Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 9

 A brief history of Agatha Harkness and the Witches Road. 

Last time on Agatha All Along, they reached the end of the Road. Which as it turns out is also the start, the Witches Road is one big circle. After a minor freakout from Agatha about doing the Road again to get the prize, Billy decides to say screw this and put his shoes back on. Putting one’s shoes on is what triggers the actual final trial, which takes place in Agatha’s basement. They figure out that the trial is to make something grow in the basement without ready access to water, soil, or seeds. While that sounds extremely hard even with magic powers, they find a loophole, in that if you get what you came to the Road for, you just get let out. They figure this out upon discovering the origin of Jen’s binding was in fact Agatha, who in the 1920s was doing mercenary magic work for banknotes, and using Agatha’s hair to unbind herself. Agatha offers to help Billy get what he wants, Tommy. She learned from Rio aka Death, that Tommy is not in fact running around right now, his spirit is more or less in limbo. Billy was able to find a recently vacated Vessel in the form of William Kaplan and Agatha coaches Billy to find another one for Tommy. She coaches him through the ritual in implanting Tommy in the body of a recent drowning victim. Billy asks if he’s killing the boy to save Tommy, and Agatha says no. She’s able to finish the trial herself by using a seed left her in locket with Nicholas Scratch’s hair and her tears. She faced off against Rio upon being freed, as she didn’t hand Billy over like they agreed. She’s almost killed, but Billy stops by to help her in his new Wiccan gear. They hold Rio off, Billy actually giving Agatha a good deal of his power in order to restore her own. Agatha admits that fighting death is an insane idea. Billy offers himself up to Death for Agatha and Agatha agrees to it. She tries to wash her hands of the whole situation but Billy reaches out to her telepathically and asks if this is how Nicky died. Agatha then kisses Death, surrendering herself to her and rapidly deteriorating to nothing. After getting home and washing up, Billy realized that somehow he’d made the road, as aspects of it could be seen all over his room before being scared by Agatha’s disembodied voice. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 9: Maiden Mother Crone

 

Okay, now for a brief history on Agatha Harkness, one of Marvel’s Magic head hitters. We begin in 1750 and Agatha running through the woods. I’m guessing some angry villagers are after her. She strips off her cloak revealing herself to just be in a thick shift and visibly pregnant. She cuts an orange and bites on it to get herself through a strong contraction. She sees Rio in the distance, and she approaches Agatha. Agatha tries to deny Rio and begs that her son get to live. Rio must care about Agatha a great deal because she doesn’t even really barter with her before agreeing to at least give them time. She disappears before answering how long. Agatha births her child, noting that she didn’t use magic to conceive her son, stating “you I made from Scratch,” hence his surname. Agatha cleans them up and continues their journey. As she wonders she comes across a coven of Witches performing a ritual of some kind. The witches invite her in, allowing Agatha to pass through their protective wards. There’s a sweet moment where they offer Agatha and Nicholas food, only for Agatha to smile evilly before smiting them all. Afterwards, Nicholas makes a happy cooing noise, and Agatha says that they’ll be very good at this.

 

Jump forward to 1756 and Nicholas Scratch is a child hanging out by a well. A Witch notices him and tries to talk to him, but Nicholas grabs a bell from her stand and runs. This lures the Witches to Agatha’s home. Nicky escapes out the back, and when the Witches follow Agatha inside to berate her parenting style, she kills then and steals their power. A very well constructed con they’ve got worked out. Later, Nicholas asks his mother why she kills Witches. She claims that it is to survive. He asks if they can’t just live with the Witches and survive with them. Agatha shuts that idea down, telling her son that if he wants to survive in this world he’ll have to get used to this feeling. We see the origin of the Witches Road ballad; it starts as a little song that Agatha and Nicholas sang together as they traveled. Later Nicholas asks for food and Agatha entertains him with a magic blast, her ‘purple’ as he calls it. She gets very sullen for a moment and lists off her powers, she can cast illusions, destroy things, move them with her mind, but she can’t protect him from what’s coming or divine when ‘she’ will come for him. He asks what that means but she doesn’t tell them. We see vignettes of Agatha and Nicholas walking the Road and writing their Ballad together.

 

Sometime later, Nicholas sings their song for an inn’s common room. Agatha pretends to be a bystander and pays him for the song. A witch comes to Nicholas and asks where he heard that song. Nicholas just coughs. She offers him a warm meal with her sisters, clearly another planned hit, but Nicky runs off saying that his mother needs him home. Agatha chases after him. They end up by a river, Nicholas telling her that they can kill more Witches tomorrow. They sing together and bed down for the night. In the night, Nicholas wakes up to see Rio waiting for him with a green burning Torch. She beckons for him, he gets up, but she beckons back at Agatha. Nicholas gives his mother a kiss before walking into the night with Rio. Agatha awakens beside Nicholas to find him cold and dead. She immediately starts sobbing and begging for more time. She buries her son and adds more verses to the Ballad. Her final lines get me a little choked up, “if one be gone, we carry on, but every mile I go, with every bend, beyond the end, your mother loves you so.” She places a bit of Nicholas’ hair into her locket but is interrupted by the Witch from the inn the previous night. She heard Agatha singing and assumes ‘she knows the way.’ See, the Ballad has taken on a life of its own beyond a simple song that Agatha Harkness and Nicholas Scratch would sing as they traveled. Now there are Witches that believe that it’s a real thing and are willing to deal with Agatha to get the prize at the end. She tells her that first, they must gather a Coven.

 

We then see how the Witches Road in fact became Agatha’s hunting pattern for the next few centuries. She’d gather Witches with the promise of showing them the way to and through the Road. When their summoning song didn’t work, she’d berate and insult the Witches until inevitably one lashed out at her, and she could drain their powers. The others reacted in kind and she’d harvest a whole Coven’s worth of power. Assumedly she killed and stole in other ways as well, I just assume that this was the easiest and her preferred method. After a montage of her draining Witches in the 1800s, 1920s and 80s, we return to this most recent trip down the Road. We see a bit more of Agatha’s face as the song ends and see the smirk as she starts the ‘you suck’ tirade to try to drain her new Coven, only for Sharon to note the pentagram in her floor. She checks the pentagram made of sand and looks truly befuddled when Billy runs down and screams about the Salem Seven.

 

We jump to Billy in his room, realizing the Road was made by him and Agatha cackling behind him. Agatha appears to him as a Ghost and seems to be enjoying herself. She makes it a point to tell him that she did NOT sacrifice herself for him, she took a calculated risk. And she’s still figuring out the rules of being a Ghost. She tries to slap him but her hand passes through his face. Billy asks her if he’s the one that made the Road. Agatha explains that, unlike Wanda, he did something interesting with his reality warping powers. He says she’s making fun of him, and this is another of her tricks. Agatha corrects him, saying that the Song was the trick. It didn’t mean anything, it never did, until HE made it real. Billy starts freaking out at realizing that he made the Road, and that by extension he killed the others. He lists off the dead, but Agatha does counter his points for 2/3^rds of them. Alice? Agatha killed her. Lilia? Well, she chose to sacrifice herself. Sharon? Yeah, that one was on him if you want to be technical. She does say that if they’re keeping score he also saved a life. We cut to the outskirts of Westview where Jen Kale digs herself up out of the ground. She seems pissed and dirty but alive. After a moment catching her breath she takes off. Agatha then points out that she was going to kill them all on day one, so yeah. She gives him the same advice she gave to Nicky centuries ago, to get used to this feeling. Billy refuses, but she says that they’ll see.

 

Billy returns to Agatha’s house and goes into the basement. Agatha joins him as he stands before the entrance to the Road. Agatha knows he has her locket and demands he give it to her and that she’ll be on her way after. He ignores her and draws a counter circle to the Witches Road door. He calls his book to him and uses Agatha’s locket as a focus to try to banish Agatha. She tells him not to do it. She scoffs at this attempt but is clearly afraid as he keeps up the incantation and it starts to work. Billy asks why she’s still here, why won’t she just die, and Agatha screams back “Because I can’t face him!” and knocks her locket from his hand. She’s able to make herself solid enough to reclaim her broach and infuse it into her being. Billy tells her that he’s sure Nicky would forgive him for what she did, and she says that when he talks like that he reminds her of him. Agatha offers to work with Billy, but notes she tends to kill her Coven members. Billy points out that he does too. He uses his power to seal the gate to the Road, and engrave a memorial to Sharon Davis, Alice Wu-Gulliver, and Lilia Calderu. The two head out, Agatha saying that they’re going to go find Tommy.

 

Overall, this is one of the better post Endgame projects in my opinion. Kathryn Hahn and Joe Locke really carry this story, which has solid writing to it and some legitimately good twists. I like how, when you get down to it, the title is a lie. It’s not Agatha All Along, but Billy. Using the reality warping powers he inherited from his mother as the twist reveal of how the Witches Road was made is a solid twist. And the show highlights all the little bits of foreshadowing that it’s the case. Starting with the fact that the Witches Road in modern times seems to be all but common knowledge to be a lie Agatha uses to harvest power. There’s just enough rumor and mystery surrounding it for the others not to blow it off completely, but in the second episode everyone knew Agatha was trying to steal their power to save herself, it wasn’t until they saw the door that they started believing. I’ve no idea if this will be a one and done for Jen Kale or if she’ll return at some point to fill in a space in the Magic subsection of the MCU. I’d like to see Sasheer Zamata again, as she was a very solid performer throughout this show… I’m just not sure what they’d try to do with her going forward. Her being the High Priestess sounds cool… but could also be nothing. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see. I would say that the genuinely heartbreaking part of this story is seeing that Agatha truly, desperately loved her son. I guess I assumed that this was going to be a case of “I didn’t know what I had until it’s gone,” on Agatha’s part. Like she’d treat her son as a biproduct of some choice or deal, bring him along because it’s expected of her, but to not truly realize she loved him until after Rio claimed him. But from minute one, she loved that boy. She loved him fiercely and completely, so much so she wasn’t even mad when he decided not to attack that last Witch and instead spend what turned out to be his last night with his mommy. I don’t have kids, and my mother is still very much alive, but the moment where Agatha added her grieving lines to their song got me legit choked up. And revealing that ultimately, she chooses to linger as a ghost because she’s not ready to face Nicholas was a good stopping point for Agatha’s character arc. It leaves them open to having Agatha move on when Kathryn Hahn’s contract is up, but also declaw her enough so they can use the funny, mildly sadistic witch character without having to constantly explain why she’s not dropping magic users left and right to get her power back. I’m not sure what I’d like to see next with Billy and the formation of the Champions (Marvel recently revealed they’ll use this name instead of the Young Avengers because even their youngest cast member will be in their mid20s by the time they finish setting it up). Part of me would like to see Billy finding Tommy and getting him up to speed on the hero stuff… but another part would just like to see Wiccan, Speed (yes that is his actual codename), Hawkeye Bishop, Ms. Marvel and Stature (Cassie Lang) go do a hero thing together. It’d be neat. But we’ll have to wait and see. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Bluesky: basicssuperhero@blsk.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 8

 A long road to get right back where you started.

