The witches have a new anthem, and technically it still belongs to Donovan. Alanis Morissette is just the one singing it.
Morissette confirmed she recorded a cover of "Season of the Witch" for Yaga, the Crave Original thriller that reimagines the Baba Yaga myth, calling it "an honor to get inside this song" and signing off with #witchesunite. The series premieres Oct. 23 on Crave in Canada and on AMC+ in the U.S.
Fans who watched the trailer already guessed. AMC+ unveiled the first full look at Yaga on Sept. 25 with her version of the 1966 song draped over footage of a missing heir, a coastal town and a lot of bones, part of the network’s FearFest slate.
Donovan wrote "Season of the Witch" as the closer of side one on his 1966 album Sunshine Superman. At just under five minutes, with that loping organ line and its warning not to look over your shoulder, it was long, strange and ripe for reinterpretation decades before every autumn streaming release needed a soundtrack.
Artists have lined up ever since. Vanilla Fudge rampaged through it in 1968, the same year Al Kooper and Stephen Stills made it a centerpiece of the jam-session landmark Super Session. Lana Del Rey cut her own version in 2019 for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Donovan, meanwhile, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Yaga began life as a hit play by Kat Sandler, who adapted it as writer, showrunner and executive producer. Noah Reid stars as private investigator Charlie Rapp, sent to the coastal town of Whittock to find Henry Park, a young heir to a fishery empire played by Hudson Williams. Carrie-Anne Moss plays a professor with a taste for younger men; Clark Backo is the local detective who wants Rapp gone. The eight half-hour episodes roll out on Fridays after a two-episode premiere, wrapping with a two-episode finale on Nov. 27.
For Morissette, the job sits snugly against a catalog that has always flirted with the uncanny. Jagged Little Pill, her 1995 breakthrough, has sold more than 33 million copies worldwide and took Album of the Year at the 1996 Grammys on the way to seven career wins. She also wrote and recorded "Uninvited" for the 1998 film City of Angels, a song built on exactly the same eerie patience she brings here.
As the trailer’s professor puts it, Baba Yaga lives in a chicken hut and eats kids — only the very, very naughty ones. Now she has a theme song, and it arrives Oct. 23.
