Agatha All Along Archives - ComicBook.com https://comicbook.com/tag/agatha-all-along/ Comic Book Movies, News, & Digital Comic Books Thu, 31 Oct 2024 04:21:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/10/cropped-ComicBook-icon_808e20.png?w=32 Agatha All Along Archives - ComicBook.com https://comicbook.com/tag/agatha-all-along/ 32 32 237547605 Agatha All Along Has One More Shocking Death (And It’s More Significant Than You Think) https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-finale-shocking-death-spoilers/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 04:21:55 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194479

We have finally come to the end of The Witches’ Road, but there was one more loss for the coven at the end. Wednesday night’s two-episode finale of Agatha All Along was packed with revelations about the Road, the witches on it, and even what might be next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but all […]

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We have finally come to the end of The Witches’ Road, but there was one more loss for the coven at the end. Wednesday night’s two-episode finale of Agatha All Along was packed with revelations about the Road, the witches on it, and even what might be next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but all of those revelations came with a price: one more witch met her end and this time, it could have major implications going forward. Warning: spoilers for the finale of Agatha All Along beyond this point. Read on only if you really want to know.

In the end, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) did not survive the adventure undertaken in the series, with the seemingly invincible and scheming witch finally taken out. However, it wasn’t the Road that killed Agatha nor was it a failed trial, or anything like that, really. Instead, Agatha went to Death willingly — and it turns out, the end for the legendary witch is only the beginning of the story. Picking up after last week’s trial which saw Lilia (Patti LuPone) sacrifice herself to end the Salem Seven, Agatha is back on the road and comes face to face with Rio (Aubrey Plaza), aka Death. It turns out that all along, Agatha has been distracting Rio from Death’s real target: Billy (Joe Locke). It turns out that, per Rio, Billy is an abomination who has messed with the “sacred balance” by taking a second life and she has to stop him from doing the same for Tommy. You see, it turns out that Tommy hasn’t been reborn yet and Billy’s mission to find his brother is a problem. Agatha ends up making Rio a deal: since Rio can’t kill Billy because he’d just reincarnate, he has to turn himself over to Death willingly. Agatha says she’ll get him to do so, but only if Rio stops pursuing her. Rio agrees.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along Finale Reveals Shocking Truth About The Witches’ Road]

Agatha, Billy, and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) continue on the Road to the final trial which sees Jen realize that Agatha was the witch who bound her and thus, Jen unbinds herself. But Agatha tells Billy about Tommy and the fact that he needs a body to enter and, during the final trial Agatha guides Billy through finding a vessel for Tommy, causing Billy to “complete” his trial and disappear. Agatha ends up also completing her trial but she ends up facing Death who isn’t thrilled that Billy wasn’t delivered to her. A fight ensues, Billy shows up — fully in his power — and aids Agatha by giving her some of his power. Agatha then appears to turn on Billy again, revealing her deal with Rio but when Billy reaches out to Agatha mentally to ask if this is how her own son died, Agatha does something unexpected: she kisses Rio and it is a literal Kiss of Death. Agatha dies, sacrificing herself for Billy.

But the story doesn’t end there. The final episode reveals Billy coming to the realization that he created The Witches’ Road and that realization comes with a surprise visitor: Agatha, as a ghost. Agatha reveals that before Billy, the Road really was just a myth, a lie, a con Agatha created centuries ago to kill witches and take their power. When Billy fully grasps that his manifesting the Road means he killed Mrs. Hart, Alice, and Lilia, he finds himself enraged and sets out to banish Agatha. He stops, however, when the ghost of Agatha reveals why she doesn’t want to simply move on to the afterlife: she doesn’t want to face her son. It leads to a tender moment between Billy and Agatha, with Billy saying he thinks Nicholas will forgive her, but ultimately, Agatha suggests that she and Billy would make a good team, with Agatha serving as a mentor of sorts for Billy. The episode — and series — ends with Billy sealing off the Road and Agatha announcing “let’s go find Tommy” as the two head out into the world together.

It’s a major development to be sure, not just because Agatha dies, but because Agatha (as a ghost) teaming up with Billy sets into motion the possibility for Marvel to, in the aim of looking for Tommy, set up the Young Avengers or even take on an adaptation of The Children’s Crusade. It also sets Agatha up to be more in keeping with her comic book counterpart in that she’s now in a position to train Billy with his magic — in comics, Agatha trained Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the art of magic. With Agatha, to an extent, redeemed, the possibilities are somewhat endless as to where the MCU can go with the character and it will be interesting to see play out.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Will Marvel’s Agatha All Along Get a Season 2 on Disney+? https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/will-marvels-agatha-all-along-get-a-season-2-on-disney/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 03:29:55 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194465 Agatha All Along (2024)

In the age of streaming it’s never clear when a new TV show will come back for more episodes or not, and Marvel’s shows on Disney+ are no different. As shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye came to a close, fans waited to see if there would be a quick […]

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Agatha All Along (2024)

In the age of streaming it’s never clear when a new TV show will come back for more episodes or not, and Marvel’s shows on Disney+ are no different. As shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye came to a close, fans waited to see if there would be a quick confirmation or any news about future seasons, to date Marvel’s Loki is the only live-action show to confirm that it had been renewed for additional episodes at the end of its first season. So here we are once again, wondering and asking ourselves if Agatha All Along will come back for a season 2 on Disney+, and the answer seems concrete, but is it?

The entire time that Marvel Studios and Disney have been marketing Agatha All Along it’s been using very specific language and key phrasing, “mini-series.” Even before it premiered, Marvel’s plans for Agatha All Along were for it to arrive as a one-and-done batch of nine episodes that told a complete story. With the final two chapters now streaming, we can safely say they managed that.

Of note however is the fact that Agatha All Along was a series born exclusively from the fact that Marvel fans and the general public responded so favorably to Kathryn Hahn’s portrayal of Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. That in mind, though a season 2 of Agatha All Along does not appear to be in the cards at all, plans could very quickly change at Marvel Studios and another story featuring Agatha, or another character from Agatha All Along starring in their own show.

Another nail in the coffin of the potential for Agatha All Along season 2 comes from series creator Jac Schaeffer. Having previously spearheaded WandaVision and now Agatha, Schaeffer is no stranger to crafting a singular story that is told across one season and concluded, and she’s been speaking the same way about Agatha All Along ahead of its premiere as she did with WandaVision.

“I think a lot of people talk about, in a TV show, [they] can spend so much more time with these characters, but that’s not the thrill for me,” Schaeffer told Script Mag. “The thrill for me is I can really take the audience’s hand and lead them on a journey that makes them want to come back week to week. It’s also why I haven’t yet made a multi-season show, because I throw everything into that season. I’m like this. These are all my tricks. You get them all in this limited series. Which has been really fun so far.”

Agatha All Along is now streaming in full on Disney+ alongside WandaVision.

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Agatha All Along: Does Wanda Return in the Finale? https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-finale-wanda-maximoff-return-scarlet-witch-marvel/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 03:07:02 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194103 doctor-strange-2-multiverse-of-madness-wanda-scarlet-witch.jpg

The Scarlet Witch hasn’t been around in the MCU for a couple of years, since her death at the conclusion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But that hasn’t stopped Wanda Maximoff from looming large over the events of Agatha All Along. Not only was Wanda the creator of the Westview anomaly, kick-starting […]

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The Scarlet Witch hasn’t been around in the MCU for a couple of years, since her death at the conclusion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But that hasn’t stopped Wanda Maximoff from looming large over the events of Agatha All Along. Not only was Wanda the creator of the Westview anomaly, kick-starting Agatha’s journey, but so much of this show’s story is actually about Billy, one of Wanda’s sons.

The children that Wanda created managed to escape the hex as it fell, and Billy’s soul took up residence in the body of a teenager who had just died in a car accident. This is what ultimately sent Billy on the Witches’ Road, as he wants to find out what became of his brother, Tommy.

At the center of all this is Wanda’s legacy, which has caused plenty of fans to wonder if the Scarlet Witch would be making some sort of MCU return in Agatha All Along. Well, the final two episodes of Marvel’s newest TV venture hit Disney+ Wednesday night, answering that question once and for all. WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Agatha All Along! Continue reading at your own risk…

Unfortunately for longtime fans of the Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff doesn’t appear in the final episode of Agatha All Along. There is a moment where Billy thinks back to his final moments in Westview and you can hear Wanda’s voice in his head. Outside of that one line of dialogue (which was brought over from WandaVision), there was no Wanda to be found.

All that to say, Wanda’s fingerprints were all over the show. The biggest twist of Agatha All Along was directly connected to the story of Wanda Maximoff. We learned in the final minutes of the series that it was Billy who actually created the Witches’ Road, though he didn’t mean to. He and the coven were taken on this journey, which was created in his own mind (based on things around his bedroom). The Witches’ Road is basically Billy’s Westview, but now he gets the chance to make up for that massive display of power going forward.

Most importantly, the door for Wanda’s return is absolutely not closed. If anything, it’s more open than ever before, now that we know how Billy and Death’s powers work. If another popular fan theory is to be believed, Wanda might already be back.

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Does Agatha All Along Have a Post-Credits Scene? https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/does-agatha-all-along-have-a-post-credits-scene/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 02:58:24 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194451 Agatha All Along (2024)

Marvel fans fully expect a post-credits scene whenever a new movie or TV show in the MCU arrives, and the Disney+ series Agatha All Along is no different. Though previous Marvel Studios TV shows on the streamer have had scenes in the credits in various episodes, Agatha All Along has not had any up to […]

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Agatha All Along (2024)

Marvel fans fully expect a post-credits scene whenever a new movie or TV show in the MCU arrives, and the Disney+ series Agatha All Along is no different. Though previous Marvel Studios TV shows on the streamer have had scenes in the credits in various episodes, Agatha All Along has not had any up to this point. With a two-episode series finale now streaming the question has to be asked and considered, does Agatha All Along‘s series finale have a post-credits scene? Spoilers follow!

In short, the answer is no. There is no post-credits scenes in either of the final two episodes of Agatha All Along. This arrives in contrast to a few other Marvel shows on Disney+ including WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Echo, all of which had credits scenes. Agatha All Along joins Secret Invasion as being one of the only Marvel shows with no credits scenes in any episodes.

Just because Agatha All Along doesn’t have a post-credits scenes doesn’t mean that the series doesn’t tease a new chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As the series wraps up, Agatha has died but has become a ghost, however she has a new role, guiding Billy in their new coven with a very specific mission at hand, finding his brother Tommy.

Agatha All Along may not have a post-credits scene but the series clearly sets up what’s next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Billy searching for his brother Tommy, Marvel Studios could not more obviously be hinting at the fact that the Young Avengers are coming. As Marvel fans may recall, the team was previously alluded to at the end of The Marvels when Kamala Khan decides to start a group of her own, moving to recruit Kate Bishop to the team.

In the pages of Marvel Comics the Young Avengers team has naturally included Billy/Wiccan, Tommy/Speed, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye, and America Chavez, with other members including Iron Lad, Kid Loki, Hulkling, Prodigy, Patriot, Noh-Varr, and others. Though Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel hasn’t been a member of the Young Avengers, she has appeared on the Champions, which is a similar team and one that may inspire the MCU team in the end as well. It’s unclear who might make it on the team when the Young Avengers finally do appear in the MCU, but Kamala Khan, Billy, Tommy, and Kate Bishop are all very safe bets.

To date Agatha All Along has been publicized as a mini-series for Disney+, with no indication from Marvel Studios that this plan has changed, so it seems unlikely that a second season of the show will ever get made, perhaps another reason why a post-credit scene wasn’t used.

All nine episodes of Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along: Does Mephisto Show Up (Or Did We Get Played Again)? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-does-mephisto-show-up-or-did-we-get-played-again/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 02:53:11 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1193816

We’ve finally come to the end of The Witches’ Road with the Agatha All Along finale and while the last two episodes of the Marvel series held quite a few revelations about Billy, Agatha, and even the very Road itself, the episodes also gave fans an answer to what might have been the biggest question […]

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We’ve finally come to the end of The Witches’ Road with the Agatha All Along finale and while the last two episodes of the Marvel series held quite a few revelations about Billy, Agatha, and even the very Road itself, the episodes also gave fans an answer to what might have been the biggest question of all. That’s right, the final episodes of Agatha All Along finally answered the question of whether Mephisto would finally be introduced to the MCU and it might not be the answer you’re expecting. Warning: Spoilers for the final episodes of Agatha All Along beyond this point.

Despite getting a name drop earlier in the season, Mephisto once again does not show up. We are once again left wanting when it comes to Marvel’s devil. Instead, the only spooky or even lightly sinister thing we get in the finale — and indeed in all of Agatha All Along — is Death herself. Looks like we are once again going to be sitting here waiting at the proverbial station, waiting for the Mephisto train to come.

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Now that we are finally at this moment, it feels like we’ve been on this journey — or the Mephisto train, if you will — for years. Speculation that the devilish character was involved in the overall story of Westview has persisted since WandaVision where there were countless theories that Mephisto was actually behind Wanda Maximoff’s actions in Westview as the series antagonist. That, however, ended up not being the case when it was revealed that Wanda was creating the hex on her own but her real antagonist was none other than Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) who does not appear to have been influenced by anything other than her own lust for power.

Speculation that Mephisto might show up for the WandaVision spinoff started pretty early on as well, but really ramped up when a teaser for Agatha All Along showed Teen/Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke) with a sigil over his mouth preventing Agatha (and others) from hearing his real name. Many fans speculated that the sigil, which looked like an M, signified Mephisto complete with the suggestion that perhaps Mephisto was keeping Billy’s identity under wraps. And by the time we actually got a Mephisto name drop in episode 3 of the series, fans were more convinced than ever we’d be seeing the character by series’ end — and even showrunner Jac Schaeffer encouraged fans to keep their eyes open by reminding just how tied to Agatha’s story Mephisto really is in comics.

“With these shows, so often there is something that is at once a joke and a wink and a nod, and actually has something legitimate underneath it,” Schaeffer said previously. “As we all know, Mephisto is a character who’s very wrapped into Agatha’s storyline. I mean, people have to watch, but we’re always playing with the audience in that way.”

Now that we are finally here with the real answer about Mephisto, we can also start looking ahead to what’s next. A third Doctor Strange film seems like the next logical place for a character like Mephisto to appear, though at this point everything about Doctor Strange 3 is currently a rumor — including reports that Sam Raimi, who previously directed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which itself had direct ties to WandaVision, would be returning to direct. We could also potentially see Mephisto in the other WandaVision spinout, the Vision series, thought that might be a little less likely. Wherever things do end up going, the revelation in the final episodes of Agatha All Along do offer up some potential for the character as the MCU continues.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along Finale Reveals Shocking Truth About The Witches’ Road https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-witches-road-truth-revealed-spoilers-finale/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 02:38:03 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194314

All season on Agatha All Along, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven have been walking The Witches’ Road, a mythical path in magic that, per the lore, grants any witch who survives its trials and makes it to the end the thing they desire most. In fact, The Witches’ Road is so legendary that […]

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All season on Agatha All Along, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven have been walking The Witches’ Road, a mythical path in magic that, per the lore, grants any witch who survives its trials and makes it to the end the thing they desire most. In fact, The Witches’ Road is so legendary that there have been songs written about it — Lorna Wu’s “Ballad of The Witches’ Road” — and Agatha, as the Road’s only known survivor, has a bit of legendary status of her own. But now, with the two-episode finale of the Disney+ series, a shocking truth about the Road has been revealed and it’s something that changes how we see everything about the series. Warning: Spoilers for the finale of Agatha All Along beyond this point. Read on only if you want to know.

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As it turns out, The Witches’ Road has legend status because it is exactly that: a legend. It is revealed that The Witches’ Road doesn’t actually exist, or more accurately, did not exist until Billy (Joe Locke) willed it into existence with his powers, creating his own sort of “hex” to manifest it. The revelation that The Witches’ Road was never real also has a revelation of its own tucked into it. Agatha has, indeed, been lying for centuries about her experience with the road. The reality is much grimmer: the Road was a story created by Agatha to use in order to steal the powers of other witches for herself. We saw a peek of this earlier in the season, when Agatha gathered this current, makeshift coven and then tried to prompt them into blasting her with their powers. Agatha knew that she couldn’t open a gate to the Road because it didn’t exist. It was a fiction from the start.

This also explains a comment Rio (Aubrey Plaza) made in Episode 4, where she tells Agatha that she can get the powers of the other witches and she will get the bodies. We already knew that there was an existing relationship between Agatha and Rio, but now knowing that Rio is Death and Agatha was scamming witches to take their power (and their lives) for centuries, it’s a whole new dimension towards that relationship.

Of course, the reveal that The Witches’ Road wasn’t real also adds some new dimension to other aspects of the series we’ve seen. Since the Road itself was a myth created by Agatha, she knew from the start that whatever they were walking was likely of Billy’s creation, she just simply went along with it. This also means that the little details that many fans picked up on as the Road spread out in front of them each episode were genuinely clues — and by this we specifically mean the details that showed the Road to be very Billy-coded, such as the fictional witches, the horror movie-themed trial and more. And of course, there’s the largest implication of them all: Agatha knew pretty early on that Billy was Wanda’s son and to an extent suggests that she went along with things with the hope of taking Billy’s powers for her own, much like she planned to do with Wanda in WandaVision.

What is particularly interesting What is particularly interesting about the revelation that Billy created the Road is that we also get the history of how the concept of the Road came to be. The finale takes viewers back into Agatha’s history where it’s revealed that when she gives birth to Nicholas, she’s told by Death that all she can give her is time — meaning that the boy is going to die. While it is not expressly stated that Agatha has an existing arrangement with Death to kill witches, we soon see Agatha going about the business of doing just that with her young son in tow, indeed even utilizing him in the scheme. As they walk along together, young Nicky starts singing a song that eventually becomes the Ballad, and in turn, becomes the legend of the Road that Agatha uses to lure in witches that she kills for their power.

Billy’s realization — and Agatha’s confirmation — that the Road wasn’t real until he made it so not only hints at Billy starting to come into his true power, but also ultimately sets him on a different sort of journey. When Agatha dies to spare him Death (though Agatha later insists she didn’t sacrifice herself, you know, just Agatha being Agatha here), she returns to Billy as a ghost unwilling to transition so she doesn’t have to face her son. It puts her in a position to be his guide — and the two are now a coven of their own off on a new impossible mission: find Tommy.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along: What Happened to Tommy? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-tommy-story-return-billy/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 02:35:09 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1194124 One of Agatha All Along's biggest mysteries has finally been solved.

Halfway through Marvel’s Agatha All Along, MCU fans learned the surprising fate of Wanda Maximoff’s children. While she created them as part of the Westview anomaly, their souls became real and escaped the hex as it fell. Billy was able to inhabit the body of a teenage boy who’d just died in a car accident, […]

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One of Agatha All Along's biggest mysteries has finally been solved.

Halfway through Marvel’s Agatha All Along, MCU fans learned the surprising fate of Wanda Maximoff’s children. While she created them as part of the Westview anomaly, their souls became real and escaped the hex as it fell. Billy was able to inhabit the body of a teenage boy who’d just died in a car accident, but he had no idea what had happened to his twin brother, Tommy.

Unlike Billy, Tommy hasn’t been a main character on Agatha All Along, leaving fans to wonder if his twin brother would ever actually find him or not. Billy’s entire purpose on the Witches’ Road has been to figure out where Tommy’s soul ended up, so the two could reunite and once again be a family. On Wednesday night, the Agatha All Along finale arrived on Disney+, finally revealing what became of Wanda’s other son.

WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Agatha All Along! Continue reading at your own risk…

Early on in the eighth episode of Agatha All Along, Death reveals to Agatha that Tommy didn’t find his second life quite as easily as Billy did. She attempts to make a deal with Agatha to get Billy to surrender his soul, because she doesn’t believe he was supposed to get that second opportunity at all.

Both Agatha and Death know that Billy has the power to give Tommy a second life, should he be able to locate the lost soul of his brother. Agatha, after making a deal with Death, helps Billy search through the ether to find a body for Tommy to inhabit. He locates a boy who is drowning and seemingly sends Tommy’s soul into the body. This action completes Billy’s journey on the Witches’ Road, sending him back to reality and leaving Agatha all alone.

There’s a lot that happens between that scene and the full, official Tommy reveal, but Agatha All Along does bring it all full-circle. Well, sort of.

In the very last scene of Agatha All Along, Billy is joined by Agatha’s ghost, who tells him, “Let’s go find Tommy.” So whatever Billy did back on the Witches’ Road to get Tommy’s soul into a new body must have actually worked. His brother is out there and alive. The only trouble is, Billy isn’t sure where he is.

So whenever we next see Billy in the MCU (and he feels like a potential major character for the franchise going forward), he’ll either be searching for Tommy, or finally reunited with his long lost brother.

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Agatha All Along: Is The Witches’ Road Billy’s Westview Hex? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-is-the-witches-road-billys-westview-hex/ Tue, 29 Oct 2024 01:56:54 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1192283

There are just two episodes left of Marvel’s Agatha All Along and as we come to the end of The Witches’ Road, it’s hard not to notice that there’s something just a little unusual about it. We’re not talking the witchiness of it all. This is, after all, a magical path so a little bit […]

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There are just two episodes left of Marvel’s Agatha All Along and as we come to the end of The Witches’ Road, it’s hard not to notice that there’s something just a little unusual about it. We’re not talking the witchiness of it all. This is, after all, a magical path so a little bit of witchy strangeness is expected. No, the oddness in question here has more to do with fine details and the trials and, specifically, how they all seem to tie back to Billy. The deeper we get on the journey (and now that we’ve gotten a glimpse into Billy’s life as William Kaplan), the more we notice that The Witches’ Road and its trials seems to reflect Billy’s tastes and preferences and it’s making us wonder: is the road real at all or could this all be part of some new elaborate Westview hex that Wanda Maximoff’s son doesn’t know he’s creating in the first place?

Now, even from the beginning Agatha Harkness’ experience with the Road has been suspect — we’ve theorized that she’s lying about having done it. After all, her being the only known survivor pretty much makes it easy for her to just assert her success because no one is there to challenge her, but when we really look at how the coven came together and got this whole party started — particularly just how involved in the whole process Billy actually was — it seems more like the reality of the Road has always been in question. Each of the other witches knew of the Road, but thought it was a myth — Alice and Agatha both even said so — but it’s Billy who convinces them it’s real and they should walk it.  More than that, when the coven tries to open the road, they don’t seem to have much luck but it’s when Billy is in danger that things really pop off and he’s the first to head down the path and onto it. He also seems to know the most about the road and while we’ve been shown how obsessive he is in his research as it is linked to his identity, to know that much about the Road seems unusual.

The Case for The Witches’ Road Being a Hex

The real “clues” that the Road could be something of Billy’s creation comes in when you closely look at the trials and how each one seems to line up with aspects of Billy’s interests and tastes. While each trial is focused on a different witch, they all seem to have some influence from Billy. The first trial lines up with Jen’s brand aesthetic, which is something that we saw in the flashback to Billy’s life as William Kaplan that Billy admired and was interested in. The second trial is centered around Lorna Wu and her Ballad, but the flashback also revealed that Billy is a bit of a Lorna Wu superfan who had her records and was apparently pretty regularly spinning them, particularly Lorna’s Ballad. The third trial is 80s horror film themed and, again, in the flashback, we are shown that Billy is a horror fan. Then, the most recent trial, the 4th, features fictional witches — notably Maleficent and both the Wicked Witch and Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz.