Last time on Agatha All Along, we saw things from Lilia’s perspective. The coven’s divinator has been experiencing time out of sequence since she was introduced in episode 2. Screaming at things that aren’t happening, trying to give warnings without context, or being nostalgic when it wasn’t warranted. Her mental loops through time finally hurled her all the way back to training under her master when she was a girl in Sicily something like 3-400 years ago. With her master’s encouragement, Lilia was able to piece together what she needed to do to solve the fourth trial. She did a reading on herself and used each of the tarot cards she’d been calling out throughout the show: Queen of Cups, Three of Pentacles, Knight of Wands, High Priestess, Three of Swords, Tower Reversed, and Death. She also revealed to the others that Rio is in fact an incarnation of Lady Death herself. She let the others go ahead of her as the Salem Seven tracked them down. She slammed the door on Jen, telling her that she’s the future and that she loved being a Witch. While alone with the Seven, she warned them that it’s dangerous to linger in a trial site when finished as bad things tend to happen. She switched the Tower from reversed to upright position, triggering the trap in the tower. It flipped the tower around and dropped the Seven and Lilia onto rows of swords. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 8: Me My Friend / To Glory at the End

 

We find Alice lying on the floor among scattered pages in the Third Trial room when a clawed hand strokes her face. She wakes up and sees Rio in her true guise of Lady Death. She tells Alice that it’s time to go. She asks “Where?” and Rio gestures at Alice’s body on the floor. She has trouble believing that his is the end, saying that this should have been the beginning, as she just broke the curse and now has access to her powers. Rio just asks if she’s a Protection Witch, when she says yes, Rio shrugs and says, “you died protecting someone,” she then asks if Alice is ready. Alice says no, but they head out anyway.  

 

In the Fourth Trial exit, we find Jen pounding on the door and begging Lilia to not do whatever she’s planning on doing. Billy comes back to check on what happened, and they both hear something shift behind the door and they know she’s dead. Meanwhile, Agatha made it outside and tries to run for it, but she’s cut off by Rio. Rio points out that Agatha’s coven is shrinking rapidly, and complimenting her on letting the bodies stack up like she promised. Agatha asks if Rio doubted her. Rio admits she did, saying she was expecting a trick, and has finally realized there was one. Agatha was using all of this to hide Billy from her. Distracting Death by giving her what she wants. Rio says that Billy is an abomination and that he’s disrupting the sacred balance. Rio claims to know that Agatha cares about Billy. Agatha tries to deny it, but Rio says that she watches her like Agatha watches everyone else. She chastises Agatha for walking down the road with another woman’s son that leads to something, but Agatha cuts her off before she can say. Rio tells Agatha that no one in history has had the special treatment that she received. Agatha scoffs at this, saying that Rio didn’t give her anything, she just took and took from her. Rio counters by saying that’s usually her MO. She then asks why Agatha lets the others believe the things they do about her and “Nicky.” She says it’s because the truth is too awful.

 

Meanwhile, Jen confirms that Lilia chose to stay behind and stop the Seven. She then waxes poetic about how Rio told them from the beginning that she was THE Green Witch. She finally explains what that means, saying that Green Witches are in tune with the cycle of all living things, growth and decay mixed. Billy says it plainly, that Agatha’s ex is Death and Jen says that tracks.

 

Outside, Rio tells Agatha that what Billy wants is a violation. Agatha scoffs and says finding his brother is such a minimal reward that they’re borderline wasting it’s time. Rio says that Tommy isn’t out there, not yet. She says that Billy stole a second life, and she cannot allow him to steal another for Tommy. She has to take him. Agatha tells her to do it then… but then realizes that she can’t. She theorizes that if Rio tries to just take Billy, he’ll just use his powers to reincarnate again, and she’ll have to start the search all over again. He needs to turn over to her willingly. Agatha says she can arrange it, get him to the finish line and turn him over. In exchange, Agatha wants Rio to leave her alone. Rio points out that she will eventually die. Agatha agrees, but she wants Rio to stop actively hunting her, and when she does finally go, she doesn’t want to see Rio’s face. Rio agrees. Guess she wants that Billy soul badly. Rio walks off, cutting a hole in reality before disappearing through it.

 

Jen and Billy walk the Road. Billy asks how they could have even met, with Jen saying that it was probably over corpses. Billy says that this is proof that Agatha actually has feelings, but Jen shakes her head at his interpretation of the data. Billy says that he’s not defending her, and that he knows that at the end of the day Agatha will always be a Coven-less Witch. Agatha overhears that last bit, says ouch, and announces they need to finish their Walk. They’re down to the last Trial and then they’ll get their prize. Billy says that they’re doing the Green Witch Trial without someone who can do Earth Magic. Agatha scoffs, saying that Earth Magic and potions have a lot of overlap. Jen agrees there’s some. Agatha says that she’s impressed that Jen is one of the last Witches standing, admitting she thought Lilia would beat her out. Before she can keep jabbing at the others she trips… over their shoes. They return to the start of the Road. Billy says that the Road is a circle, and Agatha starts visibly freaking out that this was it. She checks if she’s gotten her power back and it seems like she can only call up the little that she drained out of Alice. Billy starts hypothesizing that they missed the trial somehow, but Agatha tells him to shut up unless he knows something. She says that they’ll just go again and this time it’ll work. Jen refuses to go through that hell a second time, and Agatha tells her to just sit there then. She sees them looking at the left-over shoes and mocks Billy, asking if he’s going to have them bronzed. Billy says that they took tehri shoes off out of respect for the Road, he says screw the Road and slips his shoes on.

 

He wakes up in a body bag in a sterile looking basement. Another drawer rolls out of the wall and Agatha pops up. Jen comes out a second later. Once all three are out, they realize they’re in a version of Agatha’s basement. The room has been overhauled slightly, what with the body drawers in the walls and grow lights above. Jen checks the door and confirms they’re locked in. When she notices the lights she suggests that maybe they need to grow something, Agatha scoffs at doing that without soil or water… but admits that follows a Witches Trial MO. They check their bags and find their personal effects. Agatha puts her broach back on, Billy checks his spell book but the inside is burned and useless. The drawers shut and they get their countdown, this time in the form of the lights going out one by one. Agatha notices that Jen is weirdly calm with this situation, Jen says that she couldn’t save Lilia, she didn’t try to save Alice, so now she won’t let the others die. Agatha mocks her from trying to do that without her powers. Billy points out that she has been doing that without her powers the whole time. She makes an offhand comment about how the man in Boston didn’t take her powers away, she gave them up, then. Agatha starts acting a bit coy, and when Jen starts needling her to figure out why, Agatha says that she didn’t realize that Jen went through Boston. Jen realizes that Agatha’s the one that bound her and screams at her for leaving her cut off like that for a hundred years. Agatha says she didn’t know it was Jen, in the 20s she did magical odd jobs for banknotes. Jen grabs her and rips out some of Agatha’s hair, wraps her wrists around in it and tries to do an unbinding spell. Agatha tease-compliments her for actually trying this. Jen repeats the line “You hold nothing” until finally she lets go of the hair and can call up her power again. Jen starts sobbing as that metaphorical weight was lifted from her. Billy looks away from her for a second, looks down and finds Jen is gone. Agatha explains that Jen came here for her power, she got it, so the Road let her go. She tells him that they can end this trial right now the same way. Agatha came for power, Billy has it, so he just needs to blast her, let her drain him and they can move on with their lives. Billy isn’t buying this time, thinking he’ll be forced to rot on the Road if he just gives Agatha his power or leave him for dead. Agatha says she wouldn’t, but he calls her a liar. She tells him to sit down and they’ll find his brother. Agatha tells him that Tommy isn’t waiting out there, that he’s not in a body just yet. She says that that is what is got Rio in a tizzy, that she knows that he could force Tommy’s soul to reincarnate again. Billy isn’t sure he believes her, saying he’s not sure how he did it, and Agatha says he never does. She tells him to do it.

 

Billy sits and she tells him to think about his last moments with Tommy. He remembers Vision and Wanda saying goodbye and the feeling of fading away. Agatha coaches with through it, to keep matching Tommy’s breath and breath for him. Agatha grabs his head and says he can’t hold Tommy in him. Billy starts breathing rapidly, saying he can’t hold it in, that he can’t find a place for Tommy. Agatha scoffs and says that 120 bodies ‘empty out’ every minute, so just find one. He sees a boy being forced under water in a prank gone wrong. He says that this boy has no one, is unloved and alone. He asks Agatha if he’s killing this boy so Tommy can live. He breaks the connection, coughing up water as he does before vanishing. Agatha, when alone, says no he isn’t, as sometimes Boys die. She opens her broach and takes the bit of hair out of it. She looks again and sees a dandelion seed inside it. She mutters “out of death, there is life.” With just a single light left she plants the seed in a bit of dirt and drops her tear over it. The dandelion sprouts and the lights come back on. Then soil and rock started dropping on her. She runs to the exit and hammers it to let her out.

