Agatha All Along expands its inner circle

Sorry, Mrs. Hart fans: It looks like Sharon is really dead. Dead enough to be buried, at least. The first scene in “If I Can’t Reach You, Let My Song Teach You” picks up right where the previous episode left off. Having escaped the flooded beach house, Agatha, Teen, Jen, Alice, and Lilia are back on the Road, trying to regroup after their near-death experience. Teen’s digging Sharon a grave, Agatha is complaining about the wasted time, and the coven is haranguing Agatha about needing a new green witch. (Technically, this would be their first green witch since Sharon wasn’t actually a witch, but with an episode runtime of less the 40 minutes, there’s no time for small details like that). It’s all pretty standard table-setting for the next trial. 

It struck me as odd, though, that Agatha All Along makes a point of showing the coven burying Sharon. It doesn’t seem like a particularly vital plot point. If this episode had picked up, say, with the group heading down the Road toward their next trial with a quick line of explanatory dialogue indicating that they’d buried her before continuing, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Walk and talk, people. Let’s get moving. We’ve got four more trials to get to. Instead, this focus on bickering and burial makes for a listless start, like they’re just waiting around for something to happen.  

However, it becomes apparent a few moments later why the episode kicked off this way. After the coven performs a spell to call down a replacement green witch—the specifics of how this is even possible are muddy and honestly not worth getting into—Rio crawls out of Sharon’s grave. Here she is, the beating black heart that Agatha knew all along was supposed to complete their coven. If the show hadn’t made a point of showing Teen digging Sharon’s grave, we wouldn’t get such a dramatic re-introduction for Rio. It’s admittedly fun, but it’s also extremely obvious that everything that happened from the beginning of the episode until this moment was superficial. Rather than the characters’ actions and dialogue serving the story or advancing the plot, they were just stalling for time.

In the lead-up to Agatha All Along’s premiere, Rio’s identity was one of the biggest questions. Her character was created specifically for the show, but fans were convinced that she was really the Green Witch, a gender-swapped version of Emerald Warlock from the comics. This, it turns out, is at least partially true. The first few episodes made it clear that “green witch” refers to a witch who draws her power from the Earth. It’s an archetype, not a specific person—unless, of course, you’re the most powerful one around. Rio explains the difference to Alice: “[I’m] less a green witch and more the Green Witch,” she says, as her voice gets deeper and more demonic. Okay then! Predictably, Agatha’s not happy to see Rio, but the others are enchanted. “Honestly, I don’t know how to feel,” Jen says. “Do I hate her? Or do I want her phone number?” 

The show’s inherent queerness has been a major talking point for the cast. “It’s in the bones of the show for sure,” Hahn told Total Film ahead of the premiere. But there is a delicate balance to maintain when depicting queerness in media, between recognizing that representation matters and acknowledging queer relationships as no more novel or worth commenting upon than heterosexual relationships. The latter approach is more reflective of reality, but it also runs the risk of feeling like tokenism or queer-baiting. “I think it’s almost like people keep describing it as the next level of representation. We have had these incredible shows which have put queerness to the front of the characters and the plot, and now it’s like, great, we can have queerness as just part of them,” Joe Locke said in that same interview. It’s clear that is the kind of representation Agatha All Along is going for, but I was worried after the exchange between Agatha and Rio in episode one where Rio tells Agatha that she’d prefer her “horizontal … [dramatic pause] … in a grave.” The sexual tension between them is palpable, but it’s all very carefully cloaked in innuendo. Is this just teasing, or do these two actually have a romantic history? And if they do, will Marvel explicitly acknowledge it or leave the implications unsaid? 

In episode two, we see the kind of unambiguous but low-key representation Locke talked about when Teen gets a call from his “Boyf.” Now, in episode four, this tossed-off line from Jen is more evidence of the show’s commitment to weaving queerness into the fabric of its world. Later, too, Agatha and Rio have a conversation about putting aside their differences and spending one more night together. That discussion is still somewhat lacking in specificity, but I think that’s probably more a symptom of the writers wanting to keep the details of Agatha and Rio’s history hidden for a few more episodes than evidence of the show gesturing at queerness without fully committing to representing it. I’m not 100-percent sure how I feel about this sort of low-key representation in the context of the MCU as a whole—the franchise is, for better and worse, extremely loud and straightforward in its themes, so purposefully understating just this one feels like a bad choice—but it works in this specific show.

