Agatha All Along
Hey everyone, and welcome. Today, we will be talking about the show Agatha All Along. Fun Fact: Agatha Harkness first appeared in Fantastic Four #94 as a nanny to Sue and Reed’s son Franklin. This show came out in 2024, stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, and Aubrey Plaza, and was created by Jac Schaeffer. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Agatha All Along Follows Agatha Harkness as she gathers a coven of witches in an attempt to get her powers back by walking the witches’ road after the Scarlett Witch takes them.
Agatha All Along is a supernatural witchy show. It has similar vibes to Wandavision, The Runaways, or American Horror Story: Coven.
Agatha All Along is a spinoff of Wandavision, and I love Wandavision, Agatha, and Witches, so I knew I was going to watch. One small thing I loved about this show is that it was very much a spooky season show that started in the season and ended right before Halloween, which should happen more, to be honest.
Kathryn Hahn reprises her role from Wandavision as Agatha in this season, and when we first meet her, it has been 3 years that she has been trapped in Wanda’s spell, and she finally is able to break out with some help from Rio and Teen. She is still powerless and wants to use the witches’ road to get her powers back, unbeknownst to us at the time, the road is fake, and she had been using it to steal witches’ powers. During Agatha’s trial, we get a little insight into her backstory and learn that her ability to absorb witches’ powers is something that she hasn’t always been able to control, which she ends up embracing. There is a sad moment where we see the ghost of her mom and her mom, and even though Agatha tries to pretend that she is this ruthless witch, her mom gets under her skin and makes her a bit sad when she says she should’ve killed her at birth. While on the road, we see a lot of talk about her son, and you can tell that she views the teen as resembling her son, to which Rio reminds her that he is not your son. There had been a lot of speculation about her son throughout the season, and I’m glad by the end, we see what actually happened. Interestingly, when it comes to her son, she never corrected people on whatever speculation they had about him; she just let them believe what they wanted, and we learn she still carries things that remind her of him. She had a relationship with Death that we also don’t quite understand, and as we come to find out, Agatha supplied her with bodies to keep her son alive, and the moment she stopped was the moment Death took her son. I’m under the impression that killing witches is either how Agatha has lived for so long, or she was under the impression that it would convince Death to bring her son back. One thing I loved about Agatha is that her ability to only care about herself never changed throughout the season, they weren’t set on making her an antihero, they let her be a villain still while showing that villains and heroes aren’t black and white and some operate in the grey. Even though Agatha was not the most trustworthy person to take this journey, she did still benefit from the coven. During the fight with Death, she attempts to use the protection spell learned from Alice, The healing spell she learned from Jen, and then the warning from Lilia that “If she calls you a coward, hit the deck”. In the end, she dies and becomes a ghost, and I look forward to her helping Billy find Tommy. I feel like in the future, Agatha will find some way to weasel herself back onto the mortal plane.
Aubrey Plaza portrays Rio or Death, and if I had a nickel for every time Aubrey Plaza was in a Marvel show and did a fantastic in her role, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s great that it’s happened twice. We meet Rio in the first episode, and she is in Agatha’s prison that Wanda left her in and she helps her get out but then also attempts to kill her. She tells Agatha that the Salem 7 are coming after her, which leads Agatha to gather some witches. While on the road, she isn’t there originally but she later joins the group in a scene I loved where she says less a green witch, more THE GREEN WITCH, and her voice is darker. We later find out from Lilia that she is, in fact, Death. From a discussion with Agatha, we learn that the plan was to feed her these dead bodies. It was interesting to learn that Rio wants Billy, but if she kills him, he will hop to another body, so he needs to turn himself in willingly, which shows you how powerful he is. You can tell that she has feelings towards Agatha and gives her exceptions that she hasn’t given anyone else. There is a scene where Rio says a long time ago, she loved someone, and she had to do something she didn’t want to do even though it was her job, and she hurt them, and that was her scar. We later find out that it was taking Agatha’s son, Nicholas Scratch. Throughout the season, there are hints that she is Death; one of the most obvious is the Oujia board saying death when they ask who is here, and she cackles. After the death of Alice, while the rest of the group pushes on, she is not seen with them, but we know someone just died, and we later see that she was taking care of that. I love it when we meet her as death she has this cool skeleton face design and her crown, but one of the coolest things is how she can cut a door in the fabric of reality. In the end, it came down to the boy or Agatha, and when Agatha didn’t give her the boy, she came after her, and we see how powerful she is without having to break a sweat. I love how they don’t try to give the main character some great power boost that can take on an entity like Death but instead just make the sacrifice to die, which Agatha did, and we got to see the Kiss of Death, which is Agatha absorbing her powers which are too strong and as hinted earlier would kill her. Also, I’m not sure, but I was like, is that the first female same-sex kiss we’ve seen in Marvel? Took them long enough. Marvel, in the past, has had a bad habit of killing off villains, and I’m so happy they didn’t this time, and I hope we see more of her.
