Agatha All Along
Note: This is a double recap of the final two episodes of Agatha All Along, which both dropped on October 30 as two halves of a greater whole. Spoilers ahead, etc.!
You know how some people walked out of the Barbie movie going, “How the hell did they get away with that?†I didn’t, but that’s how I feel about Agatha All Along, which I can now officially say has surprised the hell out of me.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this show — no, actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly what I thought we’d be getting from Agatha All Along: a solid TV series starring some of the greats, with a couple fun twists that nonetheless would eventually give way to a CGI fight and typical tie-in to the greater Marvel universe. I figured it would have flair and trusted Kathryn Hahn in particular to imbue her character with the pathos Elizabeth Olsen found in Wanda before her. And, sure, we got all that. But we also got a surprisingly bold and astonishingly self-assured piece of TV work that managed to avoid the usual Marvel pitfalls — endless blue-screen sky fights, Ouroboros references to Avengers lore, any single agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., et cetera — to become something all its own.
For as much as I enjoyed WandaVision, I found myself agreeing with Agatha realizing that Billy himself is responsible for conjuring up the Road(!). Unlike Marvel Phase Whatever, and in an even more distinct way than WandaVision, Jac Schaeffer’s Agatha All Along managed to do something interesting with its power. Fueled by a combination of grief, curiosity, and determination, Billy did indeed take after his birth mother to create something both fantastical and very real in terms of its consequences. It wasn’t Agatha, legendary serial scammer, but Billy all along. WandaVision’s similar reveals got rushed and confused once the show had to bring in the movies, but Agatha doesn’t have that issue. Absent the need to immediately tie into the greater Marvel plan, the Billy reveal(s) got to take their time, and become even more powerful for it.
“Follow Me, My Friend, to Glory at the End†picks up seconds after “I Hold Death’s Hand in Mine†left off, but instead of living in the glorious slo-mo tumble of Lilia’s sacrifice, we’re now faced with the cold, hard reality of her death. Jen beats at the door Lilia closed in her face and collapses, more exhausted and furious and distraught than we’ve ever seen her. Even Agatha seems more shaken by this death than the one she more directly caused (once again: RIP, Alice, whom we see walk off with Rio into the afterlife even though she says, through tears, that she was nowhere near ready to go). Hahn shifts into yet another gear in these moments, her raw desperation in these quieter moments contrasting sharply with the brash theatricality she puts on whenever anyone else is around — anyone, that is, except her ex.
Now that Rio’s true identity as Lady Death is out in the open, playtime appears to be over. Also, realizing who Teen actually is has royally pissed her off. “He’s an abomination,†she says of Billy/William. “He is disrupting the sacred balance! … what he wants from the Road is a violation.†Harsh, but you know what? Also fair! Wanda created a family out of thin air, and now one of her kids is living in another one’s body, with his twin potentially doing the same. If you’re Death, whose entire point of existence is to make sure the dead stay that way, this kind of workaround is gonna pose a problem, to say the least. Rio sees him as a thief, but apparently he’s one that can’t be caught; instead, he has to turn himself in.
Agatha, ever in search of ways to stay alive, promises to deliver Billy at the Road’s end if Rio will stop stalking her every move. “When I die, a long, long, long, long, time from now,†she continues, “I don’t want to see your face.†Rio’s stung, but if she knows Agatha as well as it seems, she shouldn’t believe her. Agatha and Death are so perversely fascinated by and so magnetically attracted to each other, despite it all, that there’s no fuckin’ way Agatha would want to go out without getting off one last time.
With Lilia’s death fracturing the coven even deeper, whatever structure the Road had before starts to collapse. Trying to walk to the next Earth trial without their Green Witch brings them right back to the shoes they abandoned at the start, and the sight of the three pairs that will never see their owners again erodes whatever patience Billy had left. “Screw the Road,†he snarls, shoving his foot back into his boot. Next thing he knows, he’s waking up in a body bag alongside Agatha and Jen in a stark, white room for (they hope) one last trial.