You already know where we’re going with this: Billy has depictions of The Wizard of Oz and its witches in his bedroom. But it isn’t just the aesthetics of each trial that are very Billy-coded. Billy also seems to have some sort of innate mastery of each trial. He’s the person who figures out what they need to do each time and he’s also the one who is more or less always solving them in some fashion. That isn’t to say that each trial isn’t truly for the different members of the coven, but Billy seems to be very connected to each one in some fashion. Deviating from the trials, the Road also doesn’t seem to really conform to any real rules. There were no actual consequences for Lilia and Jen when they were tossed off of it. Rio came onto the road by being summoned, which doesn’t appear to be how one is supposed to access The Witches’ Road at all, and perhaps even more curious is that Jen spotted an exit: the unfinished transit system underneath Westview. For a Road that is supposed to be an all-encompassing journey once you embark on it, having an exit seems odd, but it does seem like something that might exist if the Road is actually a spell. Maybe Billy wanted there to be an “out” if things reached a certain point.

Does Billy Know It’s a Hex?

With so many elements of The Witches’ Road being very Billy-coded and connected to him in some way, it’s hard to not to wonder is the whole thing is a creation of his own magic that he’s not really aware he’s creating. It is possible that there is a real Witches’ Road that the myths and stories came from, but this one may be a hex, something created out of Billy’s own need. Agatha even tells Billy he’s so much like his mother and we know that it’s Wanda’s unwitting creation of a sitcom world for herself that led to all of this in the first place. It isn’t a stretch to consider that Billy, experiencing his own heightened emotions and having a desperate need for answers about himself and his brother, Tommy, may have accidentally willed this version of the Road into reality. He may even very well believe this this is all real; after all, Billy doesn’t really know how to use his powers. It’s an element that makes this all the more interesting. It is also worth noting that being able to create his own Witches’ Road is something that is very. much in the scope of his abilities. One of Billy’s powers in comics is reality warping — which really is a like mother, like son situation.

If the Road really is a manifestation of Billy’s magic, there are a lot of implications. First, it makes the deaths of Mrs. Hart, Alice, and even Lilia more profound and even more heartbreaking. It also would tie into the conversation between Agatha and Billy about witches being willing to kill other witches for their own goals — something Billy said he wouldn’t do but now seems less likely. It also makes one question what will happen when we get to the end of the Road. When Wanda was faced with the reality of what she was really doing with the hex, it was devastating. If we get to the end of the Road and realize this was all Billy’s creation, it could be devastating for him as well and there’s no way of knowing how he would react to that. It could also, however, work into another theory that we’ve floated previously about Agatha All Along being a redemption story for the titular witch. If it turns out that this Road really is a hex that Billy has created, Agatha has an opportunity to do the right thing and help guide Billy, rather than antagonize her the way she did Wanda. It opens up a chance for Agatha to be better, which could end up being where this whole path has been headed the whole time.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along’s Latest Episode Hits 4.2 Million Views In Just One Day https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-episode-7-one-day-views-4-million-mcu/ Mon, 28 Oct 2024 13:22:31 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1192696 Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Viewership numbers for Agatha All Along are trending upward ahead of the series finale. Episdoe 7 of Agatha All Along debuted last week, and it focused on Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu. William/Billy/Wiccan and Agatha are getting closer and closer to completing the Witches’ Road, setting up an extra-sized two-episode finale this Wednesday. Marvel fans have […]

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Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Viewership numbers for Agatha All Along are trending upward ahead of the series finale. Episdoe 7 of Agatha All Along debuted last week, and it focused on Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu. William/Billy/Wiccan and Agatha are getting closer and closer to completing the Witches’ Road, setting up an extra-sized two-episode finale this Wednesday. Marvel fans have been enjoying every step of the way in Agatha All Along, and the global views for Episode 7 came up as 4.2 million in its first 24 hours. In comparison, the 4.2 million views is up 35% from Agatha All Along‘s two-episode premiere.

The only other available viewership numbers for Agatha All Along were for the first episode, which had 9.3 million views in seven days. Streamers are typically tight-lipped on revealing viewership numbers for their shows, and only announce things when they are favorable for them. Since Disney is providing views for Agatha All Along‘s latest episode, that should be seen as a positive sign heading into the finale. Just like the premiere, Agatha All Along will conclude with two episodes on Wednesday, October 30th, just in time for Halloween.

What can fans expect out of the Agatha All Along finale?

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image credit: marvel studios

There is a lot of anticipation heading into the season finale of Agatha All Along. Fan have been reunited with Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness, the breakout character from WandaVision. There was also the mystery of who Joe Locke was playing, with speculation pointing to Scarlet Witch’s son, Wiccan. That turned out to be correct, but there have been several more twists and turns in Agatha All Along.

For example, take Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal. Her character was a mystery to the audience as well, and the only things we know was that Rio and Agatha shared some kind of history. Before Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu sacrificed herself to stop the Salem Seven, Lilia uncovered that Rio is the living embodiment of Death. What that means for Agatha and Wiccan as they try to complete the Witches’ Road remains to be seen.

There is also the hope that Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, makes some kind of appearance in the Agatha All Along finale. Fans saw Wanda die in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Agatha All Along referenced Scarlet Witch’s death several times. However, Agatha also left some doubt to the accuracy of her death, and as we all know about comic book deaths, if you don’t see the body, it’s not confirmed.

The two-episode finale of Agatha All Along will be available to stream Wednesday, October 31st on Disney+.

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Paul Bettany Offers Major Update About Vision Series (And Reveals Why He’s Watching Agatha All Along) https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/marvel-paul-bettany-vision-series-production-agatha-all-along/ Sun, 27 Oct 2024 02:22:23 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1192267 vision-quest-showrunner-kevin-feige.jpg

Marvel’s Vision series isn’t set to arrive on Disney+ until 2026, but star Paul Bettany just revealed a major update on the eagerly anticipated series. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Bettany revealed that the series is expected to begin production next year and he’s excited about it, but he also revealed that he’s been keeping […]

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Marvel’s Vision series isn’t set to arrive on Disney+ until 2026, but star Paul Bettany just revealed a major update on the eagerly anticipated series. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Bettany revealed that the series is expected to begin production next year and he’s excited about it, but he also revealed that he’s been keeping up with WandaVision spinoff series Agatha All Along — there’s so much for him to “learn” as he heads into making the Vision series.

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“I love it. I love it and I’m so proud of [showrunner] Jac Schaeffer and I am going to watch again because there’s so much for me to learn moving forward into my contribution,” Bettany said when asked about Agatha All Along.

Marvel’s Vision series — which has also been referred to as Vision Quest, though it does not yet have an official title — will be the second spinoff of WandaVision. The series will follow from the events of WandaVision which saw Vision’s white robotic body going off on a search for identity. When the series was first announced, Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer was listed as the showrunner for the series, but it was reported earlier this year that Terry Matalas was instead taking on the role. Schaeffer confirmed to ComicBook in September that she is no longer involved with the Vision series — but she’s rooting for it.

“I’m not,” Schaeffer confirmed. “I so wish them well. Paul’s a dear friend and he’s an extraordinary person. He owns this character, so I’m not involved, but I’m entirely rooting for it.”

Outside of Schaeffer confirming that she’s not involved with the series, we don’t have a ton of details about the Vision series. It has been confirmed that James Spader will return as Ultron. The actor previously gave voice to the villain in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The series also recently added Star Trek: Picard and 12 Monkeys star Todd Stashwick as “an assassin who is on the trail of [the titular] android and the technology he possesses.

How Will Agatha All Along Influence the Vision Series?

With there being no concrete details about Vision just yet, it’s unclear how much of an influence Agatha All Along will have on the series. Bettany’s comments about rewatching Agatha All Along could very easily be more a reference to some of the series’ major revelations — namely that Billy lives — rather than any direct plot throughline. That said, given that it is possible that the Vision series will draw from Marvel’s Vision Quest storyline from West Coast Avengers comics in the 1980s, and the possibility that Agatha All Along could see a return of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch — one of the biggest theories about the series is that Wanda will return, somehow, by series’ end — there are any number of ways for Agatha All Along, WandaVision, and the upcoming Vision series to connect.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET. Marvel’s untitled Vision series is currently expected to arrive sometime in 2026.

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Agatha All Along: Did This Week’s Tragic Death Bring Back a Major MCU Character? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-lilia-tarot-tower-upright-scarlet-witch-wanda-return/ Sat, 26 Oct 2024 23:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1112748 Image Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Agatha All Along continues to get more eventful each and every week, taking the Coven deeper down the Witches’ Road and causing Marvel fans to dust off their tin foil hats. The show’s seventh episode, which aired on Disney+ this week, continues that trend, delivering a couple of massive moments that could easily have a […]

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Image Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Agatha All Along continues to get more eventful each and every week, taking the Coven deeper down the Witches’ Road and causing Marvel fans to dust off their tin foil hats. The show’s seventh episode, which aired on Disney+ this week, continues that trend, delivering a couple of massive moments that could easily have a major impact on the MCU down the line. One of those involved the long-awaited arrival of Death. The other, while not any kind of actual confirmation or reveal, planted the seeds for a potential return of the Scarlet Witch herself.

WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Agatha All Along! Continue reading at your own risk..

At the beginning of the new Agatha All Along episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” Agatha and Billy actually talk directly about the fate of his mother, Wanda Maximoff (who seemingly died in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). Billy asks Agatha point-blank if his mom actually died. She plays coy, giving him multiple different answers in a row, alluding to the fact that Wanda’s demise may not have been quite as final as we thought. Now put a pin in this conversation — we’ll come back to it later.

The climax of the episode sees Lilia performing a high-stakes tarot card reading for Billy as one of the Coven’s trials. With the Salem’s Seven hot on their tails – and the trial itself an issue as she realizes the reading she needs to do is not for Billy but herself – she completes the reading and pushes everyone else through the door to the next trial, taking on their hunters alone. As the Seven close in, Lilia flips the Tower card upright, causing the entire room to turn upside-down. Both Lilia and the Seven fall to their deaths, impaled by the swords on the ceiling.

That one card could have done more than just killed Lilia and the Seven, however. There’s a theory floating around with Marvel fans online that the Tower in the upright position may have flipped the fortunes of those in that room, as well as Wanda Maximoff.

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Think back to when William (the teenager whose body Billy inhabits) was at his Bar Mitzvah and Lilia performed his reading. She pulled the Tower card in a reversed position, which represents crisis on the horizon. He left that reading and was in a car accident that killed him (though Billy quickly inhabited his body). The Tower was again played in reverse during Billy’s reading in the trial.

While a Tower reversed represents chaos and imminent crisis, a Tower upright represents enormous, seismic change. It’s an upheaval, as seen literally by the immediate gravity change that killed the Seven. It was a change of fortune for everyone involved. Is there a chance Wanda is among those affected?

The mountain where Wanda met her doom in Multiverse of Madness isn’t all that dissimilar from the Tower on the tarot cards. Obviously not the same thing, but structurally they’re not too far from one another. There’s also the fact that this all ties into Billy’s story. The initial reading was for him, and the turning of that card seems to represent some upheaval, a massive change for him on the horizon. Yes, that could literally just be about the Salem Seven that are killed while trying to find him and Agatha. It could also have something to do with the family he lost.

Remember that pin in the conversation a few paragraphs ago? This is the most direct conversation about Wanda we’ve seen on Agatha All Along to this point, and it’s all about her fate. Agatha makes it clear that the events of her death are up in the air. Perhaps she was still breathing beneath the rubble inside the mountain, waiting for the Tower to flip upright.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes arriving Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along Showrunner Has Bad News About Those Coven Deaths https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-showrunner-death-permanent-mcu/ Fri, 25 Oct 2024 21:40:45 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1112972

From the outset of Agatha All Along, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven knew that walking The Witches’ Road was a dangerous undertaking and that has certainly proven to be true. Over the series’ first seven episodes, three members of the coven have met their end — Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) in Episode […]

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From the outset of Agatha All Along, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven knew that walking The Witches’ Road was a dangerous undertaking and that has certainly proven to be true. Over the series’ first seven episodes, three members of the coven have met their end — Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) in Episode 3, Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) in Episode 5, and perhaps most heartbreakingly, Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) in this week’s Episode 7. Given that the road is associated with magic and it would seem that with magic anything is possible, fans have been holding onto hope that perhaps the deaths on the Road weren’t permanent. However, according to Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer, that is not the case. Speaking with Variety, Schaeffer confirmed that the deaths are not only real, but they’re permanent and they have meaning.

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“What I want to say is that this is a show about death,’ Schaeffer said when asked if Lilia, Alice, and Mrs. Hart were really dead. “We actually have the character of Death in our show. I am interested in that conversation, and I am fascinated by how death is used in the comic space and in the MCU. Personally, I feel that when a person dies, you can still talk to them and feel them, and they can still be in your lives. But death is immutable. It is permanent. With this show, we wanted to pay respect to that. So, this is a more earnest and grave conversation about death than maybe you would find in another superhero project.”

Schaeffer’s comments also apply to The Salem Seven. This week’s episode saw Lilia in a moment of both acceptance and heroism save the coven by staying behind after the completion of the tarot trial to face the terrifying antagonists, meeting her own end as she sent them to theirs.

“Yeah, the Salem Seven are dead,” Schaeffer said. “They’re off the board in our show, is what I will say. Lilia has saved everybody!”

What Do Those Agatha All Along Deaths Mean For the Scarlet Witch’s Fate?

It goes without question that the idea that the deaths in Agatha All Along are real and permanent brings an additional layer of gravity to not only the story being told in the series, but also to the overall MCU — which perhaps unintentionally has in many ways served as an exploration of grief in Phase 4 — but it also may have some implications for another fan theory: that Scarlet Witch either somehow survived the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or that Agatha All Along will “undo” her death. Fans have been hopeful for some time that Wanda Maximoff’s story isn’t over and have even hoped that Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda could appear in Agatha All Along and while Episode 7 did leave the character’s fate a bit ambiguous, if she is indeed dead, Schaeffer’s comments suggest that she would remain that way.

That said, there is still the perception of reality to take into consideration. While Schaeffer says that death is immutable, Episode 7 also sees Lilia make the comment that “the flow of time is an illusion… most people don’t realize that.” if time is not linear, as Lilia is suggesting, then it is possible that we could still see various characters again, including Wanda. More than that, however, is the overall idea as Schaeffer noted that even those who are gone are not really “gone” — which feels very witchy and magical all on its own.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. The series concludes with a two-episode finale on Wednesday, October 30th at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along: All the Clues About Marvel’s Death https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-rio-is-death-explained-original-green-witch-death-mcu/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:45:06 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1112387 The Green Witch's (Aubrey Plaza) true identity revealed: Rio is Death in the MCU
The Green Witch's (Aubrey Plaza) true identity revealed: Rio is Death in the MCU

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Agatha All Along episode 7. Agatha was courting Death all along. Wednesday’s episode of Agatha All Along, titled “Death’s Hand in Mine,” revealed the true identity of the original Green Witch: Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is Death herself. “In the end, all roads lead to me,” she said in […]

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The Green Witch's (Aubrey Plaza) true identity revealed: Rio is Death in the MCU
The Green Witch's (Aubrey Plaza) true identity revealed: Rio is Death in the MCU

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Agatha All Along episode 7. Agatha was courting Death all along. Wednesday’s episode of Agatha All Along, titled “Death’s Hand in Mine,” revealed the true identity of the original Green Witch: Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is Death herself. “In the end, all roads lead to me,” she said in the episode, which ended with the death of the divination witch Lilia (Patti LuPone) as she sacrificed herself to save what remains of the coven — Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), future High Priestess Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), and Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), the Wiccan son of the Scarlet Witch — from the revenge-seeking Salem Seven.

Here are all the clues that Rio was Death all along.

Seekest Thou the Road

In episode 1, “Rio” attacked Agatha at her home in Westview, telling her, “Since you acquired the Darkhold, you hid behind all that dark magic, but then you lost it,” which happened in WandaVision. After the death of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) — who died destroying all versions of the Book of the Damned across the multiverse in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Agatha was freed from the spell that trapped her in the New Jersey neighborhood without her powers.

Although Agatha was physically vulnerable for the first time in centuries, Rio couldn’t kill her. “It’s not allowed,” Agatha told the black-clad witch. “Maybe I can’t kill you,” Rio replied, “but I can make you wish you were dead.” She dared Agatha to steal her power, but doing so would kill Agatha, so she convinced Rio to wait until she gets “her purple” back.

(L-R): Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL.

“After all these centuries, Agatha Harkness will finally meet her end,” Rio told her. “It really warms the heart.” When Agatha countered that Rio doesn’t have a heart, she said: “Yes, I do. It’s black, and it beats for you.” (A black heart also appeared on WandaVision to mark a date with Mr. and Mrs. Hart, but there was speculation that Rio’s “black heart” was a reference to the character Blackheart — one of the children of the demon Mephisto.)

Rio sent the Salem Seven after Agatha, who escaped down the Witches’ Road with the sigil-cast “Teen,” Jennifer, Lilia, protection witch Alice Wu (Ali Ahn), and “Mrs. Hart,” a.k.a. Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp). If she survives the trials on the Witches’ Road, she’ll claim her prize at the end: the return of her powers stolen from her by the Scarlet Witch.

Circle Sewn with Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate

After Agatha assembled a collection of “witchy-enough people” to form the coven needed to open the door to the Witches’ Road, they sang “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.” The Ballad includes the lyric: “I hold Death’s hand in mine…” Death, capitalized, referring to the personification of Death herself.

The Ballad also required a Green Witch — “Wake thy power, earthly and divine” — as “Earth magic is arguably the most important skill set for an attempt at The Road.”

The “black heart” (scribbled in black ink, Agatha noted) was referenced again, this time before the covenless witches recruited Sharon, a.k.a. Mrs. Hart from Wanda’s Hex.

Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials

Episode 7 revealed that Lilia’s powers of divination caused her to experience her life out of sequence. In episode 3, she said “…try to save Agatha,” an unfinished thought that seems random but happened out of sequence. While potions witch Jennifer was able to conjure up a concoction that saved the poisoned coven during their first trial, the antidote came too late to save Sharon: the episode ended with the realization that Sharon was dead.

If I Can’t Reach You, Let My Song Teach You

With Sharon’s death, the coven was incomplete. Agatha thought the Ballad’s lyrics were “Burn and brew, with coven two, and glory shall be thine,” but the actual lyrics are: “With coven true, glory shall be thine.” Agatha insisted that she would need just a coven of two to make it to the end of the Witches’ Road, but it was determined the coven needed their Green Witch.

With “Teen’s” spellbook, they summoned a replacement Green Witch who is “strong and wise, and the best at her craft.” Like a zombie clawing out of the grave, the Green Witch who emerged from the earth was Rio. She told the coven she’s “less ‘a’ Green Witch,” and, in a demonic voice, added she’s “the Green Witch.”

Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL.

Lilia had another vision and blurted out: “Alice, don’t.” Neither Lilia or Alice understood what that meant, as the sentence was out of sequence and wouldn’t be put together until later: “Alice, don’t… try to save Agatha.”

In episode 4, there was an exchange between Agatha and Rio about Rio appearing on the Road too early. “Magick, as it does, took the path of least resistance, ferried the closest, most appropriate candidate down. Or up.”

Agatha suggested a truce so that the witches could get her to the end of the Witches’ Road. “I get the pleasure of watching you do what you do best. Kill all the witches around you, one by one,” Rio said. “You get your power, and I get my bodies.”

Later, after Teen was burned by a curse during a ’70s-themed jam session, he began to bleed out. Agatha looked to Rio and said: “Don’t. Don’t.” Lilia, chanting in Latin, then said in English, “Three of Swords.” Jen’s potions healed Teen — but only because Death didn’t take Billy.

(L-R) Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Teen (Joe Locke), Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 MARVEL.

Rio told the coven that she had her own scar. Not from something, but someone. “A long time ago, I loved someone,” Rio said. “And I had to do something that I did not wanna do, even though it was my job. And it hurt them. She is my scar.” As Death, she may have had something to do with the death of Agatha’s young son, Nicholas Scratch, explaining the animosity between the former lovers.

The scene climaxed in an almost-kiss between Agatha and Rio, who told Agatha about Teen: “That boy isn’t yours.”

Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power

During Agatha’s trial in episode 5, the Salem Seven chased the coven to an ’80s slasher-style cabin in the woods. As they prepared to use a Ouija board, one of the rules was “do not ask about death.” But when the coven used the Ouija board, it spelled out “D-E-A-T-H,” and they summoned Agatha’s mother, Evanora Harkness of the Salemites, the coven Agatha killed back in 1693 (as seen on WandaVision).

Evanora’s spirit was there to “punish” Agatha with the Salem Seven, but then another spirit communicated: Nicholas. The episode ended with Alice’s death and the revelation that “Teen” is the son of the Scarlet Witch when his magic powers suddenly manifested.

“Death comes for us all,” Lilia said, repeating a line from her visions.

Familiar by Thy Side

Flashbacks revealed that Lilia cast the sigil on “Teen,” who was Westview teenager William Kaplan. But when he died during a car accident just as the Scarlet Witch removed her Hex over Westview (in the WandaVision series finale), the soul of Wanda’s son, Billy Maximoff (Julian Hilliard), inhabited William’s now-vacant body. (The car accident was referenced in the first episode, when Agatha was acting as decorated “Detective Agnes O’Connor.”)

Billy-William then broke Wanda’s spell on Agatha, setting them down, down, down the Witches’ Road, with Agatha after her powers and Billy hoping to find his twin brother, Tommy.

Death’s Hand in Mine

During Lilia’s Tarot trial, Agatha and Billy had Lilia divine the meaning of Tarot cards. The cards represented:

Jennifer: “The Path Ahead.” High Priestess, “immense spiritual power, unable or unwilling to use it.”
Billy: “The Tower reversed.” “Disaster, destruction, sudden upheaval — but reversed, it means miraculous transformation.”
Agatha: “Three of Swords.” “Heartbreak, sorrow, grief.”

As Lilia reached “The Destination,” she saw Rio, her face a skull, asking: “Don’t you recognize me?” As she predicted, “Death comes for us all.” Only then did Lilia realize Rio is Death, the original Green Witch. And Agatha knew all along.

See our guide to all the clues that Teen was Wiccan all along, Agatha Harkness’ history with the Salem Seven, and Wiccan and the Scarlet Witch’s connection to Mephisto in the comics. The two-episode Agatha All Along finale premieres Wednesday, Oct. 30, on Disney+.



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Did Agatha All Along Confirm Scarlet Witch Is Alive? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-scarlet-witch-alive-dead-speculation/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:51:55 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1112227 Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Perhaps the biggest question coming out of the latest Agatha All Along episode is whether or not the Scarlet Witch is dead or alive. Agatha All Along is a spinoff of WandaVision featuring Kathryn Hahn in the title role, as well as the return of Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy, aka the hero Wiccan. As fun […]

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Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Perhaps the biggest question coming out of the latest Agatha All Along episode is whether or not the Scarlet Witch is dead or alive. Agatha All Along is a spinoff of WandaVision featuring Kathryn Hahn in the title role, as well as the return of Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy, aka the hero Wiccan. As fun as following their journey down the Witches’ Road has been, Scarlet Witch is the big elephant in the room for dedicated Marvel fans. We all watched Scarlet Witch “die” in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but if there’s one thing comics has taught us, it that unless you see a body, it’s only a matter of time until a character is resurrected.

