The world of television had quite the year in 2024, especially when it came to characters that were able to leave a lasting impression on viewers. When it comes to “TV Scene Stealer” we here at ComicBook.com are referring to characters that lept off the screen and are still being talked about to this day. Whether it be in a galaxy far, far away, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the land of feudal Japan, there were more than a few candidates that easily filled out our nominees. At the end of the day, however, there can be only one.

And the winner for the 2024 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best TV Scene Stealer is…

Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal from Marvel’s Agatha All Along!

Agatha All Along is one of the best series to come from the MCU’s journey on the small screen, bringing together Kathryn Hahn’s coven of witches who are looking to make their dreams come true on the Witch’s Road. Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is first introduced as a fellow witch that has an ax to grind with Agatha but is eventually confirmed to be something far more sinister and essential to the universe at large. Revealing herself to be Death in the latter half of the series, Plaza’s infectiously charming character here made her an easy choice as to our “TV Scene Stealer of 2024.”

Ironically enough, this is the second beloved Marvel character that Aubrey Plaza has played on the small screen. FX’s Legion followed the story of Charles Xavier’s son David, as the young telepath came face-to-face with Plaza’s Lenore. Much like in Agatha All Along, Lenore isn’t all that she appears to be and turns out to be none other than X-Men villain the Shadow King. Similarly to the recent Disney+ series, Legion saw Plaza unleashed, reveling in her cruel role and taking a fiendish glee in her diabolical work.

Both as Rio and as Death, Plaza brings an air of mystery to the role along with her shaky relationship with Agatha herself. It’s really a shame that Plaza wasn’t introduced far earlier in the MCU’s history as it would have been fun seeing her bounce off Josh Brolin’s Thanos in the earlier entries of the Cinematic Universe. Of course, for those who read the comics, you can now be hyped for the idea of Mistress Death potentially having an on-again, off-again relationship with a certain Merc With A Mouth, should the MCU decide to explore that territory.

At present, Death’s return hasn’t been confirmed but Aubrey Plaza, whether she be a witch or the physical manifestation of one of humanity’s most feared fixtures, certainly deserves to make a comeback. Fingers crossed that a second season of Agatha All Along will be confirmed and with it, Plaza could once again trouble Billy and a much-less alive Agatha Harkness.

The nominees for the 2024 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best TV Scene Stealer are…

• Basil (Star Wars: The Acolyte)
• Biscuits (Cody Lightning, Echo)
• Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano, Shogun)
• Madelyne Pryor (Jennifer Hale, X-Men ‘97)
• Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza, Agatha All Along)  – WINNER 

The post Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal Is the Best TV Scene Stealer of 2024 (Golden Issue Awards) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has just updated its official timeline following its 2024 releases of Deadpool and Wolverine and Agatha All Along. A threequel to 2016’s Deadpool and 2018’s Deadpool 2, director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool and Wolverine hit theaters in July and saw Ryan Reynolds’ titular anti-hero collide with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who hadn’t appeared on screen since the 2017 film Logan. Agatha All Along aired on Disney+ in September and October. A WandaVision spinoff centered on Kathryn Hahn’s whimsical witch Agatha Harkness and her newfound coven of magick wielders, the show chronicled their journey through the fabled Witches’ Road. According to Marvel.com and Marvel’s Disney+ page, Deadpool and Wolverine takes place after What If…? season 2, which follows Loki season 2. Agatha All Along comes after Deadpool and Wolverine, making the series the most recent MCU project in the official timeline.

Marvel maintains its timeline to allow fans to keep track of the ever-expanding nature of the MCU and for newer audiences to be able to watch all the projects in order. Despite Deadpool and Wolverine and Agatha All Along falling at the very end of the timeline, Marvel has not always released projects in chronological order since its beginning in 2008. According to the official timeline, Captain America: The First Avenger is set the furthest in the past, as the 2011 film’s events occur during World War II in 1942. The 2019 movie Captain Marvel comes next, with its plot taking place in 1995.

Amid the confirmation of the MCU’s up-to-date timeline, there has been much speculation about the future of recent characters and storylines. The recent Golden Globes nominations list Agatha All Along as a comedy series instead of a limited series, which could indicate that a second season is in the works due to the requirements for submitting in the category. On the possibility of a second season, Hahn stated that she “would be thrilled to come back.” As for Deadpool’s future, Reynolds said that he sees Wade as more of a supporting character going forward.

The places of Deadpool and Wolverine and Agatha All Along in the MCU timeline come as no surprise given that they exist as the franchise’s two newest projects. As for upcoming titles, it will be interesting to see where they fit. The MCU’s next movies Captain America: Brave New World, which releases in theaters on February 14, 2025, and Thunderbolts, which comes out on May 2, 2025, will likely be set following Deadpool and Wolverine and Agatha All Along, considering that they precede Avengers: Doomsday — set to release on May 1, 2026.

Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe projects include What If…? season 3 on December 22, 2024, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on January 29, 2025, Daredevil: Born Again on March 4, 2025, Ironheart on June 24, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25, 2025, Eyes of Wakanda on August 6, 2025, Avengers: Doomsday on May 1, 2026, Spider-Man 4 on July 24, 2026, and Avengers: Secret Wars on May 7, 2027.

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson recently spoke with IMDb about some of his roles, especially Kraven the Hunter, the Spider-Man universe villain who’s about to hit the big screen. This isn’t the first time the actor has been part of action-packed projects or superhero stories, and it’s not his first dive into Marvel movies, either. Having played Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Taylor-Johnson shared his thoughts on the experience and even admitted he didn’t get why Wanda – his sister in the movie – didn’t bring him back to life after he died.

“Lizzie Olsen, phenomenal actor, absolute star, and a wonderful person, wonderful human being. And I’m not just saying that – she’s really lovely,” Taylor-Johnson said, praising the Scarlet Witch actress. He even reminisced about their time working together on Godzilla. “And I don’t know why she didn’t resurrect me, though,” he joked. Actually, Kevin Feige was asked this question back in 2021, and according to him, the decision was made pretty early in the development of WandaVision, even though it was kept under wraps by the production. He said the choice was meant to show just how messed up Wanda’s mind really was.

Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver died in battle during the second Avengers movie, leading to one of the MCU’s most emotional moments as Wanda mourned her brother. Instead of getting Quicksilver back, fans got the bait-and-switch of X-Men movie actor Evan Peters’ “Ralph Bohner” character, instead of a true Quicksilver cameo in WandaVision. Interestingly, Taylor-Johnson and Peters had also been co-stars together in 2010’s Kick-Ass.

[RELATED: Kraven the Hunter Star Aaron Taylor-Johnson Has a Perfect Response to James Bond Cast Rumors]

When asked if he had ever discussed Quicksilver with Peters, Aaron Taylor-Johnson admitted that he had not directly, but shared that they had crossed paths at San Diego Comic-Con: “We both really had a ‘pinch yourself’ moment of like, ‘Oh my god, aren’t we so lucky that we got to be here and still be doing what we love doing?’ But [it’s] funny that we’re in two different universes doing it,” he said.

Peters also made a cameo in Agatha All Along, and Taylor-Johnson has had nothing but praise for him. He particularly appreciated Peters’ take on Quicksilver in the latter X-Men films, noting that his portrayal succeeded because of elements he brought to the character that aligned perfectly with the role. He also found it interesting that they were able to share the character: “I think when you’re a comic book character that has the sort of attachment to Magneto, and all that House of M, there’s a different – you know, you can have these different connections. That’s kind of cool,” he said.

It’s worth mentioning that the actor stepped away from big franchise projects for a while to focus on his family – at the time, his daughter was only two years old, and he also had a newborn. “I wanted, purely, to be with my babies. I didn’t want to be taken away from them. I battled with what that would be like. I would say I was probably not ready to be in that position anyway – it was too early. But yeah, I also slightly didn’t give a f-ck,” he told Esquire Magazine last year, reflecting on the offers he had been receiving for major film roles.

Kraven the Hunter will be Taylor-Johnson’s next major project, produced by Sony. The company’s recent films, like Madame Web, Morbius, and the Venom trilogy, didn’t land well with audiences, but this new movie promises to break the mold, and is also rated R. Could this be Sony’s chance to finally redeem itself and elevate its Spider-Man universe? Let’s hope so. On top of that, it’s also the actor’s chance to make a big return to the MCU.

Kraven the Hunter will be released in theaters this week.

The post Marvel Star Aaron Taylor-Johnson Has One Question About Quicksilver’s Death (And It’s a Good One) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Kathryn Hahn is clarifying some recent statements about the future of Agatha All Along and her place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, on the heels of receiving a 2025 Golden Globe Nomination for the show. Hahn was nominated in the category of “Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy” – a listing that seems to confirm Marvel Studios has reclassified Agatha All Along from a “Limited Series” that has now ended, to a “Regular Series” that will provide at least one more additional season of content.

That’s a big change in direction from what Kathryn Hahn was indicating just last month when she made it sound like she was done with her time in the MCU after Agatha All Along. (SPOILERS) The finale of the show saw Hahn’s sorceress Agatha Harkness sacrifice her life battling her ex-beau Death (Aubrey Plaza), only to return as a ghostly companion for the Scarlet Witch’s son, Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke). With Agatha All Along seemingly done, and its namesake dead, Hahn’s exit from the MCU seemed timely.

[RELATED: Pedro Pascal’s Fantastic Four Look Revealed!]

Now, after a Golden Globe nomination and some big success with her spinoff series, Kathryn Hahn is leaving a window for more Agatha All Along wide open. Speaking to Deadline about her Golden Globes nomination, Hahn also made some statements walking back her previous teases of Agatha’s ending:

“I think I meant that we were very satisfied by the way that Agatha All Along ended the arc of that story being told there,” Hahn explained, before adding, “I think everyone would be thrilled to come back, of course, in any capacity. It was a very life-altering, deep experience in Atlanta, Georgia, with just this very small cast on the soundstage, day after day after day.”