Debra Jo Rupp plays Mrs Hart, reprising her role from Wandavision, who is not a witch but is on this journey because of Agatha. I love how happy she was just to be invited and how she didn’t really grasp how scary this all was, and sadly, she died. One of the most funny things was Agatha constantly not remembering who she was, especially since she spent the most time with her.
Alice is the protection witch played by Aly Ahn, whose goal on the road is to break a family curse. After she lost her mom, Lorna, she lost touch with her magic side, but on the journey, she reconnects with it. She comes from a line of protection witches, and her mom made her get a tattoo to protect her from a family curse that killed her mom. We learn that Lorna’s version of the ballad was also a protection spell, and we even get to hear a cool rendition of that while she breaks the curse. When they are trying to enter the road, one thing I noticed is while she is singing the song, she is crying, which I think has to do with her thinking about her mom and just being scared. During her trial, which is 70’s themed and mirrors her mom’s music career, she breaks the curse, reconnects with her magic, and finds joy in being a witch. She ends up dying trying to protect Agatha, which instead leads Agatha to absorb her powers and kill her. Her interaction with Rio or death was sad because she’s, like, I finally broke the curse, then I died. Rio proceeds to ask her if she is a protection witch, and she says Yeah and Death says you died protecting someone. As much as it was sad to see her go, I loved how Alice was able to do something no one in her family could do before her.
Lilia Calderu is portrayed by the amazing Patti LuPone, who is a divination witch who is on the road because she has hidden her powers because all she sees is death. After all, she doesn’t know how to control her powers, and instead of facing her powers she runs from them. She was so important in so many ways, from helping Agatha create this coven to foreshadowing events to come. I feel like she had the most hesitation in joining but eventually did, and throughout the trials, she kept having these moments where she would say something random, and as the episodes started to go on, I was able to piece them together to figure out what she was saying. She experienced time non-linear, which is part of the reason she was saying these things. It’s interesting how everyone is shocked when they realize they can’t hear the teen say his backstory, but she is not that shocked and instead uses her experience to realize it is a sigil and lets him and us know that the witch who put that on him would forget that they did which we find out is her. In hindsight, it seems like it was more obvious that it was her because she has so much knowledge of sigils, but we still don’t exactly know the why behind her doing this. In the episode focused on the teen or William or Billy, we learn that she was doing readings at his bar mitzvah, and she realized he had two lifelines and put the sigil on him to protect him. Her trial is filled with different popular witches like Maleficent, the Wicked Witch of the West, The Evil Queen, and Maleficent, which was genius because she talked about how she hated how witches had been portrayed throughout the year. She is dressed like Glinda the Good Witch, and in her trial, she gives Billy a reading, and that doesn’t solve the puzzle; instead, she kind of examines the entire team with cards to match. I love how she is time jumping through time during her trial, which helps her, and with impending doom, she figures out she has to face her fears and connect with her powers. She reconnects with her powers and realizes that she loves her coven, that she needs to face death, and that she is the queen of cups, which, if you are wondering, signifies a woman who is caring and compassionate. She has the saddest and most badass death when she takes out the Salem 7 by changing the tower reversed to the tower upright, and they all fall on swords. She is trying to hold on but eventually embraces death and falls, too, in one of the coolest shots of the season. As I said, she lived life not in chronological order, and I think with this embrace of her fate and abilities, she was able to fill in the blanks of what she was missing. Before she died, she showed everyone the door and gave them a piece of vital information, which mirrors Glinda’s sendoff to Dorthy.