Agatha All Along has continuously brought up the subject of Scarlet Witch and whether she’s alive, but this week’s episode comes to closest to actually providing an answer. Agatha and Wiccan even have a nice talk about mother dearest, and it appears Wiccan doesn’t have such warm feelings about Scarlet Witch like her dedicated fanbase does. This is understandable since Wanda Maximoff is Billy’s mother. William, the body Billy is inhabiting, had a whole family and life before he got tangled up in the Scarlet Witch’s Westview affairs. So is Scarlet Witch alive? Is she dead? Let’s investigate, shall we.

*WARNING: Spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 7 “Death’s Hand In Mine” are below.

image credit: marvel studios

Early on in the new Agatha All Along episode we follow Agatha and Billy/William/Wiccan as they walk the Witches’ Road. Billy is trying to read Agatha’s mind, but after he’s unsuccessful he just asks his questions out loud. The first question is about Rio, which Agatha sidesteps. We learn later on that Rio is the manifestation of Death. After Agatha teases Billy about being his mom’s former ex-best friend, he responds that Scarlet Witch isn’t his mom.

“Is Wanda Maximoff really dead?” Billy asks Agatha. “Yes. No. Maybe,” Agatha teases. When Billy asks if she saw a body, Agatha reveals that she did. Though when asked if anybody else saw the body, Agatha claims it’s hard to say.

Scarlet Witch may still be out there alive

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image credit: marvel studios

Since Agatha claims she saw Scarlet Witch’s corpse, this means Wanda must have been the dead body Agatha was investigating in the premiere of Agatha All Along. We know the body was crushed and the woman had black fingertips, which match Scarlet Witch being crushed under Wundagore Mountain after using the Darkhold magic to reunite with her kids in the multiverse. Plus, the autopsy card in the morgue was magically filled in with “W. Maximoff.”

The reason Agatha questions if anyone else saw the body is because she was still under the Scarlet Witch spell from the end of WandaVision. Agatha became a member of the Westview police force, so her fellow officers that responded to the dead body report would have also seen the identity of the woman found dead. Rio was also with Agatha in the morgue, but as we learned, her true identity is Death, so she wouldn’t count.

It’s been fun to pick through the breadcrumbs of clues Agatha All Along has dropped regarding Scarlet Witch. Billy’s main goal for completing the Witches’ Road is to find his twin brother Tommy, but another outcome could be a reunion with his mom. Scarlet Witch will always have a connection with both Billy and Agatha, so it’s only a matter of time until we see them all reunited once again.

Do you think Scarlet Witch is still alive? Let us know your thoughts on social media @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along: Marvel’s Death, Explained https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/marvel-death-explained-agatha-all-along-aubrey-plaza/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:38:19 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=1112265

Agatha All Along checked off another big fan theory in Episode 7 “Death’s Hand in Mine” (SPOILERS!) by revealing that Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) is Death itself! Like the reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is the reincarnated Billy Maximoff, Plaza as Death is a “surprise” that many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans saw coming early on. […]

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Agatha All Along checked off another big fan theory in Episode 7 “Death’s Hand in Mine” (SPOILERS!) by revealing that Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) is Death itself! Like the reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is the reincarnated Billy Maximoff, Plaza as Death is a “surprise” that many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans saw coming early on. If the casting alone didn’t spark theories, the many breadcrumbs that Agatha All Along dropped along the Witch’s road certainly seemed to lead that way.

So now that we know Rio Vidal is the MCU’s personification of Death, let’s break down the character’s history and role in the Marvel Universe.

Marvel’s Death, Explained

Marvel Comics’ “Death” was co-created by Jim Starlin and Mike Friedrich and first appeared in Captain Marvel #26 in 1973. She is personified as a cosmic being that can take on a myriad of physical forms and appearances, but most often appears as a cloaked woman or skeletal head on a female body. She has infinite knowledge, power over time and reality, and can take or restore life at her whim; as an abstract entity, she cannot be “killed” or harmed in any traditional sense. In the Marvel Cosmic hierarchy, Death is the sister of Eternity (who MCU fans met in Thor: Love & Thunder) and helps form the natural balance of life and death.

In Marvel lore, Death is most often remembered as the would-be paramour of Thanos, who originally gathers the Infinity Stones into the Infinity Gauntlet to kill half the universe as a romantic gesture to Death. Through years of expanded Marvel lore and retcons of canon, it’s been established that Death had a fascination with Thanos since he was a boy and often appeared at key points in his life to steer him toward conquest and murder.

Death has been present (as a witness and/or influencer) at several key cosmic events in the Marvel Universe, like the first Infinity Gauntlet War and Annihilation War. At one point Death tried to “retire” in a mortal form with no memory of her cosmic power; a resurrected Thanos tracked her and restored her memories, but when she rejected him, he trapped her inside a new Infinity Stone, the Death Stone, where Death tried to still resist his whims.

Agatha All Along has introduced Death, and will reveal her ties to Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), but it will be interesting to see if Marvel Studios expands Aubrey Plaza’s role from there – even revealing she was really behind the Infinity War with Thanos, all along.

Agatha All Along is streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along’s Showrunner Always Knew They’d Bring Back Ralph Bohner https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-alongs-showrunner-always-knew-theyd-bring-back-ralph-bohner/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:03:35 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=960919

In a hilarious twist, last week’s episode of Agatha All Along saw the return of one of the most controversial characters in MCU history when Evan Peters reprised his role as Ralph Bohner from WandaVision, but as it turns out Peters’ cameo and Ralph’ return was something that was planned from the start. During an […]

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In a hilarious twist, last week’s episode of Agatha All Along saw the return of one of the most controversial characters in MCU history when Evan Peters reprised his role as Ralph Bohner from WandaVision, but as it turns out Peters’ cameo and Ralph’ return was something that was planned from the start. During an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer said that Peters returning was something she knew the show would do from the start, but figuring out exactly which episode took a little bit longer but followed a similar rhythm as WandaVision.

So, I always knew that, you know, once it was an Agatha show and it was gonna be a spinoff and we were gonna return to Westview, I mean, even before that I was like, ‘If it’s Agatha, there will be songs, there will be costumes, there will be Evan Peters,’” Schaeffer said “That was kind of the thing because I love working with him so much and because I thought it was hilarious and we also always had more to his story and still have more to his story, so that was just fun. The fact that he became the kind of the exposition dump, I knew that I wanted to do, in WandaVision episode four is what we call The Rewind where we’re like, we’re in a sitcom and then, ‘Hey, just kidding.'”

evan peters as ralph bohner

“So, I knew I wanted to do that again because that was just way too much fun and the sort of delight in revisiting what you’ve already seen from a new perspective, I love that kind of non-linear double narrative,” Schaeffer said. “It’s so thrilling to me, so I knew that we were gonna do that and I think kind of quickly, I think we settled on it being six because we knew the pilot would be the misdirect Mare of Easttown. Kind of its own bubble, and then episode two would be the pilot proper. That would actually be the table setting of the show, and then in my sort of internal rhythm, I felt you needed 1, 2, 3 trials before you pull the rug, which similar to WandaVision, you get 1, 2, 3 sitcoms and then you pull the rug. It’s just rule of threes, so then I can’t remember. I wish I could credit one of my writers. I can’t, maybe it was me. I don’t remember how we came up with it that he would be like the avatar of the backstory and we’re geniuses for doing it that way because Evan is one of those rare performers who can deliver on what would be boring exposition and make it like wildly entertaining and also live the real drama of it. He’s truly traumatized, but also make it funny, like it’s so specific, and he brought so much to the table. He came up with so many ideas. The witch spray was him. That weird, creepy rattle was him and he was, you know, I mean, he was there for a day. I barely saw him ’cause it just was so fast and he was very in character, but the fans seemed to have really enjoyed it and it’s a secret that we managed to protect so that also felt like a real victory.”

Peters’ first MCU appearance was initially one that fans were excited about as Peters had portrayed Wanda’s brother, Pietro/Quicksilver in the Fox Marvel universe so his appearance as Pietro in WandaVision appeared to bring the Fox X-Men into the MCU. However, that was quickly revealed not to be true when it turned out that Evans’ “Pietro” was actually just an actor named Ralph Bohner that Agatha had forced into things. It was a shocking twist at the time, but it also upset fans because it felt like they’d had the rug pulled out from under them, leading to Ralph Bohner arguably becoming the most hated character in the MCU. However, bringing him back on Agatha All Along offered fans a little bit of redemption for the character. This time when we see him, not only do we get to see how what Agatha did has impacted him, but he also helps inadvertently send Billy on his path to finding Agatha in the first place — and thus sending him on The Witches’ Road.

The appearance ultimately served as a nice little addendum to WandaVision and the secondary characters impacted by not Wanda’s hex but Agatha’s actions. It’s that little bit of perspective that helps ground the viewer in the fact that Agatha, while central to this current story, isn’t exactly the good guy — and Ralph does remind us of Agatha’s misdeeds towards him and even that she stole his entire life, including his Blu-ray collection.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along Just Took Out a Major Threat (But Things Are About to Get Worse For the Coven) https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-episode-7-the-salem-seven-death-spoilers/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:32:31 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=959494

As Agatha Harkness and her impromptu coven have walked The Witches Road in Agatha All Along, they’ve faced a variety of threats including their own infighting, the Road itself, the various trials, and their own pasts as well. But this week’s episode, “Death’s. Hand in Mine” saw one major threat to the group eliminated entirely […]

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As Agatha Harkness and her impromptu coven have walked The Witches Road in Agatha All Along, they’ve faced a variety of threats including their own infighting, the Road itself, the various trials, and their own pasts as well. But this week’s episode, “Death’s. Hand in Mine” saw one major threat to the group eliminated entirely — but no one should relax just yet. Even with The Salem Seven off the board, things could get worse for the coven thanks the episode’s big reveal. Warning: spoilers for Episode 7 of Agatha All Along beyond this point.

In the episode, it’s revealed that Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) and Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) both survived being thrown off the road by Billy (Joe Locke) but were somewhere beneath it. While they were sorting things out — and as Lilia was starting to sort out the gaps in her memory and experiences and come to terms with her own reasons for being on the Road — the Salem Seven show up, still in pursuit of Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and presumably the rest of the coven. While Lilia and Jen are able to get to Agatha and Billy and complete the trial, that’s not where things end. The trial ends up being Lilia’s trial, one that sees her come to terms with her own powers and her own journey, specifically that she is at the end of her life. With the Salem Seven approaching again, Lilia ushers the rest of the witches out the exit and then stays behind herself, flipping things upside down (literally). It’s an action that causes the Salem Seven to “fall” to their deaths by impalement on swords protruding from the trial’s ceiling. The threat the group poses is ended — but Lilia also dies in the process, having accepted her end.

RIP The Salem Seven

Early in the season, Agatha All Along established The Salem Seven as a threat. The series premiere saw Rio (Aubrey Plaza) mention the group as coming for Agatha and the second episode of the series actually revealed the black-clad villains standing, with the cloaked witches attacking the coven before they were able to quickly escape them by embarking on The Witches’ Road. However, the Road wasn’t protection from the Salem Seven, as the summoning of Rio to the coven following the death of Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) left a door open for them to make it to the Road as well where a chase sequence ensued. One would think that the death of the Salem Seven would mean that at least that threat to the coven was taken off the board, but no one should get comfortable yet. While the Salem Seven is gone, we now know that Rio is actually Death and it’s already been established that Rio has it out for Agatha as well.  One could even suggest that the Salem Seven were working at Rio’s behest, either coming after Agatha directly on command or just there to help increase the body count more generally. After all, one of the things we heard Rio mention in the third episode “you get my power and I get my bodies” to Agatha.

If body count is what Rio is going for, she’s already gotten two with Sharon and Alice previously, a third with Lilia this week, and then the Seven, but it’s possible that there is more to what Rio wants or is going to do than just this. One of the other things that happens in this week’s episode is Billy asks Agatha if Wanda Maximoff is really dead and Agatha can’t really give him a firm answer. Given that one of Death’s powers in comics is that Death can both kill and resurrect, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Rio could bring Wanda back (assuming she’s dead at all…) Given Wanda’s history of Agatha, that could be setting the stage for an even bigger confrontation, or even a twist that no one sees coming. Whatever it all means, it will all come to a head next week with the final two episodes of the series.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes drop Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along Reveals Rio’s Identity With a Heartbreaking Twist https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-episode-7-rio-death-reveal-lilia-spoilers/ Thu, 24 Oct 2024 02:03:59 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=959472 agatha-all-along-aubrey-plaza.jpg

Even before Agatha All Along debuted on Disney+, one of the show’s major mysteries has been centered around Aubrey Plaza’s character Rio Vidal. While the other witches making up Agatha Harkness’ rag-tag coven traversing The Witches’ Road are taken from the pages of Marvel Comics, Rio didn’t appear to have any particular character correlation — […]

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Even before Agatha All Along debuted on Disney+, one of the show’s major mysteries has been centered around Aubrey Plaza’s character Rio Vidal. While the other witches making up Agatha Harkness’ rag-tag coven traversing The Witches’ Road are taken from the pages of Marvel Comics, Rio didn’t appear to have any particular character correlation — until now. This week’s episode of the Marvel series finally revealed Rio’s real identity, but that revelation came with a heartbreaking twist as one of the witches fulfilled her destiny and found her full power at last. Warning: spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 7 beyond this point.

This week’s episode pretty much gives away Rio’s identity in its very title: “Death’s Hand in Mine” which means if you guessed that Rio Vidal was actually Death, then you should give yourself a pat on the back. Here’s how that reveal went down. The episode saw Agatha and Billy make their way to the next trial inside a medieval-looking castle where they are faced with a tarot-based trial. They soon realize that they have to do a reading and if they don’t get the reading correct, swords are going to fall from the ceiling and impale them or the blade-riddled ceiling is going to lower until they are killed. At the same time, we find that both Lilia and Jen are alive, just below the road. The episode then moves backwards and forward in a non-linear fashion as we learn about Lilia. Lilia reveals that time is an illusion and her entire life she’s experienced her life out of sequence — which explains her “battiness”. As she goes back and forth from her very first magic lesson as a child centuries before to the present, however, she comes to realize that not only is her real reason for being on the Road to reach her end, but that the end is part of the journey.

It’s in this revelation for Lilia that we get the big reveal about Rio. A lucid Lilia connects all of the little clues that have been laid through the series thus far and puts together that Rio is Death, the “original Green Witch”. We even get to see Rio, briefly, in her full regalia as Death as she tells Lilia that in the end all roads lead to her. But that reveal isn’t the only major moment in the episode. Now that we know Rio is Death, it is time for Death to come for Lilia. Jen and Lilia make it to Billy and Agatha and Lilia successfully does a reading for herself and completes the trial. The exit opens just as the Salem Seven shows up and Lilia hustles everyone out before telling them that she loved being a witch and closing the door. She stays behind. Alone with the Salem Seven, Lilia has one more card to play, as it were. When the terrifying group arrives, she reverses a card on the table — the Tower upright — and causes everything to flip. The Salem Seven are sent “falling” into the blades protruding from the ceiling where they are impaled and die. Lilia holds on as long as he can, but soon falls as well but she welcomes her end — and the next we see her, she’s back in Italy as a child, getting her magic lesson again.

While Lilia’s death is heartbreaking, there is something also beautiful to it. In a sense, for the divination witch this is her “completing” the road. She not only fully embraces her powers and herself, but she is able to light the way for Billy and the other witches still travelling and be reunited with her old coven and, one could argue that she’s not really “dead” as Lilia says the flow of time is an illusion. With that in mind, Lilia will always exist, just maybe somewhere else in the flow. As for that Rio reveal, well, now we know that Death walks the Road with the coven – and with just two episodes and the mystery of whether Wanda Maximoff survived still left to solve – things could get very interesting next week.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays.

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Agatha All Along: Is Wiccan’s Boyfriend Eddie Supposed to Be Hulkling? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-wiccan-eddie-boyfriend-hulkling-speculation/ Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:30:34 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=958339 Image Credit: Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics

Agatha All Along has already confirmed the existence of one Young Avenger, but is another hero hiding in plain sight? After learning that Joe Locke’s mysterious Teen is Wiccan, one of Scarlet Witch’s twins from WandaVision, we got an entire episode of Agatha All Along dedicated to his origin. Viewers followed William Kaplan’s journey as […]

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Image Credit: Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics

Agatha All Along has already confirmed the existence of one Young Avenger, but is another hero hiding in plain sight? After learning that Joe Locke’s mysterious Teen is Wiccan, one of Scarlet Witch’s twins from WandaVision, we got an entire episode of Agatha All Along dedicated to his origin. Viewers followed William Kaplan’s journey as he learned he was possessed by the spirit of Billy Maximoff, and along for the ride was his boyfriend Eddie. William/Billy and Eddie’s relationship has been adorable to watch, but it also raises questions about the other man in Wiccan’s life, Hulkling. Could Eddie and Hulkling be one and the same?

Wiccan and Hulkling are arguably the biggest queer relationship in the Marvel Universe. Their relationship evolved from dating to officially getting married, so you can understand why fans are curious to find out if Eddie actor Miles Gutierrez-Riley is Hulkling. There is some physical resemblance between Eddie and Hulkling, and Eddie is already a major part of Wiccan’s life, so in theory the speculation makes sense. But if you dive a little bit deeper, there are clues the Eddie/Hulkling fan casting may be off the mark.

All the signs Agatha All Along’s Eddie cannot be Hulkling

image credit: marvel studios

The first sign that Eddie can’t be Hulking in Agatha All Along has to do with Eddie’s name. Hulkling’s real name is Teddy Alman, which is obviously different from the name “Eddie.” It’s quite possible that Marvel Studios chose to change Hulkling’s name to Eddie, but why would the studio do that? You could argue that maybe Teddy and Tommy (Wiccan’s twin brother and the Young Avenger Speed) were too similar, and wanted to go a different route to not confuse fans. But the names Teddy and Tommy aren’t that similar, so it seems like a waste of time.

There also isn’t a precedent for Marvel changing the name of a prominent character like that. We’ve already been introduced to several future Young Avengers across a number of projects, and none of their names have been changed. You can argue that “Hulkling” is more important than “Eddie” to the Marvel fanbase, but that would still be a significant change to the Hulkling character.

Something else we’re factoring into our observation is how vocal Miles Gutierrez-Riley has been on social media regarding Agatha All Along. He’s shared his excitement for the series premiering on the Agatha All Along red carpet premiere, along with posting about the Disney+ series on social media. While Gutierrez-Riley has been careful not to spoil any details or break his NDA, we’re going to say that if he was playing Hulkling, he’d probably keep a lower profile to make the reveal all the more shocking.

Wiccan and Hulkling’s relationship may mirror a Marvel Netflix series

image credit: netflix

So we know Wiccan and Hulkling wind up together in the comics, but what if the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes a different route with the characters? Fans may eventually meet Hulkling, but he could start his MCU career as an ally and not a boyfriend of Wiccan. We have an example of a Marvel couple not fulfilling their destiny of winding up together, and it happened on Netflix.

Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are married with a daughter named Danielle in the Marvel Universe, but they were definitely not a couple on Netflix. The two heroes hooked up in the first season of Jessica Jones, causing fans to wonder how long it would be before they became an official item. However, their romance quickly fizzled and Luke Cage ended up in a relationship with Claire Temple. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones fought together in The Defenders, but their connection never matched the heights its reached in the comics.

All of this is to say that it’s possible for Wiccan and Hulkling to be a part of the Young Avengers, but not wind up in a serious relationship. Perhaps Wiccan and Eddie are destined to last. Or, Marvel could look to establish Wiccan and Hulkling as their own individual characters, with them finding love between each other down the road.

What would be funny is if Eddie revealed his name isn’t Eddie at all, and that it’s Teddy, during one of the final three episodes of Agatha All Along. It would be a twist no one would see coming, except the legion of fans who have thought Eddie and Hulkling are the same all along.

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The Penguin & All Along Prove Superhero Franchises Are Driven By Actors, Not IP https://comicbook.com/dc/news/the-penguin-agatha-all-along-dc-marvel-best-actors-tv-shows/ Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:23:31 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=958009

It’s wild looking at the fall 2024 television season and seeing both Marvel and DC shows getting acclaim as they enter their respective back halves. HBO’s The Penguin is getting phrases like “best of the year,” and “Emmy contender” thrown around; meanwhile, Agatha All Along is the dark horse breakout that many Marvel Cinematic Universe […]

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It’s wild looking at the fall 2024 television season and seeing both Marvel and DC shows getting acclaim as they enter their respective back halves. HBO’s The Penguin is getting phrases like “best of the year,” and “Emmy contender” thrown around; meanwhile, Agatha All Along is the dark horse breakout that many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are pleasantly surprised to be enjoying so much. As the discourse about both series flows, there is one thing that is true about both of them, collectively: they are performance-driven shows, built on two very talented lead actors.

And with their respective levels of success and/or acclaim, Agatha All Along and The Penguin are proving that some new-age theories about entertainment are dead wrong, and the old ways are still true: franchises are built primarily on star power, not necessarily just the power of IP.

Colin Farrell & Cristin Milioti in “The Penguin”

Let’s just step back and look at this: The Penguin and Agatha All Along were initially met with overwhelming skepticism. The question of why either show needs to exist was asked often and repeatedly, with the only real answer being the strength of the performances of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb/Penguin in The Batman, and Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. That didn’t seem like enough to justify spinoff series for two minor characters – but both Penguin and Agatha have been wise to take those central performances as foundations, and build on them with entire ensembles of acting talent.

Penguin is giving Sofia Falcone actress Cristin Milioti the breakout she’s long deserved, and all but locking her for the Emmys next year; it’s also earning praise for Rhenzy Feliz, a young actor who has been trying to break through in projects like Marvel’s Runaways. Agatha All Along is both reminding fans that Aubrey Plaza is a top-tier talent while breaking in new Marvel franchise talent like actor Joe Locke – who is just now breaking out with the reveal that he’s Scarlet Witch’s son Billy Maximoff, the magical Young Avenger known as Wiccan. Those standout supporting actors are also bolstered by many talented veteran actors, with a list that includes the likes of Clancy Brown, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mark Strong, and Michael Kelly for Penguin, and Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata and Ali Ahn for Agatha All Along.

The buzz on both shows makes it undeniable that the individual performances and character interactions are taking precedence over any in-universe ties, crossovers, or cameos. Now granted: by the time Penguin and Agatha both come to an end, one or both shows may get the biggest signal boost from some kind of late-game crossover or game-changing reveal for the franchise. Yet it feels like Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Agtha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer (no dots to connect there…) are much more interested in focusing on complex and layered characters, created by actors who have the talent to deliver on them.