 

She escapes out of her storm cellar a moment later. A top her house Rio cackles, saying that she’s sorry she didn’t have a ribbon set up for her to run through. Agatha demands to get her prize, as she played by the rules and got Billy out. Rio asks where is he, then? Because he didn’t surrender himself to her, she’s considering their contract null and void and says she’ll collect Agatha’s soul via death by a thousand cuts, shattering her windows to hurl the glass at her. The rest of Agatha’s neighbors see the storm localized over her house and are terrified that the Hex is happening again. Agatha sees that the moon is in it’s fire phase and starts trying to do a spell to expel evil. She claims that she is the natural end and is not evil. She shouts that Agatah is a coward, and Agatha remembers Lilia’s advice and hits the deck. She just barely dodges some debris that Rio threw at her. She cuts her Achilles tendon, and slashes Agatha with roots, demanding to know why Agatha doesn’t want her. She straps Agatha to a post and prepares to end her, but she gets blasted aside by Billy in his new Wiccan look. Agatha tells him that he looks good, she says she doesn’t. He then tells her to not take it all and blasts her. Agatha starts draining a LOT of power out of Billy, his blue energy shifting purple as she drains. She reforms her witch gear, and just before killing Billy breaks the connection.  Rio recovers and gives them the option that one of them can stay and the other goes with her. Agatha blasts her with her new power and Billy gets thrown into the garden shed. He recovers and finds the Witch and Death dueling with magic. Rio blasts Agatha to the ground, and Billy hurls her into the house. He goes to check on her and Agatha says that this is futile, as they can’t fight death. She says that it should be her, and that he’s not bad. He says she isn’t either, but Agatha says he’s the only one that thinks so. Billy offers himself up, Agatha recovers and agrees that Rio should take Billy. Billy is clearly betrayed by this, but Agatha says she’s just a coven-less witch. As she tries to walk away, Billy projects his own thoughts for the firs time, asking her if this is how Nicky died. She fingers her broach before turning around, walking to Rio and kissing her until she’s consumed by blackness and drops. Her body quickly decays into fungus and flowers as the sun appears. Billy sees her broach in the middle of the greenery and grabs it. He looks at Death, who has dropped her Rio guise almost entirely, who tells him that he may go. He gets in his car and drives away.

 

Billy returns home and his parents instantly barrage him with questions, asking where he’d been gone all day. Billy has a shower and then goes to his room. He starts looking around his room and starts noticing some… oddities. Lorna Wu’s poster next to one for the Wizard of Oz. Figures of the Wicked Witch of the West and a bedazzled tree. He remembers Agatha saying that the Road isn’t real. He remembers Agatha winking at him during the trial. And the line, “You and your mother have the same tell,” and realizes that HE made the road. Using objects from his life to shape his reality.

 

Okay, I’ll just say it, the Salem Seven were a neat concept but completely pointless. Role could have easily been taken by Rio doing both the back up Green Witch part and the masked hunter or something. That’s like my big negative takeaway from this one. I liked the reveal that Billy was… not completely correct in thinking that Tommy was out there. The whole bit of him guiding Tommy’s soul to a vessel for him to take was really well done. And even if they don’t answer the philosophical question of if Billy is Billy or William, I do like that Agatha at least to herself lets us know that Billy transferring Tommy’s soul into a new body isn’t killing the original boy, just… taking up a vacated vessel. Still a bit dark, not going to lie, but better than killing someone. All I’m saying. Part of me wonders if they had some scenes cut with Jen. I don’t know, it feels like they cut her storyline short with the reveal that Agatha bound her and was thus the one she needed to be freed. Like, I wouldn’t be shocked if there were a few scenes dropped about what happened in Boston. Otherwise, why hire that actor and dress him in 1920s gear for a 15 second moment with Jen? The final confrontation with Death was neat, having both Billy and Agatha show off a little with their new and newly restored powers. As villainous as Agatha is, I am glad that she 1. Chose not to Drain Billy completely and 2. Ultimately sacrificed herself for him. It’s a classic, “worst person you know does one good thing” thing, but hey, she’s on the board now. I am very curious to see how they’ll wrap this story up now. I assume the last episode will give us the real story about what happened to Nicholas Scratch and how Billy ended up making the Road, but I can’t think of how that’ll wrap up. I’m sure it’s going to end with Billy setting out to find Tommy and that the first Champion’s (read they’re going with that name instead of Young Avengers) team up will involve finding him or take place just after Billy does so. But we’ll have to wait and see on that. So yeah, good penultimate episode, curious to see the end. Have a good night. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 7

 I think Lilia's master and the Ancient One would/did get along...

Last time on Agatha All Along, we got to know Teen, aka William Kaplan aka Billy Maximoff. Three years ago, William was a normal young Jewish boy going through his Bar Mitzva. Day of he met Lilia as a palm reader, who read his palm and learned that the kid was going to have an… interesting life. She placed the Sigil on him to give him some protection. His party ended early as in the nearby city of Westview, something weird was going on with the ‘anomaly’ aka Wanda’s Hex. On the drive back his mother was briefly distracted and the family got into a massive crash. William was dead on impact but seemed to absorb the fading synthetic life of Billy Maximoff. William woke up, but without any of his pre-crash memories and his mannerism had changed completely. And he could read minds now. For the next three years he played ‘getting better,’ and gathered information on the Hex and what happened to him. He and his boyfriend Eddie tracked down Ralph Bohner, now going by Randal, and learned about what happened in Westview, Wanda’s part in it as well as Agatha Harkness. Billy then looked up Agatha Harkness and how to use Magic to free her from the mind control spell Wanda stuck her in. He eventually did so and then the rest of the show happened. In the present, Agatha dragged herself out of the muck of the Witches Road and the two agreed to work with each other to reach the end. Agatha claims to have clocked that Teen was somehow Billy Maximoff early on and pieced together that the reason he wants to reach the end is to somehow find out what happened to his twin, Tommy. They headed off down the Road to their next trial.

 

Ep 7: Death’s Hand in Mine

 

We return to our story to find Lilia waking up as she’s falling into space. She’s dressed in some royal finery as she falls for some reason. We shift to Billy and Agatha walking down the Road. She makes a crack to Billy about him getting a nosebleed if he keeps trying so hard to read her mind. Billy pretends like he wasn’t doing just that and asks where Rio is. Agatha says that question is off the table, but any other is still up for grabs. She assumes that’s part of the reason that he sought her out, as his former babysitter and Wanda’s ex-best friend, she knows a lot about her, if he cares to ask. Billy coldly says he has a mom, and it isn’t Wanda, and he’ll get what he wants at the end of the Road. A few minutes later he asks if Wanda is actually dead. She says yes… no… maybe. She did see a body but isn’t sure if anyone else did. She then scoffs and tells Billy if he wants straight answers then he should ask a straight lady. They reach the site of the fourth trial, a giant castle. Wanda tries to give cryptic insight, but Billy is done listening to that sort of thing from her. He says that he thought her experience would be the key to finishing the Road, but now he’s wondering if she’d ever walked it at all. They enter the castle.

 

Inside they find themselves in the garb of two of arguably the most well-known witches in Disney’s IP, Billy in Maleficent and Agatha as the Wicked Witch of the West. Agatha claims that Elphaba is based off of her, and Billy tells her to prove it. They find a table in the middle of the room with their next trial. “Your path winds out of time,” is their clue and there’s a tarot deck on the table. Billy grabs it, and when an hourglass engages says he’ll do a reading for Agatha. She gets the “horse drawn cart” as Billy puts it, aka the Chariot. It’s pretty clear that he hasn’t done many tarot readings, or at least none that had the chariot in it. He places the card, and a sword drops from the ceiling. Theres a few dozen others waiting up there, waiting to drop. He plays the next card, Seven of Swords. It’s about deception and betrayal, which matches her, but it’s reversed, so that implies her being truthful. A sword drops, but this one is behind Billy. Agatha takes the deck and shuffles, saying it’s her turn now and that tarot is a con like any other. Billy insists it’s about intuition and interpretation. Agatha starts throwing cards at random, causing swords to drop. Billy jumps out of the way just in time to dodge one. Agatha insists that this is a numbers game that they can beat if they just keep throwing cards to get the right combination of 5. Billy says that’ll take too long, but Agatha insists they’ve time. Right before the ceiling starts to drop. Billy says that he wishes Lilia was there.

 

We cut back on Lilia waking up. She and Jen seem to be trapped in some kind of cage under the road. Lilia says that she ‘was falling,’ to which Jen agrees that they both were. We learn that since being stuck down there, Lilia was in a trance, telling Jen what to do. They needed to follow a root system to look for shelving, and that Lilia told Jen that ‘Teen’ was the son of the Scarlet Witch. Considering that her trances usually only last seconds, this was a big one. Jen mentions that Lilia has been both wispy and kookie since they’ve been down here. We then see some of her out of context lines in context. She says “am I wispy or am I kookie” to Alice during the third Trial in response to what Jen said. She then tries to warn Alice to not “try and save Agatha,” but slipped back to the first trial where she’d been talking to Agatha, and then jumping all the back to when she’d been training as a little girl with her master in Sicily. Her master seems to have expected this, saying that Lilia is ‘visiting.’ We swap her younger self for the current one to not confuse the audience. Her master asks how long it’s been, to which Lilia tells her it’s been Centuries. This was during her first lesson about reading tea leaves. She says she was bad at tea leaves, but her mast says she lies to herself then and now about that. She asks her what she sees. Lilia looks into the leaves and comes back to the catacombs. Jen is unintentionally condescending to Lilia, and she snaps at Jen. Jen asks her what she should think when she looks at Lilia, instead of a doddering old lady. Lilia then explains that the flow of time is an illusion, and when she was a child, she’d experience moments out of sync with time. It’s getting worse all of a sudden now, typing her off that maybe her life is drawing to a close. As she talks, she shifts to a moment when she and Jen caught up to Billy and Agatha.