Jenifer Kale, our potion’s witch, is portrayed by Sasheer Zamata, who is bound and is trying to get her powers back. She is the only one of the recruited witches to survive, and her trial is the first one. In her trial, she has to make a brew so they don’t die from poison in a house that looks like it’s straight from Big Little Lies. Her trial tests her knowledge of ingredients and the order as they are in a rush to save everyone. Her trial teaches her that even without her magic, she still has the knowledge of potions, which is extremely useful, as seen later when she cures Billy. I love how, in her trial, when they are trying to escape, she pushes everyone out of the way, but during Lilias’s trial, she wants everyone to go first, which shows how much she grew and came to love this coven. In Lilias’s trial, she pulls the high priestess card, which is Jenifer, and part of the meaning behind that card is they have a lot of power that they cannot or will not use, and I assumed that part of that has to do with her being bound but also hints that she has so much power that we haven’t seen yet. Right after Lilias’s trial, she talks to Billy about Rio, and she mentions that it is about the growth of all living things, including growth and decay. It was really interesting to see her make that connection between a green witch and Death and how they are more connected than previously thought. In the end, we find out that Agatha bound her, and she goes through the process of unbinding herself, which makes me so happy. The moment where she gets her powers back is a great scene with some great acting. She survives and flies off at the end, and I’m so happy that she got her powers back.
Teen or William Kaplan or Billy Maximoff or Wiccan is played by Joe Locke, and I must say I’m shocked that this is only his second acting credit. At the beginning of the season, he helps break Agatha out of her prison and wants her help to go on the road, which she declines and plans on leaving him, but she doesn’t have a choice in the matter. When we meet him, he has a sigil on him, so no one can hear what he is saying when he is talking about himself, which leaves a lot of guesses on who he could be. He is very optimistic about how everything will go and tries not to judge Agatha so harshly. Agatha is fond of him because he shares a lot of traits with her son, Nicholas. We later find out that Lilia put the sigil on him and that, technically, William Kaplan died, and Billy Maximoff took over his body after the Westview anomaly. He doesn’t know how to control his powers, but he is aware that he has them, and he also doesn’t understand how powerful he is. At the end of episode 5, after Agatha kills Alice, he snaps, the sigil breaks, and he puts Agatha in some quicksand by controlling Jen and Lilia to do so and then throwing Jen and Lillia in the quicksand with his powers. I thought this was so smart because, as we have seen countless times, Agatha can absorb witches’ powers, so instead of blasting her, he used his ability to mind-control the other witches to do his bidding. The big reveal not only shows him using his powers but also getting his own crown similar to his mother’s, paired fittingly with Billie Eillish’s You Should See Me in a Crown. When we learn his backstory, it is interesting to see that he had some knowledge of everyone in the coven before the events of the show, Lilia was reading fortunes at his bar mitzvah, Jen was on a YouTube video he was watching, Alice was the cop who helped his parents after the crash, and we see him finding Agatha who was playing detective in her house which he went to so that he can break the curse. In this episode, we meet his boyfriend, and he texts him something, and there is a black heart, which got me thinking back to episode 2 with Lilia making a list of who would be in the coven she drew a black heart, which I thought might be Rio but at that moment I knew it was him. With this episode showcasing his room and some interest mixed with a line Mrs. Davis said about something looking like an old train car under Westview, I had a feeling that he created the hex just like his mother did, just that he did it out of fear while she did it out of grief which ends up being true. After they made it back from the road, Death came for Agatha, which made me so nervous because Agatha was not doing well in this fight. It looks like the end for Agatha as Death closes in, and then we see Death get knocked back, and we see Billy, who is flying down in his Wiccan outfit, coming to save Agatha. The reveal of him with his powers and his comic outfit made me squeal with excitement, and while he’s no match for literal death, I think this further shows how powerful he can be because he is already learning so fast, like his mom. After this battle ends poorly, he returns home and starts to realize that there are a lot of similarities between his room and the witches’ road. He now has to live with the knowledge that he created the road that killed three people, and even after Agatha says she was going to kill them either way, it doesn’t help him feel better about it. I will say that even though the road was created by him, it did help a lot of the witches solve the problem that they wanted to. He almost Banishes ghost Agatha in the end because he sees that she will never care about anyone but herself, but he has sympathy when he realizes that the reason she is a ghost is because she is scared to face her son. In the end, he wants her to help him find his brother then he also closes the hex that he created and leaves a little mural for the people they lost, which goes to show you he is not a cold-blooded killer, it was just an accident. I hope we see more of him soon and maybe a spinoff of him finding his brother.
