Just in time for Halloween, Disney’s witchy series Agatha All Along has concluded with a two-part finale. Prior to this week, the show (which stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, and Aubrey Plaza) has consistently delivered some of the best Marvel television we’ve seen, with exciting twists rooted in emotional stakes. It’s a huge disappointment, then, that just one week after its best episode, Agatha All Along concludes with a fizzle.
With Lilia’s sacrifice in last week’s episode, the surviving members of the coven find themselves at the end of the Witches’ Road. The only thing standing between the surviving trio and having their greatest desires granted is one last trial and the looming presence of Agatha’s newly revealed ex, Death (Plaza). The first half of the two-part finale focuses on this trial, which asks the witches to make something grow in a concrete and metal enclosure bereft of life.
Despite having twice as long to tell the end of its tale, however, Agatha All Along rushes through the end of the Witches’ Road. This results in Jen, whose story about being mysteriously bound a century ago has been teased for several episodes, getting a quick bow tied to her whole arc and being sent away with little fanfare. It’s a deflating moment, as the show has implied that this is some big thing waiting to be revealed, but when the only revelation is that Agatha accidentally bound Jen in the past for some quick cash, it goes nowhere and the two resolve their differences in a couple of minutes. Jen has never been one of the strongest characters on the show, and concluding her arc with this haphazard ending a week after Patti LuPone delivered the show’s best performance in its defining episode is a major misstep.
Once Jen is out of the picture, Agatha All Along is free to refocus on its greatest aspect, the relationship between Agatha and Billy. With death seemingly imminent for the two as they can’t pass the trial, Agatha is able to help Billy connect with his powers and discover where his lost brother is, thus fulfilling the wish that led him to the Witches’ Road and sending him to safety, leaving Agatha alone to die. This moment also leads to the show’s most gut-wrenching revelation: Agatha’s son wasn’t sacrificed by her on the Witches’ Road at all, he just died. When Kathryn Hahn quietly tells Billy that sometimes boys just die, it’s a heartbreaking confession that there is no power in the world that can keep death away.
But as this is a Marvel property and we aren’t even through the first half of this finale yet, we can’t end on that emotional note. The climax of part one devolves into another special-effects-heavy brawl as Death and the team of Billy and Agatha fire different colored magical blasts at each other. Until now, Agatha All Along has largely steered clear of action, instead choosing to focus on interesting puzzles the coven has to face in each trial. Trading all that originality in for action that makes your eyes glaze over just made me wish the show would end as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, the show comes to an end quick enough. Agatha chooses to sacrifice herself in order to save Billy, which she does by sharing a passionate kiss with her longtime lover, Death, that immediately leads to Agatha keeling over and dropping dead. It’s nice that we actually got a kiss between Plaza and Hahn in the show as they’ve played their characters as explicitly queer, but it’s almost laughable that Agatha is killed off immediately after this display in what has to be one of the most eye-rolling cases of “kill your gays.” Oh, and we actually have a whole other episode to get through!
You might wonder what there is left to wrap up, the show’s titular character just died! But part one ends with the reveal that the Witches’ Road was conjured into existence by Billy’s powers unconsciously turning his dreams into reality. It’s a reveal that fans had already clocked, but one that still feels like a cheap trick that does nothing but take away meaning from what has largely been an excellent show.
Yet before we even get to that, the last episode of Agatha All Along begins with a lengthy flashback that reveals the story of Agatha’s son, Nicholas. It turns out that the boy was fated to die in childbirth, until Agatha pleaded with her lover to spare his life. All deals have a price, of course, and Death warned Agatha that his time would still be limited. Naturally Agatha and Nicholas live a fairly happy life for a few years, until one night Nicholas dies in his sleep. What’s supposed to be a window into Agatha’s soul at her most vulnerable, however, feels instead like padding to a finale that has already overstayed its welcome. Marvel projects, on both the big and small screens, seem to think subtlety is the enemy. This is just another example of that mentality, as the single quiet moment between Billy and Agatha in the first part of the finale contains exponentially more meaning and power than this extended sequence. Instead of “show, don’t tell,” Marvel chooses to show and show and keep showing until they’ve beaten you over the head with the awareness that this should be sad. A parent outliving their child is inherently tragic, of course, but stretching this emotion to its limit has diminishing returns.
As its final and grandest reveal, Agatha All Along reframes everything we’ve seen before in a much poorer light. Rather than really being a show about Agatha, this is first and foremost Billy’s show. The deaths of every other coven member (minus Jen, who survives) are just footnotes in his origin story. To justify the show’s choices, Agatha appears to Billy to act as his debate partner one more time, now in the form of a ghost—perhaps the most egregious example yet of Marvel so clearly being unwilling to commit to killing off a fan-favorite character despite the death it wrote them into. Like the show has stated before, this whole journey just shows that Billy is a killer just like his mother, one who is unable to control his dark powers. Just like the dead coven members who are nothing more than fodder for Wiccan character growth, the entirety of Agatha All Along feels like one more Marvel project that isn’t meant to stand on its own but is instead fodder for the grand MCU machine.
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