Agatha All Along Season 1
[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to Charlie and Steve Watchtuff where today we are watching Agatha all along My name is Steve Selnick and joining me as always he's going down down down the road down the witches road It's my good friend Charlie Peppers. Charlie. How you doing, dude?
Good, I am so happy to be gathering in our coven of two for this podcast that we're doing.
Not coven
Not coven true, The ballad says. coven true. Mm
and no one knows better than the person who made up the ballot. Again, getting ahead of ourselves. God, this show is so much fun. We are here today to, sort of, extend the ballot. Spooky season by an extra week, because technically it's November.
At this point, we're recording this the day after Halloween, also the day after the two part finale of this brilliant season of television to talk about Agatha all along in the [00:01:00] first season of it in its entirety. So we're going to kind of start from the top and then work our way through all of the episodes of Agatha all along.
But before we get into the show itself, because there's, there's a lot to say. There's I don't even want to say anything because I just feel like we'll start talking about it. So I, I sort of want to set the table a little bit and we'll start with you, Charlie, because I think both of us really enjoyed WandaVision.
I've watched it at least twice. I don't know how many times you've watched it, but what were your expectations for Agatha all along, both as An immediate jumping off point from WandaVision and also as a place in the larger MCU.
I'm going to be totally frank with you. I was like, that idea is so fucking stupid. I thought it was dumb. I was like, why are they doing this with their IP? Give me X Men. I don't give a fuck about Agatha. It, it really, honestly, Steve, I feel like Marvel has just burned through so much goodwill with its [00:02:00] audience.
What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that Marvel's burned through goodwill?
Oh man. I mean, here's the thing. Secret invasion, bad, really not
I didn't finish it.
like, yeah, it wasn't like, I think that was the first show where my partner Aaron and I were really starting to be like, okay, what are we doing here? I think that we are on the end of the spectrum of Marvel fandom or will pretty much show up for almost anything.
And it really takes a lot to knock us off of where the people in the theater that are grabbing each other by the shirts when fucking Gambit shows up in Deadpool versus Wolverine and stuff like that. So it takes a lot for us to be sort of out on it. You're, you're talking to a lifelong Star Wars fan through all versions of Star Wars.
So I think it takes a lot for me to really. Really be out on something like out on something that said, I think the impatience was getting there. I think that I liked a lot of more of the [00:03:00] shows than people liked. I liked Echo. I didn't like Secret Invasion. I loved Ms. Marvel.
I actually, I actually really liked Falcon and the Winter Soldier
too! Me too!
and some of those earlier MCU shows.
So while there have been stumbles, I don't think there have been like such deep errors as some people like to talk about about the MCU. So that said, I had no idea what they were going to do with this. And I think I was similarly In a why are we doing this only because I had no background for the character and they left her in such a specific place.
I was like, okay, what are what are we going to do? Clearly they had an idea. So
yeah, yeah, standing off what you said with WandaVision, the last time we saw Agatha, she was just beautiful. Full cartoon villain, full cartoon
villain with the black fingers and dark hold and floating around and they just had a CGI battle and Westview, which looked so much like a set that it made me want to roll [00:04:00] my
eyes.
I, I think Westview looking like a set episodes one through eight of WandaVision was great, but when they had that battle and it looked like they were just going through backlots, it, it just really. stretch my suspension of disbelief to an uncomfortable level, but I really, yeah, I, I really do have respect for Jack Schafer, who show ran Agatha all along, and also previously show ran WandaVision because I, dare I say, this is five times better than WandaVision.
And I'm going to tell you how WandaVision left me. WandaVision was very much a show that I would stay up till midnight. To see the episode when it dropped and I hadn't done that with the show for years. I hadn't done that with the show for years. Also with the pandemic and just wanting something to look forward to, it brought me a lot of comfort.
It brought me a lot of joy. It was also the big, inaugural [00:05:00] show for, for Marvel TV back then. So WandaVision is definitely The flagship show of Marvel TV in a very big, beautiful way, but the way it ended, which did, did you like the way WandaVision ended?
I didn't enjoy the big CGI magic punch fest. I thought some of the family stuff was weird. But I didn't mind how it ended. I was like, OK, we've got Scarlet Witch going. I actually was more disappointed by Multiverse of Madness and how that ended. More so than how WandaVision
Okay. I, I have an interesting thought about multiverse of madness. I think now looking back at multiverse of madness, seeing Agatha's arc and how far she went to get her kid. And how the grief really warped her into a monster. I think that multiverse of madness is retroactively better because of Agatha all along also, [00:06:00] and I'm jumping, I'm jumping ahead,
Agatha
back,
back, baby.
I would say that episode six of Agatha all along, when it's revealed that Lillia put the sigil on Billy. Lilia is the reason why Multiverse of Madness went down the way that it did, because she hid Wanda, she hid Billy from Wanda,
Damn. You're totally right.
like, Lilia is the reason why Wanda killed Professor X in a different universe, you know, so, Agatha all along has made multiverse of Madness better, just like how WandaVision made Age of Ultron better. I think that's the beauty of shows like this, because they give things a new lens and more rewatch value.
Really just quick housekeeping and then let's get into it. Obviously because we haven't hesitated already. We are spoiling every WandaVision. If it has touched the MCU and [00:07:00] fuck, even if it hasn't, like we might spoil some X Men 97 just because I'm just going to.
If we're talking about it, just assume that we're spoiling it, especially because we've already spoiled some parts of season six. I'm going to do like a like a quick, as quick as I can sort of like synopsis of the season, just because I want to establish the big twist that happens because it lends so much context. Charlie. Tell me if you disagree with this. How many Marvel things has the twist completely changed the way that you interact with every single aspect of a show or movie that you've done?
None, right?
It's never
never done this
Never done it. Never, ever done it. So with the
Twice. Once in episode eight and an even bigger one in episode nine. Back to
Yeah. And I, that, that bigger, that it wanted episode nine absolutely set me. Agatha is stuck in this spell that Wanda left her in, and [00:08:00] because Wanda died, they're, they're calling it, they're calling that she died in Multiverse of Madness. She has to be broken out of her spell, but she's powerless. So Rio, a green, which AKA she's also death, by the way, we're just spoiling all of the things right now. AKA Aubrey Plaza helps her break out of the spell. She's out of it. Aubrey, Is mad at Catherine Han for some reason.
All the while this mysterious teen shows up saying that he wants to walk the which is road and that he knows that Agatha is the only one to have walked it and so she agrees.
They assemble a coven. They do this whole song to summon the road. This door appears. They go down into the road. It's very dangerous. Multiple which is die. the whole thing is that at the end of the road, you get what you seek the most. We find out as they're walking the road that this mysterious teen is actually Billy Maximoff, aka Wiccan, aka the son of Scarlet [00:09:00] Witch, who has, Essentially reincarnated his lost spirit from WandaVision in to a teenager who died in a car crash We find out two big things by the end of the road. The first thing is that. Well, I guess we found out a lot of things. We find out that Rio's death and she's the incarnation of death. She's the original green, which we find out that Agatha did not trade her son for the book of the damned.
In fact, her son was supposed to die at childbirth and she made a bargain with death at the time to give her more time. And she was essentially just exchanging bodies for time. And eventually her son just died and that turned her into a vengeful soul. And her and her son created the Ballad of the Witch's Road to trick other witches into trying to find more power.
