definitely something we can all use right now.”