“I’m so proud, and I’m so thrilled for Marvel,” she continued. “They were so supportive of this tiny, fabulous, female-and-queer-led show.”

What Will Agatha All Along Season 2 Be About?

At the end of Season 1, Ghost-Agatha and Billy Maximoff (aka “Wiccan”) ended their quest through the faux reality of the Witches Road (manifested by Billy) by reaching the “prize” of Billy finally coming into his own identity and power. With Wiccan’s raw magical ability and Agatha’s experience, the two unlikely allies set out to find Tommy Maximoff who, like Billy, had his soul brought back to the living world, in the vessel of a new body. Located that body is now at the top of Billy’s list – and discovering the method of cheating death is almost certainly on Agatha’s to-do list, after dying.

Agatha All Along Season 2 is also uniquely positioned to be a major culmination of some Marvel Disney+ storylines. If Wanda’s return is mixed in with Tommy’s resurrection (as the superhero “Speed”), then Agatha Season 2 won’t just be a sophomore chapter of that show, it would be a true sequel to WandaVision, as well. Wiccan and Speed’s reunion would also be a major step forward for the Young Avengers project that’s slowly been building in the MCU – and then there’s the Vision Quest spinoff series that will also set up that character’s return, already making Agatha All Along Season 2 a potential mini-event for several key characters in the MCU’s magic/occult corner.

Agatha All Along Season 1 is no streaming on Disney+.

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Will Agatha keep going along? That’s the question a lot of Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have been asking since Agatha All Along reached its finale earlier this fall. Now the 2025 Golden Globes nominations have been announced, and Agatha All Along star Kathryn Hahn has been nominated in the category of “Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy,” it suddenly seems like Agatha All Along‘s future is all but guaranteed.

Limited to Regular: The New Awards Season Strategy

The 2024 Emmys saw a game-changing strategy carry Disney and FX-Hulu to a major awards sweep. The Japanese historical drama Shogun was first promoted and released as a limited series (a single season based on the 1975 James Clavell novel); however, when Shogun became a major breakout hit with frontrunner potential at the Emmys, Disney and FX-Hulu suddenly had the idea to announce development on Season 2, with series star and executive producer Hiroyuki Sanada signing on to return. The decision to keep Shogun going meant that it qualified for a much wider range of Emmy categories than a limited series would — and, in the end, the show walked away as the most-awarded single season of television ever, winning 18 Emmys at the Primetime Emmy Awards and Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards — including the top prize of “Outstanding Drama Series.”

[RELATED: Golden Globes – The Penguin, Wicked & More Big Nominations]

Since Shogun pulled off that historic sweep, there have been a lot of questions surrounding how other series could follow suit and jump from limited to regular series to better their chances at the Emmys. One standout example for the 2025 Emmys is The Penguin, a limited series that has gained massive amounts of acclaim as a major awards frontrunner: HBO and DC Studios could’ve easily pushed ahead with development on another season of The Penguin that would’ve catapulted the series into a much wider berth of both Primetime and Creative Emmys, and create more hype for The Batman: Part II (which releases in October of 2026). Instead, DC and HBO are keeping The Penguin in the limited series track.

Why Kathryn Hahn’s Golden Globe Nom Confirms Agatha Season 2

Now, Kathryn Hahn has been nominated in a Golden Globes category meant for ongoing series, which indicates that Disney has formally categorized the show as a regular series — meaning at least one more season is in development.

Marvel Studios and Disney likely learned a valuable lesson from WandaVision: the series entered awards season as a limited series, and even though it earned two Golden Globes nominations (for Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen) as well as 23 Primetime Emmy Awards, it’s not hard to look back now and wonder what it would have achieved as a regular series. It could’ve been a major branding game-changer for Marvel and Disney+ right out of the gate and, feels like an even bigger missed opportunity now — especially since the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the biggest ongoing story in entertainment, and WandaVision left many dangling threads that could be picked up again.

Agatha All Along ended with an even more pronounced opportunity for continuation — and no one expects that to happen in a movie. The series could actually use its sophomore season to tell a highly anticipated story in the MCU: Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) and Agatha Harkness’s ghost (Hahn) tracking down the newly reincarnated Tommy Maximoff, as well as the Scarlet Witch herself, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). The other WandaVision spin-off series Vision Quest is still in development, so another season of Agatha would give the MCU its own WandaVision corner to play in.

WandaVision and Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along was a surprise hit for Marvel Studios, but Kathryn Hahn might soon retire from the role of Agatha Harkness. As Hahn reveals, despite the extraordinary reception of the series, Marvel Studios has not contacted her to discuss any future projects.

Set after the events of WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Agatha All Along initially seemed like a hard sell. After multiple disappointments, a spinoff focusing on a minor villain who had little to do with the bigger picture was not the project people expected to help rebuild the MCU brand. Yet, thanks to the series’ determination to keep the focus on its characters, its audience grew each week. At the heart of it all stands Hahn’s Agatha, whose story introduced two major Marvel characters to the MCU: Joe Locke’s Billy Maximoff/Wiccan and Aubrey Plaza’s Lady Death.

Given the unexpected success of Agatha All Along, it was a safe bet that Marvel Studios would quickly start to develop a sequel. In addition, the series ends in a cliffhanger, with Ghost Agatha joining forces with Billy to find his brother Tommy. However, speaking with the LA Times, Hahn revealed that her phone has yet to ring. Furthermore, she sees the ending of Agatha All Along as the perfect goodbye to her character. In Hahn’s words:

“Even though, obviously now, Billy/Wiccan is not her son, there is some sort of hope for her that she’s able to maybe do for him what she couldn’t do for Nicky. I think they do make a great team. Of course, I love this part and I love Joe Locke madly, and we’ll see what the future holds. In my mind, this was a beautiful and satisfying way to say goodbye to this incredible character I had to play.”

Kathryn Hahn’s Exit Would Be a Loss for the MCU

While Marvel Studios tries to scale back and refocus, Agatha All Along’s success shows how to bring the MCU to its former glory — while also repeating its biggest mistake. On the one hand, the show dared to do something different and deviate from the Marvel formula, focusing mainly on the story instead of the bigger interconnected universe. Even so, Agatha All Along ends with an unfinished journey, promising a future we don’t know will exist. 

There have been talks about a Wiccan series, or maybe the rumored Young Avengers project can pick up where Agatha All Along left. Regardless, since Marvel Studios opted for an open ending in Agatha All Along, letting Hahn slip through their finger would be a crime. Ghost Agatha has been positioned as an integral part of Wiccan’s journey to find Tommy, so it would be incredibly unsatisfying for Hahn to simply not return. Marvel Studios does not need another Kang to swipe under the rug, especially when Hahn is such a talented actress with no legal issues, contrary to Jonathan Majors. 

There is still hope, though. As Hahn said in the interview: “By the end of the show, I would go into hair and makeup at the end of the day and be like, ‘Well, this is my last acting job,’ because I felt like I had a chance to do it all. But it really just reopened my hunger and love for performing.” The ball is in your court, Marvel. If Hahn is hungry for more Agatha, please give her a call.

Agatha All Along is currently available on Disney+.

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WandaVision dropped an entire episode before airing, according to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, but the content of that episode was still included. In an interview with Backstory Magazine earlier this month, Schaeffer confirmed the longstanding rumor that WandaVision was originally ten episodes long, and she set the record straight on how that changed. She said that two episodes were combined, putting to bed the speculation that there was more to the story.

“WandaVision was originally ten [episodes], then, for logistical, budget, and creative reasons, we combined two episodes,” Schaeffer said. “Then moving into [Agatha All Along], I wanted it to have the same surface area and real estate as WandaVision, so yeah it was always nine.”

This builds on a previous revelation from episode director Matt Shakman, who talked about WandaVision‘s episode count and structure back in 2021 in an appearance on Kevin Smith’s podcast Fatman Beyond. He said: “Things were constantly changing and getting rebroken. The story was changing, especially a lot of the real-world stuff and the finale. There was a lot of experimentation going on and sort of trying different things out. We also at one point had 10 episodes planned and we ended up collapsing a couple, you know just to make the rhythm feel a little bit better.”

Was Anything Cut?

Both quotes make it sound like the full story was ultimately told, even if the episode count was changed. However, we do know a bit about what was cut and altered. For one thing, Schaeffer told Variety earlier this month that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) was originally meant to appear in a post-credit scene, but the idea was dropped due to pandemic restrictions during filming. She said: “It’s Wanda sitting on the porch of that cabin, and she’s rocking peacefully. And you know how Strange can do those circles around someone, and make them go somewhere? The circle starts around her, like she’s going to be teleported somewhere, and she stops it, so Strange has to show up in person. I just loved that so much, that Wanda would be like, ‘No, I’m not going to go where you want to teleport me. You’re going to have to come to my door.’ It was a good one, but another tag took its place.”

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: Billy’s Powers, Explained]

Additionally, WandaVision was released on home video with bonus content including deleted scenes. One of those even shows Ralph Boehner (Evan Peters) breaking off his ankle monitor and fleeing the authorities, helping to explain his late role in Agatha All Along.

WandaVision, Agatha All Along and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness are streaming now on Disney+. The characters could crop up anytime in the MCU, but fans are definitely expecting more from them in the stand-alone Vision series, which is due out some time in 2026.

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Scarlet Witch was a hot topic on Agatha All Along, but if fans want to see a reunion between Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff, they’ll have to tune into Marvel’s Scarlet Witch series. The comic has done a good job of re-establishing Scarlet Witch’s place in the Marvel Universe while expanding her supporting cast by reintroducing a de-aged Agatha. Wanda’s world is going to be thrown upside down when Agatha presents her with a protege named Amaranth. Her backstory remains a mystery — as well as Agatha’s motivations — but for now, we can take a look at the Scarlet Witch issue where Amaranth makes her Marvel debut.