Kathryn Hahn & JOe Locke in “Agatha All Along”

Marvel Studios and DC Studios are hopefully taking note that the old star-driven franchise model isn’t yet as dead as many declared it to be. Loyalty to an actor and their performance as a character will get audiences to engage with even the most unlikely IP concepts. Farrell and Hahn’s now-proven ability to go from supporting roles to carrying shows also proves that no casting should be taken frivolously, as any breakout performance is potentially a new spinoff project of some kind. For the actors, it should be well-earned validation (and future leverage) that the craft is still a valuable commodity.

The Penguin airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max. Agatha All Along streams on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along: Marvel’s WandaVision Cameo Merch Is Something That Every MCU Fan Should Want https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-marvel-wandavision-ralph-bohner-shirt-mcu-merch/ Mon, 21 Oct 2024 01:36:09 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=957121 Ralph Bohner really came back.

Agatha All Along brought back a familiar face from WandaVision this week and should probably spawn a popular piece of Marvel merch. Episode 6 decided to give us Billy Maximoff’s extended backstory for everything that happened in WandaVision until now. In doing so, Joe Locke’s character enlisted the help of Evan Peters’ Ralph Bohner. Now, […]

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Ralph Bohner really came back.

Agatha All Along brought back a familiar face from WandaVision this week and should probably spawn a popular piece of Marvel merch. Episode 6 decided to give us Billy Maximoff’s extended backstory for everything that happened in WandaVision until now. In doing so, Joe Locke’s character enlisted the help of Evan Peters’ Ralph Bohner. Now, MCU fans of the Disney+ shows haven’t heard that name in a while. But, the Quicksilver actor cameoed again and relayed a lot of the Westview details to Billy and his boyfriend. He also told the kids that Agatha Harkness basically lured him in, took his house and ruined his life. The witch seems to have laid claim to all his stuff and that includes his wardrobe. Agatha’s shirt choice near the end of this episode stems from this otherwise innocuous comment. 

When Billy tries to break into Agatha’s house, he runs afoul of the WandaVision antagonist. She catches him trying to escape with her family amulet and then interrogates him. But, rather than the sleek TV procedural we saw these events through in Episode 1, it’s just in her living room. She’s got a toy water gun and Kathryn Hahn is wearing a Bohner Family Reunion t-shirt. (The shirt reads “pitch a tent” for good measure.) So, once that image made its way to social media, Marvel fans had a field day. They’re calling for the shirt to get tossed into production so they can own such a goofy suggestive statement on their chests. It makes sense, that AvengersCon gear moved after Ms. Marvel. Something similar could happen here too. The viewership numbers on Agatha All Along have been fantastic so far.

Agatha All Along: Marvel’s Wandavision Cameo Merch Is Something That Every MCU Fan Should Want

Bohner Family Reunion SHirt…perfection

The man responsible for this iconic shirt decided to bless us with the rationale behind this delightful costume choice. Daniel Selon Hopped on Instagram to share his thoughts about making this wild t-shirt. It turns out, the costume designer talked to Kathryn Hahn about the backstory for Bohner and that’s where the design of this delightful top came from. , throughout the run of Agatha All Along, we’ve seen the titular witch squatting in Westview at that familiar abode. This episode even mentions the fact that Bohner’s physical media collection got stolen by Agatha. ( if you pay attention to the scene where she tapes Billy up and throws him in the closet, those Blu-rays are hanging out in the background.) This is just another layer of laying it on thick that she took over this man’s house and wouldn’t let it go.

“Here’s an origin story for you: Kathryn brilliantly asked me, ‘where did Agatha’s clothes come from? If I’ve taken over Ralph Bohner‘s house, whose clothes am I wearing?’ So we decided that for the lucid version of the interrogation scene, we should see her wearing something that existed in Ralph’s closet,” Selon revealed. “I thought, he’s definitely a graphic t-shirt kind of dude and I bet there’s an old family reunion t-shirt in his dresser drawer. How about a camping theme? Jac and the writers brainstormed some jokes, my team sketched this graphic and here we are! Privately I wondered, are we really going to squeeze a boner joke into this dark and mysterious show about witches? Is this the best job ever? The answer to both questions was YES!”

Ralph Bohner Fits Into The Grand Marvel Tradition Of Tying Things Back In

Ralph really returned.

Of course there’s no such thing as an MCU title not tying back into the main story lines that have helped establish all of these different shows and movies. But, Agatha All Along is special in that regard because it decides to revisit an element from an older MCU show that was a bit divisive in its time. (Mostly because the audience worked themselves into thinking that major reveals were coming for the future of the MCU from WandaVision instead of it being a story about Scarlet Witch and Vision alone.) Moments like Avengers: Endgame having to revisit Thor: The Dark World come to mind. Fans might want to prepare themselves now for that moment in Avengers: Secret Wars when for some reason Secret Invasion plays a role in the wildness. Just like those moments, there’s always a measure of lemonade to be made from the varying fan opinions.
How did you feel about Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Marvel Fans Blame New Character for Doctor Strange 2 After Agatha All Along https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-wanda-scarlet-witch-marvel-mcu-doctor-strange-2-fault-lilia-calderu/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 18:37:02 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=957531 So many MCU ramifications.

Marvel fans are now blaming a new character for the carnage of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Agatha All Along Episode 6 revealed that Lilia Calderu was the one to put the sigil on Billy Maximoff and that opens up quite the can of worms for Scarlet Witch fans. On one hand, the […]

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So many MCU ramifications.

Marvel fans are now blaming a new character for the carnage of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Agatha All Along Episode 6 revealed that Lilia Calderu was the one to put the sigil on Billy Maximoff and that opens up quite the can of worms for Scarlet Witch fans. On one hand, the older witch was clearly trying to protect Joe Locke’s character from witches like Agatha Harkness. But, at the same time, she indirectly set all of that wildness after Wanda Maximoff got the Darkhold into motion with her little spell. Calderu couldn’t have dreamed that all of this would tumble down this way. And still, here we are with a dead Scarlet Witch and a young boy on a quest to reunite with his brother. (Oh yeah, and multiple casualties over in Earth-838!)

Wanda and Billy Maximoff.

Billy Maximoff just wanted to have his palm read, and this all led to him receiving that bad news from the divination witch. From there, she discovered his identity and placed a sigil on him so that no one could locate him and use his latent power for nefarious purposes. One problem, that means his mother wasn’t able to find him at the tail end of WandaVision. She took the Darkhold because of the loss of her family and desire to reunite with the boys. Who knows what happens if she discovers that a boy a few towns over somehow magically acquired Billy’s soul. (There’s also the lingering question of what happened to Tommy in all of this…) Still, maybe the Scarlet Witch doesn’t decimate that parallel Earth if she had been aware of her son.

Marvel Fans Blame New Character for Doctor Strange 2 After Agatha All Along

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Wanda was doing damage!

Wanda Maximoff’s characterization is a topic that still ignites an immediate firestorm online anytime it’s brought up. The Darkhold is corrupting influence and she simply wasn’t in the mental state to stave off its evil allure. But, after WandaVision, any attempt to make the Scarlet Witch a villain was going to ruffle some feathers. This reveal of Lilia Calderu as partially responsible for the domino effect fits right into these moments of characterization. Poor Wanda is just a passenger on this wild ride we’ve all gone on. For director Jac Schaeffer, it’s more complicated than all that. It’s both the reality of wielding such power and making the decision to employ special abilities. She told Deadline about that dance this week.

“Yeah. I mean, I think that these moments like Agatha siphoning Alice’s power, Wanda creating the hex, these moments of big power … I don’t like being like, ‘They have no control, and the power is controlling them,’ but I do think it’s always a discussion, and I think that’s what big feelings are, to me,” Schaeffer clarified. “The big power expressions are just metaphors for big feelings, so to answer your specific question about him blasting them off the Road, there will be more unpacking of that in later episodes.” 

“But what I do hope is clear from Episode 6, is that he does not have a handle on his power. From both the blasting to the telepathy, that is not something that he can actively control,” she adds of Billy. “He can’t, at this point, seem to actively control any part of it, which makes him the perfect person to be with Agatha. And also, it’s the scariest situation.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Still Falls On Wanda, But Fate Is At Play Too

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So many wheels are turning

Interestingly, Schaeffer’s read seems to indicate that this whole situation is caused by Wanda. She had a choice about the Darkhold and got seduced by its power. Our girl isn’t completely spotless here. However, the strings of fate are moving all the while. It feels like a previous iteration of Agatha All Along probably had someone pulling the strings, but those plans have probably changed! Mephisto fans should be excited by the prospect. But, it’s hard to tell for sure. However, none of that really undoes Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or the damage Wanda has caused in recent years. Maybe she’ll come back and we can see how Marvel addresses all this new information by the end of the show?

Do you feel like it’s really Lilia’s fault? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along: Where Is Tommy (And Could He Lead to the Young Avengers)? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-where-is-tommy-and-could-he-lead-to-the-young-avengers/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=957060

Over the two most recent episodes, Agatha All Along answered a bunch of major questions about the mysterious Teen played by Joe Locke, first by revealing in Episode 5 that Teen is actually Wanda and Vision’s son, Billy Maximoff and then in Episode 6 revealing exactly how Billy exists at all when Billy and his […]

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Over the two most recent episodes, Agatha All Along answered a bunch of major questions about the mysterious Teen played by Joe Locke, first by revealing in Episode 5 that Teen is actually Wanda and Vision’s son, Billy Maximoff and then in Episode 6 revealing exactly how Billy exists at all when Billy and his twin, Tommy were supposedly erased when the Hex fell. We also found out that Billy doesn’t want power from The Witches’ Road at all — he just wants to find his brother.  With Billy back, fans naturally are eager to see Tommy return as well but now we have the same question that Billy has in the series: where is Tommy Maximoff?

Functionally, the “how” of Tommy Maximoff’s survival is likely to be similar to Billy’s. We now know that Billy survived the fall of the Hex because, as his existence was being erased, just outside the Hex young William Kaplan was headed home from his Bar Mitzvah when his family was involved in a car crash. William Kaplan unfortunately died, but Billy’s soul was able to move into William’s body, causing him to be reborn. Given that Agatha All Along followed Billy’s Marvel Comics backstory, it’s pretty likely that the how of Tommy’s existence post-Hex will be similar — the comics aren’t very specific about the mechanics of Tommy’s reincarnation so Agatha All Along probably won’t linger too long on the details. It’s the where of it all that actually matters and this is where things could get interesting.

Tommy’s Story in Comics is Connected to the Young Avengers

In the comics, Billy finds Tommy as part of recruitment for the Young Avengers. While Billy isn’t specifically looking for Tommy as part of the Young Avengers, the team does locate Tommy being held in essentially juvenile detention for people with powers after an incident in which Tommy vaporized his high school using his powers. At the facility, he was texted and experimented on, something that the Young Avengers freed him from. It was later that Billy and Tommy realize they’re twin and, thus, their identities. If we had to guess — and that’s kind of the point here so we’re going to — Tommy may be enduring something similar in the MCU. If that is the case, what The Witches’ Road might give Billy at the end (provided he survives) is not Tommy’s exact location, but the path by which to find him.

That idea, of course, leads us to an even bigger bit of speculation: Agatha All Along could lead to the creation of the Young Avengers. While the MCU has already introduced numerous characters traditionally associated with the Young Avengers and even went as far as to, in The Marvels, show Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) reach out to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to seek out other young heroes and start a new group, a proper “Young Avengers” hasn’t yet happened. If Agatha All Along doesn’t end with The Witches’ Road leading Billy directly to Tommy, it could instead see him connected with Kamala and Kate, leading to the creation of the Young Avengers and sending them out to find others. It’s something that would leave the door open for Tommy to have his own comics-accurate backstory as well as set the stage for a future MCU project (and one that fans have been clamoring for for years.)

It’s also worth noting that Billy’s boyfriend’s name is Eddie. That’s a name that’s really quite close to Teddy and, in comics, Billy’s boyfriend is Teddy Altman, aka the Young Avenger Hulkling.

Could the Quest to Find Tommy Be Part of The Multiverse Saga?

If Agatha All Along doesn’t directly lead to the Young Avengers, however, the show has already provided a path for Agatha All Along to connect to the larger “Multiverse Saga” beyond merely being a WandaVision spinoff. One of the things that was established at the end of WandaVision was that Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) heard her boys crying out for her somewhere in the multiverse. This, of course, led to the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. While it might be a little weird to have one of the twins exist in the main universe and the other have ended up in another reality, Episode 6 of Agatha All Along saw Billy admit that he can feel Tommy, but he can’t find him. That could be a clue that the other Maximoff brother is in a different reality — essentially a so close yet so far away sort of situation. Maybe the end of Agatha All Along will lead to Billy and Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) on a multiverse adventure. You know, if they somehow manage to trust one another.

Wherever Tommy is, now that we’ve established Billy’s existence and centered Billy’s reason seeking out Agatha and for walking The Witches’ Road around finding his missing twin, it’s almost guaranteed that the story begun in WandaVision won’t be over with this latest Disney+ series. It’s just a question as to where the road will lead us next.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along Just Made the MCU’s Most Emotional Post-Credit Scene All the More Heartbreaking https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-billy-tommy-wandavision-ending-post-credits-scene/ Sat, 19 Oct 2024 20:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956253 Scarlet Witch searches for her sons at the end of WandaVision
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The final few minutes of Marvel’s WandaVision are among the most heartbreaking in the entire MCU. In order to free the people of Westview that she’d trapped, Wanda Maximoff made the choice to give up the family she’d created, moving on without her sons Tommy and Billy. Not only were the two boys real to […]

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Scarlet Witch searches for her sons at the end of WandaVision
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The final few minutes of Marvel’s WandaVision are among the most heartbreaking in the entire MCU. In order to free the people of Westview that she’d trapped, Wanda Maximoff made the choice to give up the family she’d created, moving on without her sons Tommy and Billy. Not only were the two boys real to Wanda, but the post-credits scene for WandaVision teased that they actually existed somewhere else. As Wanda hid out in a log cabin in the mountains, searching for answers in the Darkhold, she heard the boys calling out to her.

That moment seemed to hint at Billy and Tommy living in another reality somewhere across the multiverse. That was addressed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, as Wanda tried to take over her life in another universe and get her boys back. After the most recent episode of Agatha All Along, however, that WandaVision post-credits scene feels a little different, and seems like it could be hinting at the Billy and Tommy we now know exist in Earth-616. WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along! Continue reading at your own risk…

The fifth episode of Agatha All Along confirmed what many fans assumed — that Teen was actually Billy Maximoff. A week later, the sixth episode filled us all in on how Billy ended up in Agatha’s company. It was revealed on Wednesday that the spirits of Billy and Tommy managed to escape Westview when the hex collapsed. These souls that Wanda created out of her love managed to make it out into the real world, but neither of them had bodies to possess.

A young man named William Kaplan was in a terrible car accident just as the hex was collapsing, and Billy’s soul found a way into his body, bringing it back to life and inhabiting it as his own. We still don’t know where exactly Tommy ended up, but Billy is 100% certain his twin brother is also alive somewhere in the world.

So what does all that have to do with Wanda? This new revelation about Billy and Tommy actually makes Wanda’s story — and that post-credits scene — even more tragic.

Wanda traveled the multiverse looking for her sons. She killed people in order to accomplish her mission. She lost herself for most of that journey. Ultimately, she came back around and left the alternate-reality Billy and Tommy with their family, shortly before losing her own life.

That story is already a heart-breaking one, but it gets even sadder knowing what we now know. Billy and Tommy were right here, the whole time, not very far from Westview. Sure, they look different than they did when they were Wanda’s boys, but they’re very much alive. She could’ve found them and connected with them without ever leaving the country, let alone the universe. She lost everything when she didn’t have to.

You could probably use this new information to read that WandaVision post-credits scene a little differently as well. With Billy and Tommy’s souls still on the same plane of existence as Wanda, they could’ve been subconsciously calling out to her, looking to reunite their family.

When she says goodbye to her sons at the end of WandaVision, just before the hex collapses, Wanda tells them, “We could never leave each other, even if we tried.” That turned out to be more true than Wanda realized.

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Agatha All Along Reveals Who Put the Sigil on Billy (And You’ll Never Guess Who It Really Is) https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-billy-sigil-explained-lilia-calderu-mcu-wandavision-episode-6/ Sat, 19 Oct 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956331 The secret of Billy's sigil revealed.

Agatha All Along finally revealed who put that sigil on Billy and Marvel fans are shocked about the identity of that witch. Episode 6 of the MCU show explained that Lillia Calderu was the one to “put a sigil on that boy.” Yes, Patti Lupone’s character said those words earlier in Agatha All Along and […]

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The secret of Billy's sigil revealed.

Agatha All Along finally revealed who put that sigil on Billy and Marvel fans are shocked about the identity of that witch. Episode 6 of the MCU show explained that Lillia Calderu was the one to “put a sigil on that boy.” Yes, Patti Lupone’s character said those words earlier in Agatha All Along and now they’ve taken on a new meaning. During those earlier trials on The Witches’ Road, Joe Locke’s character was shrouded in secrecy as the other coven members couldn’t quite decipher his identity. However, Episode 6 makes it clear that Agatha really knew all along. Billy Maximoff is the product of the hex breaking down and the boy’s soul being bonded to poor William Kaplan’s body after a tragic car crash. Viewers can see that Calderu’s divination magic allowed her to see the catastrophe.

Confronted by that morbid future, Calderu decided to scrawl down a quick spell on a tile and slipped it into the boy’s coat pocket. Someone grabs his jacket and gets it back to Billy as they’re evacuating his bar mitzvah. As it would happen, the Westview Incident (i.e. The Hex from WandaVision) is happening nearby and the illusion is becoming unstable. Billy and his parents flee in their car and a general panic ensues among the people leaving the young man’s party. As they’re navigating the way home, the Kaplan family unsuspectingly drifts into oncoming traffic and Billy’s mother has to swerve to avoid a truck that is barrelling down on the family sedan. Unfortunately, that quick jerk of the steering wheel sends the car careening off the road and hits a tree. Which jumpstarts our narrative for Agatha All Along.

Agatha All Along Reveals Who Put the Sigil on Billy

People are just so shook.

As the car sits with massive damage, both Kaplan’s parents are okay. But, their adolescent son is in rough shape. He was in the exact place to take the brunt of that crash into a tree. After his heart stopped beating, young Billy Maximoff’s soul swept into his body. Now bonded, William woke up yelling for his brother Tommy and was disoriented from not being in the Maximoff house in Westview. From there, he lives three years under a new identity with strange powers. Upon digging into the Westview anomaly, he figures out that Agatha Harkness is the person he should be looking for. Ralph Bohner cameos and mentions meeting Billy before and tells the kid about Tommy. Now, with that information, the young witch sets off to find his brother down The Witches’ Road.

Billy meets up with all the other witches as Agatha Harkness is assembling this coven and now viewers know that he’s met most of them before in random ways. He followed Jennifer Kale as an influencer, Alice was one of the emergency workers that saved him after the accident, Sharon called him a hooligan after breaking and entering, and Lillia Calderu worked at his bar mitzvah. It’s an interesting game to go back and think how this knowledge colors his interactions with each witch. (It also raises the possibility that he’s met Rio Vidal before too… Something to ponder as we continue!) There is also some wiggle room when it comes to interpretation here as we don’t see who returned Billy’s coat during the evacuation.

Is Billy’s Sigil Just A Misdirect For A Larger Mystery 

Our Green Witch is hiding something.

Could Rio really be responsible for the sigil? It’s a little unlikely at the moment. It really feels like Calderu’s scrawling is your ultimate culprit. But, it also feels like Aubrey Plaza’s absence is there for a reason here. Her visage is obscured when we see the events from earlier in Agatha All Along from Billy’s perspective. Sure, we know he’s the long-lost Maximoff boy now. But, it sure does seem like director Jac Schaeffer and the creative team are hiding an even bigger reveal when it comes to Rio Vidal. This entire exercise is now feeling more like a red herring than ever. A sidequest devised to keep the fanbase focused on the red ball in one hand while the other picks your pocket. We’ll know more as Agatha All Along screeches towards that Devil’s Night finale. 

Were you shocked by Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along Just Debunked a Popular Rio Vidal Fan Theory https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-death-rio-vidal-theory-aubrey-plaza-debunked-mcu-billy-episode-6/ Sat, 19 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956616 Rio and Lilia.

Agatha All Along dropped a ton of lore this week and upended one of the most popular pieces of evidence about Rio Vidal’s true identity. Episode 6 is all about Billy Maximoff and how he ended up on The Witches’ Road. One of the big reveals was who placed the sigil on the boy, and […]

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Rio and Lilia.

Agatha All Along dropped a ton of lore this week and upended one of the most popular pieces of evidence about Rio Vidal’s true identity. Episode 6 is all about Billy Maximoff and how he ended up on The Witches’ Road. One of the big reveals was who placed the sigil on the boy, and it ended up being Lillia Calderu! The divination witch read Billy’s future and tried to protect him. In her haste, she decided to place the sigil on the boy so that he wouldn’t be in danger of some other witch finding him and using his tremendous power for their own gain. However, the power of the sigil makes it so that she wouldn’t remember his identity either. This revelation means one of the earliest clues about Rio Vidal’s true nature was not what it seemed on first blush. The fan base is absolutely shocked by these developments.

When Agatha Harkness was putting together her coven, she took the teen around to all the different witches within the miles radius around Westview. Their early trip to Lilia Calderu left them with a list of names to pursue on this journey. A bunch of Marvel fans’ eyebrows went straight up when she drew a black heart instead of a name for one of the entries. Of course, their imaginations jumped right to Rio Vidal. But, it seems as though the black heart might be from Lilia remembering Billy and not being able to write down his name. It really fits when you think about it and feels so crushing as she was trying to prevent this exact scenario from taking place. Yet and still, destiny came for Billy and she could only protect him for a little while longer.

Our Green Witch is hiding something.

Rio Vidal might really never have been meant to travel down The Witches’ Road with the coven at all. Mrs. Hart looks like she was the plan at Green Witch and the other women just panicked when Sharon bit the dust in the first trial. As Rio Vidal crawled into frame, it became clear that the witches did summon her, but this wasn’t a part of Lilia’s roster earlier in the series. The small detail had some Marvel fans believing she could even be Blackheart or some other comics deep cut. (That one theory was massively aided by the idea of Mephisto finally making some sort of appearance in Agatha All Along after being teased multiple times in WandaVision. Now, that theory has taken a bit of a hit as well.

Aubrey Plaza has been very mum on what’s going on with her Marvel character. Despite the relative silence out of Marvel Studios, the fans think they’ve already got this one figured out. A couple of observant viewers noticed that some of Rio Vidal’s costume design slots in nicely with the Death tarot card that debuted earlier in the series. As an existing Marvel Comics character, that does make a measure of sense. Other moments with the Green Witch lock into place too. Her approaching Billy tentatively after his close call in Episode 4, Rio’s disappearance after Alice’s demise, her absence from Billy’s flashbacks during this episode? It’s all very suspicious when you stack it all up. There’s also the matter of her longstanding unspoken relationship with Agatha, and fans think that links back to the death of the Harkness witch’s son.

Rio Vidal Isn’t Blackheart, and That Means The Death Fan Theory Still Has Legs

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Aubrey Plaza in the Agatha All Along trailer. 