 

In the fourth trial Lilia is dressed as Glenda the good witch and Jen as Snow White’s evil stepmother in crone form. She had just been shoved out of the way of a falling sword by Agatha. She gets up and grabs Billy, throwing him up against a wall. He says that he thought they were cool, and Lilia says “No, we are not cool, Teenager!” to which Jen comments “Damn, using his full name.” It got a chuckle out of me. Billy starts responding to Lilia’s thoughts, apologizing for lashing out, saying he didn’t know what sort of power he had, and that if he did, he’d saved Alice. Jen pulls her aside and informs Lilia that they’ve moved past this. When Agatha says that they did it on her request, Jen tells her to back off as Lilia is having a day. She tells Lilia that, if things are happening to her out of sync, then she needs to just trust Jen that they’ve moved on. Lilia starts coming to, saying that she had been doing a reading for Billy before she spaced out again. Billy asked if she put the sigil on him, and she says she did. She saw who he was, who he’d become and knew he’d need more time. Swords started dropping on them and Lilia freaks out, screaming “I hated this the first time,” which came out during the third trial, and then screaming incoherently, which happened when she first met Agatha and Billy in her shop.

 

She panics but comes out of it with her master again. Her master asks her what her life is like now. She asks if Lilia is in tune with nature, if she’s using her craft, or in a coven, to which Lilia answers no on all counts. She claims that being in a coven never helped her and that it’s better to be a hermit and fraud than anything. Her master shakes her head at Lilia still being so fearful. She asks her master how to control what’s happening to her, to which she says that Lilia’s duty isn’t to control but to see.

 

Lilia shifts back to her and Jen in the underground. She says that she’d hoped to skip the whole part in the underground. They stop for a moment so Jen can rip her dress’s skirt to a more reasonable walking length, and Lilia seems to find Billy’s spell book. Jen asks why these mental visions stopped. Lilia says that she let them stop, she ignored them until they went away. She says she did it because all she saw was death. They hear Billy and Agatha arguing, and find the shelving they were looking for, the back of a bookcase in the castle. They stumble in, and Lilia tells Billy that they’re cool. She gets caught up on what’s happening, and heads to the table. She says that her job is to see and asks who massacred the tarot spread. She grabs the card and asks who the querent is, and Billy says it’s him. They argue about the etiquette of the moment, as everyone is focused on the swords coming down on them, but Lilia insists that Billy has to ask the question, and it needs to be relevant to his journey. Billy blurts out “Am I William or am I Billy?” The swords stop and Lilia explains the spread. It’s a five-card layout, first card is Billy, the traveler, second is What’s missing, Path behind, Path Ahead, Obstacles, and Windfall, the center is his destination. She tells him to focus on his question and draw a card. He draws the first one, it's the magician. She lays it but a sword drops. What’s Missing is the Sun, and another sword falls. Agatha angrily shouts at the ceiling how can they get this right when Tarot is completely subjective. Path Behind and a sword drops. She has flashbacks to the previous episodes and comes back to her master. She asks what she is missing. She asks why Lilia is on this journey.  She says it’s to get her power back, but her master denies it, saying that her power didn’t go anywhere. Lilia says she’s a forgotten woman and her master challenges her to remember herself. Lilia gets frustrated and asks what’s worth remembering, how she saw their coven die of fever, that she told them and that didn’t change anything. Her master says that Death comes for us all, and that it’s something they all have in common. Lilia asks when it’ll come for her, and then remembers that she was falling, and realizes that she WILL fall. And her master asks her what she’ll do with what time she has left.

 

She comes too into the underground with Jen. She explained what happened and that Billy is in the trial with Agatha, and they need to get to them. They’re standing at a crossroads, one leads to the real world, one takes them deeper into the Road. They hear the Salem Seven approaching and duck into the root lined tunnel. She tells Jen that she’s going to help the others and that she hopes Jen will join her. When Jen asks why, she says because they’re sisters in the craft and they both start walking. Lilia then realizes what she did wrong. She returns to the Trial, and does a reading for herself. She is the Traveler; Queen of Cups, Three of Pentacles, Knight of Wands, High Priestess, Three of Swords, Tower Reversed, and Death. She then realizes that Rio is in fact an incarnation of Lady Death. She saw Rio as Death when she first woke up in the underground and she proclaimed herself as such. The path opens. She reveals that Rio is death to the others, which Agatha confirms. They head for the exits, as they leave, she gives them all something. She tells Agatha to hit the deck when ‘she’ hits her, she gives Billy his book back, and tells Jen that she’s the path ahead before saying she loved being a Witch and slamming the door on her face. She faces off against the Salem Seven in their animal forms. She tells them that when a Witch completes a trial like she did, it’s a bad idea to stick around as bad things tend to happen, like the Tower, upright. She proves her point by switching the Tower to the upright position, flipping the whole building upside down. The Seven fall on the swords, and then so does Lilia.

 

We return to her first lesson with her master saying, “let us begin.”

 

I like episodes like this one that experiment a little. We were told this entire story out of sync, which can be a pain for me to write about but a fun experience. It was extremely fun to see all of Lilia’s time slip in the correct order, with every scream, cryptic phrase or other senior moment making total sense in context. And it was cool to see each of the cards that Lilia called out during their journey from her perspective. They were all there, the three of swords were trees behind Agatha when Billy was hurt, The tower was a painting behind Alice, Alice was in the same stance as the Knight of Wands when she died, Jen was the High Priestess standing before a trippy painting, she saw the Three of Pentacles on her card when she wrote the coven list for Billy, and she was the Queen of Cups as a child. Rio as Lady Death herself was not something I called early on but make sense in context, as just about everything she says and does seemed to be reacting to either Agatha or a comment about death. Really puts the implied relationship between her and Agatha into context. Can’t think of anything that would kill a relationship like having to claim the soul of your lover’s child. Wonder how Nicholas Scratch feels about it… probably will hear about it later. The final scene of Lilia’s first lesson was a nice way to end her personal story, putting the whole thing in a loop. I’ll miss her as she was my favorite character introduced in this show but thems the breaks. I would say I’d have liked an answer on whether or not Billy is Billy or William, but I’m thinking that’s going to be an unanswered question in this series. But who knows, we’ve got two episodes left. We’ll have to see. See you next time. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 6

I promise you, the comic book origin of Billy Kaplan is even weirder. 

Last time on Agatha All Along, the Third Trial began. The group was just able to outrace the Salem Seven by flying on makeshift brooms to get to the Third Trial. Inside they were transported to the 80s and forced to use a Ouija board to commune with the dead. After a fake out of Agatha pretending to be Sharon, the actual Ghost appeared. It was her mother, Evanora Harkness. The Elder Harkness chastised her daughter for her evil ways and for the new Coven enabling her. She tells the group to continue the walk down the Road without Agatha so she might punish her wayward child. She attempted to possess Agatha to do so. Alice, forgetting who she was dealing with because she wanted to help her Coven Sister out, tried to blast Evanora away with her powers. That worked, but unfortunately Agatha was unwilling or unable to stop herself from draining all the power out of Alice, killing her. She’s only able to stop by Teen using the Ouija board and Nicholas Scratch calling out to his mother from beyond the grave to stop her. Outside, Agatha has regained a fraction of her previous power. Teen tries to yell at her for hurting Alice, but she and the other Witches accept that this whole exercise is about power, so there’s little more they could do. Agatha taunts Teen a little by saying he’s just like his mother. Furious, Teen whips out some magic of his own, using his powers to control Jen and Lilia and having them throw Agatha onto the dirt beside the road. He then blasts them off the road for good measure. As they sink into the swampy ground, we get a look at Teen’s head and see him wearing a tiara like the one worn by the Scarlet Witch. Thus, revealing him to somehow be Billy Maximoff. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 6: Familiar By Thy Side

 

This episode is a brief history of how Billy Maximoff and Billy Kaplan became the same person. We begin three years ago during the Hex of Westview. William “Billy” Kaplan is a normal young Jewish boy that is going through his Bar Mitzva. After the ceremony and the during the party, he’s hugged by his parents, Jeff and Rebecca, and we’re shown how happy and loving they are. Ya know, to really drive home that shit about to hit the fan. He sees a palm reader stand at his party and goes to get a reading. He meets Lilia for the first time. She does a reading for him, Billy asking her to not read too much as he doesn’t want too many spoilers. She sees that he’s got a long journey ahead of him, and, more disturbingly, his lifeline is broken in two. Lilia tries to dress it up, saying that it can mean a lot of things, and it’s not always bad. She then also announces Tower Reversed in one of her trances. Billy tries to leave, Lilia grabs him and advices him to enjoy the now. When alone she quickly draws the Sigil and slips it into the pocket of the jacket that he forgot. She clearly forgets the moment the talisman is in the pocket but hands it off to someone to return it to him. The party is then broken up as they just got word that something is happening to the Hex in Westview. Oh, I forgot to mention this is happening in the neighboring town of Eastview. As the Kaplans drive home, Rebecca is distracted for a moment by the Hex shifting and they crash after swerving to dodge an oncoming car. Billy straight up dies in the crash, but while his parent run to get help the Hex fades completely and Billy’s wayward soul leaps into his body. He shouts for Tommy as he wakes up and his father comes back with Officer Alice Wu-Gulliver.

 

He's taken in an ambulance, but Billy’s clearly confused about what happened. He clearly starts hyperventilating when he sees his reflection in some glass. Later he’s recovering in his hospital bed where we hear his parents mentioning to the doctor that while he’s recovering, personality wise Billy is completely different than he was before. The doctor refers them to a trauma specialist. His parents come in to check on him, his dad making attempting to make a joke that Billy doesn’t get. He finds that he can read minds now and tries to stave off his parents fighting when they have one of those look arguments that couples can do. They tell him that the brain scans are normal, and they think the amnesia will wear off in time. Billy goes home and clearly is having weird vibes being in this place. His dog Greg starts yapping at Billy, not recognizing him. He keeps reading their minds and his parents mental panic overwhelms him, he screams at them to stop worrying and then apologizes for it. He goes to check out his room as per his mother’s thought, to see if that jogs any memories. He seems to be a big fan of Houdini from the several posters of him on the walls. Billy looks in a mirror and recites to himself that he’s William Kaplan a few times, but he clearly doesn’t believe it.

