Naming Show Babies by the Name Therapist

The difficulty of naming a show and the influences that guide the process

(Gregory Pace/Moviestore/20th Century Fox Television/Kobal/Shutterstock, CBC Gem, Amazon Prime)

Today’s newsletter comes from our Name Therapist, Duana, whose other job is showrunner/screenwriter (her most recent series is Near or Far, currently streaming on CBC Gem https://gem.cbc.ca/near-or-far) which requires lots of name therapy so she has a lot of experience with TV and movie titles and where they come from. 

Dear Squawkers,

I live with someone who maintains an encyclopedic knowledge of all upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe releases, but they’ve been stymied by the upcoming Kathryn Hahn show where she plays Agatha Harkness – because in the three years since the show was announced, it’s had twice as many titles. Currently Agatha All Along, possibly because of the earworm that is the song from WandaVision, it was originally Agatha: House of Harkness. And then Agatha: Coven of Chaos. Then Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, and Agatha: The Lying Witch and the Great Wardrobe. Yyyyyeah. 

There’s another interpretation here – that the title was Agatha …all along. Get it? At the Disney upfronts, the Marvel team leaned into an “oh, Agatha was tricking us” kind of motif. I get the cuteness involved in “oh, the character on the show is messing with the SHOW ITSELF” (an idea that also played around at the edges of WandaVision) but honestly, this is at best, good spin. With Marvel’s long lead times and closely supervised creative development, I have no doubt that someone second-guessed the Agatha title… several times.