ComicBook has the exclusive preview of Scarlet Witch #6 by Steve Orlando, Lorenzo Tammetta, Frank William, and VC’s Ariana Maher. It begins with Scarlet Witch and Agatha having a conversation in Wanda’s basement in her Lotkill shop. They recount how Agatha stole the elder god Chthon from Wanda’s soul in Scarlet Witch Annual #1, but now Agatha comes in good faith! Agatha has brought a student for Wanda, but the Scarlet Witch smells a catch. When Wanda asks Agatha why she doesn’t teach this student herself, Agatha claims not every teacher can reach every student.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along Featured on the Cover of Marvel’s Scarlet Witch Series]

Meanwhile, Amaranth is busy talking with Darcy Lewis upstairs. Amaranth reveals that Agatha saved her life and that she was adopted by her father when she was 10 years old. Amaranth’s father tried to help her uncover her past, but she wound up driving him mad. She ultimately ran until she met Agatha, who tried to help Amaranth but failed. Amaranth is now Scarlet Witch’s problem.

Who is Amaranth, Scarlet Witch’s new protege?

Amaranth is a new character created by artist Jen Bartel for Marvel’s New Champions variant cover program. Amaranth and the other young heroes featured on the New Champions variant covers will soon star in an ongoing series titled New Champions, set to debut in January. That’s pretty much all we know about Amaranth at the moment, though the description of Scarlet Witch #6 says that Wanda will be tasked with helping unravel Amaranth’s shadowy past.

“Ever since she debuted in Jen Bartel’s gorgeous variant cover, I’ve been intrigued by Amaranth,” Orlando shared. “Who was she? What was her story–no, her mystery? So, when the chance came to bring her into SCARLET WITCH and explore those questions with the rest of the creative team, I leapt. Bringing Amaranth through the Last Door gives us a chance to upend Wanda’s dynamic with a scenario where Wanda’s faced with a powerful, mysterious being she struggles to figure out–an inverse of her own dynamic earlier in her life. Amaranth’s unique gifts hint towards an auspicious parentage and impressive power, but her life has been tinged with tragedy. There might be no one in the Marvel Universe that can help her, but if there was one–it would be the Scarlet Witch.”

The exclusive preview of Scarlet Witch #6 is below. The issue goes on sale Wednesday, November 20th.

The post Agatha and Scarlet Witch Reunite to Discuss Wanda’s New Protege (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Starring in an MCU series doesn’t open all the doors in the multiverse, Joe Locke learned. In an interview on the Scene Stealers podcast, Locke confessed that he had tried to sneak onto the set of The Thunderbolts when it was filming near Agatha All Along. He said he was turned away by security before he could see anything significant.

Locke is 21 years old, which means he has basically grown up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He said that he is a big fan and he particularly loved Black Widow, so he is excited for the return of Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova in The Thunderbolts. He said: “They started filming that just after we finished. So I was like – one day they were on the same set as us, so I was trying to sneak up on the sets.”

Lock said he was spotted on the set immediately, as security and secrecy are a big deal to Marvel Studios. He said: “They were like, ‘Go away, go away!’ And I was like, ‘What, I just want to have a look.’”

Locke could soon become one of the biggest stars in the MCU depending on where the stories take him. Over the course of Agatha All Along, he went from “Teen” to Billy Kaplan to Billy Maximoff – the son of the Scarlet Witch with the alias Wiccan. In some Marvel Comics stories, he is an incredibly powerful hero with a pivotal role to play, so he could be seeing more closed sets than he bargained for.

At the same time, Marvel is infamous for guarding its secrets carefully – even from the actors themselves. In the past, the studio has handed out decoy scripts to keep the cast and crew in the dark about what is going on, and their non-disclosure agreements are incredibly strict. Back in 2022, Moon Knight star Ethan Hawke avoided even commenting on what it’s like to work with Marvel Studios for fear of violating his NDA, telling Indie Wire: “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

That same year, Marvel attorney Paul Sarker spoke to Comicbook.com about the true intentions of these NDAs. While an actor could hypothetically be on the hook for lost revenue on a billion-dollar movie if they leak a spoiler, Sarker theorized that the real risk was losing future work. He said: “The other thing you risk is the relationship, right? Let’s say you haven’t been cast and they send you a script and you’re being tested, or they send you a link to some secure site where you can get a script and you can do maybe a table read or whatever online. If you then leak that information, A) they could sue you, and B) they’re probably not going to want to work with you because you’re not someone that could be trusted. If they bring you in and give you more, they need to be able to trust you to sort of bring you in and on the team.”

Thankfully, Locke’s curiosity does not seem to have gotten him into any trouble like that. Agatha All Along is streaming now on Disney+. The Thunderbolts hits theaters on May 2, 2025.

The post Agatha Star Reveals They Tried Sneaking Onto Another Marvel Set (And What Happened) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

It’s been a week since the finale of Agatha All Along and while our time walking The Witches’ Road is done, there are still plenty of mysteries to unpack and questions fans want answers to. One of the largest questions left unanswered involves not Agatha or Billy or the rest of the coven, but rather a character we barely got to know: Nicholas Scratch. Since the finale took viewers into Agatha’s past and showed Nicky’s birth, fans have wondered who the boy’s father is. The series never directly answers that question, but fans have their own theory — and now it seems like showrunner Jac Schaeffer is subtly confirming it. In an interview with Backstory Magazine (via ComicBookMovie), Schaeffer suggests that Nicky is the child of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and none other than Rio Vidal/Death (Aubrey Plaza).

“I will say that when we were casting sometimes, we were like, ‘Does that kid look like Rio? Does that kid look like Aubrey Plaza?’” Schaeffer said. “Fans and viewers, yes, are picking up on our brainwaves for sure.”

Those brainwaves Schaeffer are referencing is the prevailing theory among fans that Death is Nicky’s “father”. The idea very quickly picked up traction when the finale showed Rio appearing before Agatha while she was in labor and then with Agatha’s comments after the baby was born that she had “cast no spell” but had instead made the child “from scratch”.  The theory got even more poignant with Nicky’s death as a child. Just before his passing, the young boy abandoned the usual scheme of killing witches by claiming that his “mother needed him home” and then, when Death did come for Nicky, not only did she instruct him to go back and kiss his mother goodbye — twice — but they walked away holding hands. For Schaeffer, fans caring so much about Agatha and Rio’s story as well as how Nicky may intersect with that is something that she didn’t expect, but she hopes we get to unpack more of it.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: What Really Happened to Nick Scratch?]

“I didn’t anticipate that the shippers would be so fervent,” Schaeffer said. “You never know how anything is going to land or if people are going to care. The amount of people that care is staggering to me. It’s my hope that in the MCU there’s more unpacking of the Agatha & Rio backstory.”

Schaeffer’s comments are also just the latest on the question of Nicky’s parentage, though while Schaeffer does seem to be suggesting the intent behind the story being told in Agatha All Along in regard to not just Nicky but Agatha and Rio’s history, she’s also acknowledged that the story could be out of her hands at this point. In a previous interview with Variety, Schaeffer detailed how the writers worked out Agatha and Rio’s backstory — including considering Rio as Nicky’s father — but ultimately didn’t cover it all, leaving it for another day.

“That’s a story for another day, but ultimately for me, it’s irrelevant in this story,” Schaeffer said, adding “The truth is that even if I did have an answer, I don’t cover it in this property. So, it is fodder for another story for another day, that I maybe don’t have control over.”

While Rio being Nicky’s other parent isn’t MCU canon (yet) the idea of it makes Agatha and Rio’s overall story and interactions in Agatha All Along even more heartbreaking. Rio, as Death, having to take Nicky from Agatha gives context to why there is so much animosity between the two when we see them fight in Agatha’s kitchen in the series premiere as well as makes that tender moment on the Road in Episode 4 when Rio has to tell Agatha that Billy (then merely Teen) isn’t her son absolutely devastating. And, of course, there’s that final exchange between the pair, when Agatha kisses Death to save Billy as it sees the former lovers coming back together in a moment that may in no small way be influenced by the loss of the son they shared and lost.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Fan theorists had a field day with Agatha All Along, and while many were vindicated, others were cast off the road. Now that the series is over, online communities are hard at work tallying up the new information and speculating about how it might apply to the wider franchise. Before we move too far past them, let’s take a look back at some of the best theories that didn’t pan out.

Mephisto

To start things off, many of the incorrect fan theories about Agatha All Along suffered from the same problem as theories about previous MCU titles – Mephisto expectations. Fans have been expecting Mephisto to make his debut for years now, and it was fair to pin their hopes on this show. Magic and witchcraft would be a reasonable way to introduce a powerful demon, and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) clearly isn’t above making shady deals to get what she wants.

Fans theorized that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) would turn out to be Mephisto in disguise, which was also pretty reasonable – especially after Plaza’s comments in September. She told Scarlet Witch Updates: “I’m just so happy they let me play this character. “I can’t spoil it, but what happens, the reveal is pretty amazing. And I think for the fans especially, they’re going to go crazy.”

While we didn’t see Mephisto in the flesh, we did get our first real mention of him on screen since The Avengers. In Episode 3, Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) shares a rumor that Agatha’s long-lost son “might be a demon… or an agent of Mephisto.” Since we know that isn’t true, this doesn’t give us any new information, but it does confirm that Marvel still intends to do something with this character.

Teen’s Sigil

Another lynchpin of fan theories was the sigil that prevented Bill Maximoff from sharing any information about himself early on in the series. Some suggested that Teen put the sigil on himself to hide from an enemy that would be revealed later, while others thought he might have put it on himself accidentally while reading about witchcraft – perhaps even in the Darkhold.