The bottom line here is that Rio Vidal isn’t going to be some sort of wild pull like Blackheart. Death is much more reasonable guess in this scenario. In addition, a Mephisto appearance seems a bit unlikely, so adjust your expectations accordingly. (Challenge level: impossible.) Plaza’s palpable chemistry with Kathryn Hahn will prove enough of a reward without some massive third act swerve. But, the latest episode helps set Marvel fans on the right track of expectations as the finale looms larger and larger. There are other surprises lurking in Agatha All Along. However, they might not be exactly what people were expecting in those first few chapters.


What was your favorite detail from Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along Explains Why Billy Is Walking The Witches’ Road https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-witches-road-explained-billy-tommy-maximoff-wish/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:53:49 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956401 Agatha All Along Billy Tommy Maximoff

Agatha All Along Episode 6 “Familiar by Thy Side” was the much-needed flashback episode, which explains how Billy Maximoff went from being a little superpowered boy conjured up by Wanda Maximoff’s Hex powers, to a powerful magic-user of young adult age. Not only did we get caught up on how Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) got […]

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Agatha All Along Billy Tommy Maximoff

Agatha All Along Episode 6 “Familiar by Thy Side” was the much-needed flashback episode, which explains how Billy Maximoff went from being a little superpowered boy conjured up by Wanda Maximoff’s Hex powers, to a powerful magic-user of young adult age. Not only did we get caught up on how Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) got to this point, but we also got to know why he decided to walk the infamous Witches Road with Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), after freeing her from his mother Wanda’s enchantment spell.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Agatha manages to save herself (and only herself) from Billy’s attack on the coven at the end of Episode 5. After pulling herself free from the mud pit, Agatha interrogates/instigates Billy to explain what he’s after at the end of the Witches Road. Billy won’t give up his reason, but Agatha sniffs it out by process of elimination: not his mom (Scarlet Witch), not his dad (The Vision), but his twin brother Tommy.

Billy reveals that after having his “soul” possess the freshly dead boy Billy Kaplan, he can still hear his brother’s soul calling to him from somewhere he can’t determine. He plans to get to the end of the Witches Road to find “what’s missing,” which (to him) is Tommy. Agatha is a means to an end for Billy, who fully remembers his time both befriending and battling her in Westview and knows not to trust her.

This Billy Kaplan/Billy Maximoff/Wiccan origin mirrors the character’s convoluted Marvel Comics history, in which he and Tommy are at first magical conjuring aby Wanda that are eventually revealed to be shards of the devil Mephisto’s soul. Even though the twins are erased (or reclaimed by Mephisto) they are reborn into the world in physical bodies years before Wanda and Vision ever got together, growing up separately as “Billy Kaplan” and “Thomast Shephard.”

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Billy get to the end of the Witches Road with Agatha and find out that Tommy is already reincarnated on Earth (thereby setting up Wiccan’s next mission in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Or, Billy gets to the end of the road and gets his wish, and Tommy is brought back, setting up something like the “Children’s Crusade” arc from the comics, which saw Wiccan (Billy), Speed (Tommy) and their Young Avengers teammates go on the hunt for Scarlet Witch so that she can help Billy gain control over his powers. That storyline revealed Wanda to be a prisoner of Doctor Doom, and included many of the major characters related to Scarlet Witch, like her father Magneto, brother Quicksilver, and former beaus Vision and Wonder Man. With MCU fans still wanting Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch back in the franchise, it seems like a smart direction to take with this storyline.

Agatha All Along streams new episodes Wednesday nights on Disney+.

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Does Agatha All Along Even Need a Big Bad? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-big-bad-mephisto-nicholas-scratch-mcu/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 04:40:46 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956241

We’re officially entering the third act of Agatha All Along, the latest Disney+ series to be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A sequel to the events of 2021’s WandaVision series, the show has not only carried on the unique journey of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), but folded in plenty of mysterious new elements. Much […]

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We’re officially entering the third act of Agatha All Along, the latest Disney+ series to be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A sequel to the events of 2021’s WandaVision series, the show has not only carried on the unique journey of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), but folded in plenty of mysterious new elements. Much like WandaVision, Agatha All Along has also been at the center of a number of fan theories, particularly those concerning what connections it might have to the larger Marvel Universe. This has included plenty of suggestions about a potential antagonist waiting in the wings, whether that be the infamous devil Mephisto, Agatha’s estranged evil son Nicholas Scratch, or someone else entirely. However, with six out of Agatha All Along‘s nine episodes out into the world — does the story we’ve seen thus far need a “big bad” in order to be effective?

Admittedly, there would be plenty of narrative potential in fully folding Mephisto or Nicholas Scratch into the culmination of Agatha All Along — both characters have been referenced by name at least once in the series thus far, and bring their own complicated baggage when interacting with other Marvel characters. There are also ways that either villain could make their way onto the show’s final episodes, whether being tied to Agatha herself, whoever appears to be magically manipulating Lilia Caldru (Patti Lupone), or the whereabouts of the seemingly-departed Tommy Maximoff. Plus, the story of a benevolent evil man trying (and eventually failing) to suppress the powers of a group of women would certainly resonate with a number of viewers.

But at the same time, the story that Agatha All Along has been telling seems dense enough without pivoting to either of these men. The series’ Witches’ Road has allowed for Agatha and the members of her coven to tackle their biggest failures — not through a direct conflict or a supervillain to repeatedly punch, but through well-orchestrated trials of the self. In the process, we’ve discovered many of the insecurities surrounding the characters, whether they be Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) dealing with the legacy of her mom, or Agatha reckoning with the countless deaths she caused over the years. While Mephisto or Nicholas Scratch could very well be the domineering force behind these trials, it might be more interesting to lean into the “man vs. nature” and “man vs. self” kinds of conflicts that the series has already presented for its characters. It would prevent Agatha All Along from defaulting to another “gotcha” twist ending and dense flashback to confirm its big bad, after the reveal of Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke) was already handled so well in Episodes 5 and 6.

If anything, the existing elements at play within Agatha All Along could provide a satisfying final villain for the show to end on. The Salem’s Seven, a shadowy group who were reestablished as the children of witches that Agatha killed during the Salem Witch Trials, have only been sporadically established in the show thus far. There’s also the loose cannon of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), whose true identity has prompted lots of theories in and of itself. And finally, there’s also the chance that Agatha All Along could live up to its title and have the true villain be… Agatha all along, helping establish the character as a less-heroic part of the MCU’s future.

Ultimately, the Mephisto and Nicholas Scratch theories are an interesting testament to the fact that, by and large, the female-fronted Disney+ shows set within the MCU have been surrounded by these massive theories about the arrival of male characters. WandaVision, of course, kicked down the door with the countless questions about Mephisto himself, the mysterious aerospace engineer, or a last-minute cameo appearance from Stephen Strange / Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). 2022’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law directly poked fun at fans who wanted to see Bruce Banner / Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Murdock / Daredevil (Charlie Cox), while still being subjected to speculation about larger roles for Emil Blonsky / Abomination (Tim Roth), Samuel Sterns / The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson), and beyond. To a degree, it is unsurprising that the conversation around Agatha All Along has often been more about the men who could appear in it, and less about the cast of characters who are already in it. It might take a bit of magic for that kind of discourse to go away — but in the meantime, Agatha All Along might not need to play directly into it.

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Agatha All Along Hilariously Brings Back One of the MCU’s Most Controversial Characters https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-ralph-bohner-return-westview-evan-peters/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:25:21 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956232 Photo Credit: Disney+

Being a quasi-sequel series to WandaVision, Marvel’s Agatha All Along was bound to pick up most of that show’s loose plot threads at one point or another, at least when it came to Agatha or Westview. We’ve learned a lot about Agatha in the first five episodes of the show. In Episode 6, which was […]

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Photo Credit: Disney+

Being a quasi-sequel series to WandaVision, Marvel’s Agatha All Along was bound to pick up most of that show’s loose plot threads at one point or another, at least when it came to Agatha or Westview. We’ve learned a lot about Agatha in the first five episodes of the show. In Episode 6, which was released on Wednesday night, fans got to see another one of those loose ends tied up, thanks to the return of one of the most controversial characters in MCU history: Ralph Bohner.

You remember Ralph. don’t you? A cliffhanger in an episode of WandaVision seemingly revealed the return of Wanda’s brother, Pietro, only this version wasn’t played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The character who appeared was played by none other than Evan Peters, who had portrayed Quicksilver in the Fox Marvel universe. This appearance indicated that the Fox X-Men characters were already starting to seep into the MCU and that the universes were potentially colliding, but the other shoe eventually dropped and Pietro was revealed to be nothing more than a creation by Agatha.

A lot of Marvel fans were furious about the reveal, mainly because of the Peters stunt-casting. In hindsight, it feels like a brilliant decision by Marvel to set up a big multiversal story only to pull the rug and remind everyone that WandaVision was never about that. But there are plenty of Marvel fans who disagree and still hate Ralph Bohner for it.

Well, if you’re a Ralph hater, we’re sorry to inform you that Bohner is officially back. Wednesday’s new episode of Agatha All Along focused entirely on Joe Locke’s “Teen,” who was revealed at the end of last week to be none other than Billy Maximoff. Episode 6 showed what led Billy to Agatha and the Witches Road (which we get into here). He needed a little help uncovering some of the truth about Westview, so he found someone online who claimed to have lived there during the Anomaly.

That person turned out to be none other than Ralph Bohner, who has become a total mess since we last saw him in WandaVision. He tells Billy that he ran away from WestView when he had the chance, so he remembers things that the rest of the townspeople don’t. That said, no one believes anything he says about his time in Westview because who would believe a man rambling about an entire town being locked inside their own bodies and forced to participate in sitcoms brought to life?

Ralph also reveals that Agatha essentially stole his life after he left. She took over his house, kept all of his things, and commandeered most of his existence, leaving him with nothing. Remember when she was wearing the Bohner family reunion shirt earlier in the season? He’s been trying to put his life back together, piece by piece, but it seems like he hasn’t had much luck doing so.

Letting Ralph be a guy on the brink of an absolute breakdown at all times allowed for Evan Peters to really bring out his comedic talents. This frustrated, fully realized version of Ralph Bohner was hysterical every second he was on screen, hopefully proving to a lot of fans out there that he always had the potential to be a fantastic MCU contributor.

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Agatha All Along: Billy’s Comic-Accurate Backstory, Revealed https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-billy-maximoff-kaplan-comic-accurate-backstory-revealed/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 01:57:04 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956219

Agatha All Along is ramping things up in some major ways, fleshing out the magical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the process. In addition to continuing the story of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the show has folded in Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed with great fanfare in the […]

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Agatha All Along is ramping things up in some major ways, fleshing out the magical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the process. In addition to continuing the story of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the show has folded in Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed with great fanfare in the final moments of Episode 5. The majority of the series’ sixth episode consists of a flashback to the origin of Billy’s current status quo — and it was actually surprisingly accurate to the pages of Marvel Comics. Major spoilers for Episode 6 of Agatha All Along below! Only look if you want to know!

Initially, Locke’s version of Billy is introduced as Billy Kaplan, a Jewish teenager having his bar mitzvah in the town of Eastview. While at the party, Billy has his palm read by Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone), who warns him that his life is about to be split in two, and appears to place a mysterious sigil on him. The party is then cut short by news of the Westview anomaly, which sends Billy and his parents driving home in a hurry — so much so that they crash into a nearby tree. Billy dies in the car accident, just as the souls of Billy and Tommy Maximoff appear to be erased by the destruction of the Westview hex.

In reality, the soul of Billy Maximoff is reborn into Billy Kaplan’s body, and he awakens and gets acclimated to his new-old life. Three years later, Billy begins to personally investigate the circumstances that led to his rebirth, researching aspects of the Westview anomaly on various web forums. Through this research, and a clandestine meeting with Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters), Billy eventually begins to discover his true identity — and the role that Agatha Harkness could have in helping him reach his goal to find Tommy.

While this story arc might seem slightly convoluted on paper, it is actually surprisingly reminiscent of how Billy Kaplan is introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics — albeit, without the WandaVision tropes like the hex. In the comics, Billy and Tommy Maximoff were originally introduced as Wanda and Vision’s children in the 1980s, only to have their lives ended prematurely by the dark lord Mephisto. The villain wiped both Billy and Tommy from existence and absorbed their energy into himself, later gaslighting Wanda to believe that the children were really figments of her imagination all along.

Eventually, this is revealed to not be the case at all — in actuality, Billy and Tommy were believed to have been reborn in the bodies of two ordinary teenagers, Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd. In Billy’s case, in the pages of Young Avengers, he is an ordinary Jewish teenager who accidentally activates his powers while fighting school bullies. There have been debates in the years since over whether or not that reincarnation was real, much less what happened to the actual Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd when the soul transfers happened. But the majority of Marvel characters recognize these versions of Billy and Tommy to be Wanda’s children — and now, it appears the MCU is doing the same.

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along: How Did Billy Survive the WandaVision Hex? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-episode-6-wandavision-billy-mcu-joe-locke-scarlet-witch-hex-story-explained/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 01:39:13 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955344 A tale of two Billy's.

Agatha All Along’s latest episode revealed how Billy Maximoff survived the Hex in WandaVision. Last week, fans were shocked to learn Joe Locke’s Teen was actually the Scarlet Witch’s son. With that knowledge in-hand, Agatha All Along took us on a trip down memory lane this week. Spoilers beyond this point from this week’s episode, […]

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A tale of two Billy's.

Agatha All Along’s latest episode revealed how Billy Maximoff survived the Hex in WandaVision. Last week, fans were shocked to learn Joe Locke’s Teen was actually the Scarlet Witch’s son. With that knowledge in-hand, Agatha All Along took us on a trip down memory lane this week. Spoilers beyond this point from this week’s episode, “Familiar By Thy Side”! Read on only if you really want to know!

The episode opens with a flashback but it’s not to “Teen” as we know him. Instead, we’re taken to the bar mitzvah celebration of William Kaplan. Amid the party, which has a magic theme, he visits a palm reader who turns out to be Lilia Calderu. Lilia sees that William’s life will split into Billy’s. Before sending him back out to his party with reassurances about the future, she slips a rune in his pocket on which she has placed the sigil. However, the party soon stops as the “anomaly” around Westview is changing. The next we see his family driving near Westview as Wanda’s Hex was breaking down. The distraction causes an accident that kills William Kaplan but at that moment, Billy’s soul is teleporting from that little boy inside of Wanda and Vision’s house and becomes bonded to the older teenager. William Kaplan survives, but now he’s Billy Maximoff… in William’s body. That’s how he’s been able to survive in this world without a “container” for the wayward soul. It’s a certifiably wild development, and one fans are going to discuss into the ground in the ensuing days. This is amongst so many more mysteries that are still on the board for the show.

For a refresher, Wanda Maximoff created the Hex after losing Vision in Avengers: Infinity War. The two were supposed to live in Westview, New Jersey and begin their lives together. However, after the synthezoid was out of commission, she used her chaos magic to warp reality to a sitcom where Vision and her boys were alive and well. Agatha Harkness realized what Wanda was doing and conspired to take her powers for her own gain. Wanda, Vision, Billy and Tommy ended up being able to stop her. But, in the end, holding all those people hostage wasn’t very heroic of Scarlet Witch. She freed all of them and they still hold resentment for that experience, as we saw earlier in Agatha All Along. (If we really go back to Westview at the end of the series, how will they react to another supernatural showdown within the city limits?) It feels like the trouble is just getting brewing.

Two Billy’s!

Billy and Agatha have a stern confrontation at the tail end of Agatha All Along’s fifth episode. It’s clear that both sides have been hiding a bit of information from each other. The more mature witch knew that her young familiar was actually the son of the Scarlet Witch this entire time. Meanwhile, Billy has been playing coy about his identity and power level for a while as well. That cute little spellbook was basically misdirection. Fans had been wondering about his identity for weeks now. Every Darkhold mention and Nicolas Scratch Easter egg created just a sliver of doubt among the viewers. But, now there is no doubt. Billy Maximoff lured these women onto The Witches Road. He said it was for power, but clearly there’s more to gain here as he’s got some scary abilities just like his mother.

Agatha All Along Hid Wiccan In Plain Sight

New Billy and Old Billy

For weeks now, Agatha All Along has been playing in viewers’ faces. Billy was the most logical reveal for Joe Locke’s Teen. But, last week confirmed it. It’s a delicate dance with a show featuring a major mystery to balance that surprise with fan expectations. Some people are interested because a Marvel Comics favorite is here. Others, argue that the reveal should have been out in the open from the word go. Director Jac Schaeffer is understanding of all of these elements. She told Entertainment Weekly, Billy’s identity was not something they were trying super hard to misdirect from. Instead, how Agatha Harkness reacts to that information is far more interesting. Also, what does this boy want from her and The Witches’ Road in general? All things to ponder as we continue towards the finale.

Schaeffer argued about the sigil weeks ago, “This is what I would say: That’s not the first place I’d look. It’s not entirely irrelevant: But there are other places to look.”

“I don’t like hiding things from the audience, just to then be, like, ‘Boo!’ There’s no artistry to that,” Schaeffer mused. “So when we talked about obscuring who he is, the first question is, why? What is the utility of that? The answer is, it’s about the effect that his mystery has on Agatha. What does that do to her? How does it motivate her? How does it hit her emotionally?” 

What do you think about this change from Billy’s comics origin? Is it something else? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along: What Does Billy Really Want From The Witches’ Road? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-what-does-billy-really-want-from-the-witches-road/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 22:22:03 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=956082

The Witches’ Road grants those who travel it and survive its trials with whatever it is they desire most at the end of their journey. On Agatha All Along, the mysterious Teen gets Agatha Harkness to assemble a coven to unlock the Road, with each witch seeking something important from the journey. Teen’s reason for […]

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The Witches’ Road grants those who travel it and survive its trials with whatever it is they desire most at the end of their journey. On Agatha All Along, the mysterious Teen gets Agatha Harkness to assemble a coven to unlock the Road, with each witch seeking something important from the journey. Teen’s reason for wanting to walk the road isn’t made clear at the outset, but last week’s episode, “Darkest Hour/Wake They Power” cast the entire journey into a whole new light. “Teen” was revealed to really be Billy Maximoff and now, given his family’s history with Agatha, everything we thought we knew is now up in the air.  But we also have a bitter question: What does Billy really want from The Witches’ Road?

According to Joe Locke, who plays Billy, the former “Teen” is definitely not looking for power. He has power, he demonstrated it last week with that big reveal of his identity and he’s been lying to everyone this whole time — especially Agatha.

“We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie,” Locke told ComicBook. “He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?”

If power isn’t the goal, Billy clearly is looking for something else and a few ideas come to mind: revenge against Agatha for what she did to Wanda in WandaVision, to bring his mother back, or to find his brother, Tommy. Let’s break those possibilities down

Billy Wants Revenge

One of the things that could be Billy’s motivation for walking The Witches’ Road is revenge — or more specifically to see Agatha pay. Agatha is, in a very real sense, the architect of much of Billy’s suffering. Her actions in WandaVision not only pushed Wanda to fully come into her power, but one of the consequences of all of that was the taking down of the hex, seemingly destroying Billy, Tommy, and Wanda’s version of Vision. While we still don’t know how exactly Billy survived that, the situation still caused Billy to lose everything in some fashion. His mother is gone. HIs father doesn’t exist. We have no idea where his brother is, if he survived. For Billy, getting Agatha on the Road could very well be a way to let the Road test the powerless witch and make her endure suffering as part of the journey, forcing her to experience a fraction of what he has lived with. It doesn’t necessarily grant Billy anything tangible at the end of the Road, like the power he claimed he was seeking, but watching Agatha suffer — and potentially not even survive — might be heart’s desire enough.

The Road Will Bring Wanda Back

While seeing Agatha suffer certainly feels like a real goal, Billy’s heart’s desire might be something less aggressive and much more deeply emotional. Billy might just simply want his mother back — so much so that he may have made an arrangement with someone else to get it done. One of the things that is interesting about Billy is that we meet him somewhat in conjunction with Rio. Agatha is still deep under Wanda’s spell in that first episode, imagining that her life is essentially a police procedural, but the two strangers that enter the picture and bring her out of it are Rio and Billy. That can’t be a coincidence. It is possible that Billy made an agreement with Rio — or perhaps even someone else (cough, Mephisto, cough). Getting Agatha out from under the spell would still leave the witch vulnerable as she has no powers and getting her on the Road could allow Rio and whoever else is coming for Agatha to have a better shot at taking her down. For Billy, walking the Road may be less about what the Road can give him and more what whoever he’s serving can — and if various theories about Rio’s identity pan out, that could be bringing back Wanda and others he loves.

Billy Is Just Trying to Get Tommy Back

It’s the idea of getting back a lost loved one that also presents a third possibility: maybe Billy wants the Rod to bring Tommy back. For Billy, getting to the road might not be some grand scheme. He may have simply needed a witch with experience on The Witches’ Road — in this case, the infamous Agatha Harkness — to get him there and after that it’s just a matter of surviving to the end so that the Road can grant him his twin brother back. The twin bond is a powerful thing and it would make sense that Billy would do almost anything to get his brother back. With this in mind, Billy may never have intended on revealing himself or his powers. He may have just wanted to walk the Road, get his brother, and then move on with his life finally no longer missing his other half, as it were. This would explain why he’s largely kept things low key up until the third trial as well as why Alice’s death impacted him so much. Her death pushed him a little too far, causing him to reveal himself and lash out because, from his perspective, Alice was the witch most like him and the one that he got the closest to on the journey to that point. Her death — also because of Agatha, much like the loss of his own family — simply pushed him too far.

Heading into Episode 6, there are a lot of unknowns. We don’t know what happened after Billy chucked all the witches (except Rio) off the Road and into the mud. We don’t know how Billy survived the hex or even how he was outside of it (as was teased in the midseason trailer). We also don’t know exactly what he wants — but with just four episodes remaining, and with Billy’s identity revealed, the path to finding out seems to have presented itself and hopefully we’ll start getting answers as to if Billy wants revenge, his mother, or just to bring back his twin.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes drop Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along Director Addresses Joe Locke’s Dark Side https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-joe-locke-jac-schaeffer-billy-dark-side-mcu/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 20:49:50 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955971 Billy's breaking bad.

Agatha All Along star Joe Locke brought some darkness to The Witches’ Road last week and the series’ director took some time to talk about it. Jac Schaeffer has been leading folks on this journey with Agatha Harkness since the WandaVision days. She told The Wrap that the close confines of this coven has made […]

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Billy's breaking bad.

Agatha All Along star Joe Locke brought some darkness to The Witches’ Road last week and the series’ director took some time to talk about it. Jac Schaeffer has been leading folks on this journey with Agatha Harkness since the WandaVision days. She told The Wrap that the close confines of this coven has made every one of these witches a little bit on edge. Last week, everything finally boiled over after Agatha took out Alice Wu-Gulliver in a moment of chaos. That led to Teen tossing the remaining coven members into the muck of the road. As icing on the dastardly cake, Joe Locke’s character has been revealed as Billy Maximoff, and will spark a ton of emotions from some of the coven as well. (Provided they ever make it out of that mud to finish out these trials.) Schaeffer has noticed that her witches have taken on a bit of an edge from the moment they all stepped onto the road. It seemed like things were going okay after Alice’s trial in Episode 4. That quickly left the building after that magical confrontation. All of this is on purpose though, and we’re going to have to keep watching to learn more.