And when they would get mad that it wasn't there, they would try blasting her with her powers and she would kill them and [00:10:00] take all of their powers away. And then on top of the realization that the road isn't real, I mean, if you're going, well, then what about all that other stuff we were talking about?
The entirety of the experience of the road that we have is a creation of Billy, Allah. The creation of Westview in WandaVision. So the entire time we're walking the road, it's a magical creation done by Billy, sort of unbeknownst to him. He doesn't even realize it until the end of the series, which is the big episode 9 reveal.
So that's like the very, very super quick, not quick version of it. Did I miss anything important in there,
No, you covered it all.
Oh, my goodness. I can't believe that. I was hanging on by a thread for that one. So, with all that in mind I was watching, which episode was I watching? I was watching episode four yesterday with Aaron and both of us know the twist at this point.
And just [00:11:00] everything that I, I kept going, holy shit, or like, oh my God, to myself just over and over again, because it, like we said, it completely. Changes the angle in which you're watching everything and that if this show had gone to Agatha's plans the whole time, it would have been two episodes long,
Yeah,
right? So we can start from the beginning and we open in this sort of like, if you know, mayor of East town, very surly. Female lead detective, very, very grungy, very,
coffee to the scene of a
yeah, very Twin Peaks without the positivity, she's trying to figure out this Jane Doe murder case, which is actually Wanda.
Long story short, she's in this roleplay because she's stuck in this spell. That has been [00:12:00] not broken, but essentially like put into limbo. And so everything that we're seeing in this first episode is happening essentially inside of Agatha's head inside of her house. So when Rio shows up and she's like, is this really how you see yourself?
It's her just kind of like looking around her house and being like, we're really in a detective noir right now. Is this what we're doing? we have the moment with the team where he shows up and we, we get to see who he is. And we get the super cool moment where Rio helps Agatha break out of the spell.
She changes through all of her different characters that she was in WandaVision and she reappears as herself. But powerless, as we said, and so Rio before leaving warns her that the Salem seven, you know, those witches that she killed back in WandaVision are there after her and they're pissed off. And now her and teen have to figure out.
What they're going to do to get onto the road, assemble the coven, all of that good stuff.
[00:13:00] Yeah, yeah. A couple of really interesting tidbits. The first is that Agatha, even though she's in this hex that Wanda, again, going back to WandaVision, Wanda can do magic on autopilot. So this illusion has pretty much just been sustaining itself, which I find very, very interesting. When Agatha goes to see the body in the first couple of minutes of the episode. It's really funny that she in reality is just standing at Herb's gate talking to Herb about something over his gate and pointing and Herb is so sweet that he's
Cause the pictures were just flowers.
okay. Those are just pictures of flowers. So
Oh, I never put that together. Oh my
That's really, really funny. Also, note that the outfit that the corpse is wearing is the outfit that Wanda left Westview with in the season finale of WandaVision,
and that the fingertips are black because of the influence of the Darkhold, aka the Book of the Damned. Thought [00:14:00] that was really interesting. Also, really love the music. That the book that Agatha thought, thought that the corpse, which she later comes to find out is actually Wanda, took out was this seemingly innocuous book, it's an anagram for Darkhold. and at that.
moment with the musical cue, Agatha, I think if she would have had a little bit more time, would have been capable of scratching her way to the surface of this hex and getting out of it, you know, at her own pace. I just think that Billy came along and really shook her out of it.
Do I think that he Got lucky? No, he is the son of the goddamn Scarlet Witch. So he came in and definitely used a lot of his power there. This episode is the one that held my interest the least. I think that's because I felt a little bit out of the loop because I've never seen Mirror of Easttown. Though I love Kate Winslet, [00:15:00] and now I do want to watch it because it'll increase the, you know, watchability of this pilot.
Oh, oh, oh, interesting detail because this show really plays around with color. Herb, when Agatha is naked, tries to put a purple shirt over Agatha. she threw it off. I thought that was really interesting. You always see the signature color of hers play come up in really interesting ways.
the little details and Easter eggs are very
We love the little details in easter
love the little, the little details as someone who just directed a film knows sitting on the other side of this call for me, the little details are everything
as you, by the way, this, those screenshots, y'all first take out just a little sidebar, it, Charlie posted some stills from his shoot, which happened when I tell you that I screamed when I saw them.
I'm very excited about they look like they came out great. So stoked for you, friend. Anyway, the other thing I want [00:16:00] to recognize is that she's humming the witch's road song to herself in the very beginning of the episode. So the first thing we hear is Agatha humming the witch's road to herself, which I think is
Yes, and yes,
knowing that she's the one who made it.
The opening title, the opening title sequence of this first episode, which is like Agnes of Westview, has the original version of the road song, which is down the winding road, which comes back in episode nine. So what Agatha is really reminiscing about is time with Nikki when she's humming
that song, and that's
the road that she wants to be on.
My heart!
Moving mama moving into moving into episode two,
Moving into episode two where teen is revealing, I guess that he freed Agatha from the spell and he wants to travel the witch's road to get something good power. And he knows that. [00:17:00] She doesn't have her power right now. Agatha also at this point realizes that there's a sigil on him.
As we talked about I guess, spoiler Lillia put the sigil on him. We'll get to that point at that point. So we don't know his name. We don't know who he is at this point. Needing a coven to open the portal to the road, open the portal to the road, the pair recruits. Three witches. Lilia called Arou as the divination witch.
She works with tarot cards. She makes her business and sort of seeing the future. She has moments of seeing the future and exclaiming moments from the future. Jennifer, Jen Kale, the potions witch. She's currently running an apothecary that that scene with the jade eggs for her pelvic floor. A plus.
Catherine Han just chewed with her mouth wide open the entire time. And I just, all I wanted was for her to just open a little bit wider. She was the best. And then Alice Wu Gulliver, who all have reasons to walk the witch's road.
We all have these very sort of quirky and comical ways that they convinced these witches to join [00:18:00] them. And they need a green, which there was a name on this list that Lilia conjured up for them. Agatha does not want to bring Rio on the road with them. They said it was just a black heart.
If you remember from the first episode, Rio says that she does have a heart. It's black and it beats just for her. The, I saw this meme of someone tweeting back in 2021, and it was four pictures of four different characters that Akitha played in WandaVision. And all it said in the text was, this is a lesbian.
and so, and that same person quoted it like a week ago and went, I read the future.
And this bitch loves death anyway. She goes to Sharon Davis, not Mrs. Heart next door. That was my favorite running gag in the entire series. AKA Kitty from that 70s show and convinces her to [00:19:00] join them as a green witch because she has a green thumb. And it is. Established in this episode that Agatha can't get powers back unless she is specifically blasted by
I have I want to double click on this. Why would
she tell Lillia that if she planned on killing Lillia by stealing her powers? Later. That part feels like a plot hole for me. Like, cuz think about it. Now, in hindsight, where we know
that that's what Agatha was gonna do, The only way I can wrap my head around it is that Agatha told Lillia that, is because after she killed the witches, she probably would've made up something, because I don't think she planned on killing Billy. I think she would have
said something. She would have said, Oh, I don't know what happened. The road just opened up and it ate all of them. It just drained them. I don't think that she was going to, what do you think?
Do you think that if she would have just successfully drained all of their magic? If it would have gone a different way, would she have turned around and zapped Billy too?