In the end, the truth about the sigil was disappointing to some fan theorists who had assumed it would have a greater significance. However, in the context of this story, it was a great way to bring the Coven closer together in a hurry.

Hulkling

After we were introduced to Billy’s boyfriend Eddie and we got confirmation that Billy is, in fact, Wiccan, many fans hoped that Eddie would turn out to be Theodore Altman – a.k.a. Hulkling. Wiccan and Hulkling had a romance in Marvel Comics’ Young Avengers, and it seemed only fitting to carry that over here. So far, there’s no indication that Eddie is hiding secret powers, but Billy is young and he could easily find a new love interest later on down the line.

The Salem Seven

Judging by the commentary online, fans were much more disappointed in the part the Salem Seven played in the show. Many theorized that these creepy witches would reveal some big secrets – likely about Agatha herself, as their connection to her in the comics is very different. At the very least, they expected the Salem Seven to be one of the trials of the Witch’s Road, forcing Agatha to stop and face them. Instead, these pursuers were put down with one noble sacrifice.

Tommy

After Billy’s identity was revealed, Fans online worked up some exciting and detailed theories about how his brother Tommy might be revived by the end of this season. It didn’t come to pass, but many of the ideas would have made for exciting TV. Some theorized that the Witches’ Road would lead into the afterlife, or to a place where an entity like Mephisto had somehow captured Tommy’s spirit. In the end, it looks like Marvel is saving this character for a different show or movie.

Scarlet Witch

Sadly, Agatha All Along also shot down the theory that Billy was searching for the Scarlet Witch herself. Many fans are still heartbroken about Wanda’s heel turn in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and her uncertain fate in the end. They were hoping she’d get a chance to redeem herself in this show – or at least that they’d get some reassurance that she is alive. Instead, there seemed to be little interest in hunting down Wanda, but that might change.

Agatha’s Next Adventure

Finally, the theories consuming the MCU fandom now are about what comes next for Agatha Harkness – and Billy Maximoff. Many expect both to appear in the upcoming series VisionQuest, which seems logical, but there are actually a lot of other options if you have an idea of which storyline they’re pursuing. Agatha All Along seemed to set up Billy and Tommy for an MCU version of the Avengers: Children’s Crusade arc from Marvel Comics, which finds them seeking their mother. Along the way, they team up with Wonder Man (among others) and go up against Dr. Doom.

That means we could be seeing Billy and Tommy, at least, in Wonder Man on Disney+ next year, and/or perhaps in Fantastic Four or Avengers: Doomsday. As for Agatha, many are assuming she will tag along with Billy wherever he goes, but as a ghost, she could appear in other places as well.

Agatha All Along is streaming now on Disney+.

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In some ways, Agatha All Along broke the mold for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but when it came to its most mysterious antagonists, it stuck to a familiar formula. Some critics have pointed out that the show pulled the ‘ole red herring trick that has become so familiar in the MCU. However, it’s worth discussing whether this held the show back or helped it slot in with the wider franchise.

Fair warning: there are spoilers ahead! No matter who you consider to be the “big bad,” Agatha All Along introduced us to them early. Many fans expected the Salem Seven to be more active villains, and to play a bigger role in the show’s finale. They would be the best example here of a red herring – an intentional distraction left by the creators to throw viewers off the scent of the real mystery. It especially makes sense since this group already had a strong connection with the titular character before the show began.

While they are a looming threat throughout the show, the Salem Seven are only really seen in three episodes, and they are defeated by Lilia alone in their first real confrontation. On top of that, they are not characterized much at all, making them weak candidates to be the villains of this story. Even if they had made it to a more climactic showdown, they wouldn’t have been central to the narrative.

Most fans would probably say the real villain of this series was Rio – a.k.a. Death, played by Aubrey Plaza. However, one could call this a red herring as well. In the end, we learn about Agatha and Rio’s history through a flashback, casting all of their interactions in a new light. Even the scene where Rio tries to “kill” Agatha is not so threatening once we know that Rio is Death incarnate, and we’ve seen her guide others to the afterlife gently and kindly.

Still, Rio provides the dramatic stakes and the climactic battle to bring this series to an end, so calling her the antagonist is close enough to the truth. This is especially true if you view Billy as the protagonist instead of Agatha. Billy has disrupted the natural order of things, but not intentionally or with malice. His fight with Rio raises some interesting quandaries about life and balance in a fantasy world, while Agatha’s sacrifice is the perfect resolution.

The MCU is full of red herring villains, the most infamous being The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. There was also Bucky in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Skrulls in Captain Marvel and the Timekeepers in Loki. The worst offender of all is Agatha All Along’s predecessor, WandaVision, which was essentially hundreds of small red herrings disguised as a streaming show. These days, writers and producers have to walk a fine line by subverting expectations while still telling a satisfying story.

Agatha All Along definitely accomplished that – whoever the true villain is. The series is streaming now on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean its the last time we’ll see some of its cast members in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One advantage a shared cinematic universe has on the competition is there’s a good chance a character in one project can (and often will) appear in another one. For example, Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness was the primary villain in WandaVision, and fans enjoyed her performance so much that she headlined the WandaVision spinoff Agatha All Along. Add in Joe Locke as Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy and Agatha All Along was filled with several MCU Easter eggs.

Fans got to see Billy don his comics-accurate Wiccan costume, and while Agatha sacrificed herself to Death (Aubrey Plaza) to save Billy, Ghost Agatha is still floating around to help Billy find his twin brother Tommy. Agatha All Along concluded with Agatha and Billy setting off to find Tommy, and even though there wasn’t a mid or post-credits scene teasing what’s to come, we took the liberty of giving our thoughts on where we can see Agatha All Along‘s two witches next.

Doctor Strange 3

Scarlet Witch broke bad in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, when her corruption at the hands of the Darkhold sent her scouring the multiverse for his missing twins. Wanda showed she still had some good in her when she leveled Mount Wundagore with her inside. Scarlet Witch seemingly died when Mount Wundagore fell, though her status was very intentionally left up in the air in Agatha All Along.

There have been rumblings for Doctor Strange 3 for awhile, with Sam Raimi rumored to return as director. Since Doctor Strange 2 was the last time we saw Wanda Maximoff, it wouldn’t be too far off to theorize that her revival could take place in a third installment. And since Agatha and Billy are so closely tied to the Scarlet Witch, their search for Tommy could lead them in the crosshairs of the Sorcerer Supreme. You never know, Doctor Strange could even offer some help in their search as well.

Vision Quest

Agatha All Along isn’t the only spinoff of WandaVision that’s in the works. Vision is also headlining a Disney+ series, and while it doesn’t have an official title, there are rumors it’ll be called Vision Quest. WandaVision featured two versions of Vision: his original repaired body that took on the white color theme, and a Vision created by the Scarlet Witch’s powers. The latter drifted out of existence after Wanda Maximoff dropped her spell over the town of Westview. Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas is reportedly helming the series.

Since Agatha All Along reintroduced fans to Billy, it would be poetic if Marvel’s Vision series did the same for Tommy. The boy that will become the Young Avenger Speed could help Vision on his journey of self-discovery, with Agatha and Billy reuniting with Vision by the finale.

Young Avengers

WandaVision, Agatha All Along, and Vision Quest appear to all be leading to the Young Avengers. There have been several rumors regarding the Young Avengers over the years, especially with potential candidates popping up across different Marvel TV shows and movies. For example, we had Kate Bishop in Hawkeye, Stinger/Stature in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, America Chavez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wiccan and Speed in WandaVision, Patriot in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ironheart in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Ms. Marvel in her self-titled Disney+ series and The Marvels, where she looked to be assembling the Young Avengers.

It’s only a matter of when and not if the Young Avengers make their MCU debuts as a team. The most likely scenario is Marvel assembles the Young Avengers for a Disney+ limited event series. It would allow their stories to be told across multiple episodes, giving each member a chance in the limelight. Agatha and Billy’s story can culminate in a reunion with Tommy, just as the rest of the Young Avengers come together to stop a new or returning MCU threat.

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Agatha All Along was billed as a limited series, but Disney and Marvel Studios just gave a strong hint that it might return for a second season. On Monday, Variety reported that Agatha All Along will be submitted for the Golden Globes, Emmys and other awards in the comedy category. The category requirements are a hint that the story could go on, although nothing is concrete yet.

Insiders said Agatha All Along will be submitted to the comedy categories for the SAG Awards, Golden Globe Awards and Emmy Awards, meaning it will go up against some critical darlings such as The Bear, Hacks and Abbott Elementary. That means it will have a harder time winning than it would in the less competitive limited series category. However, if Marvel Television wants the option of renewing Agatha, it may need to submit to a different category. It’s not the only possible reason, but it would be one explanation for this choice.

The Emmys’ rules for a limited series say: “The program must tell a complete, non-recurring story and not have an ongoing storyline or main characters in subsequent seasons.” It’s arguable that Agatha All Along doesn’t fit this criteria, even if it does only have one season. The show is a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it seems pretty clear that its characters will appear in other shows and movies to come. As it is, the show is a spinoff of WandaVision, so the story is far from self-contained.

Marvel Television Studios has already announced its slate for 2025, and Marvel’s plans for the rest of the Multiverse Saga are public knowledge as well. Adding in a second season of Agatha All Along might be tricky considering how all these stories tend to weave together. Right now, it seems clear that Billy (Joe Locke) will play a part in some upcoming stories, and Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) will presumably tag along. On the other hand, The show drew a huge audience, and both critics and audiences liked it as well. It wouldn’t be too surprising if the studios wanted to capitalize on that success.

All we can do is speculate for now, but it seems more certain than ever that Billy, Agatha and others will be back on our screens one way or another. Agatha All Along and WandaVision are streaming now on Disney+. So far, the studios have not commented publicly on award season or on the possibility of sequels.