“It’s more about a coven itself, and the idea of blessings and burdens alike, and that witches in a coven are ride or die, but also, given certain circumstances, will also stab each other in the back,” Schaeffer argues. “That was, from the beginning, something we were interested in, because witches are coded as villains, right? Like treacherous, self serving, villainous, evil, violent, duplicitous, right? That’s the thing.”

Agatha drops an absolute surprise on Billy.

“So it was important to us we weren’t doing ‘It’s a girls weekend! And it’s all about bonding and loving each other!’ We very much wanted the bonding,” The director recalled. “I mean, that campfire idea, I wish I could remember which of my brilliant writers came up with the campfire idea, but it was very early, and I was like, ‘100% However we do it, we’re getting these witches around a campfire.’ And I’m an enormous fan of Jaws, so I’m like, ‘We’re doing a scar comparison. We need that vibe.’”

So we’ve established that Billy Maximoff is a big meanie now. But what does that mean for the rest of the trials on The Witches’ Road? Last time we checked, the rest of the coven was still down there in the mud and with no real plan to escape. An exclusive clip that Marvel released with ComicBook earlier today hints that there might be a way out. But, nothing is certain right now. We also had the chance to sit down with Joe Locke and ask about where his relationship with his friends stands after all that drama in Episode 5. The Agatha All Along star is keeping details close to the vest. However, he did have something fun to say about Billy’s motivations moving forward.

“You’ll have to find out this week!” Locke teased me. “We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie. He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?”

Clearly, the Agatha All Along team is still hiding some pretty massive Secrets behind all of these teases. From our count, there are still the mystery of Rio Vidal’s actual identity, what’s going on with Mephisto, Agatha’s powers being restored, maybe a Scarlet Witch resurrection, and for good measure, the future of the magical side of the MCU, all still on the docket. It’s a little bit wild to expect Agatha All Along to pull the curtain back on all of these mysteries. But, you can probably bet that 3 to 4 of them will get their conclusion in this Disney+ series.


Do you think Billy Maximoff is the secret villain of this show? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along: Joe Locke Reveals The Real Significance of Alice’s Death https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-joe-locke-alice-death-significance/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:48:42 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955676 Image Credit: Marvel Studios

While fans of Agatha All Along are still reeling from Teen’s identity being revealed, there’s still the matter of the major death that took place in the last episode. Alice (Ali Ahn) died when Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) began siphoning her magical powers, leaving Joe Locke’s Teen, aka Billy Maximoff / Wiccan, enraged and out for […]

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Image Credit: Marvel Studios

While fans of Agatha All Along are still reeling from Teen’s identity being revealed, there’s still the matter of the major death that took place in the last episode. Alice (Ali Ahn) died when Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) began siphoning her magical powers, leaving Joe Locke’s Teen, aka Billy Maximoff / Wiccan, enraged and out for revenge. If it weren’t for Alice’s death, Agatha may not have figured out that Billy is the Scarlet Witch’s son. Those events are the springboard for the final episodes of Agatha All Along, and one of the players involved is exploring what it all really means.

ComicBook spoke to Joe Locke following the big Wiccan reveal in Agatha All Along, with the Heartstopper star diving into how Alice’s death impacts Billy and the series going forward.

“I always saw that scene as the last time we see Teen in his true, full innocence before he goes and tries to kill three of his friends,” Locke joked. “The last time you see your fully innocent Teen until the reveal of ‘He’s been lying this whole time!’ And, I think it’s that, that pushes him over the edge. I think he has a very optimistic sense of people and, maybe wrongly so?”

He continued, “Alice, as a character, is the one that I think Teen bonds to the most and the quickest. She lets him in before she lets anyone else in. He feels so betrayed by Agatha that she could do that to Alice. Then, this debate if she could control it, or meant to, or not. But, that’s something that is for the audience to decide. He certainly thinks that she could have stopped it.”

He then spoke about all the emotions at play when it came time to film the death scene with Alice.

“It’s quite an emotional scene to film, seeing your friend on the floor, actually looking dead, because again, practical makeup,” Locke points out. “Yeah, it was quite emotional, in a good way. It was fun, not weird, a sadistic fun way.”

Agatha All Along trailer has a surprising WandaVision callback

The midseason trailer for Agatha All Along features Kathryn Hahn’s titular Agatha Harkness referring to Teen as Billy Maximoff. We see footage of upcoming scenes remaining in the Disney+ series, including a look back at Billy, an Eastview resident, witnessing the red hex that Wanda Maximoff cast over Westview in WandaVision. Billy then screams as his mother swerves to avoid hitting a car on the road. The flashback ends with the car slamming into a tree. Eagle-eyed fans may remember Agatha mentioning a fatal car crash that happened in Eastview earlier in Agatha All Along. It looks like Billy was involved in that crash, which led him to search out Agatha so he could follow her down the Witches’ Road.

What is Agatha All Along about?

The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…

The series stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza.

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Agatha All Along’s Joe Locke is Open To a Young Avengers Turn https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-joe-locke-billy-wiccan-young-avengers-mcu-future/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:39:58 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955794 Young Avengers continues to bubble in the background.

Agatha All Along star Joe Locke addressed possibly joining up with the Young Avengers at some point down the line. ComicBook talked to the MCU star after his dramatic reveal at the end of Episode 5 of the Disney+ series. He’s officially Billy Maximoff now, and that leads to some serious questions about his Marvel […]

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Young Avengers continues to bubble in the background.

Agatha All Along star Joe Locke addressed possibly joining up with the Young Avengers at some point down the line. ComicBook talked to the MCU star after his dramatic reveal at the end of Episode 5 of the Disney+ series. He’s officially Billy Maximoff now, and that leads to some serious questions about his Marvel future. One of the biggest ones is his status with the formative Young Avengers. The end of The Marvels saw Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel getting a hold of Kate Bishop to form the team. Could they be in need of another sorcerer? (Assuming America Chavez will be along for the ride?) Locke says he’s down for anything, but also mentioned that Marvel Studios hasn’t said anything to him just yet. When they call, he’ll put on his crown. However, that moment hasn’t happened yet. So, he’s just waiting here like the rest of us for the news.

“I don’t know. I mean, I obviously would love for that to happen because I love working with Marvel and I love Billy as a character and would love to carry on playing him. But, I don’t know anything about it,” Locke explained in our interview. “If that’s their plan, that’s great and I absolutely love that. But, they don’t tell me anything. Like, that’s not even me keeping anything. I’d love to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing all this!’ But, who knows? You know, it’s very early days.”

Billy helping the young avengers?

The Marvel Stars playing it cool but it seems obvious that we’re headed to some sort of young Avengers project here in the meantime. Before we can get to all that, Billy needs to be trained though, as his power seems to be a little wild after his interaction with Agatha and the rest of the coven at the end of Episode 5. In the comics, “The Children’s Crusade” storyline is directly powered by Billy and Tommy’s search for the Scarlet Witch. The Young Avengers need to find Wanda to help avert catastrophe and with Avengers: Secret Wars on the near-horizon, it makes a lot of sense to try and start working out the tea leaves for ourselves.

The Young Avengers Begin To Assemble

They’re on the way.

Young Avengers is always a topic on social media surrounding Marvel properties. The MCU has made it a point to feature a ton of legacy heroes in Phases 4 and 5. Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Billy, Ironheart, and Skaar have all appeared over the last 4 years. There’s been an anticipation for the Young Avengers to really assemble ahead of whatever’s been going on with Avengers: Secret Wars. Iman Vellani is your tentative leader of this team of younger Marvel heroes. She talked to ScreenRant about who Kamala Khan should recruit to the cause next. Honestly, America Chavez would be a nice pick for the Ms. Marvel star. Xochitl Gomez would probably fit right in with the Young Avengers whenever they get a project too.

“I just want to see them interact. I think they’ve left so many of the younger character stories open-ended, and to see fans start shipping people together, it would be something like, I want to see Kamala interact with America,” Vellani said during our conversation. “I want to see Kamala interact with Patriot, I don’t know. Just all these random people. And so yeah, I think there’s so many different avenues you could take with this.”

It’s getting a little bit hard to ignore the numbers of the Young Avengers members that exist in the MCU right now.With Billy and toe it’s becoming even more probable that we’ll see the team unite sometime in the near future. The overall success of Agatha All Along and Joe Locke’s profile already with Heartstopper should also make a youth Marvel team-up an easy sell for audiences. Seeing fan favorite actors bantering back and forth has always been a bread and butter move for the MCU, and the Young Avengers project (whatever shape it takes) would follow in those footsteps. So, there’s just a lot for the fans to be looking forward to.

Do you think we will get a Young Avengers announcement here soon? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along: Joe Locke Talks Marvel Reveal, Elizabeth Olsen & Multiverse Group Chats https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-joe-locke-billy-scarlet-witch-elizabeth-olsen-young-avengers-mcu-interview/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:17:05 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955469 Joe Locke sits down with ComicBook.

Agatha All Along Episode 6 premieres tonight and Joe Locke is ecstatic to talk about all the fallout from last week’s shocking reveal. ComicBook had the chance to ask about keeping the secret of Billy Maximoff all this time. It’s been a couple of years since the Heartstopper star found himself cast in the MCU. […]

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Joe Locke sits down with ComicBook.

Agatha All Along Episode 6 premieres tonight and Joe Locke is ecstatic to talk about all the fallout from last week’s shocking reveal. ComicBook had the chance to ask about keeping the secret of Billy Maximoff all this time. It’s been a couple of years since the Heartstopper star found himself cast in the MCU. He’s dealt with a long road to get here, and his big moment knocked most viewers’ socks off. The 21-year-old is no stranger to stardom at this point, but keeping these Marvel secrets can be tough for even the most seasoned of veterans. (Hello to Mark Ruffalo, if he’s reading this.) During our conversation, Locke talked about finally seeing himself in a crown, setting up a Billy group chat with WandaVision‘s Billy Julian Hilliard, and what the prospective Young Avenger wants at the end of The Witches’ Road.

Our new Billy was in a great mood to talk to me after the events of Episode 5. The young actor is all energy early in the afternoon and, after commiserating about messy rooms, we dig into Agatha All Along’s big secret finally being out in the open. Namely, he’s playing Wiccan in the MCU, or at least Billy for right now. Fans have been frothing at the mouth trying to untangle this mystery for weeks now. Locke has been deflecting and demuring whenever asked about his stint as “Teen.” Marvel Studios and everyone in the production have tried their best to keep this secret, but we can finally talk about it. 

Keeping the Billy Secret

Trust issues in the coven!

When I ask the Marvel star about an Instagram post he made the morning after Episode 5 aired, about keeping this secret for two years, he corrects me and says it’s been longer than that really. Clearly, we’ve all been waiting for Billy to make a grand re-entrance into the MCU. Locke exclaimed, “More than two years, two years and a month!” When I joke and ask who’s counting, the young magic-user smirks, “Me.”

The Heartstopper phenom admits that it’s a strange feeling to finally be able to talk about his MCU character. “It feels really weird,” Locke admits. “It feels like every time I keep talking about it, I feel like I’m going to get tackled by the ‘Marvel Police.’ I don’t know. It’s been drilled so much into me to not talk about it. It’s amazing to be able to talk about it, but it also feels like I’m breaking all the rules.”

“I think that is one of the best lines ever. It’s also the way that Kathryn plays it. Her mouth in that scene?… Every time I watch it, I don’t watch myself, but I watch her.”

All of that is completely understandable. Marvel Studios is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to preserving these secrets. To have the young star walking around with that massive secret for more than two calendar years is a lot of pressure. But, Locke wears it all well. With every “Teen” mention in those interviews before the premiere, he never let it slip. You could probably say Locke is a natural at keeping those details close to the vest. 

As we’re laughing about how bizarre the situation is, Locke confirms that we’re allowed to call his character Billy and we both let out an audible cheer. He smiles, “I got scared there for a second!” But, it’s all clear right now as we switch gears to Kathryn Hahn’s dramatic moment where Agatha Harkness reveals that she knows who Billy’s mother is. Locke has nothing but praise for his costar’s delightful command in such a dramatic flashpoint for the show.

“I think that is one of the best lines ever. It’s also the way that Kathryn plays it. Her mouth in that scene? The way it did [Locke imitates the movement]… Every time I watch it, I don’t watch myself, but I watch her,” he admitted. “She’s just in many different emotions and deciding whether she’s going to say it or not. She’s just incredible and I think it’s such a great way to reveal it.”

You Should See Me in a Crown

When talking about Episode 5, you also have to ask about the moment where Billy gets his crown. I wondered if the headpiece was practical. After all, it’s fashioned a lot like Scarlet Witch’s diadem. To our surprise, it’s actually real. But, everyone had to be super careful handling the prop. Locke explained, “It’s actually 3D-printed, and they only made four of them. I think two of them snapped in half in transit because they were so fragile. So, when I was wearing it, it was very much like, ‘Don’t fall over!’ They talk about the superhero power, and wearing it, you feel super powerful.”

“It’s actually 3D-printed, and they only made four of them. I think two of them snapped in half in transit because they were so fragile. So, when I was wearing it, it was very much like, ‘Don’t fall over!’ They talk about the superhero power, and wearing it, you feel super powerful.” – Joe Locke on his crown

“Like, every time I took it off, they would have to re-do my hair. So, I might as well just keep it on all day. I just walk around feeling really cool and powerful,” Locke recalled

Of course, the topic of the coven in limbo had to be addressed, too. It sure seems like they’re dead at the end of Episode 5. But, who would Billy walk the road with? Locke chuckles, “You’ll just have to find out. Maybe the rest of the series is just me walking the road by myself?” I joke about skipping down the road like in The Wizard of Oz and he corrects me, “Evilly!”

The World Needs the Billy Group Chat & Wanda Back

New Billy and Old Billy

In an effort to start the Billy group chat, I ask if Locke has spoken to Julian Hilliard yet. (Hilliard played Wanda’s son in WandaVision, for those who need a refresher.) The Agatha star replied, “No, I haven’t. I would love to! Yeah, we should. We should have the Billy group chat!” 

Maybe the MCU’s resident Billys can trade tips on blue, glowing hands. Locke tells me that his magic is actually practical in that scene from Episode 5. He began, “I don’t actually think that was CGI, I think they use some sort of electrical, practical thing. And then I just put it on, I might be wrong? That was definitely what they were planning on doing. They were definitely planning on using two electrodes and then placing that in, rather than using CGI.”

“I’m yet to meet her. Obviously, I would love to.”

– Joe Locke on Elizabeth Olsen

As the man bringing Wanda Maximoff’s son to life, the Scarlet Witch couldn’t be absent from this conversation. Locke says that he still hasn’t spoken to Elizabeth Olsen, but there were some pictures sent from the set. “I still haven’t,” the 21-year-old says when I mention meeting the Avengers star. “I think, when we did that day, Jac [Schaeffer] and Mary [Livanos] sent pictures of me in the crown. But, I’m yet to meet her. Obviously, I would love to.” So, social media will just have to wait for the eventual picture of those two together. That will probably melt the Internet. 

Alice’s Sad Ending in Agatha All Along

Lost in all of this shuffle is the death of Alice Wu-Gulliver in Episode 5. Ali Ahn’s character forfeited her life trying to save Agatha. For Locke, that scene has significance alongside the loss of a new friend in the story they’re trying to tell.

“I always saw that scene as the last time we see Teen in his true, full innocence before he goes and tries to kill three of his friends,” Locke joked. “The last time you see your fully innocent Teen until the reveal of ‘He’s been lying this whole time!’ And, I think it’s that, that pushes him over the edge. I think he has a very optimistic sense of people and, maybe wrongly so?”

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Alice Wu-Gulliver steps into the spotlight in Episode 4.

He continued, “Alice, as a character, is the one that I think Teen bonds to the most and the quickest. She lets him in before she lets anyone else in. He feels so betrayed by Agatha that she could do that to Alice. Then, this debate if she could control it, or meant to, or not. But, that’s something that is for the audience to decide. He certainly thinks that she could have stopped it.”

“It’s quite an emotional scene to film, seeing your friend on the floor, actually looking dead, because again, practical makeup,” Locke points out. “Yeah, it was quite emotional, in a good way. It was fun, not weird, a sadistic fun way.”

What About Mephisto? Young Avengers? Tell Us!

The “Sigil” binding Billy’s identity still hangs as one of the biggest mysteries left and Locke isn’t letting that one out of the bag just yet. “You’ll have to find out this week!” But, he does have some small admissions that he can make. “We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie. He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?” When I joke about aggregators getting a hold of that, Locke quips, “That’s the fun to work out before things get rolling!”

Billy’s costume in Episode 5 was a major hint at his identity from the moment the fans saw his ’80s getup. Red and blue with a headband just screams Wiccan for the people who love the comics. But, we’re not exactly there yet. Still, the star got a kick out of that reference. “I feel like the biggest [hint] for me is Episode 5, the costume. That outfit, and then there’s quite a few others. I think people were expecting this to be the big reveal of the season. But, strap yourselves in because there’s a lot more to come.”

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MEPHISTO might really be coming.

One thing fans hope is still coming is the arrival of Mephisto. Locke is very amused at the prospect of the villain showing his face. “That was great. I feel like that was a very fan-service/wider MCU thing that I have no idea about. But, it definitely is fun to bring to life, as a fan of Marvel,” he admitted. “To be like, ‘Oh, we get to say his name!’ That means that maybe…like, who knows what that means for the future of that character?”

When it comes to the future, the ground has been shifting lately over at Marvel Studios. With Billy’s arrival, a lot of fans expect the Young Avengers to announce their presence in the near future. But, for Locke, he’s not letting anything slip. 

“I don’t know. I mean, I obviously would love for that to happen because I love working with Marvel and I love Billy as a character and would love to carry on playing him. But, I don’t know anything about it,” the actor deadpans. “If that’s their plan, that’s great and I absolutely love that. But, they don’t tell me anything. Like, that’s not even me keeping anything. I’d love to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing all this!’ But, who knows? You know, it’s very early days.”

Were you shocked by the Wiccan reveal? Do you think Wanda’s coming back? Check out all the pop culture discussion at @ComicBook!  

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Agatha All Along Episode 6 Teases Trust Issues in New Clip (Exclusive) https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-episode-6-clip-kathryn-hahn-joe-locke-mcu/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:05:55 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=947313 Teen and Agatha have an intense conversation.

Agatha All Along Episode 5 really shook the table and Marvel Studios dropped an exclusive preview of Episode 6 here on ComicBook. You can watch Agatha Harkness and Teen’s intense encounter leading into whatever challenges The Witches’ Road has for this bedraggled coven next. As regular viewers are still reeling from last week, things have gone a bit sideways for […]

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Teen and Agatha have an intense conversation.

Agatha All Along Episode 5 really shook the table and Marvel Studios dropped an exclusive preview of Episode 6 here on ComicBook. You can watch Agatha Harkness and Teen’s intense encounter leading into whatever challenges The Witches’ Road has for this bedraggled coven next. As regular viewers are still reeling from last week, things have gone a bit sideways for our favorite coven. Joe Locke’s character has been revealed as Billy Maximoff. He no longer looks up to Agatha the way he did when the series started. It was only a matter of time before the fan-favorite witch bared those fangs again. The scene above featuring Kathryn Hahn and her protege shows off just how mercurial her character can be. In the same breath, Agatha All Along’s fanbase has long suspected that there’s more to “Teen” than the show was letting on. This new clip should only heighten that feeling moving forward.

Billy and Agatha stand on the road, lit by a sickly yellow light. Both of them have been through the wringer on The Witches’ Road. Through multiple trials, the coven has escaped with heavy losses. However, this week finds these witches pushed to their limits. Teen tells his mentor that he will never trust her again after all that’s happened. Despite Agatha’s posturing, she needs him to finish out The Witches’ Road. So, they have to work together despite their fractured bond. In the same token, Agatha sees Teen as a naive child who never really grasped the consequences of what they were up against until right now. “Last one there is not a nice person” feels like quite a dig. But, then the younger boy hints there’s something evil lurking within him.

Agatha All Along‘s final chapters should be a hoot if there’s any indication. The series has been a mainstay on Disney+ during this Halloween season. Marvel Studios has reportedly seen its highest retention rate for a show ever with the latest MCU series. (If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably as hooked as the rest of us are.) Agatha All Along has also reignited Mephisto fever among fans who remember the hysteria of WandaVision. So, the theories are coming fast and furious on social media now too. Who knows where this Marvel series will end up going at this rate. Whatever the case, we’re in for one heck of a ride.

Agatha All Along Took The Gloves Off Last Week

Teen and Agatha have an intense conversation.

Last week wasn’t the first time that Agatha All Along really shook up the fans, Episode 3 was a real doozy in multiple ways too. In that first trial on The Witches’ Road, the table had been set for some really gnarly stuff to go down. In order to let the viewers know how serious this was going to get, Mrs. Hart ended up getting killed off. A lot of WandaVision die-hards were shocked they would kill off Debra Jo Rupp’s character. Especially, because it happened so early in the run for Agatha All AlongDirector Jac Schaeffer told Entertainment Weekly that it was important for viewers to be aware that this series has some teeth. So far, the show is living up to that pedigree after the chaos of last week. 

“It was so important early on when we figured out we’re doing the Witches’ Road, we’re doing this coven, the hilarious idea that we would bring a normie along,” Schaeffer began. “Debra Jo Rupp is a comedy genius. She can’t not be funny, but we do horror-comedy on the show. This show has teeth, and in the later episodes it goes to really dramatic places. It was important to signal that, it was important to make it clear that we’re not messing around, that people die in this show.”

“That we are theatrical, campy, broad, all the spectacle, all the fun, all the winking, all the meta, but that underneath it all, there is real grit to the story,” Schaeffer continued. “There is real meaning to it. I also think that is part of Agatha’s personality; she can do all the flamboyance, but she’ll cut you. It felt disingenuous to not really go there.”

What do you think is coming on this week’s episode of Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Did You Spot Agatha All Along’s Reveal of a Deep-Cut Marvel Character? https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-episode-5-nicholas-scratch-reference-explained/ Tue, 15 Oct 2024 22:48:14 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955507 Rio Vidal in Agatha All Along.
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Agatha All Along Episode 5 “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power” ended with the big twist(?) reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is Billy Maximoff (aka “Wiccan” in the comics), the son of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch. However, the episode also had a sneaky name-drop to another mystical son: “Nicholas Scratch,” the son of Agatha Harkness! The […]

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Rio Vidal in Agatha All Along.
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Agatha All Along Episode 5 “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power” ended with the big twist(?) reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is Billy Maximoff (aka “Wiccan” in the comics), the son of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch. However, the episode also had a sneaky name-drop to another mystical son: “Nicholas Scratch,” the son of Agatha Harkness!