In the episode where we get more of a backstory on Billy, we get the return of Evan Peters as Ralph Boehner. I was shocked to see him because I honestly thought he would be one of those characters that wouldn’t come up again. One interesting thing that I don’t remember if it was covered in Wandavison was that he was controlled by Agatha, not Wanda. It did make me think about how many others were as well. Always enjoy seeing Evan Peters, and now we see Ralph as this conspiracy theorist because of what he has been through.
In each trial of the Witches’ Road, there was a theme that was always cool to see. We start with this beach house, which is giving rich Big Little Lies vibes, then we head to this 70s-themed music studio, then a haunted cabin straight out of an old slasher, then a castle, and the last one looks like a morgue. With each location we visited, we also got outfits to match; which was interesting to see what they would be wearing to match the vibe. It was cool to see these and how they tied in with the trial, and with the revelation that Billy made the road, I assume he was able to take on this form and set up the trials due to his mind-reading abilities. I think the themes helped make the episodes feel like individual episodes instead of a long movie and made them more memorable.
The show had multiple different titles announced, which seemed like a fun little marketing scheme, but they settled on Agatha All Along. The title of this show gets its name from a song from Wandavision, so going into it I was like, hmm would we get another song, and will I like it? We get The Ballad of the Witches’ Road in many different renditions, and I must say I loved every single one of them.
The Salem 7 are chasing Agatha because she killed their parents, and it is cool to see how they all could shift into different animals. Even though they mentioned early on that they were coming for her, I just had a feeling that they wouldn’t be the main threat this season. It was interesting to see them pop up throughout the season, but by the end, I was happy to see them meet their demise, and the scene was just great.
Wanda comes up a lot this season, and even though I was hoping for confirmation that she wasn’t dead, I’m glad they showed how much Wanda affected Agatha’s life. In the first episode, Agatha is in the illusion prison that Wanda put her in, and she’s playing detective, and we see that the Jane Doe she’s trying to solve looks like Wanda. Besides the trap Wanda puts her in, she also has to deal with her son now, creating another little maze for her to weasel out of.
My Favorite part of this show was episode 7. During this episode, we see how Lilia doesn’t view time linearly and how all the random stuff she’s been saying throughout the season has significance. We further see how Witches’ skills are unique, as displayed when Agatha and Teen try to complete the trial, get confirmation on Rio being Death, Get rid of the Salem 7, and see Lilia facing her worst fear, Death, and embracing it. Patti Lupone gave a fantastic performance in this episode and brought so much grace to Lilias’s send-off and made it even more gut-wrenching. It was overall a fantastic episode, and I already loved the show, and this somehow made me love it even more.
Agatha All Along was a fantastic spin-off that gave us more of this character we came to love while introducing us to so many more that, by the end of the season, we loved. Every episode stood out and made me want more, and by the end, I was left satisfied. I do hope we can learn more about these witches in the future and see what their potential can be.
