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 15th 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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/116730706/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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