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The final two episodes of Agatha All Along aired last week and the Witches’ Road has now come to an end. Even though we’re sad the show is over, that means we can now add these characters to our collections with new Funko Pops! The lineup includes Billy, AKA Wiccan, the powerful witch and son of another powerful witch, Wanda Maximoff, and the terrifying but charismatic Rio, AKA Death!

What’s really cool is these two Pops take the looks of these characters and amplify them in Pop form. Both Billy Maximoff and Rio/Death are recognizable and stylish. We’re hoping other members of the Coven will eventually be made into Pops too, but for now, we’re happy to have these ones (plus Agatha of course).These two Pops are each going for $11.99. You can grab them from Entertainment Earth here and over here at Amazon. 

Spoilers Ahead for Agatha All Along.

The sequel series to the popular Disney+ show WandaVision, Agatha All Along has taken us for quite a ride since it started back in September. With magic, spells, lost souls, and even the literal incarnation of Death, Agatha All Along has definitely brought excitement. The two-part finale, which aired on October 30th, took us through the (eventually cyclical) Witches’ Road, ending in a sacrificial death from our beloved Agatha. She doesn’t stay dead for long though – the spiritual form of Agatha arises again to help Billy on his mission – to find his brother Tommy, whose soul they’ve brought back to the land of the living – much like Billy’s was before. 

Agatha All Along was a great ride, and fans of the series would agree that it’s one of the better Marvel Disney+ shows, making its predecessor proud. Having a cast of characters that were interesting and new, balanced by Marvel Comic backstory and characters we already recognize and love are just some of the ways that Agatha has worked for its audience. We’re hoping that Disney can continue the streak with their next original series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. For now, all we can do is wait while we see what Disney has in store for us. 

To stay up to date for all the Funko and Marvel news and collectibles, keep an eye on our Gear page!

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One of the most beloved side characters in the Disney+ era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost took a trip down the Witches’ Road. Agatha All Along already had an all-star lineup of talent on the call sheet, with Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza starring alongside the likes of Patti LuPone, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Debra Jo Rupp. It appears there were plans for that crew to be joined by Patty Guggenheim, reprising her role as Madisynn from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

If you watched She-Hulk, you definitely remember Madisynn. You probably remember the character even if you didn’t watch Marvel’s She-Hulk TV series. Madisynn was a comedic breakout that launched a viral meme format back in 2022. She’s easily one of the most popular characters from the MCU over the last few years, and Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer wanted Madisynn to be part of the coven that embarked on the journey down the Witches’ Road in the new series.

Speaking to The Ringer-Verse, Schaeffer revealed that there were plans to have Madisynn be part of the coven at the start of the series. However, thing ultimately didn’t work out because bringing in Madisynn didn’t make a whole lot of narrative sense.

“[We wanted] to get Madisynn on the Witches’ Road, but it just didn’t work. It was shoehorning,” Schaeffer explained.

In order to get Madisynn on the Witches’ Road with the rest of the coven, the creative team would’ve had to figure out how to get her over to Westview, and then how she could naturally stumble into the action. The amount of hoops you’d have to jump through to make it feel like anything other than fan service likely kept Madisynn’s appearance from becoming a reality.

It does make you wonder, though, if the inclusion of Debra Jo Rupp’s Mrs. Hart checked the same boxes as Madisynn would have. She’s a hilarious fan-favorite returning character that isn’t at all a witch, but does provide the entire situation with some comedic relief. Unlike Madisynn, Mrs. Hart was already stationed in Westview, still residing in the same place she did during WandaVision. Bringing her into the mix made total sense and wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow; it just felt natural to have her be a part of the story.

If that’s the case, maybe Madisynn missing out on Agatha All Along is for the best. We all want to see more Madisynn in the MCU at some point, but Mrs. Hart was a better (and potentially even funnier) fit for the story of Agatha All Along.

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Agatha All Along introduced us to a promising new hero played by Joe Locke, which may be a strong hint about where the Marvel Cinamtic Universe is heading. Locke’s character Billy Maximoff is a key member of the team Young Avengers, and there are strong hints that he is being set up for the Marvel Comics storyline The Children’s Crusade. Read on for a bit about this story and how it might take shape in the MCU.

Locke’s character has a much more convoluted history in the comics, but the Disney+ version of him bears a lot of similarities to the version in the 2010 miniseries Avengers: The Children’s Crusade written by Allan Heinberg with art by Jim Cheung. There, he and his brother are reincarnated through magic and go searching for their mother, the Scarlet Witch, which would feel like a natural next step for them in the MCU as well. Two other Young Avengers characters are already on hand for this mission, too – Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel and Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop Hawkeye.

Add to that the characters in upcoming projects featured in The Children’s Crusade. Wonder Man eventually tags along on their odyssey in the comics, and we now know that a Wonder Man series is coming to Disney+ in December of 2025. They also encounter Victor von Doom, who we know is coming to the MCU played by Robert Downey Jr. at some point in the Multiverse Saga.

If this team-up is coming, it will have to be soon. We could see hints of it in Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart and/or Wonder Man next year, and probably in the 2026 series Vision Quest as well. Meanwhile, Dr. Doom will be front and center in the theaters with The Fantastic Four: First Steps due out in July followed by Avengers: Doomsday in May of 2026.

Aside from narrative context clues, there are rumors and teasers from the industry as well. The biggest is that The Cosmic Circus‘ Alex Perez recently mentioned the Young Avengers lineup in a Q&A with fans, and many believe he was talking about the Children’s Crusade storyline in particular.

Of course, knowing which comic book arcs the MCU is sourcing from does not answer every question we might have. These adaptations have done an amazing job at keeping both new and old fans engaged with fresh takes and remixes on classic stories. Hopefully, these tie-ins inspire fans to pick up comics or revisit their old favorites in anticipation of the next release. Agatha All Along is streaming now on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along’s two-episode finale aired this week and while the coven — or rather, what was left of it — reached the end of The Witches’ Road and its final trial, there was still a couple of major surprises about the mythical path to be revealed. The MCU series revealed that the Road was originally a con created by Agatha using a song she and her son created — the original Ballad — to lure unsuspecting witches to their deaths at her hands but that Billy had somehow made the Road real with his own powers. The latter revelation meant that everything that happened to the coven along the path did in fact happen and the deaths of Mrs. Hart, Alice, and Lilia were sadly very real as well. But it also means that there was indeed something at the end of The Witches’ Road for those how made it to completion. Here’s how that went down and what was really at the end may surprise you.

After leaving the tarot trial that saw Lilia sacrifice herself to stop the Salem Seven, Agatha, Billy, and Jennifer had just one trial remaining but when they continue on the road, they find themselves back at the beginning — literally. Instead of finding a new location for a final trial, the trio find their shoes that they took off when they first started down the path. It turns out that the end of the road was just a circular path, but as with most things in magic there’s more to it than that. When Billy puts on his shoes, he suddenly finds himself in a bare, almost clinical room with grow lights overhead. Agatha and Jennifer soon appear as well and they deduce that whatever this trial is, it’s about green magic.

As the lights start ticking down the passage of time, Jennifer realizes that Agatha was responsible for the spell that bound her powers in the past — Agatha was selling spell work back then — and then performs an unbinding ritual, freeing herself. Jennifer vanishes from the trial, now free. Then, Agatha helps Billy, guiding him to find his brother Tommy and then, helps him guide Tommy into a boy drowning due to a horrible prank. Billy freaks out and asks if he’s killing the boy so his brother can live, but he doesn’t get an answer. He’s completed the trial and disappears. Only Agatha is left and, with time running out, she finds a seed in lock of hair kept in her brooch. Using the soil from the broken part of the floor and a tear as hydration, she plants it and it grows into a dandelion with just seconds to spare, completing the trial and exiting Agatha as well.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: What Happened to Tommy?]

So, what was really at the end of The Witches’ Road? Despite the Road not actually being real until Billy manifested it, the Road did give the witches who completed it the thing that they were missing and thus fulfilled its promise. Jennifer was no longer bound, Billy located Tommy, and Agatha got her powers back. However, it was less the Road that gave those things back to the witches and more the witches themselves. At the end of the Road was less a true trial and more a situation where the witches had to face themselves and come to some pretty important realizations about self. For Jennifer, that meant she had to recognize that she had the power to empower herself, something that we see her do when she uses the unbinding ritual to free herself from Agatha’s spell. The scene where Jennifer repeatedly tells Agatha that she holds nothing, each time growing more confident, is incredibly powerful and you can see Jennifer returning to the power within herself — a power that may or may not have anything to do with witchcraft. For Billy, it was about not only finding Tommy — and in this case creating a path for him to be reborn — but also recognizing that being a witch and using magic is something that comes with hard choices. Once Billy does it, the next time we see him he has fully transformed into Wiccan, presumably having fully accepted who he is and having stepped into his power.

And when it comes to Agatha, for her it’s a little more complicated. While it would seem that what she wanted from the Road was her son, what she needed was acceptance. This plays out with her creating life from death — the hair and seed were taken from her son after his death centuries before — and given that Agatha has been the source of so much death in her time, this moment is significant. It’s a moment in which she actually has to sit with her grief, which the actual finale episode hints is something she never really did as she goes directly from burying her son to tricking witches with the con of the original Ballad. The final trial, for Agatha, was about having that moment and in that moment perhaps becoming whole.

Ultimately, what was at the end of The Witches’ Road was self — and it didn’t just come at the true “end”. For every witch that walked the Road Billy manifested, the trials were a confrontation of self. Each witch had to work through something that had been holding them back and preventing them from being their authentic selves. Alice finally broke through and stepped into her power as a protection witch when she saved Agatha from Evanora in the ‘80s horror themed trial. Lilia found her own acceptance of being a witch and her powers in the tarot trial. Each witch that walked the Road found the end, albeit at a different place, but they each found glory — in themselves.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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When people have talked about the future of the on-screen Avengers in a post-Endgame world, two of the names most often brought up as leaders of a new iteration of the team are Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. There will need to be new Avengers taking charge after the deaths/departures of cornerstone characters like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Natasha Romanoff. Spider-Man makes sense, given his age, popularity, and longstanding history with previous Avengers icons. Doctor Strange, though, has never felt like a real future-thinking answer for the magical pillar the Avengers need. How much longer are we going to keep demanding Benedict Cumberbatch dress up in a cape and make funny hands in front of a green screen?