The latest stop along the Witches Road saw Agatha and Co. pulled into a 1980s horror-slasher film reality, where the trial saw Agatha having to face literal ghosts of her past after a Ouija board summons the spirit of her mother Evanora. The spirit of Evanora is wrathful toward Agatha for murdering her coven and possesses her daughter’s body to kill her new coven. After Alice (Ali Ahn) exorcised Evanora from Agatha’s body, Agatha goes magic-vampire and drains Alice of her powers and life force. As Agatha is feeding, “Teen” notices the Ouija board spelling out the name “Nicholas Scratch,” signaling that another spirit has entered the room. Calling out the name stops Agatha in her tracks – with good reason.

Who Is Marvel’s Nicholas Scratch?

We did a full deep-dive breakdown of Nicholas Scratch’s Marvel history when Agatha All Along first premiered, but just to recap:

“In the comics, Nicholas Scratch is from New Salem, a secret area in Colorado where witches and warlocks escaped from the Salem Witch Trials. Nobody actually knows who his father is, and there are fan theories that range from demons to Mephisto to the idea that, like Wanda, Agatha simply conjured him into being. After The Scarlet Witch abandoned New Salem, Nicholas Scratch took over as its leader, and felt betrayed by his mother’s decision to leave the cloistered little magical world. Scratch dispatched a batch of New Salem witches out into the world to retrieve Agatha, so that she could return to New Salem, stand trial, and be executed for treason.”

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Scratch’s obsession with vengeance eventually got him banished to the Dark Realm, but he would escape eventually, possessing various other Marvel characters (like Fantastic Four’s Franklin Richards); taking over places like the tow of Centerville and causing epic conflicts with the Avengers and other Marvel teams and characters – eventually even landing in hell, and working for Mephisto.

Obviously, there’s any amount of that comic book lore for Agatha All Along to play with. The show has been building clear themes about power and the daming compromises made for it – and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) seems to have a lot of bad karma to answer for. Having Billy Maximoff and Nicholas Scratch in the same story arc also makes this an interesting generational story, as both Wanda and Agatha’s time with the Darkhold have created magical offspring and legacies that will live beyond them.

Agatha All Along streams new episodes Wednesday nights on Disney+

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How Agatha All Along Channels ‘80s Horror Movies in Latest Episode https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-80s-horror-movies-episode-5/ Tue, 15 Oct 2024 21:17:20 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955368

We’re officially halfway through Disney+’s Agatha All Along, and viewers are discovering new truths about Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven of Marvel witches along the way. Each of the Marvel Studios series’ episodes has been structured around a different facet of popular culture, with the recent fifth episode sending viewers back into the […]

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We’re officially halfway through Disney+’s Agatha All Along, and viewers are discovering new truths about Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven of Marvel witches along the way. Each of the Marvel Studios series’ episodes has been structured around a different facet of popular culture, with the recent fifth episode sending viewers back into the 1980s. In a lot of unique ways, Episode 5 of Agatha All Along was reminiscent of the era’s horror tropes — and here were some of the biggest connections.

The episode sees the coven approach the latest house (and trial) on the Witches’ Road — an ’80s-themed bungalow designed specifically for Agatha herself. As the coven suddenly dons ’80s-themed sweats and pajamas, they are presented with an Ouija board that seems to present them with the answers that they seek. They use the Ouija board to converse with the seemingly-dead Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp), and then later activate the ghost of Agatha’s mom, Evanora Harkness (Kate Forbes). This alone pays tribute to 1980s pop culture, during which Ouija boards rose in popularity, even inspiring movies of the decade such as Witchboard.

Agatha’s estranged relationship with Evanora, who is disappointed in her daughter for her overall reputation as a witch, can be seen as a take on the snarky parent-child relationships that were a hallmark of multiple genres of ’80s movies. Agatha getting possessed by her mother, which ultimately leads to her killing Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), is also a hallmark of ’80s horror, ranging from the Evil Dead franchise to the aptly-named Possession.

Even the final moments of the episode — when Teen (Joe Locke) activates his powers and appears to drown the remaining members of the coven, revealing himself to really be Billy Maximoff / Wiccan — can be tied to the countless twist endings of ’80s horror. From Friday the 13th to Sleepaway Camp and beyond, plenty of memorable horror movies of the decade ended with characters who were hiding in plain sight suddenly making villainous moves.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, the infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…

In addition to Kathryn HahnAgatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

“One of the biggest was that it was Jac Schaeffer, because she created all of that,” Hahn explained to ComicBook earlier this year. “She kind of created this iteration of Agatha, because she’s all over the place comics-wise, and touches on so many worlds. And so, that creation of this Agatha was so beautifully crafted by her. But it was very important, to both of us, that it honored Westview and the world of Westview, and also started in reality of what would happen next. And so, it’s really about her gaining, not even her powers back, but them changing. She shifts.”

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Marvel Reveals Heartbreaking Scarlet Witch Fact in New Agatha All Along Teaser https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-scarlet-witch-wandavision-billy-joe-locke-mcu-hex/ Tue, 15 Oct 2024 15:11:21 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=955104 Wanda's Hex delivers another gut punch.

Agatha All Along’s Episode 6 teaser left fans crushed about Wanda’s arc matching up to Billy’s. Yes, last week the Marvel TV show revealed that Joe Locke’s character was actually the son of the beloved Avenger. Still, so many questions remain about how Billy ended up alive after WandaVision and it looks like Marvel is […]

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Wanda's Hex delivers another gut punch.

Agatha All Along’s Episode 6 teaser left fans crushed about Wanda’s arc matching up to Billy’s. Yes, last week the Marvel TV show revealed that Joe Locke’s character was actually the son of the beloved Avenger. Still, so many questions remain about how Billy ended up alive after WandaVision and it looks like Marvel is bringing some answers this week. Agatha All Along Episode 6 is poised to take MCU fans back to the Hex and the closing chapters of Scarlet Witch’s Disney+ debut. People who watched WandaVision remember the spell that Wanda Maximoff cast over the entire town of Westview. That entire series was an effort for the Scarlet Witch to get her family back. Vision was a profound loss after The Infinity Saga, but her desire for her two sons was very pronounced by the end. Marvel fans can’t help but notice that the grown version of Billy might not have been too far away. It’s a crushing moment for people who just want to see the witch happy.

In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda went on a murderous rampage to secure variants of her boys. The universe of Earth-838 will likely never be the same after she killed Charles Xavier, Reed Richards, Captain Marvel, Captain Carter and Black Bolt in her quest to reunite with Billy and Tommy. (Not to mention the poor Wanda of their universe who everyone must be looking at with extreme skepticism!) Going through all of that when Billy was basically one town over in Earth-616? Woof. Just a brutal gut punch to realize. But, as most Marvel Studios teasers and trailers can be, there’s probably some key information being hidden from the viewers before Agatha All Along Episode 6. Wednesday is going to bring answers and we’re excited to see what other surprises Marvel has hiding.

So many wild moments in here.

In all this WandaVision fervor, MCU fans have also noticed that Agatha’s comments to Billy take on a new light after the teaser. Kathryn Hahn’s line reading of, “you are so much like your mother,” takes on new heights when you compare the young boy’s actions to Wanda’s in that previous series. Agatha All Along has hinted that Billy could have really been Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son. But, it turns out he’s a Maximoff. In grand family tradition at this point, he’s led some people into a dangerous situation for his own personal gain. Yes, Agatha wanted to go down the road to restore her powers. But, these other witches have put their lives on the line at the urging of Agatha and her familiar. It’s not exactly wrapping a whole town of people in a Chaos Magic Hex, but it’s still pretty reckless and morally ambiguous. So, the elder witch has some ground to stand on when she challenges Billy about his deception so far in this adventure.

One Of Agatha All Along’s Big Secrets Is Out In The Open

Wanda’s Hex Might be even more tragic

A lot of folks probably weren’t expecting the biggest surprises from Agatha All Along until the end. Sometimes, Marvel Studios can still shock the fans. Billy being confirmed just over the midway point in the series certainly qualifies. Joe Locke has to feel a tremendous weight lifted off of his shoulders with this new development. The entire promotional tour for Agatha All Along, he had to step up to the plate and lie to all of our faces. Now, the “Teen” actor can finally call his character Billy. Entertainment Weekly sat down with the Heartstopper star to discuss his newest maternal figure. It seems as though Billy and Wanda Maximoff have some other traits in common besides their magical abilities. Is the young witch a maleficent presence? We’ll have to tune-in and find out. 

We talked a lot about playing with the gray area,” Locke remembered when asked about the big reveal “At the end of episode 5, we don’t know what happens to those witches, but he’s not doing a good thing. We played a lot with, does that make him a bad person? Is he a good person? Which then draws parallels to the motherly figures in his life.”

Billy and Wanda Maximoff.

He added, “Wanda does evil things but isn’t necessarily evil. Agatha, questionably, is evil, but there’s more to that, as well. We know that he’s been lying to her, and we play a lot with those dynamics of how duplicitous he is. The facade of the fanboy teen, is that completely fake or is that actually still a real part of him? This is the stuff that I found so interesting in playing him.”

Billy Might not be a good person, but he didn’t want all of his friends to die at that moment. It seems like there’s a lack of control for the young witch, and luckily there are more episodes of the Disney+ series to go. Back in WandaVision, Agatha correctly argues that Wanda needed to learn how to control her powers to reach her full potential. At this point, the son is echoing the mother in some interesting ways.

Do you think the Hex helped create Billy? Is it something else? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along Trailer Reveals a Surprising Connection to Wiccan and WandaVision https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-trailer-wiccan-wandavision-hex-connection/ Mon, 14 Oct 2024 18:16:04 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=954720 Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Agatha All Along fans are taking a trip down memory lane to WandaVision in the show’s latest trailer. The big buzz coming out of last week’s Agatha All Along episode was the confirmation that Joe Locke’s mysterious Teen is Wiccan, one of Scarlet Witch’s twin boys from WandaVision. Fans had long speculated that Teen was […]

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Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Agatha All Along fans are taking a trip down memory lane to WandaVision in the show’s latest trailer. The big buzz coming out of last week’s Agatha All Along episode was the confirmation that Joe Locke’s mysterious Teen is Wiccan, one of Scarlet Witch’s twin boys from WandaVision. Fans had long speculated that Teen was going to be Wiccan, and while Episode 5 of Agatha All Along didn’t name-drop the words “Billy” or “Wiccan,” Agatha did tell Teen how he was so much like his mother, and we saw Wiccan grow a crown similar to the one worn by Scarlet Witch. With only a few episodes remaining, we now look at how the events in WandaVision impact Agatha All Along.

The midseason trailer for Agatha All Along features Kathryn Hahn’s titular Agatha Harkness referring to Teen as Billy Maximoff. We see footage of upcoming scenes remaining in the Disney+ series, including a look back at Billy, an Eastview resident, witnessing the red hex that Wanda Maximoff cast over Westview in WandaVision. Billy then screams as his mother swerves to avoid hitting a car on the road. The flashback ends with the car slamming into a tree. Eagle-eyed fans may remember Agatha mentioning a fatal car crash that happened in Eastview earlier in Agatha All Along. It looks like Billy was involved in that crash, which led him to search out Agatha so he could follow her down the Witches’ Road.

Billy watching scarlet witch’s hex from wandavision

What happened to Wiccan in WandaVision?

Scarlet Witch magically created Billy and his twin brother Tommy in WandaVision. Still reeling from the loss of Vision in Avengers: Infinity War, Wanda Maximoff conjured a fairytale lifestyle for herself in the small community of Westview. Part of this involved a spell that brought Vision back to life and brainwashed Westview’s residents. Because of the nature of Wanda’s spell, Billy and Tommy aged rapidly during WandaVision, growing from small babies to young boys. They each demonstrated abilities similar to their mother and uncle, with Billy mastering magic while Tommy possessed Pietro’s speed.

Once Wanda became the Scarlet Witch and defeated Agatha in the WandaVision series finale, she dropped her spell over Westview, causing Billy, Tommy, and Vision to fade from existence. However, MCU fans witnessed alternate versions of Billy and Tommy in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when Scarlet Witch went on her rampage through the multiverse to reunite her family.

Wiccan is the latest Young Avenger to debut in the MCU

Agatha All Along joins a list of recent Marvel projects to introduce viewers to future members of the Young Avengers. WandaVision featured the twin siblings Billy (Wiccan) and Tommy (Speed); Eli Bradley (Patriot) appeared in The Falcon and the Winter SoldierLoki included Kid Loki; America Chavez was in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Kate Bishop fought alongside Clint Barton in Hawkeye; Ant-Man’s daughter Cassie Lang (Stature/Stinger) was in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; and we also have Agatha All Along teasing Teddy (Hulkling) in Episode 2.

The mid-credits scene in The Marvels also continued the MCU’s Young Avengers setup. The scene saw Ms. Marvel head to New York to recruit Kate Bishop, telling the young Hawkeye that she was putting a team together, similar to Nick Fury’s cameo in the first Iron Man movie. Ms. Marvel also referenced Cassie Lang when speaking to Kate Bishop.

What is Agatha All Along about?

Agatha’s coven is shocked.

The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…

The series stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza.

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Agatha All Along Releases New Mid-Season Trailer & Wiccan Poster https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-releases-mid-season-trailer-new-wiccan-poster/ Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:13:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=954701 Joe Locke as Billy Maximoff/Wiccan in Marvel's "Agatha All Along"

Marvel’s Agatha All Along has released a new mid-season trailer, which gives us a preview of the back half episodes; as of writing this, Agatha All Along has aired 5 of 9 episodes, officially crossing over the halfway mark with Episode 5, “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power”. (SPOILERS!) The latest Agtha episode ended on […]

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Joe Locke as Billy Maximoff/Wiccan in Marvel's "Agatha All Along"

Marvel’s Agatha All Along has released a new mid-season trailer, which gives us a preview of the back half episodes; as of writing this, Agatha All Along has aired 5 of 9 episodes, officially crossing over the halfway mark with Episode 5, “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power”. (SPOILERS!) The latest Agtha episode ended on the massive (read: obvious) cliffhanger twist that Agatha’s ‘pet’ sidekick “Teen” (Joe Locke) is indeed Billy Maximoff, the son of Wanda Maximoff the Scarlet Witch. Billy made his identity known in a display of magical power that has seemingly overwhelmed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and her surviving coven.

To celebrate the big reveal, Marvel Studios has now released an official poster of Joe Locke looking like his fully in his “Wiccan” era, the mystical superhero/Young Avenger that Billy grows up to be in Marvel Comics lore. Check out the Wiccan poster and new Agatha All Along mid-season trailer, below!

Marvel’s Agatha All Along Mid-Season Trailer

Many viewers of Agatha All Along saw the reveal of Wiccan coming from the moment Joe Locke was cast in the show. Locke clearly had a look that could be a live-action version of what Billy/Wiccan looked like in the comics – as well as looking like he could conceivably be the son of Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch.

As discussed on our ComicBook Nation podcast, the question was never really who “Teen” was – but more the question of how Billy Maximoff is back, and older, when WandaVision revealed he was just a construct that Wanda created with her hex powers. Those questions extend to how Wiccan is such a powerful sorcerer now, and (as the poster clearly reminds us) how he got to be wearing his mother’s crown. To the credit of Agatha All Along, Wiccan is just one of several mysteries that are keeping viewers locked in: what lies at the end of the Witches Road is still a major one – and of course, there are all the fan theories, about how Marvel characters like Scarlet Witch or the devil Mephisto could be involved. There’s also the major thread of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio and her true identity (Death?), as well as her history with Agatha and the fate of Agatha’s son that all need to be addressed.

This mid-season trailer for Agatha All Along does a pretty good job of bringing all of that mystery to the forefront, basically reminding anyone who’s been tuning in that there is a lot of reason to still be invested in the series – including some bigger magical battles to come. Agatha All Along’s greatest magic trick may be proving to its many doubters that the show holds a meaningful place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise – and possibly plays a pivotal role in the current Multiverse Saga story arc.

Agatha All Along streams on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along Episode 5 Connects To Massive MCU Rumor https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-avengers-doomsday-billy-wiccan-scarlet-witch-mcu-rumor-joe-locke/ Mon, 14 Oct 2024 02:23:15 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=954297 Marvel Studios seems to be putting together a new team ahead of Avengers: Doomsday and Joe Locke's character is key.

Agatha All Along’s latest massive reveal makes the big rumor surrounding Avengers: Doomsday even more interesting. In case you missed it, Episode 5 of the Disney+ series told the audience that Joe Locke’s mystery Teen is actually Scarlet Witch’s son Billy. It’s a ground-shaking reveal for this series. But, maybe more interestingly, it lends some […]

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Marvel Studios seems to be putting together a new team ahead of Avengers: Doomsday and Joe Locke's character is key.

Agatha All Along’s latest massive reveal makes the big rumor surrounding Avengers: Doomsday even more interesting. In case you missed it, Episode 5 of the Disney+ series told the audience that Joe Locke’s mystery Teen is actually Scarlet Witch’s son Billy. It’s a ground-shaking reveal for this series. But, maybe more interestingly, it lends some credence to the hottest rumor surrounding Avengers: Doomsday. Writers like Alex Perez from The Cosmic Circus have hinted that the next Marvel Studios team-up movie might adapt elements of The Childrens’ Crusade. This storyline heavily involves Billy and the rest of the Young Avengers heroes. They strike out to find Wanda Maximoff, because two of their teammates would like to know what happened to their mother. (That’s Wiccan and Speed for those playing at home. Speaking of, where is Scarlet Witch’s other son?) So, Billy would have to be around for that story to take place in the same way.

Avengers: Doomsday is one of the biggest moments on the foreseeable MCU timeline for a number of reasons. Take your pick of Robert Downey Jr’s return as Victor Von Doom, a sorely-missed Marvel crossover movie, or even more direct Multiverse Saga developments in a live-action project. If the rumors about Scarlet Witch being in a romantic entanglement with Doctor Doom are true, fans could toss Wanda’s long-awaited appearance onto the fire as well. There’s so much anticipation building around Joe and Anthony Russo’s big Marvel Studios movie. This development would only heighten things as we move toward the crucial moments of The Multiverse Saga. If the Young Avengers begin looking for Wanda by the end of Agatha All Along, don’t be shocked about that development.

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Joe Locke on the road to Young Avengers

A lot of credit should go to director Jac Schaeffer for managing to weave in these big MCU developments during Agatha All Along. The WandaVision creative force has tried her best to keep the spotlight on Kathryn Hahn and her coven. But, in a franchise this big, there are some story elements that need attention. Even when they come in unlikely places. Episode 3’s Mephisto mention shook the Internet, and revealing Billy as the teenager that’s been tagging along with these witches would qualify as well. Still, it’s a delicate balance for a creative team that wants to tell a story about Agatha Harkness and not just provide MCU updates every week. It would seem that they’ve done that here. Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter that Marvel president Kevin Feige helped make the call for Mephisto in the early going. So, the gears are always turning. 

Agatha All Along Laying The Groundwork For Children’s Crusade

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These kids are going to find wanda.

When it comes to the Young Avengers, they already have a leader in Ms. Marvel. Iman Vellani sat down with ComicBook’s Phase Zero after the release of The Marvels to discuss getting the team together. During our chat, the actress revealed that The Marvels actually cut a sequence where Ms. Marvel had all of the heroes together. The theatrical cut of that movie actually featured Vellani speaking to Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop. A fun reward for fans who had been following these younger characters. Marvel Studios must have thought this was all a bit much too soon. But, in the time since The Marvels, more pieces keep getting added to the puzzle at different points. Bill is just the latest Young Avenger to pop-up after all these honor students keep cropping up.

“Yes, I mean, it was like pretty much the same lines,” Vellani told us. “I think they were trying their best to incorporate as many as they can. But, I think its better that we see Kamala actually form the Young Avengers starting from the beginning. Because, there was a version where they already exist and I was like, ‘That doesn’t make any sense’ and they were like ‘We know, we’re not gonna film this.’”

“But, yeah, I think it was really fun and I loved working with Hailee for just that one day that I got to meet her and see her and talk to her. She’s so… it was nice just having someone to relate to about the super suits and… you know, where the future of the Young Avengers lies,” she continued. “So, yeah I’m very excited. Hopefully, that turns into something real…. It’s my favorite part about the first Avengers film too. When Nick Fury and Scarlett Johansson, they all gather together, and they’re like ‘we’re a team now.’”

Do you think Children’s Crusade is on the way in the next Avengers movie? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Wandavision Fan-Favorite Reacts to Agatha All Along Recast https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-joe-locke-billy-wiccan-wandavision-julian-hillard-mcu-recast/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 21:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=954011 The original lineup in WandaVision.

Agatha All Along revealed a new version of Wanda Maximoff’s son this week and the actor that had the role before in the MCU reacted to the news. WandaVision fans grew to love Julian Hillard as Billy in the Disney+ series. On social media, the MCU actor praised Joe Locke for his performance in Agatha […]

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The original lineup in WandaVision.

Agatha All Along revealed a new version of Wanda Maximoff’s son this week and the actor that had the role before in the MCU reacted to the news. WandaVision fans grew to love Julian Hillard as Billy in the Disney+ series. On social media, the MCU actor praised Joe Locke for his performance in Agatha All Along Episode 5. While the name Billy hasn’t been said yet, it’s pretty clear that the mysterious teen is supposed to be Wanda’s son.  Hillard said, “Joe Locke is awesome y’all… I fully support whatever role he plays in the MCU.” It’s a kind gesture and garnered a lot of love for the younger version of Billy online.

So, the call is already there for Joe Locke whenever he wants it. Since this is The Multiverse Saga, there’s still a chance that both Billy’s could be on screen together before Avengers: Secret Wars is done and dusted. Interestingly, one thing that Hillard had on his vision board might now be on Locke’s to-do list as well: being a Young Avenger. The team continues to build in the background of all these Phase 4 and 5 Marvel Studios titles. Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Cassie Lang, Skaar, Billy, Ironheart and more have already found their way into the mix for whatever’s next. The Direct previously asked Hillard about joining up and he sounded thrilled about it.

New Billy and Old Billy

“I’m up for anything. I think it would be cool to do more projects with Xochitl, and yeah, all the ones you mentioned too. I’d love to see some sort of Children’s Crusade adaptation,” Hillard admitted. “That’s my favorite Billy story. It would be fun to see Billy and Kid Loki interact, and Alligator Loki too. And, of course, can’t forget Teddy! Ooh, and Iron Lad!”

Agatha All Along Is Not Short On Surprises

Billy and Wanda Maximoff.

Agatha All Along Has demonstrated that Marvel Studios has its eyes on the future with every passing episode. Remember the fervor back in Episode 3 when Mephisto finally got dropped into an episode of one of these Marvel TV shows. Moments like that are helping build the idea that the forward arching plan can move forward even in series where you would least expect it. One of the main theories dancing across the entirety of WandaVision was that Mephisto would appear at some point to be at the core of this problem with Billy and Tommy’s existence. Now, Agatha All Along is geared towards telling the story of our main character. But, it’s clear that Marvel has some other plans in the works too.

Director Jac Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter that the call to include Mephisto came all the way from the top. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, Marvel Television head Brad Winderbaum and executive producer Mary Livanos all had a conversation about including the famous Marvel villain in the latest series. With that level of communication, it would seem something is brewing with the demon somewhere down the line in the MCU. At any rate, fans reacted to that news with the kind of candor you would expect. Viewers are now hoping for a possible cameo from the actor who’s playing Mephisto before the end of this show. It remains to be seen if that will happen. But, anything is really possible when you dig down into it.