That's a great question. I think there was probably [00:20:00] something involved with Rio there as well. She also didn't know who Billy was at that point. So who knows? I, I honestly, she probably would have just turned around and zapped Billy at that point. I don't think she understood who he was until about five minutes after this scene, she started having an idea of who he was or what he was capable of.
She was curi I will say she was curious about him.
He lifted the spell.
well, the sigil made her
The sigil the sigil made her lean in. I
would say that he lifted the spell. And she was a little like, when she saw the sigil, she was like, what the fuck,
yeah,
are you? Why, why, why can't I figure out.
who you are? And you just happened to be the person who saved me. Then the third thing was the door, which I didn't catch her expression when the door opened up, you know?
not in the way that you would catch it knowing that the road is, was a magical conjuration of [00:21:00] Billy's. And so this is a a result of his stress, and before we talk about that, I just wanna take a quick moment because this is all happening while the song is going on. And so first of all, number one.
Banger of the century. The witch's road ballad was incredible. Every iteration of it was so good. So I just, I loved, I loved it. And you know, who loved it was Sharon Davis.
She was like,
bouncing up and down, doing, do it. She was just getting into it. In this moment where Agatha is sort of trying to bait the other witches to blast her with her magic so she can get powered up.
The Salem Seven is descending upon the house. These, I believe it's the daughters of the witches that she murdered in WandaVision, who got all contorted in their own magic and are like these shape shifting. Think if Professor McGonagall got like really into Evanescence. And got a bad streak. Those are the Salem seven, [00:22:00] essentially.
So Billy is upstairs running around with a rabbit in his hands, trying not to get killed by these literal like witch demons. And so under great duress and stress, he creates this door underground and all the witches are like, it's the road. Fuck yeah. Let's go. And, and Charlie, just to put a button on your point, Agatha didn't back down.
When Lilia was like, you're just trying to get us to blast you. She doubled down on goading them. So I, I think it was a mixture of desperation and I think she was out of practice. First
Yeah, I think
bit in a while
was, she was out of practice and
telling somebody how her powers work, right off the
bat, I'm like, Hmm? Like, that doesn't
seem But, to Agatha's credit, Agatha is a con woman. Come on. She is
a con woman to the extreme. The fact that she was thrown by the road being created, [00:23:00] but she rolled with it,
rolled with it for the entire show just shows that one overconfident, very overconfident and her overconfidence is what fucked her and WandaVision because
she came into the hex and she was just. Curious that that actually that's something I'm going to keep commenting on with Agatha I think one of the most brilliant things about her is her intellectual curiosity. She doesn't just want to steal Magic, she wants to know how it works she wants to know why Wanda or how Wanda created the hex and I think she wanted to Understand how Billy created the hex and she also Wanted to see if it was legit.
Would it give her her powers back? You know, it was
fake before, but now that it's real and it can do all these
Anything's
anything's possible.
And she was definitely out to get her purple back. What do you
Definitely. No, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I, I mean, obviously [00:24:00] beyond the choice of stay here and deal with the Salem seven without your powers or walk into this mystery magical that's just appeared in front of you. I think you're going to take the mystery magical 10 times out of 10. But yes.
And I think all of The other stuff that you said is very true. I think she, and especially when you go back and see in episode nine, the way that she looks at that door at the ground, you go, Oh, Buck, she is just as shocked as the rest of us that that door appeared into the ground. But the only difference is the rest of the witches go, Oh, it's the road.
Let's go. We, we did it. We're on the road now. And Agatha is just like, Oh, yeah, we're on the road now, I guess. So that leads us into episode three through many miles of tricks and trials. Also love that each of the episode titles were lines for the songs. That's really cool. Agatha explains that to reach the end of the road, the coven will face trials focused on different branches of witchcraft, which is just fucking bullshit.
[00:25:00] And so I, and also I love that she's putting these ideas in Billy's head. So then Billy is turning around and making them
Subconsciously.
so she's sort of, she's sort of manipulating what's happening around them. So at the first trial, the coven comes along a coastal house with a bottle of wine that everyone, but the team drinks, Jen pulls, Billy aside and it's like, Hey, don't trust Agatha.
You know, she traded her kid for the dark holds. So like you might want to, I feel like she would maybe trade you for less. We find out that that's not true. That's just a thing that Agatha has let people believe about her probably just to hide her grief from the actual truth. And a timer starts counting down.
Jen realized that the wine was poisoned as they all put puff up in the faces and Sharon passes out. Sharon, very important to remember, drank two glasses of the wine. Kitty continuing her drinking problem from the, that 70 show universe into the Marvel [00:26:00] cinematic universe. so this is the potions, which trial.
So this is Jen's trial. They're gathering ingredients to create an antidote. I loved The witch names for things and how they're actually just real things, but they're calling, what was it? The, the undigested Lorax of a, something like that. And they just go, Oh, so you mean honey? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honey.
Then we just need some honey. But at the same time. The witches are starting to have hallucinations, Lillia sees her younger self and her maestra from the renaissance era, as you may or may not know, these witches are hundreds of years old, even though they don't look like it Jen hallucinates a doctor, forcing her underwater, and Alice sees her mother, Lorna Wu, the famous Artist who tried to summon the road via her band about to commit suicide and Agatha sees a crib containing The dark hole now quick pause on this These are all understandings Of how Billy sees these women [00:27:00] currently.
I want to add onto that. I think that like his mom, the road is also now magic on autopilot.
Hmm.
that the road is kind of a sentient embodiment of his understanding of witchcraft and these women.
And it's doing its own thing, but Billy has the ability to influence it or change it unknowingly. Like when he manifested it, he manifested all of it and it exists in its entirety up to a certain extent. I also think that with him pulling all of this information about them, it's not just It's not just an amalgamation of all of the stuff in his room and what his interests and his sensibilities and his tastes are, I think without realizing it, he read their thoughts.
Yeah. Cause you can do
He read their [00:28:00] thoughts subconsciously and he took things from them because the, the, remember the thing that Wanda was able to do, like the Wiggly Woo thing from Age of Ultron? This is
kind of a form of that, with grabbing all of their worst fears and having them. Hallucinate. And yeah, I think that is very interesting, but wait a minute. I'm going to push back against myself. Damn. Was it, was it Billy who kind of wiggly wooed their fears or did he, because Maximoffs can alter reality and also manifest objects, if he manifested the poison, the poison might've been the thing that did it, not him because they were legit ingredients. Do you think the ingredients were legit?
Like the ingredients that were in the house.
like he, he manifested the ingredients or he, like, telepathically pulled them from somewhere.
I think everything that was on the [00:29:00] road was legit. Much like in the way that everything inside of Westview inside of the hex was legit. It might've been under a black and white filter or in a different sort of era, but I think all of it was real.
Also, let it be said that Billy has better taste than Wanda because I found this hex to be far more interesting.
Agatha wasn't wrong, but I'm
This kid is so much cooler than Wanda, are you
He is. I, I would, when he gets older, I would date him.
I was telling Cody the
yeah, oh yeah, are
He's so
First of all, that kid got to grow up in, right now, and Wanda grew up in 1980s war zone Eastern Europe. I think Wanda's gonna have a little bit more style than the
Right, right.
potentially. Wanda had that terrible accent until like the last two movies. So we're, we're doing much better with Billy on the onset.
So to, to wrap up this first one, Jen is successful in creating the potion. At the same [00:30:00] time, the house is suddenly underwater. And they all drink the potion, the oven opens up, they slide through the oven, they all get out as the water is rushing through as they're all getting up and dusting themselves out, they discover that Sharon is dead.