 

Flashforward three years and we see Billy with his boyfriend Eddie. He asks Billy why he’s got that Sigil with him all the time. Billy says he’s not sure and can’t explain why. They kiss and while they do, Eddie thinks about telling Billy that he loves him. Billy panics a little when he hears this and tries to explain to Eddie what happened to him. Specifically, that he died on that night and that when he came back, he wasn’t fully William Kaplan. They kiss some more and then Eddie asks the big question, if he’s not Wiliam Kaplan then who is he. They head up to Billy’s room and he shows Eddie the dossier that he’s compiled about what happened to him. We learn that officially; the Hex was deemed an Avengers Training Exercise gone wrong. They pull up Billy’s computer where he had been watching a Jen Kale skin care tutorial online. He plays a video of the Hex and how they were able to see the ruins Wanda carved into the Hex from the outside. He says that this was magic, and that Westview people refuse to talk about it. But he found this guy on Reddit that was there and wants to talk to him about it.

 

Billy and Eddie go to meet his contact, Bohnerriffic69 aka Pietro Maximoff aka Ralph Bohner. He’s grown a mustache since last time and is going by Randal now. He’s very skittish after the Hex it seems, he jumps at anything and everything. He tells the teens about the Hex and how Wanda used it to act out her sitcom. The way he describes it is incredibly creepy, as Wanda was subconsciously puppeteering them. They couldn’t act unless it was part of their scene with her. Billy asks if there were any side effects that Randal had notice after the fact. He says no, but then thinks really hard “Don’t ask about Agatha Harkness” on repeat. Billy asks and Randal flips out, saying she’s an ancient witch that mess you up and sprays them with Witch repellent. He tries to storm off, but Billy follows him and begs for more info. Randal agrees, saying that his deal with Agatha was way worse than the rest of Westview. He reveals that he was Agatha’s henchman for the whole Hex, being the “Ralph” she called her husband and the one that did all her dirty work, like kidnapping Monica Rambeau and killing Sparky the dog. He seems really messed up about killing Sparky, which proves he still has a soul. He also says he was a bad influence on Wanda and Vision’s kids. Billy asks about them and gets info on the OG Maximoffs Twins. He reacts to hearing the name Tommy, and Randal referring to them as the little speedster and his mind reading brother. Randal says he ran after getting free and that he’ll never go back, not even for his BowFlex or Blu-ray collection. Billy asks if she’s harmless now, but Randal insist that’s not the case.

 

Billy heads home and pretends that he has homework to avoid his parents and do research. While listening to Lorna’s Ballad of the Witches Road and compiles what he knows. Vison and Wanda are presumed dead, and their twins are missing. He looks up Agatha Harkness online and learns what some folks have aggregated about the ancient witch. He uses a picture of Agatha Harkness to see some of her exploits and learn about the Witches’ Road. After that he headed over to Westview where our story began.

 

Before breaking into Wanda’s house, he used his spell book to learn how to do a release spell on Agatha and how it requires a personal item. He slips over to the house and up into the second-floor room of Nicholas Scratch. He searches through her stuff until she finds her broach and runs for it. Detective Agatha chases after him before he’s taken out by Sharon and captured by Agatha. It’s very weird to see the Agatha’s delusion from the outside. It’s clear that like one sentence in five is breaking through to Agatha as Billy was trying to explain himself the whole time but she just wasn’t registering it. He breaks through to her with pointing out the picture of the dead girl is just a picture of flowers and then tries to free her. We then fast forward through the events of the first episode, including the moment when he introduced himself, first as William Kaplan and then as Billy Maximoff.

 

Back on the Witches’ Road, Agatha drags herself from the muck. Billy meanwhile is standing and playing with the Sigil before breaking it in his hands. Agatha joins him and says that was quite a debut. He asks when she figured it out. Agatha claims to have had a feeling right from the start, saying that he and Wanda had the same tell, magically speaking. He asks what it is, but Agatha ignores it, saying that she wasn’t sure-sure until he whipped out the powers. She calls him Billy for the first time and he’s shocked to know that she can hear him now. She says she’s impressed by his use of power, and in killing Lilia and Jen. She asks him where he got this fresh body he’s wearing. Billy doesn’t answer, and Agatha says that he shouldn’t feel bad about breaking the rules to survive. As that’s what makes him a witch. Agatha starts talking about making it to the end of the Road, Billy says he doesn’t need her anymore but when he tries to whip out the power it doesn’t work. Agatha starts needling him, asking what Billy Maximoff wants at the end of the Road. She reasons not his parents, but Tommy, Tommy is the one that he wants to find. Billy says he can sense him but can’t find him. Billy tells Agatha that he’s willing to work with her, but she’s got to know that he doesn’t trust her now or ever. She agrees and they head out to find the next trial. “Last one there is a nice person.” To which Billy says that he’s not that nice.

 

Here’s a quick summary of the history of the Maximoff twins 2.0 in Marvel comics. In 2005 there was a comic event called “House of M” in which Wanda Maximoff used her immense magic Mutant power to rewrite reality so that Mutants were the dominant species of human on Earth under her father Magneto. As part of that, she created two twin boys to be her children, as her husband at the time, Vision, was obviously incapable of reproducing naturally. To do this it was eventually revealed that she stole souls from Mephisto, one of Marvel’s biggest Devils. Eventually Wanda’s magic was undone, with Wanda herself whispering “No More Mutants” and beginning the era of Mutant extinction, and her boys were seemingly destroyed to push Mephisto back. It’s later revealed that through… magic, basically, when the universe was restored, it seemed to scoop up the fragments left over of Billy and Tommy Maximoff and wrote them back into the script… I mean reality, as Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard. They had lives completely separate from each other and seem to have existed a decade and change before Wanda’s big rewrite. Eventually the boys discovered each other, their powers and their weird cosmic relationship to Wanda. Tracking her down after she’d vanished post House of M. For some reason they never seem that interested in their cosmic papa the Vision though… I can see why the MCU decided that all of that might be a bit much for their live action universe and went with a ghost merging with the recently deceased.

 

That was a solid origin story for this version of Billy Kaplan. I assume that they went with an actor swap instead of just using the same one as Julian Hillard who played Billy in WandaVision and Doctor Strange; Multiverse of Madness is barely into his teens and Joe Locke is in his early 20s. Gotta age him up if you want him in the Young Avengers with Hawkeye 2.0 and Ms. Marvel. Which, yeah, I can already tell that the MCU and Disney big wigs are salivating to get started on that spin off, only slightly less than they want to get to the X-Men refocusing. I want to give props to Joe Locke’s acting chops in this episode. While he’s been giving 110% the whole time, he really did a great job portraying the confusion and imposter syndrome that Billy was clearly going through as the William Kaplan that was got mixed up with the Billy Maximoff that also was to make the new version. It’s insanely convenient that he was able to find all this information from a few minutes google searches but that’s TV writing for ya. It was interesting to see how each of the New Coven featured in Billy’s story before he knew it. Jen was obvious as he mentioned being a fan of hers when they met but seeing that Alice was the cop that reported to the scene of his accident and that Lilia was the one that put the Sigil on him was interesting. I don’t think I’d have guessed that Lilia was the one, somehow a protective sign screamed Alice. And I have to give the show props for making finding Tommy the real goal of Billy’s walk. The twins have as tight a bond together as their mother and uncle did, so I completely get Billy’s drive to find his twin again. I wonder if they’ll include a cosmic reason why they can’t find each other, as Tommy should probably manifested speedster powers by now, so you’d think Speedster boy would be in all the news by now. But given the nature of Billy’s reality warping powers maybe he’s just mundane until his soul twin finds him again. So year, good origin story. Next time, we’ll see how the duo of Agatha Harkness and Billy Maximoff plays out with all their cards on the table. See you then. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 5

It's a hell of a game night.

Last time on Agatha All Along, the second trial began. Just before that, though, the group used magic to summon a Green Witch to replace/actually do the job Sharon was supposed to do. Their spell summoned Rio, the woman that got Agatha out of her mental prison and seems to hate her. The group was transported to a very seventies house that was owned by Alice Wu-Gulliver’s late mother Lorna. After some searching around the trial began when Teen put on a record. It essentially triggered Alice’s family curse and made it target the Coven members. The curse manifesting as burning pain, a scar on the right shoulder, and eventually total immolation. Agatha has a lightbulb moment and realizes that Lorna’s version of the Ballad of the Witch’s Road was in fact a protection spell to ward off the curse and protect Alice. The group play Lorna’s Ballad and excise the curse from them all. Teen, unfortunately, took a bit of glass to his stomach. The group take him outside and use Jen’s potions to heal him. The group bonds a little while waiting for Teen to recover, Rio hints at a past with Agatha before Agatha storms off. When alone, Agatha goes in for a kiss, but Rio stops her and tells her that Teen “isn’t hers.”

 

Ep 5: Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power

 

We continue our story on the Road. We go back track to Sharon’s grave as the Salem Seven gather in various animal forms (fox, raven, snake) before they resume their human shapes and do their Ringwraith impression. Though instead of “Shire, Baggins” they say “Agatha Harkness, find her.” As one of them gathers up some dirt and sniffs it, Lilia startles awake and warns the others they need to run, like now. She explains that when they used their summoning spell, they left a door open for the Seven to follow. Lilia also finally tells us what the deal is with the Salem Seven, with some footnotes from Rio. In a nutshell, Agatha’s original Salem Coven (which included her mom) tried to execute her for using dark magic. She used her powers to drain them and kill them. When that happened, she spared the young children of the other Coven members. After that they grew into a vicious hivemind Coven that will stop at nothing to destroy her. Agatha then runs in from somewhere and quickly adds that the moral of the story is “mercy is overrated” and “always finish what you start.” The Witches start running but they’re quickly surrounded, some of the Seven coming from the front, some in back. Teen suggests using a “Hexenbesen” which is immediately shot down by every woman there, but when he asks them for a better idea, they have zilch. Turns out that’s just getting some sticks together to make a makeshift broom and fly on it. As they quickly make their rides, Teen asks Lilia why her generation of Witches hate the broom thing. It’s a combination of Halloween coopting their culture, a symbol of feminine domesticity, and is just really damn basic. Part of the ritual is pairing off, doing the spell and trading, and Teen gets to participate with Alice. He’s jumped by one of the Seven, but they knock her aside. They finish the ritual and fly under a bloodred moon. It’s one off those things that’s scary but neat at the same time. Teen asks why they haven’t doing this all along before the Road answers. By pulling them abb back to the ground. They reach the next Trial house, passing through a Salem Seven member made of Bees.