Whether it was planned this way or not, Marvel just made things much easier on the franchise by swiftly developing a Doctor Strange replacement that’s not only younger, but far more interesting at this point in the MCU’s story. We are talking, of course, about Billy Kaplan.

Also known by the alter ego Wiccan, Billy is one of the two sons of the Scarlet Witch, and has been a key piece of the Young Avengers teams in Marvel Comics for quite a while. He was a minor character in WandaVision, but Agatha All Along finally brought him into young adulthood and laid the groundwork for him to become a fixture in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Billy has a fascinating origin story and a ton of conflict from his past that still hasn’t been resolved. He’s one soul that has taken over a second body. He’s on the search for his missing twin brother — that he may or may not have sent into another dead body. He’s got a mentor in the form of a powerful witch’s ghost. Not to mention he’s almost just as powerful as his mother, who was considered the most powerful character in the universe for a time.

Anything Doctor Strange can do, Billy can probably to better (after a little training). When you factor in all of the drama that comes with that character after Agatha All Along, and the fear that comes with being the son of the Scarlet Witch, you’ve got a character that demands to be on-screen as much as possible moving forward.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along Showrunner Addresses Mephisto’s Absence]

On top of all that, you’ve got a young and incredibly talented star-on-the-rise portraying Billy, who could easily help anchor the MCU for a decade or more moving forward. Joe Locke is best known for his starring turn in the hit Netflix series Heartstopper (he was also phenomenal in the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd earlier this year). Since that show debuted, he has been quickly garnering attention from TV fans around the world. After Agatha All Along, he’s got a shot to become one of the most in-demand young actors around.

Locke was a scene-stealer throughout the nine episodes of Agatha All Along. Do you have any idea how hard that is when you’re sharing those scenes with Kathryn Hahn and Patti LuPone? Billy’s story required an actor who could hold their own in heavily emotional situations, but could also keep up with some incredible comedic performers. Locke had absolutely no problem toeing that line, gliding between acting worlds at will. There were a couple of episodes where he essentially had to carry the entire show on his shoulders, and those turned out to be some of the best episodes of the series.

This is an actor who has more than enough talent to be a face of Marvel heroes on screens both big and small. He also happens to be just 21 years old and tied to a character with more story possibility than almost anyone else in the MCU. Alongside Tom Holland and Iman Vellani, Locke is ready to take the next step and help anchor the next generation of Marvel’s long-running franchise.

The post Move Over Doctor Strange, the MCU Just Found Its Magic Cornerstone appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The first (and potentially only) season of Agatha All Along concluded this week, and the latest Disney+ series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has left a lot for fans to unpack. There was another major death, the truth about The Witches’ Road was revealed, and we finally learned Tommy’s fate, too. We also got some pretty significant moments such as that devastating “romantic” moment between Agatha and Rio and a couple of disappointments when neither Wanda nor Mephisto showed up in the end. But beyond all of those things, it is ultimately Agatha’s story that remains the biggest thing to examine because the series’ revelations about the infamous witch leave us with an unexpected truth: Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff, it turns out, are far more alike than anyone realized and it’s those similarities that put Wanda’s story into a whole new light and may make you reconsider how you see Agatha as well.

There are multiple aspects of both Agatha and Wanda’s stories that have major similarities. Everything from their early family experiences to their romantic entanglements to even their children reveal that the two witches have a lot in common with the biggest difference being how they dealt with those aspects of their lives. While one can argue that they both ended up in villain-like roles before ultimately seeing the error of their ways, they are both highly complex characters that fans want to see more from. Let’s break it down.

Agatha and Wanda Both Have Family Trauma

For both Agatha and Wanda, the similarities begin in their early histories as both witches have deep family trauma. In the case of Wanda Maximoff, her parents were killed when she was a child when a missile struck their apartment in Sokovia during a war, leaving Wanda and her brother Pietro trapped for two days with the missile. Years later, Pietro was killed in the fight against Ultron, leaving Wanda traumatized yet again and deeply grieving another significant loss that, this time, left her largely alone in the world. In Agatha’s case, the trauma is a bit more complicated. We know nothing about Agatha’s father or her childhood, but we do know that Agatha is responsible for her mother Evanora’s death — though it’s a sad story all of its own. In 1693, Agatha killed members of her Salem coven (including her mother) in essentially self-defense when they tried to have her executed for the practice of dark magic. However, during The Witches’ Road trials we learn that Evanora may not have been a loving mother at any point in Agatha’s life. Evanora’s ghost tells Agatha that she should have killed her when she was a baby, a revelation that visibly hurts Agatha all these centuries later.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: Did Wanda Actually Save Billy?]

While Wanda’s trauma is familial loss, Agatha’s trauma of being an outcast and having her own mother decide that she is evil and needed to die is just as significant and creates a form of grief itself. Both witches carry with them a sense of loss as well as other emotions that impact how they view themselves and the world around them and, in turn, how they interact with others.

Agatha and Wanda Both Have “Taboo” Loves

Another parallel between the two witches are their romantic lives. Both Wanda and Agatha’s choice of romantic partners fall a little bit outside of what might be considered normal or acceptable for their social norms. In the case of Wanda, she has a healthy and seemingly happy relationship with Vision who just so happens to be a sentient android rather than a human man. That’s something that probably is seen as a little weird. In the case of Agatha, her love is literally Death, which means that there are aspects to their relationship that simply do not work the same way as it would between two mortals (after all, fans are debating whether Agatha’s death kiss was the couple’s first kiss). For both Agatha and Wanda, their unconventional loves present challenges that ultimately lead to them not being able to be together — something that causes both women a great deal of pain, and in Wanda’s case, prompts her to create a whole false reality.

Both Agatha and Wanda Are Mothers Who “Created” Their Children… and Lost Them

We already know that Wanda created her children. Both Billy and Tommy were products of her hex, created out of her magic and her grief with Billy only becoming “real” when his essence found a vessel in the form of the recently deceased William Kaplan as the hex was collapsing. But the final episode of Agatha All Along reveals that Agatha also created her own son, Nicholas Scratch. While Agatha clearly says that she did not use an incantation to bring Nicholas into the world, she does say that she “created him from scratch”. It is entirely possible that there was some sort of magic involved — the series doesn’t get into the details of Nicholas’ full parentage which means this could be a situation of manifestation, a deal with the devil, or really any number of possibilities. But there is something to be said about the “magic” of carrying and giving birth to a child more broadly so even if magic in the witchy sense wasn’t involved in Nicky’s birth, for Agatha he is still something of her creation and indeed the first “pure” thing she’s ever done.

Tragically for both Agatha and Wanda, they lose their children to death or death-like scenarios. Those losses change both women in big ways. For Wanda, it makes her more determined than ever to find her children again as she believes they are out there somewhere. That leads her down a dark path — literally, she uses the Darkhold — while for Agatha, losing Nicky haunts her. It ruins her relationship with Death and may even be what prompts her to continue using the Ballad of The Witches’ Road to lure in and murder unsuspecting witches and take their power for centuries. Neither woman is the same after losing their children.

By looking at the similarities between Agatha and Wanda, there’s a fundamental shift to not only how we view Wanda’s story, but to everything we thought we knew about Agatha. While she initially just comes across as a power-stealing antagonist, there are more layers there. Agatha’s motivations in WandaVision may have been less about merely wanting to take ultimate power but instead more about taking Wanda’s power to do something similar to what Wanda did in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: try to get her child back. Yes, the end of Agatha All Along does have Agatha not wanting to transition to the afterlife because she’s not wanting to face her son, but this takes place three years after the events of WandaVision and with a newly dead Agatha having to face the reality of everything she’s done. It’s a different scenario than where she was in WandaVision where she was trying to take from Wanda.

We see a bit of the shift in how we perceive Agatha in her relationship with Billy at the end as well — which interestingly enough also has a parallel to something from Wanda’s life. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, while Wanda starts out wanting to use America Chavez for her powers as part of her own efforts to reunite with versions of her children from another timeline, she ends up relenting and sacrificing herself to destroy the Darkhold, freeing Chavez. Agatha ends up sacrificing her own life to keep Death from taking Billy and then returns as a ghost to become Billy’s spirit guide and heads out into the world with him to locate Tommy having helped Billy bring Tommy into reality during the final trial. For both Wanda and Agatha, they start their journey as one thing and end as another — all informed by their complex life experiences.

The MCU is nothing if not full of complex and layered characters. Agatha and Wanda may be two of the best examples of that and looking at the similarities between the two witches really highlights that. For both of them, the significance of motherhood and grief in their journeys are driving forces that see them grow and change in ways that lend to not only good entertainment, but rich and flawed stories of redemption. Ultimately, both Agatha and Wanda have bittersweet fates. Neither woman is truly a villain nor a hero. They’re simply complex women with stories viewers want to see more of.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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To say that the finale of Agatha All Along left fans of the Marvel series with a lot to unpack would be an understatement. The two-episode conclusion to the WandaVision spinoff not only offered up some answers to major fan questions — namely if Mephisto would finally show up in the MCU and if Wanda would return seemingly from the dead — but also had quite a few surprises as well. We found out the truth about The Witches’ Road, and about where Tommy ended up but there’s something else that the final episodes gave us as well. The end of Episode 8, “Follow Me My Friend/To Glory at the End” gave fans something else they’ve wanted all season: a kiss between lovers-turned-enemies Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and Rio/Death (Aubrey Plaza) and it’s got fans shook — and maybe not for all the reasons you might think. Warning: spoilers for the finale of Agatha All Along beyond this point.