And the theory was is that she, Only drank one cup of the potion, but she needed to because she drank two glasses of the wine. So I guess she didn't get enough antidote. They also leave it very arbitrary that they got it in in time. The clock kind of hits zero right as the antidote is hitting the lips.
So
The clock is dramatic, much like
basically the clock is dramatic and Billy's a murderer.
Ha ha ha ha! But, I mean, not me being soft on Billy, because I love his character, but Mrs. Davis kind of did it to herself. Nobody told her to drink two glasses of wine. They gave her the antidote, but I am [00:31:00] insulted. On the audience's behalf, because I was excited that Mrs. Davis would be revealed to be an actual witch. But now looking back at the big reveal in episode nine. Agatha knew the spell wouldn't work so she just grabbed anybody and she was 100 percent gonna kill Mrs. Davis. And,
and cold blood, that's really fucked up. That's so
Yeah, she didn't give a fuck. Well,
a fuuuuuck. Ha ha
the end of the episode, Teen goes, Sherrod's dead, and Agatha just goes, Who? Who's Sharon? we move on to episode four, they bury Sharon, the coven is forced to summon a replacement green witch and Rio just emerges from Sharon's grave, which is absolute brilliant because death comes through and claims her prize and then emerges from the ground.
Aubrey Plaza, again, just eats. Everyone just [00:32:00] eats in this show, which is fantastic.
hot. So
Well. You said it, but I agree
Oh, male, female, hot is hot. I can
How does, yeah, the Todd
like, not just, not just physically, just the energy, the confidence, the weirdness.
Yeah. The way she holds
the commitment to the bit. I'm
so into it. She killed it in the show. And
intended, but Agatha and Rio clearly have a past as we've established before. And the coven encounters a house from this like 1970s aesthetic that prompts renewed feelings of grief for Alice, because it turns out to be a recording studio that's tied to her mother, Lorna Wu just as Rio playfully suggests to Agatha that they betray the others.
And just, you know, you get your power. I get my bodies. First of all, that's not really playfully because that's exactly how their deal worked. [00:33:00] As we find out in episode nine, Agatha uses her powers to kill witches and Rio cleaned up by getting the bodies. So that's actually just like a, Hey, let's just pick up where we left off from.
What do you say? Just like old times. Billy accidentally plays a record backwards, summoning the demon who is the source of the curse analysis family. And in order to fight it, the group has to play. Lorna's version of the Ballad of the Witch's Road, which is the most popular version.
It's this very like 70s glam rock. I said Janis Joplin vibes were very strong Fleetwood Mac vibes. It's revealed to be a protection spell. And Alice is able to kill the demon, lifting the curse. off of her that's been plaguing her family for generations. The way that they all react to her being like, wait, hold on.
You're telling me this is a generational curse that we're dealing with right now? Are you kidding [00:34:00] me? And in the battling of the demon, Billy actually takes some glass to the abdomen and he gets really, really hurt. And back on the road, Jen actually uses some moonlight and some water and is able to heal his wound, which is a really big deal.
If they make it seem like a really, really big deal oh yeah, this is actually really good. The trio bonding with Rio where they're all just kind of like, really attracted to her. They're like, do I want to run away from her? Do I want to ask for her phone number? Like, what is going on here?
and Patty Lebon being like, that is one scary bitch
was so great.
scary bitch, Patti LuPone was, I mean, of all of the wonderful performances, Patti's performance of this was so, so good. Just wait till we get to episode seven. And we sort of have a couple of moments between one teen and Agatha, where teen continues to prod Agatha about what happened to her son, but she doesn't want to answer.
And Agatha tries to kiss. Rio, which is an interesting [00:35:00] move, but Agatha stops her by saying that, you know, you know, that that boy isn't your son, which she knows, but I guess revealing that truth to her is like, okay, I'll stay away from it. What do you think?
Hmm, I hadn't thought about this moment, but they do have the kiss of death in episode 8. So now, from a character perspective, what was Agatha's intention in trying was it Agatha who tried to kiss Ryo?
Yeah.
was she gonna try and take Ryo's
power?
I don't know if it would work like that. I truly don't
Yeah, Agatha at this point pretty much knew that Billy was a Maximoff and knew that he
had jumped into someone else's body. She didn't know how he had quite done that, and I think that whereas she wanted to know how Wanda created the Hex, she wanted to know how Billy cheated death and how he did it, which is what she explicitly asks him later on in the series, so I think If she were to kiss Ryo, maybe she wanted to become a ghost [00:36:00] sooner? To like, find a loophole in that? To kinda I don't know, but I think I kind of look at everything that Agatha does as a con in being super calculated. Specifically, specifically when her acting is over the top, that's when she's conning.
But when it's a little bit more down to earth and muted, that's when she's telling the truth. Which is why I don't think she kills you know who in the next episode. But before I get to that, I want to double click on my girl, Alice, who She broke her generational curse.
Huge.
That was the most charmed that Agatha got with her. And you've never seen Charmed, right?
No.
watch an episode. It's not too dissimilar from Buffy, but Buffy's better. Oh, man, Kevin's gonna kill me
I think that just seeing Alice go through that was definitely meant to show that the coven needed each other and the way that [00:37:00] Agatha stepped up and mentored Alice in that moment to really, you know, own up to making her life
Play like a witch!
a witch. Then the episode before that really encouraged Jen. I think that one of Agatha's qualities that she doesn't get to flex that got buried underneath all that dark magic and killing witches. She's a mentor. Agatha is a mentor and she has an eye toward it. You know what, which is can work on what the craft is. She truly loves and she studies the craft and she has deprived herself of a coven.
I think that her respect for knowledge and the finesse that goes into witchcraft really shines through when she's pushed to help the people in the coven. And that is how she sort of builds a bond with them through their shared love of the craft.
Totally agree with that. Too bad she can't go more than like two hours without killing them all. [00:38:00] Anyway we're gonna move on to episode five, where the Salem seven have arrived on the road or figured out a way to work through Billy's magic to arrive on the road to chase the coven who evades them by using makeshift flag broomsticks, which was absolutely incredible.
After being pulled back down by the road, they enter the next trial, which takes the form of a cabin with a 1980s aesthetic. This is Agatha's trial. The group uses a Ouija board to make contact with Agatha's mother Evan Nora, who was killed by her daughter in 1693, along with her previous coven. As seen in Wanda visions warning the coven to leave Agatha behind Evanora possesses her and attacks the group and Alice uses her powers to expel Evanora from Agatha. And then Agatha sort of wakes up from being possessed and absorbs Alice's magic, which causes Alice to die. To die. My opinion is that [00:39:00] she could have stopped and she chose not to.
I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that. I think she could have, I think she could have stopped. I think a few things factored into it. She was just super traumatized by being possessed by her mom. And we know that being portrayed by her coven is the reason why she started doing this in the first place. So,
that was definitely a shock to her system. Agatha is an addict. The way that she absorbs the energies from other people. She is the embodiment of somebody who has an addiction they can't kick. She
enjoys murdering people. It gives her a high because of how it fills her up. Like, Agatha's a fucking villain.
She's a villain? Because she doesn't know how to close her grief, and how that coincides with her addiction just makes it very deadly. And she feels that she can't be honest with people. I think that she didn't care where the power came from. She was just happy to be feeling it, and she drained it [00:40:00] from Alice. Because it felt really good, and it felt like home.