 

Inside, it’s very 80s. Jen freaks out a little because the Seven are outside waiting for them, but Agatha points out that they can’t get in, so they just need to finish the trial and run. Alice wonders if the trial will be a game of “Kiss, marry, kill” before Rio states that this trial is Agatha’s. Oh, and Teen notices his little spell book is gone, so they’ve lost their cheat sheet. When he asks how they know, Lilia points out the Bloodmoon in the sky, which is a symbol of the veil between the living and the dead being at its thinnest. Teen asks Lilia if that shouldn’t be her department, but she explains that her specialty is reading time (magically) and reading people (Cold Reading) but speaking to the dead was always a con for her. A Ouija boar leaps from a pile of boardgames, and all their watches start blaring 30 minute alarms. Teen grabs the instructions, which say 1. Don’t do it alone, 2. Don’t talk over each other (everyone calls bull on that) 3. Do. Not. Taunt. The Spirits, 4. Don’t ask about death, 5. End sessions with a goodbye, 6. Don’t, under any circumstances remove your hand from the planchette. Doing so will release a spirit. They gather around the board and asks who’s waiting for Agatha and with what trauma. She says it could be literally anyone before they begin.

 

Agatha asks who they’re communing with, and it’s revealed to be Mrs. Hart, Sharon. The Planchette is pulled violently to one side, knocking Lilia’s hand aside. Agatha suddenly jerks around and starts doing a damn fine Debra Jo Rupp impression. It takes them a minute, but once she refers to herself as Mrs. Hart, they realize that this is just Agatha doing a bit. They get back to it and do the Ouija again. Agatha asks who is with them tonight and it spells out Death. Rio laughs. They ask what she wants, and it spells out Punishment. She’s here to punish Agatha. It spells her name over and over again until Agatha pulls her hands and screams start happening. Lilia screams she hated this the first time, in another out of time moment. When Teen asks what it wants Jen answers, Punish Agatha. The screaming stops and they realize to pass the trial they need to punish Agatha. Everyone’s super into the idea, but when they look away Agatha is gone. The power cuts out and they find her hanging from the ceiling with a face out of The Exorcist. She lands and starts attacking randomly until the lights come back on and she vanishes. A moment later a ghost enters the room. This is Evanora Harkness, Agatha’s late mother. Agatha says hi to her and is then snarky about her. Evanora screams at the Coven, saying that her coven died trying to stop her and yet they join her willingly. The group asks what they can do to appease her and sends her away, and she tells them they need to finish the Road but without Agatha. Rio refuses first, Jen points out that a minute ago she was ready to slit Agatha’s throat, to which Rio says that doesn’t matter because her mom can’t have her. Agatha asks her mom why she still hates her. Evanora says she was born evil, and she should have killed her after birthing her. Jen is ready to leave Agatha, saying that there’s no fire or water here, that the only danger of this trial is Agatha. Agatha begs them not to go but gets possessed by her mother again. Alice rushes over and tries to free Agatha with her powers, forgetting for a second what Agatha’s deal is. Evanora is forced out, but Agatha keeps draining Alice. Teen notices the planchette freaking out and runs over to it, asking the board who it is. It quickly spells out the name Nicholas Scratch. Teen screams the name out, and that breaks Agatha’s concentration. They hear a child saying “mama, stop,” before the watch beeps. The exit opens. Alice drops, dead. Teen tries to find a way to save her but it’s too late. He yells at Agatha, saying that Alice was trying to protect her, but she didn’t deserve it. Agatha slips out while the others mourn.

 

Outside, Agatha flexes her hands and draws up a flower of power. Teen comes out and starts yelling at her for what happened. Agatha claims she couldn’t control it, but he doesn’t believe her. He accuses her of only doing this for power. The others come out and agree that that’s all that’s been, for any of them. Teen asks if this is what being a Witch means, and if so, he refuses to accept it. Agatha starts laughing and whispers in his ear, “Are you sure?” before saying he’s just like his mother. Teen, clearly angry, uses his powers to force Jen and Lilia to grab Agatha and throw her onto the ground outside the path. He then blasts the two of them back onto it as well. As the three witches sink, we pull back from Teen face to see he’s got a blue tiara on his head that is extremely similar to that warn by… the Scarlet Witch. Oh, hi Billy!

 

That’s right, teen is Billy, one of Wanda’s twins from the Hex. I’ll get into how that’s possible and the character’s background next time when I’m sure the episode will go over it. Suffice it to say, Billy somehow being alive despite being a figment of the Hex in this universe isn’t the weirdest thing to come out of Marvel Comics. Not sure how they’ll explain him looking different, though. In the comics the magical construct Billy Maximoff and the human Billy Kaplan (again, explain tomorrow) were identical, as were the Tommys. I knew that they’d be bringing Billy back in at some point as he’s a founding member of the Young Avengers along with his twin, but I didn’t guess they’d bring in a new actor to metaphorically age up the character significantly. But I should probably talk about the episode now. The trial itself was pretty straightforward, do a Ouija, summon a ghost, and have the ghost of Mama Harkness yell at Agatha for bit. Simple. Again, I need to give props to Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness’ impression of Debra Jo Rupp. Very believable. Evanora’s ghost was good. I totally buy that she’d still be haunting the mortal plane after how she died all those ages ago. Having your daughter drain life and power out of you has got to be one of the worst ways to go. Saying that your child was pure evil and shouldn’t have even gotten a chance to live is a bit much, but I kind of get it. I do find myself wondering if Agatha could have stopped herself or not. She wanted power, absolutely, and this whole Road experience was initially part of a plan to just drain everyone… but I don’t know, I thought Agatha kind of like her crew. Odds are she probably did intentionally, but I wouldn’t call foul if the story decided it was an accident later. And I guess that’s all I have to say on that. Tomorrow, we’ll be getting the backstory on Teen aka Billy. See you then. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 4

I wanna rock and roll all night, and do magic every day.

Last time on Agatha All Along, the test began. The Witches were lured into a beach house and locked inside. They were led to drink some wine the turned out to be poisoned, Mrs. Hart aka Sharon getting the first dose, the other Coven Witches all got it at the same time, and Agatha got it last as she attempted to not drink it at all. Jen Kale was tapped to make an antidote. The Witches gathered the ingredients while dealing with hallucinations of their nightmares. Jen saw a man that tried to drown her, Alice saw her mother during her psychotic break, and Lilia saw Lady Death claiming some kind of 15^th century noble lady. They mixed up the potion, but not before Agatha saw her hallucination, the Darkhold in a bassinette. They finished their antidote, but it wasn’t the right color. With only a minute left, Jen started panicking. Agatha grabbed her then and gave her the ‘I hate you, but you do good work” speech, having Jen remember that the last ingredient was blood of the unpoisoned. They added Teen’s blood to the potion and drank. The oven opened to let them out and the group bailed. Outside they started bickering again, only to discover that Sharon had died from the poisoning. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 4: If I Can’t Reach You / Let My Song Teach You

 

We open on Agatha contemplating while looking at Sharon’s corpse. She says she didn’t think someone had it in them. Teen asks her what she meant but Agatha just makes a noise at him. He gets back to digging the grave. The other Witches pay their respects, Alice’s mother’s death is brought up again and Alice reveals that she knows her mother is dead. She didn’t die on the Road, but in a fire while on tour. She claims to be on the Road not to look for her mom but because before she died, she told Alice the Road would “Save” her. Agatha says RIP Mrs. Hart and tries to go on her way, but the others won’t leave just yet. When Agatha tries to get them moving, Jen points out that it’s not just her callousness that’s keeping them in place, but the fact the coven is incomplete now. Agatha tells them that that’s to their benefit, more power for the group. When Jen pushes back on that, Agatha says that they just needed a complete Coven to access the Road, but after that it’s anyone’s game. They start arguing what the lines of the Witch’s Road Ballad says, “Coven True” or “Coven Two” and they ask Alice what the line is, as she’s an expert by proxy. She instead asks Agatha how many Witches came back from the Road with her last time. Agatha confirms she came back with one. The group start fighting about who is to blame for Sharon’s death, Teen cutting them off and saying that they’re all at fault. They were supposed to look out for each other, but they didn’t. They come back to the point of needing a Green Witch and Agatha suggest they try to summon one. The other’s think it’s a bad idea, as a lot could go wrong with a spell like that, but Agatha insists it could work.

 

They form an outline of a person in leaves and perform a spell to summon the Green Witch. They each ask for qualities they need, Alice being the most practical and asks her to bring Advil. They finish the spell. There’s the classic joke of ‘oh we have to wait a bit before anything happens’ only for it to happen immediately. A being rises out of the grave they dug for Sharon. It’s not Sharon, but Rio Valda. Agatha demands to know what she’s doing here, and Rio says she heard they were having a party, and she was in the neighborhood. Agatha tries to slap her, but the others stop her and Agatha storms off. Rio introduces herself to the others, claiming not to be ‘a’ Green Witch but “The” Green Witch, in a demon voice. She then starts skipping after Agatha and Teen.

 

Teen catches up to Agatha and asks if they’re in trouble… more trouble than ten minutes ago. She doesn’t answer. The other Witches aren’t sure how to feel about Rio, as they find her scary but also hot. They come upon another house, but Alice decides she’s done and tries to bail. They try to leave only to find the house in front of them again and they resignedly head towards it. The moon on this door is waxing. Teen says that’s the fire phase. The group enters. Inside they’re all in 70s chic. Alice warns the group not to eat, drink or touch anything. They look for another note that might kick off this next challenge. There’s a tension between Rio and Agatha that she tries to ignore by just saying “no,” before they join. The group looks around the house, each finding something that seems to snare their attention. Lilia paintings of Witch burnings, Jen sees some weird masks, and Alice finds an album cover of her mom. Lilia joins her and asks if her mom was trying to open a path to the Witch’s road with her concerts. She nods, saying her mom’s fans were her Coven. Alice says that two years after the tour that cover was commemorating, they had to sell her mom’s catalog to keep the house. Lilia has another of her magic senior moments where she asks “Which is it? Am I wispy or am I kookie?” She then looks at Alice and tells her to “don’t do” something before coming out of it. Agatha tries to take a load off, but Rio follows her. She claims to be feeling bored and wants to cause damage to liven things up. Agatha says she’s early. Rio says that magic ‘follows the path of least resistance,” so when they called for the best candidate for the job, whatever force governs such things tapped her and funneled her down. Or up. Rio wants to know what Teen is here and Agatah cryptically says “many hands.” She offers to treat the Road like Switzerland, they’ll be neutral why they’re there. She offers for them to have one last ride together. She tricks Rio into talking more and hits the PA system they were standing by. Rio claims that she’ll watch as Agatha does what she does best, kill Witches, and she’ll claim the bodies. As the others hear this and start to protest, Agatha not-at-all-convincingly claims she’s not that kind of Witch anymore. Music starts shrieking an we find Teen put a record on a record player, saying he thought it was a clue due to the “play me” cover. The music gets real bad. They smash the player and a metronome starts going. The timer has started.

