‘Agatha All Along’ Season 1 finale reveals mastermind behind The Witches’ Road
Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Down, down, down the road. Down the Witches’ Road.
Disney+ and Marvel Studios’ newest show, “Agatha All Along,” left viewers wanting more following its Season 1 finale.
Viewers now know that the Witches’ Road was never a real quest to begin with.
Instead, Billy (Joe Locke) unconsciously created the quest of the Witches’ Road, using inspiration from his room in EastView; the portrait of the house, a figurine of the Wicked Witch of the West, a poster of Lorna Wu, etc.
However, the “Ballad of the Witches’ Road” was originally a song that Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her six-year-old son, Nicholas Scratch, created in their pastime together during the late 1750s.
The audience saw how the pair changed the lyrics, crafting the ballad to suit their child-like fantasies.
As con artists, Nicholas sang the ballad while trying to lure witches in the town to his home where Agatha would kill him.
It wasn’t until after Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) led the young Nicholas to death that Agatha decided to use the rumors of the Witches’ Road as a new way to kill witches and gain their powers.
“The Witches Road,” a young witch told Agatha as she was grieving the loss of Nicholas Scratch. “I heard tell of it. The road offers a prize worth the peril to witches who are brave and true.”
Audiences are then taken on a montage of Agatha killing witches with the promise of going on the Witches Road until we hit the present time of the latest coven.
Fans of the show theorize that Agatha killed the witches as payments to Rio, so she would have more time with Nicholas. At the beginning of Episode 9, Rio waits for Agatha to give birth so she can take her son away, so the theory might not be too far off.
Instead of killing Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp), and Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Agatha was shocked to see a door appear after singing the song, not realizing at the time that it was Billy who conjured it.
Rio revealed one of Agatha’s grand plans while on the Witches’ Road; to keep Rio distracted so she wouldn’t realize who Teen really is, now known as Billy Maximoff.
“He is an abomination,” Rio told Agatha during their heated conversation, ready to collect Billy’s soul. “He is disrupting the sacred balance. And I know how you feel about him.”
Showrunner Jac Schaeffer said viewers should expect a deep dive into Agatha’s mind and more information on Rio’s true identity.
“There will be a little bit more illuminating about our version of Death, but what I will say is we generally leave some of it to interpretation in this show,” Schaeffer told Inverse. “But you’ll get a little bit more understanding of how she operates in the last two episodes.”
Agatha, always looking out for herself, made a deal with Rio. She agreed to have Billy surrender himself to Lady Death in exchange for not being pursued by Rio for an extremely long time.
During the epic battle scene between the two powerful witches, Agatha almost got away — until Billy asked the witch if this is how Nicholas died.
Instead of going through with the deal, Agatha sacrificed herself for Billy yet again, protecting him from Lady Death.
Agatha kissed Rio, as viewers speculate the kiss was the kiss of death, ending the rumored terrors that were Agatha Harkness.
In Episode 9, Agatha comes back as a ghost as Billy makes the realization that he made a physical manifestation of the Witches’ Road, which killed Lilia, Sharon and Alice.
After an unsuccessful banishment incantation, Billy and ghost Agatha, now a coven of two, embark on a new adventure to find Tommy after Billy guided his brother’s spirit to an empty vessel during the last trial.
Though a Season 2 hasn’t been confirmed yet for this spinoff series, another WandaVision spinoff is in the works focusing on Marvel android, Vision.
“With this show, we wanted to tell a complete story, and I hope that we did. But as a fan and as an admirer, I believe that there is so much more story to tell about all of these characters,” Schaeffer explained to Decider on a potential Season 2 for “Agatha All Along.”
Paul Bettany, who will reprise his role as Vision, told the Hollywood Reporter the show is set to start shooting next year and that “we’re cooking up something that I’m really excited about.”
The unnamed Vision series will also see James Spader return as Ultron — a sentient being created by Tony Stark, a k a Iron Man, to act as a defense program. “Star Trek: Picard’s” Terry Matalas is serving as showrunner.