Yeah.
If she had known, I think it's 50 50. On
whether she would have stopped, because Alice doesn't remind her of her son. That's her
one bias. It's like, oh,
I didn't have a girl. You're dead.
Yeah.
I don't think so. But I do think that she meant it when she said it was an accident.
It was an accident
because she slipped. It was a slip, but it wasn't something that she couldn't not control. What do you think?
No, I mean I agree with that. It's super nuanced. And I think you put it really, really well, especially with that note on addiction. And when you get that taste without even knowing that it's going to happen and you sort of, it does really look like she's doing it before she realizes that she's doing it.
And then you have that moment of realization. There's also the thing that breaks her out Alice's powers, which is Billy. Sensing another [00:41:00] presence in the room, another spirit in the room, and then saying its name, which is the one of the first times we heard her son's name, which is Nicholas Scratch, which causes her to stop and she drops Alice and but Alice is dead anyway, and Tina's pissed.
Billy's pissed her super, super mad, but Lily and Jen probably in a bad move at this point go. No, but that's why we're here. We're not here to be buddy buddy and to necessarily save each other, no matter the cost. We're here to get what we want from the road. We knew the risks. And so did she. And that was the, pretty much the, the final straw.
And the real final straw is that the Agatha calls Billy dramatic and mocks him and says that he's just like his mother, which She's kind of right. Both of them created a hex like reality, but Billy does not take this [00:42:00] well and he blasts them all into the mud, which they sink into with his telekinetic powers and we get that sick needle drop with the Billy Eilish.
You should see me in a
Oh, the way I screamed. the way I screamed, You should see me in
a crown. That was
Billy was, Billy was serving in that shot
He was, the internet lost its mind
Rachel Goldberg definitely went, Hey, I need you to serve as much CU as possible as you do this.
I need you. I need you to do that for me and serve. He did,
This was definitely an homage to Carrie. Because Carrie, you've seen the original Carrie, right?
Nope.
we'll cover it next year for Halloween. Here we go! It's so great. But she, she taps into her telekinetic powers when she's feeling stressed. So him having that poster in his room and then this moment happening definitely is a callback to [00:43:00] that.
I, I also think that Agatha didn't mean to join Alice's powers because of how she behaves when she's alone. She Looks prettycrestfallen about it. But then, she's like, but let's see what we got though. It doesn't
last for that long, but there
was something there. So I think she feels bad a little bit, but not bad enough.
bad. Yeah, definitely not bad enough. So episode six is very much. So a bottle flashback episode where we get to see how Billy Maximoff spirit. entered this body. So in flashbacks, we see William Kaplan, a teenager from Eastview, who is celebrating his bar mitzvah, where he encounters Lilia doing some palm readings at his bar mitzvah.
So cool.
cool. I love how everything's, and this is where we should have started to realize it, that all of them were connected to Billy in some capacity, as we start to see in this episode. Reading something on his palm, [00:44:00] essentially that his lifeline is broken in two, And what she doesn't say is that he's going to die like right after this, and she knows.
And Lilia decides to cast a sigil on him to protect him for some reason. And it part of casting a sigil on it is that the person who casts it on him forgets that they casted it. So they, they immediately forgot their identity. The party ends when the hex recently created by Wanda starts to collapse because the end of WandaVision is happening and the, the hex is collapsing in itself and this is the part where the boy's spirits are, they're fading away and they're, they're being like, We'll see you out there soon.
While driving past Westview, William's parents do a bad job at keeping their eyes on the road and they almost get hit by a truck, swerve off the road, get into a really bad accident. And William dies in that accident. And in that [00:45:00] moment, Billy Maximoff's soul that had been created in the hex enters William's body, resurrecting it.
William struggles to adjust after the accident due to his newfound ability to read minds. He can hear his parents just incessantly worrying about him his lack of memory of just anything that happened before the accident, which people are just sort of Writing off as normal traumatic brain injury accident stuff.
So three whole years pass and William and his very, very cute and supportive boyfriend, Eddie are trying to figure out what happened to him and who he is. And they meet up with the one and only Ralph Boner, AKA Evan Peters, AKA Quicksilver from the X Men movies. Days of future past X Men movies, right? And continuing to just be an absolute Dion waiters scoring like 50 points off of the bench in the two minutes that he's on screen.
[00:46:00] He used to be controlled by Agatha inside of the hex. He tells them that what happened there and about Wanda's twins, about Billy and Tommy, making William realize that he's actually Billy and that Tommy. Could be somewhere out there. So he wants to use the witch's road to find Tommy, not knowing that the witch's road is a con created by Agatha Harkness.
And all he knows is that Agatha is the only one who has ever successfully walked the road before. So he starts stalking her. We get some crossover in that first episode where he breaks into her house.
cool.
And in the present, agatha escapes out of the mud, realizing that the sigil has been destroyed. She deduces Billy's goal and tell them that they have to continue together because Agatha is a mentor and Billy can't quite control his powers yet, and he agrees.
Yeah, I want to [00:47:00] backtrack. Don't at me for saying this. I rolled my eyes so hard when Evan Peters showed up. I was like, not this stupid
character again.
No, you didn't like
All right. I like, I like Evan Peters just fine. I liked him as Quicksilver in the Fox movies, but I'm so fucking annoyed with how Marvel Studios is handling X Men right now., like, Spider Man got a fresh start, Fantastic Four is getting a fresh start. But for some reason, we are bringing in all of these old X Men characters from the Fox universe and putting them into the MCU in a way that just makes me so nervous. So
nervous that they are gonna fumble so hard with the X Men. And I've pretty much accepted that X Men 97 is gonna be as good as we get from, I don't even know what season 2 is [00:48:00] gonna be because they're changing showrunners, but you never know, you never know. I've accepted that X Men 97 is gonna be as good as it gets with the X Men and the MCU. Because for some reason, they are so precious about preserving what they consider, like, the golden years of the Fox franchise.
Which, Fox, oh my god, if we ever cover any of the X Men films, I'll talk about this, Fox didn't understand the X Men. They did not, they don't, they didn't get that it was a found family. They had Wolverine of Jean Grey's ass. Leave that woman alone. Leave her alone. Oh my god, it makes me so mad. Oh my god, it just It kills me. Sorry, we're not talking about
No, no, you're good.
we're talking about Agatha. But the minute that [00:49:00] fucking F. Peter showed up, my eye was like,
Oh my god, you're so funny. I loved it. See, but I'm an easy get.
mad. I was so mad.
Oh, that's so funny.
But it was, it was fine. He got, hey. He made some money. I'm glad that he had
one day of work
on
keep getting them checks.
you know that they shot him out in one day.
So going into episode seven, which is, I mean, these last three episodes are like all three of them are bangers.
are,
how, how rare is it again, where the last three episodes of the season are like low key, the best three episodes of the season.
This is, this was such a good season of television. So Agatha and Billy continued down the road before coming to a castle upon it. entering the tour guard as the wicked witch of the West and Maleficent, which was so good. Just flexing that Disney stuff and are presented with tarot cards. If they don't [00:50:00] place the proper cards in the correct sequence, the swords hanging from the ceiling starts falling down on them.