 

Nothing seems to happen at first, but then Lilia’s body starts smoking and she screams like she’s on fire. Alice grabs a knife from Rio and quickly draws a protection circle around Lilia. Once it shut, she’s fine. They spitball what they can do to end the curse, Agatha saying that once the vengeance of a curse kicks in you can’t get rid of it, and Lilia adding the only way to stop it is to face it. Jen’s next, as she starts screaming and smoking, but Alice carves a circle around her too. By the time it’s done, Jen’s shoulder is burned. Alice pulls back her jacket and we see she’s got a burn too. Alice checks the record and sees that it was the Ballad of the Witch’s Road. Agatha grabs her and says that she brought the curse in with them. Alice says she didn’t think it was real, that bad things happened to her because she just kind of sucks at life. She pulls back her shirt and shows the burn, saying that she convinced herself it was a birthmark that all her family had. The group realizes it’s a generational curse, which is extra bad. Teen gets thrown by an unseen force through a window and crashes to the ground. He asks if this means he’s part of the Coven, but no one confirms. Agatha has a lightbulb moment from the instruments around them and thinks they need to play Lorna’s version of the ballad. Alice refuses, asking how playing that song could do anything since singing it opened the way to the Road. Teen confirms Lorna’s version of the ballad is different from the ‘real’ one. They ask what Lorna did different, what she wanted from the Road, and Rio says she wanted to save her daughter. Agatha leaps on that, pointing out that Alice should have died years ago but here she is, aimless but not burnt. She realizes that that’s because that song was designed to be a protective spell and regardless of how Alice feels about it, it’s so popular someone is playing it at any given moment and protecting her. The Witches grab instruments and prepare to play.

 

Alice starts playing the piano, but then Agatha starts burning. She tells Alice to keep playing despite the pain and she starts singing. As they sing fire starts springing up around them. Rio says that the curse is angry. Agatha tells her to stop phoning it and play it right. They keep playing and Teen notices he’s got some glass in his side. Towards the end of the song, Alice sees the Curse, manifested as a giant Bat creature. They keep playing, Alice realizing that this could kill the curse. They keep playing, the Curse landing on Alice’s shoulders and scalding her before it vanishes. The metronome stops and they beat the challenge. Teen drops, though, due to the glass in his side.

 

They get him outside and get the glass out of him. Agatha clearly starts panicking and demands the others try to save him. Jen makes a potion from moonlight and water and pours it on the wound. Lilia says this has to do with the Three of Swords. They pour the potion on his wound and it heals him. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and try to make him comfortable while he recovers. The group takes a break around the fire and get to know each other a little. Jen reveals she’s also a root worker and a midwife. They ask how she was bound. Jen reveals she was invited to the ’brand new Obstetrics Association of Greater Boston” where she was attacked by ‘him’ that bound her powers and she still doesn’t know how. Alice reveals that after her mom’s death she tried to forget Witch stuff because of how angry she was with her mom. She says she wanted to believe the Road wasn’t real so she could just stay Mad. Lilia notes that now she’s sad because of the fact it's real, but sad is better than angry. Lilia complains that the worst part of being a witch is the rumors and stereotyping. Teen wakes up and asks if Agatha put the sigil on him. She says no, but if she did, she wouldn’t know. The reason Witches don’t use them that often is because it affects the caster too, which is irritating. He asks if it can be lifted, and Agatha says they have to be destroyed, not lifted, and that it’ll go away on it’s own. Teen asks what happened to her son, but Agatha doesn’t answer. She tells him to heal fast.

 

Back at the fire, Lilia shows a scar from a vampire bite on her neck, saying she got it right before knocking out his other tooth. Lilia says that in the beginning they kind of hated each other before trailing off. The others realize this is another of her weird moments and asks ‘where do you go’ when that happens. Agatha joins them and tells them Teen is alive and mouthy. They asks to see her battle scars. She rolls up her sleeve and shows them one, from a knitting needle to her elbow. She asks if they’d heard of the daughters of liberty and when they say no, she says “exactly.” Rio offers to show her scar. She says that a long time ago she loved someone, that she had to do her job and doing it hurt that person. And now that person is her scar. Agatha walks off to stretch her legs and Rio follows.  Lilia grabs her hand and tells her to not think she forgot what was said in the sound booth before letting her go. When alone Agatha and Rio hug, and Agatha prepares to kiss her, but Rio stops her and says that that boy isn’t hers. Agatha then smiles weakly and walks off.

 

Of the three extra Witches we brought along on this trip, I didn’t think Alice would be the first one to get her backstory explored. I assumed we’d get them in the order they were recruited, with Lilia’s story being first, then Jen, then Alice and finally the Teen.  The Teen being last because he’s Agatha’s sidekick for this story. It was interesting to hear more about Alice’s mom and how this family curse ruined her. I think we could have dived a little deeper on the how and why of the curse, but maybe they’ll go into it more later. There are five more episodes to do after all. The twist that Lorna’s Ballad was effectively an anti-curse spell for Alice was extremely neat. It made Lorna being a Goddess of Rock matter to the actual story instead of just being an anecdote for Alice. The rocking out session was great, I don’t know if everyone was digitally fine tuned or they got voiced over, or if maybe Kathryn Hahn and co all have naturally good singing voices, but the final product was well done. Having Teen get injured during the trial to force Agatha to show a little of her softer side was nice too. It’s clear that regardless of how she treats him that he matters to her in some way, so him being hurt messed her up a little bit. The return of and relationship Agatha has with Rio is interesting. It’s clear they have a long history at this point, and that whatever her job, it’s tied to Agatha’s son’s death and why their relationship soured. The episode tried to play it a little coy, but Agatha storming off after we hear about Rio’s scar isn’t exactly subtle. Nor was the almost kiss. Having Rio tell Agatha that the Teen isn’t hers seems important. Obviously, we don’t know her state off mind, but I could believe Agatha starting to hope that maybe somehow Teen was her son reincarnated or something. That sort of thing isn’t unheard of in Marvel and when you’ve got magic and demons in the mix anything is possible. Especially when the episode specifically points out that sigils affect the caster as well. So, I can see why her hopes getting dashed would kill the mood. I am curious to see what the next trial will be, as the only one left is the divination Witch and Lilia is my favorite of the Coven. Hopefully we’ll start seeing the context of some of her outbursts soon. See you then. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Agatha All Along ep 3

 A witch's true nightmare, a middle class house!

Last time on Agatha All Along, Agatha and her new sidekick the Teen formulated a plan to get her power back. Agatha decided to risk braving the Witches Road, a mythical and dangerous journey that is said to grant the Witches who complete it their hearts desire. She’s supposedly conquered it before. They need a Witches Coven to complete the journey, though, and so went recruiting. The gathered the Diviner Witch Lilia, Potion’s Witch Jen Kale, and Alice Wu-Gulliver, the Protection Witch. They actually need a fifth witch, a Green Witch, but for some reason Agatha just grabs her neighbor Sharon Davis aka Mrs. Hart as she was known in the Hex during WandaVision. They attempt the ritual to open the way to the Road, but it doesn’t seem to work. To make matters worse, the Salem Seven arrive. The Seven are part of Agatha’s former Coven and have come to get payback. Agatha yells at the other Witches, Lilia catches on that Agatha lied to them. She didn’t intend to take them down the Witches Road. She just wanted to get some Witches of moderate strength together and get them to blast her with their magic so she could drain them of their powers. Combining several moderate or even weak magical talents together would greatly increase Agatha’s power. Magic works under the ‘greater than the sum of it’s parts’ rules. It’s only then that Sharon notices the pentagram that formed on Agatha’s floor. The Witches, Sharon, and Teen run through the magically formed trapdoor and just barely escape the Salem Seven. The Witches, Sharon, and Teen take off their shoes and start walking the road. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 3: Through Man Miles / Of Tricks and Trials

 

The group walks down the road, a dark and winding road through a dark forest. The Witches are in awe of the place, and wary of the things that were chasing Agatha. Sharon, as the only one not sure what is happening here, says that they’ve kidnapped her, and she tries to call the cops. But, she doesn’t have service so they just keep walking. Teen tries to get everyone to feel team spirit, saying a Coven shares blessings and burdens… but the others just wonder where his parents are. Jen has figured out that Sharon doesn’t have magic powers and rightly points out a non-witch on the Road will put them all in danger. She also points out that they don’t know what they’ll face down here, but Lilia has a lightbulb moment and realize they’ll be facing their darkest fears down here. Alice says that it’ll come in the form of test for each of the Witches’ crafts. Jen asks how they’ll face that without any real power, to which the Teen says they’ll just need to focus on the Craft part of Witchcraft. Jen asks him again who the hell he is. Teen says his name, but no one here’s it, the other witches saying that someone put a sigil on him. They look at Agatha, who says Sigils are beneath her. Lilia explains when Teen asks that the Sigil is a redaction spell, it hides what it covers, hence why they’re physically unable to hear his name or see his mouth move in case they could read lips. The other Witches are curious about his deal, but Agatha says they can figure him out later, as what they want is at the end of the Road. She points out their desires, saying Jen wants her powers unbound, Lilia wants to change her fortune, Alice wants to find out what happened to her mom, and Sharon… well she wondered off when they weren’t looking. Crap.

