Agatha All Along comes for the queen and doesn’t miss

If you had asked me before Agatha All Along‘s fifth episode, “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power” aired, I would’ve bet you money that it would focus on Lilia’s trial. You get the trials of the supporting witches—Jen, Alice, and Lilia—out of the way relatively quickly, then give Rio, who has the most history with Agatha, a beefier episode for the sixth entry, and a more substantial episode still for Agatha’s trial in episode seven. Two more episodes of Marvel’s standard CGI-battle-heavy climactic fare, interspersed with a Big Reveal about Teen that ties this promisingly different and detached show into the larger MCU, and you’ve got yourself a competent, if conventional, miniseries. We all learned our lesson about hoping Marvel would finally break its formula after WandaVision‘s disappointing finale, right?

But the pre-episode recap tipped me off that this wasn’t going to play out the way I thought it would. First, a scene from WandaVision: Agatha’s original coven, led by her mother in Salem, Massachusetts, tries to kill her in 1693. Instead, she turns the tables and kills them all. Then, a few scenes from earlier episodes of this show, all of them focusing on Agatha. Eight minutes later, Rio confirms it: this is Agatha’s trial.

Before we get to the trial, though, the episode kicks off as the Salem Seven—who, we learn, are the children of the witches Agatha killed back in 1693 (“A feral, hive-minded coven bent on revenge,” as Rio describes them)—catch up with Agatha’s new coven. “The moral of the story, kids, is always finish what you started,” Agatha says. “Also, mercy is overrated.” Unfortunately, there’s no time to luxuriate in Kathryn Hahn’s impeccable line reading here, because these witches have got to get gone, like, yesterday. And what do witches do when they need to get somewhere fast? Lilia is so not stoked about it, but Teen’s right: they need to whip out the broomsticks. Cue Aubrey Plaza, serving up a direct Wizard Of Oz reference two episodes in a row, doing a delicious Wicked Witch of the West cackle as they race through the skies. The CGI here isn’t great, but it feels intentionally campy and cheesy, of a piece with the scene’s tone. They crash-land outside their next trial, which, much like the last episode, appears to take place at a cabin in the woods. 

This time, though, it’s ’80s teen sleepover vibes rather than ’70s excess. In another change, the moon phases mural that usually adorns the outside of the trial’s front door is on the wall inside. The connection is more explicit, too: “A blood moon,” Lilia says. “When the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.” Teen is confused about how this points to Agatha, but Rio explains that there’s no one better to commune with the dead than someone who’s killed a lot of people. It’s not clear why Agatha’s trial is ’80s-themed, though I suspect that Rio knows the answer to that, too.

An Ouija board flies off a shelf, everyone’s digital watches start counting down from a 30-minute timer, and Agatha’s trial gets underway. She’s up against a wall here; lashing out, trying to deflect. Delay the inevitable.

It’s not clear to me how this trial was supposed to play out if Agatha didn’t let go of the planchette. Using the board, the spirit identified itself as Death, and said it wanted to punish Agatha. It’s only after Agatha lets go of the planchette that her mother’s ghost appears and tells the others that, in order to punish Agatha and complete this trial, they must leave Agatha behind and finish the Witches’ Road without her. Before Evanora Harkness (Kate Forbes) appears, the coven was strategizing different ways to punish Agatha, but none of them were as specific as this. If Agatha didn’t let go and didn’t summon the ghost, they wouldn’t have known what Evanora wanted them to do.

Unsurprisingly, Jen is the first person to throw Agatha under the bus and try to leave her behind. Teen protests and stands up for her. But in the middle of all this, it’s Agatha’s exchange with her mom that forms the emotional core of the episode. “Why do you hate me still?” Agatha asks. “You were born evil. I ought to have killed you the moment you left my body,” Evanora replies. Even Jen has the good sense to look mildly abashed after hearing that.