And we also are getting flashbacks from Lillia's childhood lesson in divination. And we get the reveal that she's been experiencing her life out of order, which explains a lot of her memory lapses and why she seems to be seeing the future or recalling stuff from the past seemingly randomly. After falling through the mud, Lillia discovers that Rio is the.
Personification of death. Something that Agatha knew who forbodes that her time is coming very soon. She awakens Jen, who is still alive also through falling through the mud. And after evading the Salem seven, they find their way through the tunnels before reuniting with Agatha's. In Billy, and Lillia is dressed up as Glinda, and Jen is dressed up as the hag version of the evil queen from Snow White, which I thought was so crazy.
So crazy. Even Jen was like, this [00:51:00] is ridiculous.
using his full name.
Not using his full
part had me weak.
oh my
had me she's so funny. Why is Jen
She was really good. Flowers to flowers to Jed. She whoever I don't have her name right in front of me, but whoever played Jen Kale was actually really, really great. And I'm starting to see her like appear on like my scroll feed of podcast clips too.
So she's great. I hope we see more of her for sure. Lillia knows that the trial is hers, she starts placing the cards in their proper order, and she manages to save them all, and as they're escaping from the trial, Lillia decides to stay behind, as the seven approaches, she flips the tower card. Causing the entire tower to flip over and all of the seven are killed on the swords.
And we get that full circle moment from the beginning of the episode where Lillia herself is falling to her death. And then as she falls to her death, a young Lillia is [00:52:00] shown gleefully attending her first lesson in divination. So we get sort of the, the forever full circle That Lillia's life is. And so it's very
It's very bittersweet. Also, the
road becomes a circle in the next episode.
Yes,
and to you, and I think that Lillia plays the part of the great and powerful Oz more than Glinda, because as everyone is going into the Iron Maiden, she gives Agatha courage. She says, when she calls you a coward, hit the deck. Lillia gives Jen a heart and says, you are the way ahead. Lilia in this episode was so fantastic. Think this and episode nine might have been the best episodes of the show.
It's a, it's definitely a toss up. They were really,
Yeah, they were both really, really really, well done. But yeah, what, what else did you have to say about this episode? She
Patti LuPone. [00:53:00] Needed to sing in this season. That's my only complaint is that I needed a solo Patti LuPone singing the witch's road moment and we didn't get that. She, she was serving the whole time as well. Patty during the, the second, which is road performance when she just had maracas and then a triangle and then the little mini symbols and was just playing little tiny instruments the entire time.
What a sport. This is, this is a legend, Patti LuPone, who is just doing really goofy stuff the whole time. So she was fantastic from
was enjoying herself. She was enjoying herself. I, I also, I love that Jen, you would expect Jen to be super impatient with Lillia, but I love how curious and gentle Jen was with Lillia and really wanting to know. Like, what it felt like for her to have this power that she didn't quite understand, because their goals were different.
Lillia wanted to get rid of her power, and Jen wanted to get it back.
Yeah.
were [00:54:00] diametrically opposed, but they ended up getting along the best. I think Lillia and Jen got along the best, and Billy and Alice got along really well because Alice was a protection witch and she sees a young person So immediately just gives big sister vibes.
No, totally does. As we get out of that trial for Lilia, we're in episode eight, the penultimate episode of the season. Agatha is agreeing now to give Billy to Rio, who views him as an abomination for Essentially having cheated death for gaining a second life and finding William's body with Billy's soul.
Billy and Jen rejoin Agatha at the end of the road, only to find that it goes in a circle. Billy puts his shoes back on, and the three are transported to a version of Agatha's basement with grow lights that slowly go out. And in this time, Jen learns that Agatha was actually the witch who bound her. [00:55:00] And that, and she was just like capitalism, baby.
I, I was, I was in Salem. I was trying to stay alive. People were paying me for work. I, I, it was a simple binding spell. Some dude was jealous. I can't help it. And in like probably one of the most powerful moments of the show, she unbinds herself by what was she saying over and over
you hold nothing.
You hold nothing.
I got I got choked
up I got choked and dude, dude If you look at this is why Catherine Hahn is just probably gonna be my acting MVP throughout This whole series, she starts off rolling her eyes. She's like indignant about it at first. She's like, say it like you mean it, baby. But after a while, she feels deeply ashamed. Like her
face, she feels moved
It was very, it was very you've seen Good Will Hunting, right?
Yes,
It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Did you not know what I'm talking
I, I don't love that movie as much. I've only seen it twice.
my god, it's where Robin [00:56:00] Williams tells Matt Damon that it's not his fault over and over again, and then Matt Damon cries because it wasn't his fault, but he was angry,
Mm.
it wasn't his fault.
At first he's very combative and he's like, what are you fucking doing? Like, fuck you. And by the end he's like crying and hugging him and stuff like that.
How could you not? Also, like, this white woman took away this black woman's magic.
Yeah,
You know, that was fucked. Especially in that age.
Yeah, and hell yeah for Jen just standing on you hold nothing and getting her powers back and being the future as Lillia told her that she would
That was amazing. I want a true
and that's what she meant in that moment.
to start playing.
Don't hurt
Don't hurt nobody.
I saw, I saw an awesome meme where it was like, y'all, Jen still thinks the road was real.
But having [00:57:00] gotten, having gotten what she wanted out of the road, Jed disappears, comes out from underground because they were really just like putzing around underneath the road and like the fucking sewer systems or something like that, and flies away with the use of her powers, which she now has.
shot mirrors Wanda leaving Westview in WandaVision, but
they do that a couple of
the sun was setting because Wanda's journey was ending, the sun is rising with
her. So I think that that was really beautiful. I wanted to just cry
out, Yas! When I
saw her
Yes! Fly!
And her magic was
Yes, witch!
her clothes.
But let's get back to
Billy and Agatha. Cause this moment gave me this moment. I found genuinely disturbing that we're about to talk about
Yeah, so, Agatha agrees to help Billy find
Tommy.
soul. His brother's soul. And they find it, [00:58:00] and Billy puts the soul in the body of a boy who is actively
Does he, or does he stop himself?
No, he doesn't. I think he doesn't.
I think it's left unclear.
I think he does it because he disappears from the
Hmm. Okay.
And so Billy disappears having theoretically completed his task because I think still in his head is once you get what you wanted, you, you get off the road and we're still playing by the rules that Billy thinks are the rules, if that
Well, if we were, and maybe this is another plot hole. If the road, which again is its own living entity, I, I hold that the road is its own living entity and that the rules that Billy assumed it would have would be the rules that it has, or maybe it's some combination of the two. Cause this again is chaos magic and you are the scarlet witch. That [00:59:00] was so, she cheered. I watched that episode earlier today. I think if Alice got what you want. Wanted why didn't Alice disappear off the road didn't she?
I don't think Alice got what she wanted.
She wanted to find out what happened to her mom Okay, interesting. Okay, good good response But I thought that was that genuinely made me gasp when Billy said Agatha am I killing this boy so my brother can live
that was shocking
And it was shocking. . After he disappears, I think we get the answer, which is no, sometimes boys just die. Which was so sad, and so true. Agatha grows a flower through a crack in the floor using a seed from her locket, completing the trial. She escapes and finds herself in her own backyard, where Rio's waiting for her. And Billy comes down
No, Steve, not Billy. Wiccan.