Whatever it is, it gives both Sasheer Zamata and Jen Kale the showcase they deserve. When Jen realizes that it was actually hired mercenary Agatha who bound her magic, she releases a century’s worth of pent-up … well, everything. She looks Agatha and her own self-doubt in the eye, invokes a spell-breaking incantation, and reclaims her magic for herself, before getting zapped out of the Road and into the clear pink skies above. Zamata is so, so good in this episode as she shows off the full range of what she can do, and if Jen should return in future, the MCU would be very lucky to have her.
Once Jen is gone and Agatha’s faced with the reality of possibly handing Billy over to Rio, the Road and series alike rapidly unravel — which makes it sounds like they lose control, but that’s not the case at all. In fact, the end of the Road for this “coven of two†is only the beginning. As ever, this show’s really packed a ton of story into impressively short episode run times. (Stranger Things, I am absolutely begging you to take notes!)
After Jen’s left the Road with her prize of power, Billy and Agatha are left to puzzle out their own escape hatches. Though Agatha promised Rio she’d get Billy to hand himself over, she instead basically sits him down for an intensive meditation class with the goal of locating Tommy’s far-flung soul. As the eerie ceiling lights start to flicker out, Agatha guides Billy through aural flashbacks of his final moments in Westview, a.k.a. those final blow moments of WandaVision. He can’t quite remember his twin, but he can feel him like a second heartbeat, like “that feeling when your body knows it’s safe.†That feeling doesn’t last long, though, because soon enough he’s following Tommy’s spirit to a backyard pool outside Wanda’s Westview Hex, where some teens prank their friend into an accidental drowning. Wherever that body is seems to be his best bet to find Tommy. With that revelation, Billy gets zapped out of the Road, too.
Which leaves only Agatha, who’s used to being alone, but isn’t thrilled about it in this case. Not even trying to plant a lock of her son’s hair in a floor crack, with her own tears to boot, seems to do the trick; the walls cave in and she only barely gets away. She bangs and bangs on a door to get let out, but when it finally gives way, she doesn’t have time to be relieved. The vibe outside the Road is giving “a sepia-toned tornado is on its way to fuck your shit right up†— but in this case, of course, that tornado is Death herself.
This is the point where I got nervous that we were about to get some mind-numbingly bland, CG’ed magic battle. (Let’s just say I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Whatever this weekend and leave it at that.) But Agatha and Rio’s final clash isn’t just operatic, but viscerally bloody. Aubrey Plaza’s made no secret of loving this role, and how could she not with scenes like this, which let her openly cackle and snarl and slice? Agatha’s right that they “can’t fight Death†forever, but man, is it fun to watch them try.
This sequence also has the grounding force of Billy, now decked out in full Wiccan garb, at the height of his powers even after donating some to Agatha — who, in an extremely uncharacteristic act, manages to stop herself before sucking every ounce of it out of his body. Good job, Agatha! But wait, there’s more: The second Billy offers himself up to Rio, she seizes the chance to bounce. Bad job, Agatha!! Billy, who’s rapidly become powerful on a level that must really annoy Agatha, then gets inside her head to ask the one question she never wants to answer: “Is this how your son died?â€
It’s hard to know exactly what goes through Agatha’s mind at this, but it’s safe to say plenty of it is tinged with regret. And so she turns on her heel and grabs Death in an impassioned kiss, letting someone else suck the life out of her, for once. Once again, I must point out how extremely gay this entire situation is. Death by making out with your ex-girlfriend, who’s literally Death?! Rio was right; no one in history has had “special treatment†quite like Agatha Harkness.
With the rapid decaying of Agatha’s body into the ground, the original Green Witch’s work is done, and so she takes her reluctant leave. Billy does the same, though the slo-mo solemnity of his exit from Westview loses some of its gravitas when he and his superhero cloak have to drive his Subaru home. It’s only once he’s back in his very cool, densely decorated bedroom that he realizes what actually just happened.
Agatha didn’t lie when she told him the Road wasn’t real; no one was more surprised than her when a door appeared in the floor to send them on their way. Billy just wanted to believe in its magic so badly that he made it happen, drawing inspiration from his own life and reference points to create every trial and bump they encountered along the Road. Credit where it’s due to the production and set-design teams, which I already said killed it with William/Billy’s room, but I didn’t realize how much they killed it — they gave us all the clues! (Extra credit for the unmistakable “Trans Lives Matter†flag, too.)