Agatha All Along has spent four and a half episodes establishing its main character as a manipulative liar who plays on other people’s emotions to get what she wants. In episode two, she tries to goad the other witches into blasting her with their powers so she can steal them. It’s such a transparent attempt, though, that it feels as though she’s not even trying; she’s doing it more for fun than out of an expectation that this will actually work. But the intention is clear: she would, without a doubt, steal one of her covenmates’ power if she had a chance to. That’s why the final scene inside the cabin works so well. Agatha’s mother possesses her and Alice blasts Agatha with magick to drive her mom out, but Agatha drains Alice of her power instead. Teen breaks the spell and stops Agatha from torturing Alice when he spots the planchette moving on the Ouija board again. It’s Nicholas Scratch, this time, and hearing the name of her son stuns Agatha into silence. “Mama! Stop,” a disembodied voice cries out. This is her real punishment. The attic ladder drops; Alice falls to the floor, dead.

In the aftermath, back out on the Road, Agatha claims she couldn’t control it, that she didn’t kill Alice on purpose. Teen doesn’t believe her, and it seems like Jen and Lilia don’t either, though they’re both oddly placid about it. This, Jen says, is what they’re all here for: regaining their power. “Death comes for us all,” Lilia adds.

Agatha is a witch who lives in the space between truth and lies: she’ll happily embrace rumors, even wicked, horrible rumors, if they obscure the truth. She plays into people’s perceptions of her—as an infamously cruel and dangerous witch—to keep them at arm’s length. You can see the turn, here, in Hahn’s brilliant acting, when she figures out how to use this situation to her advantage. Using Jen and Lilia’s tacit acceptance as cover, she stops trying to deny that she killed Alice on purpose. I think she was actually telling the truth; it was her mom’s spirit that drained and killed Alice, not her. But everyone already knows Agatha is a murderer; claiming credit for another body will just bolster her legend. So Agatha does what she does best: she turns defensively cruel, striking out and hurting others in order to protect herself. The final exchange of the episode confirms what everyone has guessed from the beginning:

Teen: “So that’s what it means to be a witch? Killing people to serve your own agenda? No. Not for me.”
Agatha: “Are you sure? You’re so much like your mother.”

Teen is Billy Maximoff, Wanda’s son. His hands crackle with blue energy as Jen and Lilia’s eyes turn a matching shade. They toss Agatha off the Road into the quicksand, and she disappears under the muck. After that, Billy blasts Jen and Lilia into the quicksand, too. Rio, I think, is still inside the trial house, so it’s not a total party kill (and, come on, we all know the show will at least bring Agatha back somehow). A crown, which looks very similar to Scarlet Witch’s crown, materializes on Billy’s head as the music kicks in: “You should see me in a crown,” Billie Eilish croons.

It’s a mic-drop moment, one of those ultra-rare times when an on-the-nose music cue is actually perfect because of how obvious it is. This is Billy announcing his arrival and his heritage at the same time, a warning that he’s not to be messed with. You could see the twist coming from a mile away—it wasn’t a surprise that Teen ended up being Billy. But the way the reveal played out was constructed so perfectly that it didn’t matter if we all knew what was about to happen. The surprise in “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power” wasn’t Teen’s identity; it was that Agatha All Along managed to craft a perfect reveal that actually felt earned.

Stray observations

• • Kathryn Hahn’s Debra Jo Rupp impression is S-tier.
• • So many questions about Billy—did he know who he was all along? Or did the memories, and the power, come flooding back in his darkest hour, as the episode title implies? Based on the look he gives Jen after she tells him “Familiars don’t get a vote” (at roughly 15:30), I think he might have been playing them all from the start. Either way, it’s a brilliant bit of foreshadowing that something is about to happen from Joe Locke that you can only catch on the second watch, and then it’s so obvious that you wonder how you missed it the first time.
• • Other board games lying around the cabin include Clue, Pente, and Sweet Valley High.
• • When they’re using the Ouija board, there’s a poster behind Teen for Point Reyes National Seashore, which I can only assume is a nod to John Carpenter’s The Fog.
• • Agatha’s wearing a jersey with the number three on it; Teen says the Ouija board is for ages “three and up.” Actual Ouija boards are recommended for ages eight and up.
• • Last episode, Lilia blurted out “Three of swords.” This time, she says “Knight of wands.”