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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/116660408/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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