Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

It really was Agatha all along – until it was Billy

Spoiler Warning for Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End, and Maiden, Mother, Crone

For me, the final two episodes of the show provide a fitting conclusion to the show overall.  ‘Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End’ concludes and reveals the truth about the Road just travelled, while ‘Maiden, Mother, Crone’ reveals the truth about the Road since its beginning in a soft epilogue.  They are maybe not what was entirely expected, and they do not reveal or answer all the questions the show has posed, but there is enough here that the story feels like it has a decent ending.

Part of that ending begins with the events in the eighth episode which features the climax of the journey begun in the second.  The Road that we’ve been travelling down through the events of the show is drawn to a conclusion with the trial for the Green Witch, or rather as it turns out, the trial against the original Green Witch.

There is a good tension woven into the storytelling because of Agatha’s deal with Rio, that she will get Billy to surrender himself to Death and Agatha will then be free of Death.  Agatha is contrary enough as a character that the audience is never quite sure what she will do in the end.  As Agatha sits down with Billy under the grow lights, is she really helping him to find Tommy or is she going to kill him?  When she walks away after Billy offers to go with Death, will she really let him do that? 

I loved each of the three distinct parts here.  The first act on the Road sets up the deal and reiterates through Billy and Jen’s conversation that Agatha is not to be trusted, yet Billy does not wholly believe that for all he can see what the others see.  It also signals with the callback scene to Alice’s death and how Rio led her away, that the deaths are permanent and real. 

The second act which mimics a trial by trapping the three remaining witches into the sterile room with the ‘grow’ lights allows for the dichotomy of Agatha’s character to be shown again.  On one hand, she turns out to be responsible for Jen’s binding, and on the other, she helps Billy find a way to save Tommy.  The end of that scene with her nourishing the small seedling from her locket is heartbreaking.

The final act with the confrontation between Death, Agatha and Billy in his Wiccan persona is incredibly well-done.  It continues that dichotomy.  Agatha doesn’t kill Billy and they fight together.  But then it really looks like she’s walking away when he offers himself up.  The moment Agatha locks lips with Death and surrenders herself up to her former love is shocking because it is truly not expected of Agatha.  She’s a witch who kills other witches.  She’s the embodiment of the Wicked Witch, the covenless witch because she cannot be trusted.  Yet here Agatha finds one single moment of redemption when she saves Billy.

It is the end scene though of Billy, back home in his room, realising that it was Billy All Along who was responsible for the existence of the Road which is the cherry on top.  There has been a suspicion of it because so many things on the Road have corresponded to things in Billy’s room, it is always Billy who starts the trial, and, for comic book fans, there is the knowledge that part of Billy’s skill set is the warping of reality.

If the show had ended here, it would still have been a decent, if a bit of a shock ending.  There would have been criticism of a lot of unanswered questions, and complaints that Agatha herself went unexplored.  Instead, the show provides a soft epilogue with the story of how the Road was really Agatha all along – until it was Billy.

I liked this last episode a lot.  I liked that it showed Agatha in her ‘Mother’ mode, and that it kept the character open to continuing in the MCU through becoming a ghostly ‘Crone.’  Is this episode a redemptive tale for Agatha?

In some ways. 

I think most people can empathise with the want to keep a child alive as a parent.  It poses a solid challenge to our own morality.  What would we do in her place?  She is a mother who will do anything to save her child.  She bargains with Death.  In turn, her child lives while witches die.  She helps Billy find a boy who is dying for Tommy. Perhaps Billy doesn’t kill the boy who died, but he doesn’t save him either. Is that an acceptable trade?  Would you do it?  It is an interesting moral dilemma.

The time with Agatha here also shows that is Agatha and her son who create the ballad of the Road.  It was them all along.  And Agatha is the only witch who survives it, because her son, always destined to die, eventually is taken by Death.  That moment where Rio walks Nicky across the bridge is heartbreaking and poignant.

Yet the story also shows how Agatha without Nicky then uses the ballad to lure in other witches, to steal their power and maintain her own so she can continue to avoid Death herself.  She is not an innocent.  But we now have the dichotomy explained.  Agatha truly loved her son, but Agatha truly is not a good person. How much have her experiences twisted her? Who can say.

I love the reveal of how she intended to do exactly what she had always done with this coven, until Billy created an actual Road.  I like the callbacks to the moments which piece together her knowledge that Billy was responsible for the Road’s reality.  They echo with the power of Lilia’s tarot reading where all the moments seeded into the show before suddenly coalesced and came to fruition.