 

We cut over to Sharon, who is panicking and trying to find a way out of here. She sits on the side off the road and puts her bag down. The ground eats the bag and tries to eat her, Sharon shouts for help and Alice runs over and pulls her free. Agatha decides she should lay out the ground rules for the uninitiated, even through she thought the rules would be obvious. Rule 1, do not step off the road. Suddenly, in the distance they see a house in the middle of a beach. Lilia asks if that was there before and Agatha says they should stop asking that question.

 

They approached the house. They notice the door has the phases of the moon on it. Sharon tries to be polite and rings the doorbell, but Agatha just walks in and the others follow. Inside the Witches note that this doesn’t’ give ‘dark nightmare’ vibes, to which Agatha says that the Road changes for the Coven. It also changes them. Everyone is now dressed in WASPs on Thanksgiving wear. Teen looks around the house and says it gives “Middle-aged second chance at love’ vibes and he loves it. The other witches agree, Jen adding that she looks like one off her customers. Alice notices the doors don’t open. Sharon says oh my god, but then comes in to says to bury her in that kitchen. Teen notices a note on the mantal, and they all grab it to look. It is an invite from the Witches Road to their first trial. On the back is a riddle. “My age has value. I’m no fun alone. I mess with your mind, my tricks are well-known.” Sharon turns around and notes there’s wine. Alice then realizes that’s the answer and gives Mrs. Hart ten points. The Witches are skeptical of what’ll happen if they drink it, but Agatha points out that if they don’t follow the breadcrumbs, they don’t get the prize. Teen runs over to get a corkscrew from the bar, Jen follows him. She tells him to keep her guard up around Agatha. When he says he knows her reputation, Jen asks if he knows she sold her child for the book of the damned, I assume that’s another name for the Darkhold. Teen says that can’t be true. Jen plays it off that he’s right but says that it is what people say. That Agatha’s son might be dead, or a demon, or an agent of Mephisto. (Name Drop!) But it’s to be expected when you’ve got Agatha Harkness as a mother. She adds that she probably wouldn’t recognize him if he appeared at her doorstep before grabbing the opener.

 

The Witches pour wine. Sharon downs her glass and tells the others not to judge her as she’s had a hard day. A timer starts counting down from 30 minutes. They toast to the prize and start drinking. Teen asks if he can have some, but the adults say not. They adjourn to the living room. Agatha stealthily empties her glass into a potted plant. Teen sees Alice has a tattoo and asks her about it. She’s defensive about it at first, but says that she got it in Colorado, when her Mom was playing Red Rocks. Teen knows the symbol wards off Curses. Allice says her mom made her get it as all the women in their family are cursed. As they talk, Agatha’s empty glass refills from thin air. Alice says she was 13 when she got it, and that her mom wasn’t well. Teen says a lot happened when he was 13 too. Alice says she misses his eyeliner, but the hair is cute on him. The group start chatting, Sharon saying that she doesn’t necessarily want to join the Witch club, but she’d drink the blood of a virgin to smooth out some wrinkles. All the others jumped back in surprise, as that’s what happened. Sharon’s face is super smooth… but also super swollen. Alice then realizes they were all poisoned. Everyone’s faces start swelling up. Jen goes back to Sharon, gets her name wrong, and then says she’s so pretty. But because she drank first, she’s kind of their canary in a coal mine about what’ll happen to them. Agatha runs off while everyone is distracted and tries to find a way out while hiding her own face. Jen lists off some symptoms, but Sharon doesn’t seem to be feeling any of them/doesn’t know what they are. Their faces all return to normal a second later. They breathe a sigh of relief, but Jen says the face swelling wearing off so fast means the poison was Alewife’s Revenge. And face swelling is phase 1.

 

Agatha freaks out and tries to break through one of the windows to escape but it doesn’t work. The group then notices that Agatha didn’t drink the wine. Agatha tries to weasel out of drinking, the others telling her she can’t cheat out of this and they’ll force it down her throat if they have to. She drops her glass (on the upholstery!- Sharon) but another glass fills up. Teen offers to drink it, but Agatha stops him, takes the second glass and drinks. Sharon starts hallucinating, begging Wanda to let her husband breathe. Agatha tells Jen it’s time to brew an antidote.

 

They head to the kitchen and Jen sends them off in groups of two to find the ingredients she needs. Agatha and Lilia go to find a corpse that’s been decayed for 30 million years… aka zooplankton, which is in petroleum products. They first look for a car, but there isn’t one, so no gas.  They find some of Jen’s cosmetics in the bathroom. Lilia says they’re advertised as organic, so no petroleum, but Agatha says she knows a snake oil salesman when she sees one and says they’ll call her bluff. Lilia suddenly shouts “Save Agatha” to which Agatha says is a great plan. Teen and Alice go to find frankincense and the guts of eusocial insect. They smell eucalyptus and go looking for essential oils. Alice starts to hallucinate and sees the door to the sauna and is drawn in. Back in the kitchen, Jen realizes she needs eye of newt for the potion… aka mustard seed. She steps out into the pantry to grab some, comes back in to find someone standing in the kitchen. As Agatha and Lilia hurry back, Lilia sees a girl in an old world dress who asks her in Italian “do you want to see it?” In the Sauna Alice sees her mother. In the Kitchen Jen sees a man that calls her an “inconvenient woman.” And Lilia follows the girl deeper into the house. Alice’s mom tells her that her grandma died today, a thousand miles away but she still felt it. Her mom thinks she’s next and tries to drink something, but Alice stops her. Lilia is drawn into a room where a corpse in an old habit is waiting for her. Death herself then stands up behind the corpse. The man tries to drown Jen in the sink, saying she’s nothing. Alice’s mother screams that she can’t protect her as she runs. The others come out of their trances all at the same time, and they’re all shaken up by what they saw. They gather with the ingredients, Agatha asking what’s next. They then notice the window is broken and salt water is gushing in. As Agatha says, no thank you.

 

They quickly throw the ingredients into the sink they’re using as a cauldron. Agatha calls Jen on her bluff about her ‘all natural’ cosmetics and she says throw them in. The water turns pink… but then they run into the problem off how to set water in a sink to boil. Teen suggests using a Sous vide, a super fancy cooking tool that lets you set the heat to a specific temperature to cook it evenly. He says his dad loves his. Jen gives Teen a spoon and tells him to stir the water with his dominant hand counterclockwise. And to the others to pull a hair from their heads. As Agatha goes to grab hers, she hears a baby crying and gets pulled into her hallucination. Makes sense, she drank a good five minutes after everyone else. She sees a bassinet and hears a baby crying. She pulls the blanket aside and finds the Darkhold instead. She snaps out of it and quickly adds her hair. The group then grab hands and clear their minds. When they’re intentions are clear it’ll turn cerulean. The potion turns green instead. Oops. Jen says she must have forgotten something but not sure what as she’s never made this potion before. They’ve only got a minute to figure it out. Jen starts freaking out, saying she used to be able to fix something like this with a wave of her hand, but she’s bound now, *he* stole her magic. She starts screaming that she doesn’t want to die here. Agatha grabs her and says she’s always hated her, but that she left Jen alone because she respected what she was doing. Not the Kale Care crap, the real work. She says they can take her power but not her knowledge. She remembers they need the blood of someone unpoisoned and Agatha quickly adds Teen’s blood, thanking him for being underage. The water turns blue, and everyone drinks. They then remember to get some to Mrs. Hart as the timer is still ticking down. They force some into her mouth and… an oven pops open. Lilia refuses to get in, saying that a friend of hers did that once and died, just as the glass shatters and water rushes in. They all race through the oven, Agatha, Alice and Teen carry Sharon through. They all end up sliding down a dry river bed back onto the Witches Road. Agatha and Jen start sniping at each other, but Lilia cuts them off, saying that thy survived the first test so they need to be thankful. But then Teen says they all didn’t make it, as Sharon is dead. There’s a somber moment when they close Sharon’s eyes, before Agatha ruins it by asking who Sharon is.

 

This was a solid first challenge. It’s pretty straight forward, drink a poison, and you have 30 minutes to cure yourself or die. Simple and to the point. The fact that everyone hallucinated their great fear was a nice touch. For one it lets us know how old the oldest members of this coven are. From the dresses we saw on Lilia’s hallucination, she’s Centuries old. I don’t know fashion, but the outfits screamed Middle Ages. And Jen’s attacker looked like a 1920s stereotype, so assume she’s at double, even triple as old as she looks. Lady Death seems to be the big fear among this coven. Oh yeah, if I hadn’t mentioned it before, Marvel’s Death canonically takes on the form of a woman. And it was an attempt to impress her that an insane Thanos was trying to impress by sacrificing half of all life in the comics. Mephisto is also a big name in Marvel Cosmology. He’s an incredibly powerful Demon Lord, having on more than one occasion posed as the capital D devil on more than one occasion. I have no idea if this is anything more than a name drop, but it’s fun to know he’s at least rumored to exist in universe. Watching Agatha in this one was interesting. She’s devious and self-serving, That’s a known fact. When she poured out the wine in the plant, I’m surprised someone didn’t clock that the moment she did it. No, the interesting part was using her apparently decades long grudge against Jen to get her mind working right. It’s a pretty standard “I hate you, but you do fine work” speech, but Kathryn Hahn sells it. And it was interesting to get a hint at some of her damage. Whatever really happened with her son, it’s clear his fate hits very tender nerves in Agatha. Considering Agatha herself is infamous, it is very likely that her son’s fate has been overblown with time. But there is clearly some truth to it. As the Darkhold is clearly tied to him somehow. I’m admittedly not great at symbolism, but evil book in bassinet before a woman with a canonically dead son… it’s not advance calculus. Pour one out for Mrs. Hart/Sharon. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Debra Jo Rupp and she was fun as the odd one out on this adventure. Her comments made me snicker, since she was just a normal lady in a very insane situation. Having her die so… unceremoniously was a bit of a shock. I wonder if she was too expensive to keep on for more than three episodes… Who knows? She was fun while she was there, and I’ll miss her. We’ll see what comes next for Agatha and her Coven. See you then. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social