For the past seven Wednesday nights, my friends and I have gathered around the TV and locked in to Marvel Studios’ latest limited series endeavor, “Agatha All Along.” Born from the same team that blessed us with “WandaVision” three years ago, this show is a spin-off of that series surrounding the continued, chaotic adventures of Agatha Harkness, Wanda Maximoff’s “nosy neighbor” and rival witch obsessed with stealing the magic of other witches. “WandaVision” was a smash hit for Marvel, earning Emmy nominations and glowing reception from fans and critics alike for its emotional writing, compelling mystery element and stunning visual effects, sets and costumes.
With Kathryn Hahn as Agatha completely captivating the narrative and the audience after her iconic villain reveal, it was only a matter of time before Marvel realized that she could still make them more money and “Agatha All Along,” named after her iconic theme song, was developed. I had loved every single second of this series with the casting for these new characters, including the one and only Patti Lupone as divination witch Lilia Calderu, the brilliant writing, the horror/mystery elements and the visuals all reminding me of why I fell in love with “WandaVision.” However, the ending dropped this past Wednesday, and that’s what I’m here to talk about, so spoilers ahead if you have yet to watch.
I will never say that the final two episodes were bad because they weren’t. I think that overall, everything fell into place very perfectly, specifically the reveal that The Witches’ Road was a hoax designed by Agatha as a means of tricking other witches into handing her their magic. It’s a perfect character choice that makes sense for Agatha and wraps up the mystery element of the road in a simple, yet brilliant way. I also am a sucker for costumes and the flashbacks of each decade had phenomenal ones every time. Joe Locke’s Billy Maximoff accidentally conjuring the road as well was a nice touch as it generated a smart parallel between him and his mother, as Wanda also accidentally created the Westview Hex.
My main problems with the wrap up of the show are the treatment of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal and transference of the spotlight away from her relationship with Agatha and the two of them as characters to more about Billy’s motivation and character development. From minute one of Rio and Agatha’s screen time together, my friends and I felt our gay-dar ringing violently. Hahn and Plaza had such an incredible, unteachable chemistry that it was impossible to not immediately want to see them interact romantically. However, this is still Disney we’re talking about so, in the beginning, I tried not to get my hopes too high in terms of getting canon sapphic representation from this show.
Imagine my shock when the show confirms that the two characters were past lovers through referring to each other as “my love,” Rio’s speech about how having to hurt someone she loved turned that person into “her scar” with pointed cuts to Agatha’s pained reaction, one instance where they held each others’ faces and nearly kissed and eventually one real kiss in the finale. We could not believe that they actually got to kiss on camera because after years of shows like “Killing Eve” or “The Haunting of Bly Manor” turning sapphic love stories into tragedy, it was so rewarding to see.
That is until Agatha died seconds after the kiss concluded. As much as at makes sense, seeing is Rio is the personification of Death after all (literally that’s her revealed character title) and Agatha siphoning Death’s magic would obviously kill her, it was extremely disheartening to watch another show bury their gays. The context of the kiss being that Rio required either Agatha or Billy to cross the other side with her to keep the balance of life and death equal after Billy snuck a second chance at life by possessing the body of the deceased William Kaplan after the destruction of Wanda’s hex. At first it seemed Agatha didn’t hesitate to throw Billy at Rio in order to save her own life, but after Billy invaded her head with memories of her own deceased son, she had a change of heart and decided to not let another child die.
As much as this humanity felt out of character for Agatha, it made her a more well rounded character and reflected her development as a person. Eventually it is revealed that Agatha is able to stick around as a ghost and the show concludes with her embarking with Billy to go search for his twin brother Tommy’s new body. As happy as I am for this loophole that means Agatha isn’t really gone, it is extremely frustrating to watch the titular character of this show lead by female characters be reduced to a ghostly sidekick for the one male character who gets to be in charge now. Yes, Agatha takes a mentor role for young witches in the comics, but giving her a villain arc like Marvel did is so much more interesting and I wish she got to keep her magic and cause more chaos.
Not only did Agatha’s character receive that short end of the stick in these last two episodes, Rio as a character also got completely snubbed as did their whole relationship as a couple. There was not a single second of plot dedicated to explaining how Rio became Death, how her and Agatha met, the development of their love story or the seemingly very dramatic fall out of that love story. Rio had maybe three lines of dialogue in the flashback episode that was all dedicated to the forging of the fake Witches Road and how Agatha lost her biological son to disease, not a Darkhold trade.
It was so irritating to watch the first lesbian couple in the Marvel Universe by snubbed by a lack of explanation, and because of the lack of context for their relationship, all of their other sweet, flirty, emotional moments throughout the show carry much less weight and feel hollow because we don’t actually get to see their relationship at all. The classic Marvel final act fight scene also felt very unsatisfying with Billy once again finding himself at the center and Agatha and Rio’s dialogue and interactions during the fight literally fading into the background as they prioritize his super-suit reveal, but it was so nice to see Agatha finally get her magic back, even for two seconds.
Overall, to have seen a sapphic couple kiss in a Marvel project was something that made me so happy to see, even if they weren’t as fully fleshed out as I would have liked. I still encourage everyone who loved “WandaVision” to give this show a watch because it is still some incredible work, Lilia’s episode is my favorite and I could write whole other article on it alone, but go and see for yourself all the love and attention that was poured into this show by the actors and show runner Jac Schaeffer. If not for perfect gay representation, the show certainly delivers powerful female representation which a franchise like Marvel always needs. Cling on to the spooky season while you can and go support these witches.