And so we end up back in Billy’s room with Agatha appearing to him as a ghost to help him come to terms with what he did.  The reality he created had real consequences for Alice, Sharon and Lilia.  I like how Agatha points out that he did save Jen and that she would have killed them all if he hadn’t created the Road.

Jen is one of my two nagging true disappointments in these final episodes.  I thought Jen might play more of a part given Lilia’s tarot read of Jen as the Path Ahead.  In the end this turns out only to mean that Jen survives, disappearing from the story until Agatha confirms she made it out alive; it is not particularly satisfying.  But I get that the final confrontation in Agatha’s garden works better with that dynamic of ‘Mother’ and ‘Son.’ 

My second disappointment is that for all that the last episode is titled ‘Maiden, Mother, Crone,’ we don’t really get to see Agatha as Maiden.  Perhaps it was felt that the reveal scene of Agatha being confronted by her mother’s coven back in WandaVision (2021) or the ‘trial’ of Agatha where her mother attacked her was sufficient.  Or perhaps that the episode is structurally stronger keeping with the ‘Mother’ tale.

Unfortunately, whatever the reason, we never do get to understand truly why her mother tries to kill Agatha.  Did the event actually give her the power stealing ability or did she have it before?  Was she unable to stop drawing on others’ powers without killing them right up until her fondness for Billy enabled her to control it for once? Or was she always able to control it and chose not to?

The final scenes where Billy returns to Agatha’s house and helps her regain the brooch with Nicky’s hair is nicely done.  I enjoyed the last part where Agatha and Billy agree she will be his guide, a callback to the comics, and finally, they come full circle, and once again, set out to find Tommy.

I cannot complete this review without shouting out the performances in these last two episodes. Sasheer Zamata is brilliant in the short scenes she has – the unbinding is emotive and powerful.  Abel Lysenko does a great job as Nicholas Scratch; there is such a sweet innocence in his performance that it really works.  Kudos too to Aubrey Plaza as Death.  She is truly terrifying in her confrontation with Agatha, and yet plays conflicted because of her love very well and very subtly through her facial and body language rather than the dialogue.

Joe Locke has been fantastic throughout the show and gives a tremendous performance in these last two episodes in particular. The way he portrays Billy’s slow realisation that the Road was his creation, his angst and guilt over the deaths, his distress for Tommy as he finds a drowning boy for his brother to land within – fantastic.

But the strongest round of applause has to go to Kathryn Hahn who anchors these last two episodes brilliantly.  She delivers a fully formed Agatha – good and bad and everything in between.  She is believably a desperate mother, grief-stricken, and yet also selfish and self-serving.  Just brilliant. Indeed, Hahn’s performance has rarely faulted throughout the whole show.       

The Show Overall

This is my favourite Disney Plus Marvel television outing to date.  Magic, witches, and fantasy is my jam and I am here for it all.

The show has been well-directed and produced.  Everything from set design to costuming and make-up has been quality.  The performances throughout have been stellar for the most part, only occasionally in a couple of early episodes, rubbing me the wrong way as veering towards too campy or lacking believability – typically when they have not been served by the plot and dialogue.

But mostly the storytelling has been ambitious and clever. While I may complain at moments of clunky dialogue here and there, the structure and attention to the detail to enable the reveals at the end is tremendous.  Kudos.

I have to say that as a show which very much committed to its want to have big reveal moments, it is definitely hugely more successful in its execution of them than The Acolyte (2024).  It is not perfect though.  The want to keep things secret and do reveals means that the structure and pace of the storytelling is impacted at times, and while a lot of it worked here, it may have worked better in a movie format rather than in a television show.

I also think that there is valid criticism that Marvel in recent years has used its shows and movies too often as vehicles to introduce new characters rather than to explore the existing and often titular characters.  Hawkeye (2021) was arguably used to introduce and showcase Kate Bishop more than to explore Clint Barton.  Here I will say that the show has similarly veered a little too much into the territory of introducing Billy-as-Wiccan instead of exploring Agatha.  The final episode did a lot to rebalance the show, but in the end this was Agatha and Billy All Along.

And truthfully, the dynamic between Agatha and Billy, between Hahn and Locke, has been one of the joys of this show so I can’t be too mad at it for making it that way.  There is also the bonus that the door is open for a third show in this chain – one where Billy finds his brother.  Although given that the Marvel slate is definitely full for 2025, who knows when and if we’ll ever get it.

In conclusion

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Agatha All Along and I’m already planning a rewatch binge to take in all the little details that were so lovingly planted. 

Take a bow, Jac Schaeffer, and all the cast and crew.  You deserve a standing ovation. 

End Note: Please like, comment or share if you enjoyed this review!