Fans have known Agatha and Rio have some sort of romantic history since Episode 4, when Rio explained that the woman she wronged was her “scar” and we see Agatha and Rio almost kiss. However, by the time we get to Episode 8 the animosity between the two women is higher than ever with Agatha making a deal with Rio that she will deliver Billy to her in exchange for Rio leaving her alone permanently, even when she dies. However, Agatha ultimately sacrifices herself for Billy and in the end kisses Rio, the act leading to her demise. For fans, the. moment paid off on all of the tension between the two characters and also delivered the first lesbian kiss in the MCU but it’s also prompted a lot of discussion, namely about what the kiss actually meant and whether the kiss is what killed Agatha or if it was just a mechanism for Agatha to kill herself.

The First Lesbian Kiss in the MCU

While there have been representations of same-sex relationships in the MCU prior to this — notably, Eternals featured a same-sex couple, Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and his husband, as well as a brief on-screen kiss and even Agatha All Along had a same sex kiss between Billy and his boyfriend — the Agatha/Rio kiss is the first lesbian on-screen kiss in the franchise, something that fans were ecstatic about.

Was It Really a “Kiss of Death”?

Outside of the excitement about the moment being the MCU’s first lesbian kiss, however, fans also were debating what the kiss actually was. While Agatha kissing Rio led to her death, fans aren’t entirely sure that it was the kiss that actually killed her. Specifically, some fans think that Agatha kissed Rio because she wanted to, reuniting the two lovers at long last, but also that Agatha used it as a mechanism to take Rio’s power. As was established in the series premiere, Agatha can’t just take Rio’s power the way she does other witches. Doing so would kill her and Agatha knows this so, for many, the kiss is Agatha choosing her own death rather than making Death kill her.

Others, however, are not so sure and think that Rio simply couldn’t kiss Agatha at all because it would kill her — and that is why when she came to collect Nicky, she sent him back to kiss his sleeping mother. Nicky kissed Agatha twice — and fans say that one was for him and one was for Rio because she couldn’t do it.

Of course, the general consensus is that it doesn’t actually matter what the mechanics of the kiss were. What matters is that it happened at all.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along answered a lot of questions in its two-part finale, but left Marvel Cinematic Universe fans with quite a few new ones, as well. One of the bigger questions has been the origin of Billy Maximoff/Wiccan, who managed to survive being a creation of Wanda Maximoff’s hex reality in Westview by transferring his essence into the body of a newly-deceased boy named William Kaplan. Some fans saw the flashback scene to Billy’s resurrection and came away with a major question:

Did Wanda Actually Save Billy?

During Agatha and Billy’s discussion of his resurrection (in Episode 6), Agatha insinuates that Billy’s true nature as a survivor willing to exploit an available resource (a soulless body) was a defining quality of him being a witch. This suggests that Billy’s spirit (through his powerful abilities) was able to instinctively seek out William Kaplan like a parasite desperately looking for a host body to survive in. However, there is a conflicting theory that Billy had help with coming back from the dead.

The WandaVision post-credits scene and events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse suggest that Wanda is uniquely attuned to the spirits or souls of her children – going so far as to sense them in different realities across the multiverse. It’s not without reason that, as a mother, Wanda couldn’t have given her boys the push needed to send their souls out into the world. If those two souls got separated in that expulsion it, could explain why Billy’s first word when waking up in his new body was yelling “Tommy!”

This is not an issue that needs to become a major MCU mystery – it’s more an opportunity for deeper storytelling depth. Assuming that future MCU storylines eventually culminate with Wanda, Billy, and Tommy reuniting, it would resonate with deeper power to discover that Wanda had an active hand in saving her boys – even if she had to bend the laws of the natural world to do it. It would endear Wanda to parents everywhere – much like the finale episode of Agatha revealed her (albeit twisted) heart as a mom, which reframed the character entirely.

Then again, finding out Wanda saved Billy would only make the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – Wanda slaughtering her way across realities to find Billy and Tommy – even more tragic. MCU fans might also take it as a major pothole that Wanda willfully sent her sons’ spirits out looking for new bodies, but couldn’t sense where they landed – especially Billy.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

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Marvel fans have come to expect one thing from an MCU television show or movie and that’s a post-credits scene, but when the end of Marvel’s latest Disney+ series Agatha All Along rolled around there was nothing. All the Kathryn Hahn-starring series had to offer fans was the actual credits — which were pretty cool — but no additional scenes to tease what’s next or keep fan imaginations running wild with theories. Now, series showrunner Jac Schaeffer reveals to Variety that while she did have ideas and even wrote some, Marvel made the call to not have a post-credit scene.

“That’s a Marvel decision,” Schaeffer said. “I know nothing more than that.”

She added, “Yes, I wrote a number of tags, because you always do on every Marvel everything. I love writing tags. I think some of my best writing is in the tags that were never made. I should have a little binder of my tags. They’re so fun to write, because you’re writing the promise without having to deliver on anything. They’re the best. But there are so many things that factor into those. And I was told that we weren’t going to do a tag on this show. That doesn’t affect my work, or my vision for the show.”

However, while Agatha All Along didn’t end up having a tag or a post-credits scene, the show did leave things in a place where many more stories are possible. The finale saw Agatha (Hahn) become a ghost — after having largely sacrificed herself to Death (Aubrey Plaza) to spare Billy (Joe Locke) in the penultimate episode — and step into the role of a guide for Billy as they head out into the world as a coven of two to find his brother, Billy. That search for Tommy, especially when connected to the fact that the larger MCU has already introduced several members of Marvel Comics’ Young Avengers team, could be setting up for a future story or project for Marvel that officially brings the team to screen.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along Showrunner Says Mephisto Was Never Going to Appear]

A Second Season of Agatha All Along Is Unlikely

Even with the lack of post-credits scene and an ending that sets up a whole new stage of storytelling, at this point it seems unlikely that there will be a second season of Agatha All Along. The series was advertised as a miniseries for Disney+ which means that there wouldn’t necessarily be plans for a second season. There’s also already another WandaVision spinoff featuring Vision in the works so continuing the story set up in Agatha All Along for more episodes might not necessarily make the most sense. Much like WandaVision lead into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Agatha All Along could, instead of an additional season, lead into a larger project — such as the aforementioned Young Avengers, should Marvel go that direction. There is also the possibility of things leading into the rumored Doctor Strange 3 film as well or even a Wanda-centric movie, though Schaeffer has said that she knows “nothing of a Wanda movie, that’s what I can tell you.” That, of course still leaves Wanda’s actual fate a big question for fans — the Scarlet Witch didn’t make an appearance in the Agatha All Along series despite many fan theories suggesting it — and it’s one that hopefully will get an answer eventually.

Agatha All Along — without a post-credits scene — is now streaming on Disney+.

The post Agatha All Along Showrunner Says Lack of Post-Credits Scene Was a “Marvel Decision” appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Marvel fans have been hoping that Mephisto would make an appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a few years now. The fan demand for the devilish character began with WandaVision and when he didn’t appear, fans turned their hopes to Agatha All Along. A teaser for the series showed the then-mysterious Teen (later revealed to be Billy) with a sigil over his mouth that sent theories flying about Mephisto but as the series arrived and continued, Mephisto never showed up. Now, series creator and showrunner Jac Schaeffer reveals that the fan-favorite devil was never going to. Speaking with Variety, Schaeffer said that not only does Mephisto not interest her as a character, but there were never any serious considerations to bring the character into Agatha All Along.

“In my heart, no. I hope this doesn’t upset anyone, but Mephisto has never interested me,” Schaeffer said. “But we have an early, early document that included him in a potential antagonist, but I don’t remember ever really taking that seriously. And also, within the MCU, logistically, it wasn’t right for our show. I will say, it was not my intention to toy with anyone with the Mephisto stuff. I think I just continue to underestimate the appetite for Mephisto among the fan base.”

And to be fair, there is quite the appetite for Mephisto among fans. When the third episode of Agatha All Along name-dropped Mephisto, fans were surprised and it spawned a whole new set of theories: that Mephisto was behind that sigil, that it was Mephisto who was really behind setting Teen along the path of The Witches’ Road, even that Rio could be Mephisto in disguise. However, when the credits rolled on Agatha All Along, there wasn’t a Mephisto in sight. The sigil turned out to be Lilia’s doing, the Road ended up not being “real” and instead was something that Billy manifested with his own magic, and Rio? Well, she turned out to be Death. However, even with Mephisto not actually appearing in Agatha All Along, the series did give fans something significant. By mentioning the character by name, it means that Mephisto does exist in the MCU even if he hasn’t appeared yet.

[RELATED: Marvel Made Agatha All Along Showrunner Use Very Specific Wording About Wanda Being Alive or Dead]

More than that, the confirmation that Mephisto exists paired with part of Schaeffer’s comments — specifically, “also within the MCU, logistically, it wasn’t right for our show” — and her confirmation that Mephisto did at least briefly enter the conversation, it seems like there could be longer term plans for the fan-favorite antagonist to appear. That means the anticipation and theories can start looking forward to other potential appearances. One of the most likely is a third Doctor Strange film. Given how connected Doctor Strange ended up being in Wanda’s story thanks to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the whole Darkhold of it all, Mephisto making his arrival as more than just a passing mention, the rumored Doctor Strange 3 is as good a place as any. Additionally, Agatha All Along did end with Billy and Ghost Agatha heading out into the world to find Tommy and that presents an opportunity as well.

Does the MCU Even Need Mephisto?