Wiccan, comes down [01:00:00]
in his full
He looks so good. This was
such a
it? They
shot. Yeah,
I saw some photos next to like his comic outfit. And they did a really good job.
they did. I mean, when I saw him flying in, I had some thoughts that I won't share on the podcast, but that I told my boyfriend, and we'll leave that there. But I really enjoyed the look. And
I,
the, what's the name of that show that he's in? What's the hot start. You'd let, you'd let him stop your heart. That's for
I don't know.
That's
We'll see.
no. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. And so we have a little bit, it's not a Marvel show. If there isn't some CGI punch festing a little bit. And so we have. Agatha fighting Rio because Billy decides to charge Agatha up.
He goes, don't take all of it. She takes a lot of it.
She does! I would have been like, damn! [01:01:00]
lot of it. I was like, we're getting, we're stretching it a little bit. And, but she does cut it off. So showing that she is capable of not killing everyone who she starts absorbing powers from. And she has a little bit of a fight with Rio and it's, it's.
Apparent very, very quickly that you to take a very popular term. You can't fight death.
It's just, they're totally
Also, a lesson that they taught us on Charmed.
there you go. Thank you, Kevin. And I think she knew that. And I think also Rio was probably just humoring the notion that they were going to fight for a little bit because she knew that she was going to get what she wanted, which is one way or another, she was going to get the death that she felt like she was stolen.
And so this part, so this is the actually the only part of the show where I kind of went like, okay, wait, so hold on. Agatha would rather fucking die than talk about what happened to her son.
Some people are really afraid of awkward conversations.
So [01:02:00] people are really averse to digging into their drama.
I'm like, damn, Agatha, have you heard of better help?
Oh my God. Not better help. That's better help. Use Charlie and Steve at checkout for 20 percent and don't do
no, no, no, We don't, we don't, we don't. I read this online theory actually from, shout out to Screen Crush, because they do great breakdowns of all these episodes.
Screen Crush said that it's possible that Agatha wasn't trying to avoid Nicholas. Maybe she was trying to avoid Mephisto. Because
we're still unsure if. Whether or not Nicholas is an agent and
he, I don't think, but I have something to say about where Nicholas came from in our, like, next episode, not next
episode of Charlie and Steve Watts stuff, I mean in a couple of seconds when we
like, yeah, when
like, right,
Well,
right, right the fuck now, I think that it's not that Agatha traded Nicholas Scratch [01:03:00] for the Darkhold.
I think that after Nicholas Scratch died, because if you look at the montage of The Witch's Road in the 80s, Agatha's fingers aren't black. So she didn't have the Darkhold in the 80s. I think that at a certain point, she got the Darkhold to protect herself. from death ever finding her. And I think in order to get the dark hold, she made a deal to become an agent of Mephisto after she died. So Agatha knows that as soon as she really crosses over, she potentially won't reincarnate and that she'll just be an agent of this person. And that could be what she's afraid of. But for the thematics and for the emotional resonance of it all, probably talking about Nikki. But I thought that was a cool theory.
Oh, I like that a lot. Cool. Yeah. Well, I was going to say is as Agatha is walking away, Billy gets into her brain and was essentially like, [01:04:00] is this how Nicholas died?
Ooh,
And Agatha doesn't say anything and she just turns around and grabs Rio and kisses her and that's the kiss of death and she dies and her body becomes a garden
I love that. I love that so
Which is, which is beautiful. It was a beautiful transformation. And Rio allows Billy to leave saying that the debt's been paid. And this is where you get to see the really cool change of her face into the half skull at the bottom. And upon entering his room. He's looking around and realizing that a lot of the objects in William's bedroom match aspects of the
Mm hmm.
then all of a sudden, we hear Agatha's laughter as the screen cuts to black, and Aaron and I were both like, AHH, PUT ON THE NEXT EPISODE RIGHT NOW! And so we, we jump right into the final episode, which starts in 1750. Where Agatha is giving birth to Nicholas, but is warned by death that she will eventually come and take him, [01:05:00] even though she doesn't want to, she has to, and Agatha makes some sort of deal with death for more time with her son, and Agatha spends the next six years raising her son while killing witches, which Nicholas eventually grows to oppose.
And together throughout all of their adventures of which murder, they come up with the song, which should eventually become the ballot of the witches road and take on a life of its own. And eventually Nicholas does grow sick and death takes him, which absolutely devastates Agatha. While Agatha is burying her son, a witch comes up to her saying, Oh, you know, the ballad of the witch's road.
I'm searching for the witch's road. Can you help me find it? And it starts the cycle of Agatha pretending like she knows how to get to the witch's road, assembling a coven, the song not working, her being like, you're [01:06:00] all a bunch of dumb witches, then blasting her with her power. And her killing them by absorbing her power.
So we pretty much learned in this moment that, like I said, if Agatha had her way, the series would have been over after an episode and a half, barely two episodes. But that's not what happened. And so Charlie, I want to throw this theory at you, I think the unspoken part of the deal with death is that
Has to give bodies.
has to,
has to give bodies
And the one
day, the one
and the one day,
didn't do it,
is the day
is the day he died.
day that Nikki died. The entire internet is saying that right now. So, I I agree with
Oh good, I'm glad I didn't look at the internet.
You thought of it. I looked at the
I felt so smart.
are BB. You are my
smart BB. I
thank you. So yeah, the one day and Agatha [01:07:00] was like, she's like, it'll be fine. It'll be I've given her so many bodies. It'll be fine.
you could see that decision on her face too. She was probably like, It'll be okay.
like how I'll be watching. I'll be right here It'll be fine. It wasn't fine. And so in The present, Agatha, now a ghost who has not crossed all the way over to the other side, tells Billy that he was the one who made the road the reality with his magic. He blames himself for the deaths of Lillia, Alice, and Sharon.
Yes. Yes. And Agatha was basically like, well, I was going to kill them all anyway. And Jen is better than she ever has. She escaped the road and she has all of her magic restored because of him. So three down, but add one, I guess you're still down too, but it's fine. Billy returns to Westview and tries to banish Agatha, which again, like she starts being like, you can't do that.
And then she realizes that. Maybe he [01:08:00] could do that, it says here that she's afraid of having to face Nicholas in death, which I think is a little funny. I think she would want to maybe be with him, but I think there's more there. I agree with you that there's more there.
but I also like the simplicity of that. I mean, would it be cool if it was a Mephisto thing? Sure. But everyone is always trying to be like, I have a Mephisto theory and they're never true. Oh,
but Mephisto is going to show up in Ironheart of all shows.
Wait, for
Yeah, Mephisto's in it. It's confirmed. There's this one shot
of Riri Williams laughing and there's fire behind her. I think
that's interesting because none of the Iron Man properties really get into the occult. So I think that would be great. I would also love to see
Riri Williams interacting with Jen. Which I doubt that
they'll do, because I think that they filmed at the same time, and I don't think that there would have been that much crossover. I think she's [01:09:00] ashamed because she uses the ballad to kill witches for centuries, and that's a song that started between the two of them.
Sure. And he didn't, and he didn't
he didn't like that, but the fact that she did that for hundreds of years.
He really wouldn't like that. Definitely not. That'd be a tough explanation to your son. And, and so Billy relents and allows Agatha to come with him as his literal spirit guide in his experience. Hunt for trying to find his brother, Tommy, wherever he ended up season two hollered at me.
And after sealing the door to the road and recording the names of the fallen, Billy and Agatha head out for the eventual season two. And that was the honestly freaking fantastic first season of Agatha all along. The MCU is back. I won't go that far,
We keep saying it's back, We, we, I said that, I said
dumbass
said that after Wakanda [01:10:00] forever. And what did that get me? Thor love and
thunder.