Now that the coven is actually complete, they’re off to see the wizard to take on trial No. 2. This one appears in the form of a cabin in the woods. The front door depicts a waxing moon, a fire phase that represents a period of growth and rebuilding. Inside, everyone gets another costume change to match the interior decorating scheme. It’s full-on 1970s-rock-star vibes this time, with faux fur, shag carpets, and vintage instruments littering the lush recording studio in which they’ve found themselves. Alice’s reaction makes it clear that this is her trial when she immediately emotionally shuts down and tries to get everyone to leave. It seems like she recognizes this specific location (as opposed to Jen’s trial, which was more symbolic), but she doesn’t elaborate on it. 

The rest of the group wears her down until she finally reveals what’s got her so spooked: Her family has a generational curse. It affected her mom, who died mysteriously, and it affects her, too, in the form of uniquely bad luck. Agatha has the solution this time: “The only way to end a curse is to face it,” she says. Given their surroundings, Agatha correctly guesses that facing the curse means an epic jam sesh in which the coven has to play Lorna’s (Alice’s mom) version of “The Ballad Of The Witches’ Road.” It’s the most famous version of the song, and it differs from the traditional song in an unspecified small but significant way because Lorna’s version is actually a protection spell that’s been keeping Alice safe from more severe harm all these years. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the moment and holds up even less under scrutiny, but the show doesn’t take the time to expand on that, focusing a good chunk of the episode on a conversation between Agatha and Rio in the recording booth instead. Rio thinks it’s a private conversation, but Agatha secretly turns on a microphone that lets everyone else listen in when Rio hints that she thinks Agatha doesn’t care about the rest of the coven and is only using them to get to the end of the Road. Which, duh, but it still stings for the others to hear it so bluntly. 

Much like with Jen in episode three, Alice is sidelined even though this is ostensibly her episode. All the big moments belong to Rio and Agatha. Agatha even sings the lead vocals on the Ballad, relegating Alice to the piano. And look, I’m not going to pretend that the performance isn’t extremely cool, between the setting and the costumes and the cast. But this is the second time in only four episodes where the climax centers on the coven singing this same song. The scenes are visually and tonally different, but they’re thematically the same: The characters are singing the same song in service of reaching a goal that can only be achieved through collaboration. How many times is the show going to use the Ballad as a crutch?

During the performance, the curse is still stirring up trouble, and Teen is thrown through a glass window. He’s badly injured as they complete the trial and escape back to the Road, though it seems like he’s going to live. In this episode, I wanted more background on Alice. From her initial dismissal of Agatha, it seemed like she didn’t even believe in witchcraft, but she was performing protection spells here, so maybe she was just lying. I’d also like more details on what being a protection witch even entails, but by the time the credits rolled, I was more preoccupied with something Rio said to Agatha about Teen: “That boy isn’t yours.” She sounded pretty sure of that.

Stray observations

• • Aubrey Plaza’s little Wizard Of Oz Scarecrow-style hop as she skipped down the Road was a nice touch.
• • We got another out-of-the-blue tarot reference from Lilia: “Three of swords.”
• • I’m sticking with my previous prediction that Teen is Wanda’s son, not Agatha’s. It feels like Rio is implying that Teen can’t possibly be Agatha’s son, because Agatha’s son is dead, and it seems like something she said as more of a wake-up call than out of cruelty.
• • Agatha is on lead vocals, Lilia is on backup vocals, Alice is on piano, Jen is on bass, and Rio is on drums during the performance of the Ballad. 
• • I have to admit that I was charmed by the demon hanging out in the rafters of the house. When was the last time we saw such extensive makeup and practical effects in the MCU?