Though he and Agatha’s ghost end up having unfinished business (“it’s not loyalty — it’s analysisâ€), it would’ve been so easy to end the season there. But what makes this show so intriguing is that it once again zigs where we expect it to zag. After seemingly bringing the story to a fitting close with Wiccan’s origin story, the final episode — “Mother, Maiden, Crone†— throws us all the way back to 1750 Salem for Agatha’s. It’s to director Gandja Monteiro’s credit that she took on this episode as well as the previous one; they couldn’t be more different in visual scope, with one bouncing between a stark white room and Westview, and the other mostly in 18th-century forests. Still, she handles both with a deft eye for what each scene can say about the characters at their heart.
In “Maiden, Mother, Crone,†we see Agatha at each of these life stages. We see her attempt to give birth only to get interrupted by her “love,†Death, and beg for more time. We see Death grant it, but only for so long. We see Agatha and her son, Nicky, form a mother-son scammer team that lures unsuspecting witches into giving up their lives and power to bolster hers. We see them make up a silly song to entertain them throughout their travels — and it sounds all too familiar, since we’ve already heard “The Ballad†about a dozen times before. We see why she gained such a reputation as a serial “witch killer†(because it was, uh, entirely accurate), but also what she lost when Nicky finally had to follow Rio into the dark.
After Nicky’s death left her without a purpose beyond her own power grabs, she spent the next hundreds of years running a different, solo scam: the Road. She’d tell witches she could bring them to it and then, when singing “The Ballad†didn’t work, absorb all their powers for herself to maintain her status as the Road’s “sole survivor.†That Agatha’s con took advantage of so many people for so long is a wrenching twist (if a little funny to realize that the great Agatha Harkness was essentially just a pioneer of the MLM movement). It’s also a twist the show’s earned by demonstrating time and time again what’s always made her tick.
After the first episode of this show, I wondered if the Agatha team would have the guts to tell the story of a villain without ultimately redeeming her into a fallen hero. After the last one, I was thrilled to see them rise to the challenge. Agatha’s complicated, crafty, and certainly capable of love. She was neglected and traumatized by those closest to her, and lost every piece of family she ever had. She’s also incredibly self-serving to the point that she was, once again, a ruthless serial killer who preyed on anyone who showed her even a scrap of vulnerability. She was not a good person, but she is a great character, and it’s been a real treat to watch her story from middle, to end, to beginning, and back again.
The Snarkhold-overs:
• If I were able to separately rate these episodes, “Follow Me, My Friend†would probably get four and “Maiden, Mother, Crone†five for sticking the landing, which averages out to 4.5, so why not round up?
• Well done to anyone who figured out the ultimate twist of the Road being all Billy’s doing, especially those who clocked the blue magic surrounding the door! I don’t always love it when a show does a flashback montage of all the clues we missed, but this one was a lot of fun.
• One last Kathryn Hahn Line Read of the Week: I usually go with something snappy and fun, but this time, I’m giving it to her heartbroken “Sometimes, boys die.†A world of pain in one phrase that requires an actor like Hahn to land it right.
• Ah what the hell, an Aubrey Plaza Line Read of the Week for the Road: “I am the natural order of all things, baby. And you love me!â€
Absolutely loved Rio leaving the Road by simply ……… taking her dagger to the canvas scenery. Not just another hint that the whole Road sprung up out of whole cloth, but a sly practical effect, too.
• Credit to Joe Locke for handling a very tricky role and, not for nothing, reminding me that Billy’s not just Wanda’s kid, but Vision’s.
• Highly recommend checking out the Instagram of Daniel Selon, Agatha’s lead costume designer, for in-depth BTS insight on how all the looks came together. I can’t wait to hear more about the different eras of Agatha’s Road scam, most especially her ’90s Craft look.
• If you’ve gotten this far, whew! What a journey we’ve all been on. Thank you for reading these recaps, it really has been a blast (so to speak). If (Ghost!) Agatha and Billy do go on an unlikely adventure to find Tommy and we get to see it, I’m all in.
Come see Agatha’s best frenemy Wanda at Vulture Festival, November 16–17 in Los Angeles, where we’ll be talking to Elizabeth Olsen.