The following story contains spoilers for the ending of Agatha All Along.
AND SO WE come to the end of the Witches’ Road, and of one of the most compelling installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to hit screens in recent years.
When it was first announced that WandaVision villain Agatha Harkness would be leading her own spinoff on Disney+, I tried to manage my own expectations. The very existence of Agatha All Along felt like the product of an algorithm, a result of all the memes that popped up online following that eponymous jingle. I knew I’d be able to count on Kathryn Hahn’s acting chops to anchor whatever kind of show this ended up being, but my hopes for genuinely creative storytelling were low.
I have never been so happy to be wrong. Much like WandaVision used its medium in inventive ways, crafting a TV show that was about being a TV show (and delivering a love letter to the sitcom while doing so), Agatha All Along took that baton and sprinted in a different but equally inventive direction.
First, it built out an ironclad ensemble cast for Hahn to bounce off in the form of Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Aubrey Plaza, Debra Jo Rupp and Patti goddamn LuPone. Then it made the most of its episodic format with its weekly Trials; escape room-style sequences that yielded immediate thrills while furthering longer-term plot and character arcs in the way that an old-fashioned 20-episode season of television used to. And while gays all over the internet are still seething that Patti LuPone didn’t get a big musical solo, she did deliver one of the most gripping, emotionally rewarding episodes of the entire series.
Sure, the two-part finale wasn’t perfect. Similarly to Loki, the creators of Agatha All Along gave its perfidious anti-heroine a redemptive moment of self-sacrifice which undermined the deliciously evil qualities that made her so watchable in the first place. It also sidelined main villain Rio pretty quickly, although thankfully her fateful showdown with Agatha didn’t include quite as much green-screen action as WandaVision‘s Wanda/Agatha battle. (The less we say about the Charmed-level ghost CGI in “Maiden Mother Crone” the better.)
But these final chapters also broke new ground for Marvel, delivering a same-sex kiss that was integral to the plot (read: hard to edit out for markets like China) and giving one of the comics’s most prominent gay characters his official superhero debut, complete with cape and crown.
Far too often, past LGBTQ+ representation in media has amounted to a character who “just happens” to have same-sex relationships, which are rarely if ever explored or even depicted on-screen. Not so in Agatha All Along. Unlike previous Disney and Marvel projects which have promised LGBTQ+ representation that amounted to mere scraps (we’re looking at you, Thor: Love & Thunder), the queerness in this show is far from incidental. As Agatha herself says: “Want a straight answer, ask a straight woman.” And there were precious few of either to be found on the Witches’ Road.
There were twists and turns along the way, of course; Joe Locke’s Teen was revealed to have been Billy, Wanda Maximoff’s son, just as many fans had predicted. Aubrey Plaza’s scenery-chewing Green Witch, Rio, was actually Death—again, as many comic readers suspected. What far fewer viewers were able to anticipate, however, was that the Witches’ Road never existed; it was a con cooked up centuries ago by Agatha to ensnare unsuspecting witches, and the Wizard of Oz-inspired trail we’ve been traveling all spooky season was in fact a hex created subconsciously by Billy, who is even more like Wanda than we realized.
But the fact that some of the show’s central mysteries had already been clocked by various fan theories online doesn’t detract from the pleasure of watching them unfold. If anything, having a sense of where the plot was going allowed viewers to focus more of their energy on appreciating the rich character work happening on-screen.
Like any decently written comic book hero, Teen/Billy/William goes through his fair share of trauma and angst. But what makes Agatha All Along refreshing, especially in Billy’s flashback episode, is how his queer identity is not a source nor a target of any of that pain. In fact, despite “Familiar By Thy Side” bearing many of the hallmarks of YA storytelling, we never see Billy come out as gay. After the three-year time jump, he is out and proud and telling his boyfriend he loves him, and when it comes time for him to don a Maleficent costume, it’s full drag. The show even has fun with his sexuality being part of the status quo; upon being temporarily imprisoned by a bewitched Agatha, he protests: “I don’t want to go back in the closet!”
The show does not slow down to make a plot point of Billy’s sexuality—it makes sense that his character would be far more concerned with more pressing matters such as solving the mystery of his own apparent death and resurrection, not to mention finding his missing twin and trying to survive a series of increasingly dangerous magical trials. But nor does it ignore his queerness, or anybody else’s for that matter.
The chemistry between Hahn and Plaza is evident from the very first episode, when Rio enters the dreary detective drama in which “Agnes” has become trapped. Even when that very same episode gives Agatha back her identity and reveals them to be nemeses in the real world, she and Rio talk more like exes than enemies. So far, so Marvel: queer fans have become used to reading into subtext that may or may not have been intentional in the script. But the show made sure to bring our attention back to their relationship over and over, and takes great pains to confirm the romantic nature of the relationship. They call each other “my love,” and every one of their scenes is played with the weight of centuries-long heartache, culminating in a literal “kiss of death” in the penultimate episode that provides closure to both Agatha and Rio’s toxic love, and to sapphic viewers who had been anticipating this moment for weeks—and arguably, for years before that.
In the grand scheme of the MCU, Agatha All Along remains a pretty low-stakes, self-contained story, save for the sure-to-continue saga of Billy and Tommy. But the fact that amid widespread Marvel fatigue and increasingly risk-averse studio decision-making, series creator Jac Schaeffer was able to conjure such an inclusive, narratively satisfying, downright entertaining story gives me hope for whatever comes next.
As for whether or not Hahn will return as Agatha? Let me consult my Tarot cards.