“It was a conversation with [Agatha] executive producer Mary Livanos, [Marvel’s head of streaming] Brad [Winderbaum] and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige], but it is a mention that is larger than me and this show,” Schaeffer began. “It is the larger Marvel-ness of it. So it is not about me bristling or having any kind of a reaction or agenda, mostly because that type of fevered discourse that is very, very rooted in the comics is not as interesting to me as the current story being told in the series at hand.”

Are you shocked that Billy has already been revealed? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along Gives Iconic Marvel Villain Group a New Origin https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-marvel-villain-group-new-origin-salems-seven/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=953616 marvel-agatha-all-along-watch-stream-premiere-time.jpg

We’re over halfway through Marvel’s Agatha All Along, and the Disney+ series absolutely is not pulling any punches. The series aims to flesh out the magical side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe through the lens of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven, which has included some unexpected and clever homages to Marvel Comics thus […]

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We’re over halfway through Marvel’s Agatha All Along, and the Disney+ series absolutely is not pulling any punches. The series aims to flesh out the magical side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe through the lens of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven, which has included some unexpected and clever homages to Marvel Comics thus far. As the newly-released fifth episode of Agatha All Along reveals, the series’ plans have included given a major Marvel Comics group a new update. Spoilers for Episode 5 of Agatha All Along lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

The majority of Agatha All Along’s fifth episode concerns the Witches’ Road trial for Agatha herself — an ’80s-themed horror adventure that reckoned with her storied past as a witch. Prior to that, Agatha and the coven began to be attacked by a group of cloaked witches, who are quickly identified as the Salem’s Seven. As the coven reveals to Teen (Joe Locke), the Salem’s Seven are directly connected to the witches whose energy Agatha drained during the Salem Witch Trials. More specifically, the Salem Seven are the descendants of those witches, who are only alive because Agatha decided to spare their lives as children.

Who Are the Salem’s Seven in Marvel Comics?

This reveal for the Salem’s Seven differs a bit from how the group are portrayed in Marvel Comics. Created by Len Wein and George Perez in 1977’s Fantastic Four #186, the comic version of the Salem’s Seven are actually Agatha’s grandchildren, and the direct children of Nicholas Scratch. Armed with the ability to transform into magical beings resembling lions, snakes, and fish, the Salem’s Seven grow to become major antagonists of both Agatha, Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch, and the Fantastic Four, the latter of whom Agatha serves as governess for. The group was rebooted in the Ultimate Universe as a team of heroes, who were later revealed to be evil.

According to the end credits of Agatha All Along, the MCU’s version of the Salem’s Seven do share a naming scheme similar to their comic counterparts, with names like Snake, Crow, Owl, and Fox. That being said, there’s no telling at this point if Agatha All Along will lean fully into the group’s shapeshifting abilities from the comics, or if they will just be mysterious and creepy witches who continue to target Agatha and the coven (or, what’s left of them, that is). Either way, this new approach to the Salem’s Seven’s origin story definitely adds some personal stakes to their connection with Agatha, without having to directly answer exactly what is going on with the show’s version of Nicholas Scratch.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, the infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…

In addition to Kathryn HahnAgatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

“One of the biggest was that it was Jac Schaeffer, because she created all of that,” Hahn explained to ComicBook earlier this year. “She kind of created this iteration of Agatha, because she’s all over the place comics-wise, and touches on so many worlds. And so, that creation of this Agatha was so beautifully crafted by her. But it was very important, to both of us, that it honored Westview and the world of Westview, and also started in reality of what would happen next. And so, it’s really about her gaining, not even her powers back, but them changing. She shifts.”

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along Fans Discover Massive Clue for Episode 6 https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/agatha-all-along-scarlet-witch-billy-episode-6-easter-egg-mcu-guide/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=953741 Episode 6 is going to be wild.

Agatha All Along fans think they’ve figured out what’s coming in Episode 6, and Scarlet Witch fans should be excited. Episode 5 just revealed that Joe Locke’s Teen is Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. So, social media has been buzzing since the moment the pictures of that crown hit the timeline. But, some fans have already […]

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Episode 6 is going to be wild.

Agatha All Along fans think they’ve figured out what’s coming in Episode 6, and Scarlet Witch fans should be excited. Episode 5 just revealed that Joe Locke’s Teen is Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. So, social media has been buzzing since the moment the pictures of that crown hit the timeline. But, some fans have already tabbed Agatha All Along’s sixth episode as a flashback sequence for the young witch. Cross referencing promotional materials, they discovered the Episode Guide graphic that Marvel Studios put out before the premiere has Episode 6 circled in red ink. With Wanda Maximoff’s son now confirmed for the show, it would make sense to have the Scarlet Witch get mentioned in the upcoming episode. Viewers were left to ponder how much Billy knew about his parents and the origins of his powers. It looks like this week will provide some answers.

Episode 6 could very well explain how Billy even exists considering his status at the end of WandaVision. Back in that Disney+ series, fans learned that Wanda Maximoff had conjured her sons Billy & Tommy and a version of Vision with the destructive power of Chaos Magic. Upon lifting her spell from the town of Westview, the boys and their father disappeared. (Not before a doppelganger of Vision flew out into the larger MCU. Yeah, WandaVision was wild.) However, it’s established that other places in the multiverse have variants of Billy and Tommy. So, Wanda threatened to destroy every universe to be reunited with them and paid for it with her life. Maybe, Teen is a variant? Could it be Mephisto striking a bargain with the Scarlet Witch? Or is it something else entirely? We’re probably about to find out in Agatha All Along Episode 6.

Look at that red circle, pretty interesting!

The next installment of Agatha All Along is poised to set the table for the road to the series finale. We’ve already seen Billy in a crown, so we need to know where he came from and why he lured Agatha Harkness down The Witches’ Road. If Episode 6 is indeed a flashback to the path that led this boy here, it would go a long way to answering some important Scarlet Witch questions while simultaneously giving us some answers about why Agatha has been keeping him around. With the line of, “You’re so much like your mother” still bouncing around in everyone’s skulls, Marvel Studios could turn up the heat even higher if it decides to link back to Scarlet Witch with the upcoming episode. This is Agatha’s tale, but it’s become clear that she and Wanda Maximoff are intrinsically linked in the MCU. Billy has become a bridge for all of those connections to come into the light again.

Agatha All Along Has Been Teasing More Scarlet Witch Details

Agatha All Along Episode 6 is going to be a doozy.

For weeks, Agatha All Along has dangled those Scarlet Witch Easter eggs for anyone paying attention. A lot of MCU fans are fully locked into  the WandaVision spinoff series because of the possibility of Wanda Maximoff returning. It isn’t the only reason, but it certainly hasn’t hurt matters. Director Jac Schaeffer knows that people really want more information about what’s going on with the Scarlet Witch. But, she’s encouraging them to remember that Agatha All Along is about Kathryn Hahn’s villain, not our favorite Avengers. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, she acknowledged the long shadow that Elizabeth Olsen’s character is casting over the show. It’s only natural the writer of WandaVision would be expected to help bring back an MCU favorite. Despite those thoughts, we’re focused on Agatha now.

“There was a lot of consideration. That’s a great way of articulating it: her shadow. Agatha is not a character who’s going to stand in anyone’s shadow. So this is emphatically Agatha Harkness’ show,” Schaeffer told the outlet. “However, we are in the WandaVision corner of the universe, so Wanda’s legacy has threads in this narrative. But, yeah, it is about Agatha. It’s about her journey, it’s about the truth of her, and that is very much our focus with the show.”

In everything leading up to Episode 6, that’s been true. While there have been overt references to Wanda Maximoff, the focus has stayed on Agatha Harkness and her familiar. But, as Joe Locke’s character revealed his identity this week, it’s only natural that fans might want to get some bread crumbs about the Scarlet Witch. While a full-blown cameo seems like a longshot at this point, there’s still some hope out there for any information that Marvel Studios sees fit to divulge. For now, the wait continues. But, Episode 6 could bring a ton of excitement if Teen’s backstory ends up explaining what’s going on with Wanda.

Do you think we get a big Scarlet Witch moment during the next Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

The post Agatha All Along Fans Discover Massive Clue for Episode 6 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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 Terrifier 3 Review & Absolute Batman Begins | ComicBook Nation https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/terrifier-3-box-office-dc-absolute-batman-explained/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 17:51:13 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=954305

The ComicBook Nation crew reviews the new cult-horror flick Terrifier 3, and discuss the pivotal new Marvel Cinematic Universe character revealed in Agatha All Along’s new episode!  CLICK HERE to LISTEN to ComicBook Nation! PLUS: DC’s Absolute Batman launches its debut issue; the DC Universe has cast John Stewart/Green Lantern; James Wan’s mysterious new show […]

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The ComicBook Nation crew reviews the new cult-horror flick Terrifier 3, and discuss the pivotal new Marvel Cinematic Universe character revealed in Agatha All Along’s new episode! 

CLICK HERE to LISTEN to ComicBook Nation!

PLUS: DC’s Absolute Batman launches its debut issue; the DC Universe has cast John Stewart/Green Lantern; James Wan’s mysterious new show Teacup has dropped and the Batman (1989) Universe will continue!

Terrifier 3 Review – Is it Really That Grotesque?

Cineverse

ComicBook Nation’s Evan Valentine went out and saw Terrifier 3 and had this to say about it:

Terrifier 3 is now in theaters and Art The Clown has given horror junkies his bloodiest, goriest, and downright most jaw-dropping misadventure yet. While the third entry of the series might not be as long in runtime as Part 2, it somehow crammed in far more grotesque moments as the killer clown attempts to share his version of the holiday season.

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Agatha All Along: Episode 5 Snuck in Scarlet Witch Tease https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-wiccan-billy-teen-scarlet-witch-theme-reveal-mcu/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 17:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=953142 Billy is here, is Wanda next?

Agatha All Along Episode 5 had the most overt Scarlet Witch tease during this week’s tensest moments. While “Teen” is arguing with Agatha Harkness about killing Alice Wu-Gulliver, the older witch tells Joe Locke’s character that “you’re so much like your mother.” When that happens, some sonically gifted Marvel fans detected a small snippet of […]

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Billy is here, is Wanda next?

Agatha All Along Episode 5 had the most overt Scarlet Witch tease during this week’s tensest moments. While “Teen” is arguing with Agatha Harkness about killing Alice Wu-Gulliver, the older witch tells Joe Locke’s character that “you’re so much like your mother.” When that happens, some sonically gifted Marvel fans detected a small snippet of Wanda’s Theme from WandaVision. If that’s not underlining who our beloved “Teen” is at this point, I don’t know what to tell you. So, clearly, Locke is playing Billy and will be the Marvel hero Wiccan by the end of this show. And, if Wanda Maximoff’s son is here, does she turn up by the end of the show? This is all wild stuff if you’re a big fan of the Scarlet Witch and hoping for a return before Avengers: Secret Wars. Agatha All Along’s theories just keep multiplying as the weeks go on.

Billy being on the board so early comes as a shock to a lot of Agatha All Along viewers. In the Disney+ model/format, the costume change or heroic entrance happens in the second to last episode usually. In introducing Locke as Wanda Maximoff’s long-lost son so early, the show managed to outsmart the fanbase because of those expectations. Billy telling Agatha that witches shouldn’t hurt other people for their own benefit draws a direct comparison to how the Scarlet Witch behaved in Westview during WandaVision as well. The MCU did gesture towards those facts during Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and had Wanda sacrifice herself to save the multiverse. But, there’s still some examination that could happen there.

Bah Gawd, That’s Wanda’s Music!

Scarlet Witch’s return is something that’s taken over social media in the weeks that Agatha All Along has been on the air. The first episode of this series was not shy about tossing some very meta references to the audience. A red haired “Jane Doe” dressed just like Wanda Maximoff from her last MCU appearance? The name W. Maximoff on a library book card used as a toe tag? The red hair cascading down from the dead body in the morgue? Agatha and John Collins looking directly to camera when talking about how their victim got crushed? The Scarlet Witch teasing radiated off every frame. But, this takes things to another level. The viewer has to wonder if Agatha knew that Billy was Wanda’s son this whole time. If so, what does that mean for the Scarlet Witch’s MCU future. A great show continues to pile-on the mysteries at the halfway point. 

Agatha All Along Reveals Wanda’s Son is Alive Somehow?

Wiccan is here. Is scarlet witch next???

This is far from the first week of Agatha All Along with a massive hint about Wanda Maximoff coming back. But, it is a concrete breadcrumb on the way to a Scarlet Witch resurrection. Everyone involved with this show has been asked about Elizabeth Olsen making her way back to Marvel multiple times. Including the actress herself! During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Olsen didn’t sound opposed to a future with the MCU. If she hasn’t heard about the fan buzz surrounding Agatha All Along yet, someone needs to tell her. It feels like the WandaVision fever is back in a massive way. All these hints probably should lead to a reveal at the end, but we’ll have to wait and see. Olsen is just hanging out like the rest of us from the sounds of things. 

“I mean, no, but I would love to pop up. I love Kathryn, I don’t want to leave her side ever, I’m so grateful she’s here tonight,” Olsen said earlier this year. The star added that she would love to reunite with Hahn as well as Paul Bettany (Vision). “We do think, ‘Gosh, we just gotta do it again!‘ We just had a really great time making that show, and with Paul, it was really a special time, so we would love to get the gang back.”

So, for now, we all wait for the eventual Scarlet Witch return. After the events of Agatha All Along Episode 5, the chances of seeing the MCU favorite again feel like they’re sky high. Nothing is for certain until the bell sounds though. Previous Marvel Studios Television series have built up a ton of intrigue before the finales couldn’t quite tie everything up in a bow. This is the biggest positive for Agatha All Along, they’ve gotten the Billy/Wiccan reveal out of the way so that other theme and story beats could take their place at the ending. Without needing to address Joe Locke’s character as a big secret, we can get onto other business.

Do you think Scarlet Witch is coming back at the end of Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along: What If We Have Agatha’s Powers All Wrong? https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-alice-death-accidental-marvel-theory/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=953579

This week’s Agatha All Along, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”, marked the midpoint of the Disney+ series and it was the wildest episode to date. The episode saw not only a shocking death among the coven, but the revelation of Teen’s (Joe Locke) real identity right before he tossed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Lilia (Patti LuPone), and […]

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This week’s Agatha All Along, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”, marked the midpoint of the Disney+ series and it was the wildest episode to date. The episode saw not only a shocking death among the coven, but the revelation of Teen’s (Joe Locke) real identity right before he tossed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Lilia (Patti LuPone), and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) off the road entirely and watched as the witches sank into the mysterious mud. While the events are a lot to unpack — and the unexpected death of Alice (Ali Ahn) — feels very much like not only a hard shift for the series with this dark turn, Episode 5 may have also raised a major question about everything we know about Agatha Harkness and it’s possible we may not know the witch very well at all.

When it comes to what we know about Agatha actually begins in WandaVision. In the eighth episode of that series, “Previously On”, we learn that in 1693 a coven of witches led by Agatha’s own mother, Evanora, tried to kill her for practicing dark magic but instead of dying at the hands of the coven, Agatha drains their magic and their life forces, killing the coven instead. That act is revisited, in a sense, in the second episode of Agatha All Along, “Circle Sewn With Fate/Unlock Thy Hidden Gate”, when Agatha explains to Lilia that she can only take another witch’s powers if she’s blasted by them. The explanation serves to clarify why Agatha hasn’t simply just stolen powers now that she’s out of Wanda’s spell, but it also ends up being a bit of foreshadowing for Episode 5. In Episode 5, the third trial of the Witches’ Road is said to be Agatha’s and revolves around a spirit declaring that Agatha must be punished. The ghost of Evanora shows up and possesses Agatha briefly, then declares that Agatha was born evil, and moves to possess her again, presumably this being part of Agatha’s punishment. However, Alice attempts to intervene and attacks, using her powers to expel Evanora from Agatha’s body. The act does save Agatha, but Agatha quickly begins absorbing Alice’s magic, resulting in her death.

Agatha all along, marvel studios

While this may seem very much in keeping with Agatha’s previous actions — absorbing the magic of others and killing them for her own gain — and certainly is read that way by the others, particularly Teen, if you watch the episode carefully there is something a bit more nuanced there and it suggests that we may all be critically misunderstanding Agatha’s powers. When Alice initially blasts Agatha and the power absorption begins, Agatha looks truly horrified and briefly appears to be trying to resist, though in short order we see her start to draw more and more power. When it’s over, Agatha looks stricken and even horrified by Alice’s death and quickly leaves the challenge. Briefly alone on the road, Agatha is clearly shaken and when Teen arrives shortly after and confronts her, Agatha tries to explain herself, insisting it was accidental, though the young man won’t hear it.

Here’s the thing, though: I think Agatha is telling the truth. Agatha is very clearly too shaken by Alice’s death for what happened to have been intentional and, more than that, Agatha did seem to genuinely struggle against taking Alice’s powers when it started, though she was quickly sucked into it. One can’t deny that Agatha doesn’t appear to be relieved or even glad to have power again, but she just doesn’t seem very comfortable with how it went down. Additionally, the only other time that we’re aware of Agatha draining another witch to her death came in a similar situation — when Agatha’s own life was at risk. When Agatha took the magic from the coven attacking her in 1693, those witches were trying to kill her. It’s possible that Agatha took their power reflexively as she tried to save her own life. What this could mean is that Agatha really cannot control her ability to absorb the powers of other witches. It could simply be an automatic reaction to being blasted, like a self-preservation instinct that kicks in that she has little to no control over.

If we are misunderstanding Agatha’s power and it’s something that she doesn’t really have control over, this changes a lot about our perception of Agatha. Agatha may not be quite as sinister as she’s been presented as and while this certainly doesn’t absolve her of the things we can confirm she’s done — she did still kill Sparky after all — knowing more about her powers offers us a way to look at the witch through a trauma informed lens. If Agatha can’t really control her powers, much of the vitriol and malignment that she’s experienced in her life, including what she got from her own mother, was undeserved. It is absolutely something that would make her jaded, but she would also probably lean into her potentially undeserved reputation as a form of armor. If people mistrust her and think she’s “evil”, they’re less likely to attack her and thus, she’s less likely to accidentally take another life when her powers are triggered again.

wandavision, marvel studios

What’s perhaps most heartbreaking, though, is that if we are misunderstanding Agatha’s powers, it makes Alice’s death all the more tragic. While Teen assumes that the coven has a disregard for life when it comes to the acquisition of power, thus making being a witch a selfish affair, Agatha genuinely accidentally killing Alice is just one more overall misconception about witches and another unfair malignment that has held them back and made them reviled for centuries. It’s the kind of misconception that breeds division even among a group that needs solidarity now more than ever and could even make the remainder of the journey ahead even more treacherous for everyone involved. If they survived being thrown off of the Witches’ Road, that is. Only time will tell.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.

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Agatha All Along Breaks MCU Disney+ Rule and It’s the Smartest Thing Marvel’s Done This Year https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/agatha-all-along-wiccan-teen-billy-scarlet-witch-reveal-episode-5-mcu-disney-plus-rule/ Sun, 13 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000 https://comicbook.com/?p=953406 A bold choice to put Teen's identity out in the open.

Agatha All Along broke one of the most common Marvel rules this week and the show is one of the strongest Disney+ efforts to date because of it. Episode 5 of the MCU show brought massive reveals about Joe Locke’s Teen actually being Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. The final moments of this installment set social […]

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A bold choice to put Teen's identity out in the open.

Agatha All Along broke one of the most common Marvel rules this week and the show is one of the strongest Disney+ efforts to date because of it. Episode 5 of the MCU show brought massive reveals about Joe Locke’s Teen actually being Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. The final moments of this installment set social media on fire. But, more importantly, they bucked a years-long MCU Disney+ trend. In a lot of the other Marvel Studios streaming programming, the big massive reveals are saved for the final two chapters of a season. Be it Sam Wilson becoming Captain America or Loki confronting He Who Remains. (Two times in that case!) Those last two episodes are always trying to catch the audience off-guard and it usually works.

But, this time, we’re getting the mystery of Billy out of here before 75% of the series has played out. He even got his diadem, just like dear old mom before the credits rolled. Director Jac Schaeffer and her team are clicking on all cylinders at the halfway mark of Agatha All Along. The Marvel fandom is as engaged online as they have been in a long time, and even attempts to ruin this surprise have fallen flat by the methods Marvel Studios had chosen to deploy it. After all, in most other MCU shows, Billy would have been a massive highlight saved for the final chapters. Now, fans are wondering what else might be hiding in the back end of the show if Wiccan has already been partially confirmed!

Billy and Wanda Maximoff.

All of these developments helps explain how Agatha All Along is doing so well on Disney+. We’ve gotten reports and word from Marvel Studios itself that the series is the lowest budget show of this new era. In addition, Agatha’s solo outing also has the highest retention rate of the MCU shows. That means people got caught up in the curiosity around the premiere episodes and decided to stick around. Maybe, a big part of this positive appeal is how different the entire enterprise feels to other superhero TV? (And in its own way, a vindication of the subtle goals of Phase 4 to craft a big tent where there’s a little something for everyone in the MCU.) If the rest of the show can entice viewers the way the first five chapters have, Agatha All Along could find itself alongside WandaVision as the class of the Disney+ Marvel offerings.

Agatha All Along Exceeds Expectations On Disney+

Agatha’s coven is shocked.

Every week it seems like Agatha All Along finds a way to exceed expectations. Some MCU fans believed that the WandaVision spinoff series wasn’t going to be an essential installment in the Multiverse Saga. However, the latest MCU series has proven to be surprising in Phase 5. Agatha All Along probably got greenlit because of the dynamite performance of its predecessor. Flashback to 2021, and there weren’t many Marvel fans that weren’t partially in love with Kathryn Hahn’s nosy neighbor. Fast forward to late 2024, and that seems to still be the case among a ton of the viewers out there. ComicBook asked Marvel TV head Brad Winderbaum about following-up WandaVision and he called the decision a no-brainer because of the creative team involved with the project.

“Well, it really comes down to Jac [Schaefer, showrunner]. And Jac brought that world to life in WandaVision. And Kathryn Hahn embodying that role, I mean, she became an icon on screen,” Winderbaum told us. “Agatha was always a side character. She’s a villain in WandaVision. But like Wolverine showing up in an issue of Incredible Hulk, you never know what the audience is going to respond to. And Agatha was no different. So, as soon as Jac became inspired, we all just went down the road with her.”

For Marvel Studios, it’s been really important for fans to be able to enter Agatha All Along without having the requirement of watching WandaVision beforehand. Yes, people might be coming from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and other MCU titles to visit Westview again with Agatha. But, it’s important to remember that not everyone that picks up their remote and scrolls over to Disney Plus has followed every single bit of Scarlet Witch’s MCU history since Avengers: Age of Ultron. Striking that balance is key, and Agatha All Along is doing a great job of making room for newer viewers.

“I mean, I would say that if you know the MCU, it might justify a few things that happen in kind of a prologue way,” Winderbaum added. “But if you’re coming to it straight from WandaVision or you’re coming to it, frankly, never having watched another Marvel show before, you get the information you need about the characters you need for the journey.”

How did you like the big Agatha All Along reveals? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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