The entire time I’ve been watching Agatha All Along, I’ve been thinking of the time I saw Patti LuPone star in the West End’s Company. (Brag.) (Stay with me!) There are so few performers on her level that I didn’t care about being so far up in the balcony I could barely see. I knew it wouldn’t matter as long as I got to hear that voice command the room from the stage right up to the ceiling.
When the show finally got to her marquee number (“Ladies Who Lunchâ€), which the entire audience had clearly been dying to see all along, LuPone did the whole thing without even getting up from her barstool — and she crushed. As she finished the song with the rafter-shaking command, “everybody RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!â€, everyone immediately obeyed. I mean, when Patti LuPone shakes a martini glass in your general direction, you have no choice but to do exactly as she says, really. And so we all dutifully stood and clapped and cheered and lost our minds, until the only person in the theater still sitting was LuPone. We didn’t have to get the full brunt of her power to understand it.
Until this episode, it felt like I’d been cheering for a still seated LuPone. It’s not that she hasn’t been great, because of course she has. I just knew there was no way this show cast her to just shake a maraca and have random “kooky†outbursts. No, if you hire LuPone, you’d better have something magnificent waiting in the wings for her to grab with both hands and make entirely her own. I expected Agatha to give her that moment, but didn’t anticipate how.
Which brings us to “Death’s Hand in Mine.†It’s an incredibly ambitious chapter, and not just because of its nonlinear storytelling (which makes it impossible to recap from beginning to end, so I won’t even try). We’re at a critical moment in the show’s overall arc, having just discovered Teen’s dual identity and connection to the larger Marvel universe. This episode manages to both incorporate that and unravel a completely different but no less personal story spanning centuries of fear and hurt. It seems that Lilia’s lifelong terror of her own divination powers has been building up for so long that she’s hit a true breaking point, and the only way out is through.
After a brief interlude with Agatha and Teen sniping at each other again, the episode largely follows Lilia on her scattered journey through time, from the grimy tunnels beneath the Road, to her own Tarot trial, and even back to her very first tea leaf reading lesson with her Maestra (Laura Boccaletti). As written by Gia King and Cameron Squires, it’s a nesting doll of revelations, and also a maze, and a series of psychological psych-outs. It winds and rewinds to fill in all the “gaps†in Lilia’s memory, which is a porous place on a good day. On the Road, though, it’s gotten even worse.
Turns out that Lilia’s been experiencing the Road entirely out of order, weaving in and out of the trials with just enough knowledge of what’s ahead to be frightened, but never staying long enough to make real use of it. To Lilia’s own terror, the last time she felt like this was as a teen witch who had no real control over her own powers and could only watch helplessly as her family’s coven died of fever. She’s been a prisoner of her own fear for so long that she barely remembers the shape of her powers without it; the Road forces her to embrace everything she is, to spectacular and ultimately fatal effect. “Your task is not to control, but to see,†her Maestra tells her. It’s permission to unleash a power she’s long feared and resented, but also to look at herself with the same sudden clarity she’s been turning on others for so long.
Lilia reading her own Tarot spread is an important piece of the overall Road puzzle, but “Death’s Hand in Mine†also does a particularly elegant job of making it Lilia’s final act of grace toward herself, too. It’s the spotlight LuPone episode I’d been waiting for, and she never so much as sings a note — an unexpected move from an otherwise very musical show, but one that pays off, because her acting is just as nuanced and bold as her voice.
That kind of trust in its strengths and vision is what’s made Agatha All Along such a strong surprise in general, and “Death’s Hand in Mine†ramps that up on more levels than just its storytelling. At this point in a franchise such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s so hard for any one project to develop a visual language all its own, but Agatha’s achieved it, and I have no choice but to respect it. The set design for Lilia’s trial alone is so lush and spooky that it’s easy to forget they’re all standing around dressed as Disney characters. (Jen, rudely made to look like a gnarly version of Snow White’s wicked stepmother: “I don’t want to talk about it.â€)
Maybe it was inevitable that this show would have to evoke its almighty parent company, but Jac Schaeffer (who also directed this episode) has found a way to both embrace its Marvel origins while striking out on a different kind of path, anyway. We haven’t even gotten into the fact that Agatha just goes ahead and confirms that she’s queer for anyone without eyes and/or basic deductive reasoning. When she can’t answer Teen’s biggest questions about Wanda (“is she really dead?â€) and Rio (“where is she?â€), she shrugs, “you want straight answers? Ask a straight lady.†Once again, I have to ask if the Marvel Powers That Be have actually read the scripts for this show! Do they know just how gay this highly anticipated spinoff is?! It’s just bizarre to see the official Marvel social media accounts post such overtly queer #content at the same time that the almighty Disney parent company’s apparently (allegedly) scouring movies of anything that could read remotely gay, but I guess, once again, it’s down to the witches they couldn’t burn to push on through. Disney villains have always been queer, anyway.
With that, we’re bidding a real goodbye to Lilia and LuPone, who both brought something different to this series that will be sorely missed. For as much as Agatha and Teen’s emotional turmoil have mostly been the show’s defining emotional journeys, LuPone grabs the opportunity to highlight Lilia’s with both hands here. Her ultimate sacrificial scene is appropriately grandiose as Lilia quite literally upends the entire trial, flipping over the Tower card to send her and all the Salem Seven flying up and into the swords waiting on the other side.
But it’s her confessions to Jen underground that really struck me. LuPone and Sasheer Zamata both lock in, immediately creating a paired dynamic I already miss. When Jen asks Lilia, sincerely, why she’d ever want to hide her own power, she opens the door for Lilia to be honest with herself for maybe the first time in her long life. If I’d been sitting in the uppermost balcony for the moment Lilia snaps that she’s “not confused,†I’d have been prepping myself for the standing o. What a joy to watch LuPone let Lilia rip, whether covered in dirt, in Glinda drag, or trading quiet wisdom with her Sicilian elder. Getting to finally see both LuPone and Lilia in their elements is a thrill that makes the episode’s final twist of the knife even more effective. “Death comes for us all,†as Lilia’s already told us, and sure enough, Rio’s come looking for her.
The Snarkhold-overs:
• So, yes, confirmed: Rio is Death, and to that I must say, hot! Love her full Grim Reaper by way of DÃo de los Muertos look almost as much as I love Agatha’s, “what can I say? I like the bad boys.†(This is also my pick for Kathryn Hahn line read of the week, but I’ll take further nominations in the comments, as always!).
• Very funny to have everyone realize that Death is “the original Green Witch†while Agatha’s literally glaring back at them through lurid green face paint. So much for being the most notorious witch on the Road.
• Teen wants to know “am I Billy or am I William?â€, and while I’m pretty sure the answer is “why not both dot gif,†I’ll keep calling him “Teen†for now out of respect for his journey of self-discovery.
• Thrilled at Lilia insisting that Jen represents “the path ahead.†I feel even more strongly that Jen’s apparent potions trial only skimmed the surface after the deeper emotional revelations of Lilia and Alice’s trials, and hope Zamata gets the spotlight she deserves in the two(!) episodes to come.
• Another episode, another banger of an end credits song. Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle†is the perfect, bittersweet way to send off Lilia and LuPone (“there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them / I’ve looked around enough to know that you’re the one I want to go through time with …â€). RIP to a real one, may she get to read tea leaves in the garden forever.