I did not say that after Wakanda Forever,
you didn't like it. Okay. I,
I liked it, I don't, I wasn't going DMCU's back
you know, I was like, okay, maybe I didn't either. I just really loved Angela Bassett in that movie, this is the great thing about the MCU. I think the MCU is my Star Wars because there's so much of it and it's so big, it's so big, it's so big that I forget that all of it is happening in the same place.
Sometimes. I don't know if you get that way too, of While I was watching Agatha, I forgot that all of these characters know that Tony Stark was a person, or that, like,
they're getting away from that a lot
they're getting away from it, which I like, because when I remember, it's delightful, like, Billy knows who Spider Man is, or he's heard of Spider Man, you know, I think that's really cool, and it makes it feel more like a comic book.
[01:11:00] and they're doing a better job of creating these stories in their own little corners, too. I think some of the criticisms that I was hearing is that there wasn't enough street level stuff happening.
Mm
And in a way, this is a very street level story. We were underneath the street the entire
hmm. Yeah,
but we were, we are very contained to this corner of the world.
And so even if it was dealing with some of the cosmic supernatural, whatever, it was still like a little pocket and we just got to live in the little pocket. And it still exists within the bigger outfit, but it was nice to live in the little pocket. And I'm very excited to see how it will relate to the larger universe moving
absolutely. Though I have something else to say. Like, the only two things that I really didn't care for in this show were the Evan Peters cameo, even though I think he is super talented, and, like, I loved Ms. Quicksilver. I just hate that [01:12:00] they, ugh, don't get me started with the X Men in this universe. I don't really like that Agatha came back as a ghost.
Okay.
on one hand, it's just staying faithful to the comics because that's what she does, she mentored Wanda as a ghost all along the actual witch's road, which is real. in the comic books, but they made a very great decision to just make it fake in the TV show, which really worked well thematically. I, I think that Agatha becoming a ghost, the episode after she had that brilliant sacrifice for Billy, cheapens her sacrifice a little bit, because if she could just be brought
back like that, what are the stakes?
You know, I, I like That we saw Alice get woken up by death and told, you know, Oh, it's over, which by the way, that moment of, are you kidding me? That's all the time I get left.
Ooh, [01:13:00]
Yeah. Because I think that's, I mean, that was the criticism that I had. I was like, wait, we killed her off the next episode. She broke the curse.
that's life that's death.
And that's life. And, and Rio also going, but you're a protection witch. You died protecting somebody. You're telling me you didn't fulfill your purpose.
And Alice handled that with grace after
hearing it, which says a lot about Alice, because I think seeing how Alice was after a second of consideration, Oh, cool. Then left and how Agatha for centuries. Agatha's a coward. She's a coward. Just have that fucking conversation with Nicola Scratch.
at least she hit the deck after.
Mm hmm.
Alright, well, is there anything else you want to add before we hit up our final
No, I mean I'll sum up my thoughts about this show writ large But this is something that I've been waiting for for years. I I definitely like this [01:14:00] more than WandaVision because I'm not a big sitcom guy and I think this is something that I consider this an unofficial season two of WandaVision because WandaVision revealed itself to be a show about witches all along, and Agatha really stepped into that.
And I, yeah, I, I love Agatha for that. Just really leaning into the witch of it all.
Yeah, I agree with that. Well, let's just Go with our ratings then man
Want to do pentagrams?
you can't if you want to do
Oh, no,
I was gonna say witch hats.
Or sigils.
sigils, but what would a sigil
You know what? I, I don't know. We'd forget about it the moment we cast it in our vote. So let's just do witch hats.
That was good, I like that good say well, it's it's gonna be a five witch hats for me, man Honestly, like like I said, I I just started another rewatch of it And I almost want to start the rewatch over because I watched the first three episodes before I watched [01:15:00] eight and nine and watching episode four after knowing everything that eight and nine revealed to you just totally changes the perspective of how you view absolutely everything
like we said at the beginning, no other MCU property has done that at all. And I think just the general execution of being able to do that and being able to hide it in front of us so clearly the entire time and for the thing to be the thing, but for it to, for it to subvert our expectations so deftly.
This has gotta, this has gotta be a five for me. And I, I hope more MCU shows can embrace being their own thing while also being comfortable to exist inside of the MCU. Like Agatha did
Yeah, I would say that Catherine Han needs an Emmy
Yesterday,
the Emmy.
her performance as Agatha is so damn good. She was that character whenever she was on screen. I think how I feel about her [01:16:00] performance in this is how I feel about Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, which is the biggest, biggest compliment I can give to anyone.
Because I've been
thinking about, truly, you know me, Cody said the same
thing, he said the same thing. Because I've been thinking about Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, since 1992. I think of that damn performance at least four times a week. That's how much of a mark it's
left on
that whip in your brain often.
It'll even be little things.
I'm like, Oh yeah, like that moment with Catwoman, you know, like I just, that performance felt so real for me. And I was tempted to do four and a half witch hats because I won the Evan Peters cameo, which I was like, ugh, do we need it? Stop reminding me that y'all are gonna suck at bringing the X Men back. just a reminder for me to lower my expectations to the fucking floor for how they're gonna bring in the X Men I think that bringing Agatha back as a ghost [01:17:00] I'm torn on doing that. I think that they could have just let her live. They could have let the sacrifice be an episode 8 thing and episode 9 maybe bring back the boyfriend and they're talking to each other a little bit.
And what little things or beats we needed to hit could have been what we hit with him. But I think the core of the show was the Agatha Billy relationship, so not ending it with that would have been a misstep, and I would be saying something different, like, oh, that's all we get with Agatha and Billy.
But by the time that she was haunting him at the end of episode 9, I think that her character sort of overstayed her welcome a little bit with her arc.
I kept thinking, okay. You just had such a powerful standoff. It would be like if Tony Stark's ghost was in Spider Man Far From Home.
Okay.
it's like, oh, it had this impact, but now [01:18:00] you're back. But again, that's what the comics
did. I'm gonna give it, I hate doing this. I'm gonna give it four and a half witch hats.
Cause I, I don't know.
I love it. I love it. But that the ending of it all and having to set up another Marvel thing kind of made me go. Oh,
Yeah. Yeah. Not just letting it
but I get I get why they did it. I get why they did
it. But I think they could
Got to have that season two
like handle it. But also what would a season two of this show look like? She's dead
or
going to find
Vision Quest.
So yeah, maybe vision quests, they're all going to pop up again. So that's probably the most logical thing is getting a vision show and seeing how much of the family we can get back together, but they're well on the way for sure. So Charlie, we have officially, officially. Wrapped up our spooky season coverage for the year.
Good job by us. We wanted to give you
The day after spooky season [01:19:00]
The day the day after Halloween is over. I guess this is the this is the witching hour for us, if you will. But up, up, up, up, up, going down, down the witch's road. Anyway, we'll see you next time. I'm it's late here and I am slowly descending into madness.
So I'm going to go ahead and land this broomstick. So we're going to get out of here for now. Thanks for hanging out with us for our coverage of Agatha all along season one. We're going to be back. Next time with not a spooky movie. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching wherever you are for myself, Steve Selnick, and for my good friend, Charlie peppers. We will look forward to seeing you on the next one.
Bye friends.