While Mephisto wasn’t really ever intended for Agatha All Along and that may be disappointing for fans, the series not introducing the character also has begun to prompt another question about the devil: does the MCU even need Mephisto? Other considerations for a big bad with connections to magic and witchcraft in the MCU include Blackheart — a character some theorized was the actual identity of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio until that big Death reveal. There’s also Chthon, an Elder God who became the first master of black magic in Marvel who could end up having a role in things. And, interestingly, Chthon was a character that many theorized about during WandaVision, too.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.

The post Agatha All Along Showrunner Says Mephisto Was Never Going to Appear appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along kept Marvel Cinematic Universe fans guessing all season about whether or not Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) would be making her return as Scarlet Witch. Last we saw, Wanda seemingly died at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, after going on a murderous rampage across realities as the Scarlet Witch. However, Agatha walked a tightrope line about referencing Wanda and her current status – and that was very intentional.

WandaVision writer and Agatha showrunner Jac Schaeffer is out doing post-show interviews following the Agatha All Along finale, and in a new interview, she addresses the show’s ambiguity about outright revealing whether or not Wanda is dead or alive. Specifically, Schaefer was asked about the line from Aubrey Plaza’s Death in Agatha Episode 1, where Death says “That witch is gone, and all copies of the Darkhold with her.” Agatha never really engages Billy Maximoff’s (Joe Locke) multiple inquiries about his mom’s status, and from what Jac Schaeffer says, Agatha couldn’t give us that answer, while Rio Vidal/Death wouldn’t give it:

It’s my opinion — and these stories will move ahead, and who knows what it will be — it’s my opinion that Agatha does not know [if Wanda is alive],” Schaeffer told Deadline. “And yeah, it’s my opinion that Rio does.”

Schaeffer then gave MCU fans a whole new set of theories to chase, when she revealed that Marvel Studios had specific wording they insisted get used when discussing Wanda: “I think the word ‘gone’ is important. I was instructed to use the word ‘gone.’”

What Happened To Wanda After Doctor Strange 2?

“Gone” is a very charged word for Marvel Studios to stick on – especially after we now know the ending of Agatha All Along. The finale concludes by setting Billy Maximoff and Agatha Harkness’s ghost on the quest to locate the body where his twin brother Tommy’s soul now resides. The final Agatha episodes ran through it rather quickly, but during Agatha and Billy’s big seance spell in Episode 8, it was determined that Tommy’s spirit was still “out there” somewhere, not completely gone, and that Billy simply needed to locate him and pull him back to the physical world. If that sort of resurrection or spirit transference can be done with a “person” that was originally a hex manifestation, then why not the Scarlet Witch?

We still don’t know what happened when Wanda used her unrivaled powers to destroy all copies of the Darkhold in every reality, while also destroying the original inscriptions of the Darkhold spells, in the walls of Wundagore Mountain. Falling mountain debris wouldn’t be enough to kill the Scarlet Witch – it was more the expulsion of so much power, plus the assumed feedback or cost of destroying the Darkhold that seemed to doom Wanda.

Agatha All Along has made it clear that witchcraft and magic make the laws of life and death much more bendable and/or negotiable than they are for non-magic beings. Wanda is more likely stuck in some other dimension or non-physical state of being just waiting for a skilled sorcerer to restore her.

So, Scarlet Witch: “gone” for now, but hopefully back soon.

Agatha All Along is streaming on Disney+.

The post Marvel Made Agatha All Along Showrunner Use Very Specific Wording About Wanda Being Alive or Dead appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The series premiere of Agatha All Along had a clever Easter egg hiding in plain sight for eagle-eyed Marvel fans. A trophy in one of the bedrooms of Agatha’s house had the name of her son, Nicholas Scratch, etched into it, teasing that he could be involved in the series somehow. Throughout the next several episodes, there were plenty of references to Nick and the tragic event that separated Agatha from him. The true story of Nick Scratch was kept at arm’s length for most of the show, but Wednesday night’s finale showed what really happened — and it’s even sadder than we expected.

WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for the Agatha All Along finale! Continue reading at your own risk…

In the ninth and final episode of Agatha All Along, the series turned the clock back to the 1700s to show what happened to Nick Scratch, as well as what went down between Agatha and Rio (aka Death). When Agatha was alone in the woods and going into labor, her lover showed up with bad news, ready to take away her baby boy. Nick was supposed to die during birth, but Agatha pleaded for his life. Death allowed Agatha “more time” with Nick, but it was always clear she would return for him at some point.

Agatha ultimately got several years with Nick, but she spent it trying to prey on other witches so she could take their power, hoping to gain enough to ward off Death whenever she returned. In that time, she and Nick actually created the Witches’ Road song, and she used him at times to gain more power (though it was all in an effort to protect him).

[RELATED: MCU Young Avengers Team Nearly Complete After Agatha All Along]

Unfortunately, none of that mattered, as Death came for Nick in the middle of the night, while Agatha was sleeping next to him. So for 300 years, Agatha has been trying to get revenge for the loss of her son, and hoping to gain enough power to one day bring him back.

Could Nick Scratch Return?

In the final task on the Witches’ Road, Agatha buried a piece of Nick’s hair that she had saved in some dirt in a grow room. Using her own tear as a catalyst, she attempted to plant a seed to bring him back. A dandelion sprouted from the spot where she buried the hair before the entire room came crashing down.

So there could be something more in Scratch’s future, should Marvel decide to bring the character back at some point. It doesn’t seem completely necessary, but the seed has been planted (pun intended) for him to show up again someday.

The post Agatha All Along: What Really Happened to Nick Scratch? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along ended with a bang this week, but it seems like Billy Maximoff’s story is just beginning. The teenage witch now has a strong grasp of his own powers and abilities, though some of the details were easy to miss on screen. Read on for what we know so far about “Wiccan,” but fair warning – there are spoilers ahead!

The character played by Joe Locke – first known as “Teen,” then as William Kaplan and finally as Bill Maximoff – is based on a character from Marvel Comics known as Wiccan. So far in his short time on screen, the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Wiccan has shown many of the same powers as the original. He inherited magical affinity from his mother, though studying witchcraft gives him a more formal relationship with his powers than she has. Unlike Wanda, he uses incantations, sigils and other techniques to enact his will.

Over the course of WandaVision and Agatha All Along, Billy demonstrates psychic abilities including telepathy, telekinesis and compulsion – most notably when he manipulates Lilia and Jennifer into pushing Agatha off of the Witches’ Road. He can also use telekinesis to fly at least to some extent, such as the climactic scene where he levitates above Agatha’s house. Billy’s blue-colored energy attacks may also fall under this category.

In the penultimate episode, Billy also showed the ability to resurrect the dead. He had already resurrected himself, in a way, by finding a new body to host his consciousness after the events of WandaVision. With the help of Agatha, he was able to do the same for his twin brother, Tommy, calling forth his consciousness and guiding it into the body of another recently deceased boy.

Finally, in the end, both Billy and the audience learned that he has the ability to warp reality, much like his mother. It turns out that Billy unconsciously manifested the Witches’ Road in the same way that Wanda created “The Hex” around Westview. However, going forward he may have more precise control over this power, and may be able to use it on a smaller scale. This power may also have been a factor in Billy breaking the spell on Agatha in the beginning of the series, bringing her back to reality.

The comics generally depict Wiccan with the same powers we’ve seen on TV, though his history is much more convoluted. He first appeared in a 1986 issue of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch by Steve Englehart and Richard Howell, and was later reimagined in a 2005 issue of Young Avengers by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung. The comics generally draw a clear line between the Scarlet Witch’s powers and those of Wiccan, so we should assume that Billy still has some incredible untapped potential in the MCU as well.

WandaVision and Agatha All Along are both streaming now on Disney+. At the time of this writing, we have no idea when Billy will make his next appearance on screen.

The post Agatha All Along: Billy’s Powers, Explained appeared first on ComicBook.com.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 8 and 9.] Ding dong — the witch is dead. The two-episode Agatha All Along finale ended with centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) receiving her prize at the end of the Witches’ Road: the return of her powers, which were stolen from her by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) in the WandaVision finale. Wanda Maximoff’s son, Billy (Joe Locke), reincarnated as Wiccan, returned Agatha’s “purple” so they could fight Rio/Death (Aubrey Plaza) and stop her from taking Billy, who stole a second life and is disrupting the sacred balance by inhabiting the body of William Kaplan.

Rather than get Billy to turn himself in to Death as they agreed, Agatha died sacrificing herself to save the son of the Scarlet Witch. Her corporeal form then rapidly aged and decayed, and the series ended with Agatha’s return from the grave — as a ghost. Billy initially attempted an incantation to banish ghost Agatha to the afterlife, but when she tearfully confessed that she couldn’t face her son Nicholas Scratch (who was taken by Death in the 1700s), Billy let her stay in this realm.

With spirit as his guide, Billy and Agatha then set off to find his twin brother Tommy as a Coven Two. Although Agatha All Along ends with Agatha in her spectral form, Agatha has died and returned to life in the comics.

The Death of Agatha Harkness

[RELATED: All the Clues That Rio Was MCU Death All Along]

In 1977’s Fantastic Four #186, Agatha’s adult son, the warlock Nicholas Scratch, had his children return their grandmother to New Salem, Colorado: a secret community of witches that Agatha left to live among mortals in the 17th century. Calling themselves the Salem Seven, the supernatural squadron of Vertigo, Brutacus, Gazelle, Hydron, Reptilla, Thornn, and Vakume tried to execute Agatha for allegedly revealing New Salem’s existence to the mortal world. But the Fantastic Four saved Agatha, and Scratch was banished to the Dark Realm by the witches and wizards of New Salem. After Salem’s Seven returned in 1979’s Fantastic Four Annual #14, Agatha stripped them of their powers and sent them back to New Salem.

Salem’s Seven returned once more, this time in 1985’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #3, and burned Agatha at the stake. Agatha cursed the coven now led by the priestess Vertigo, who then attempted to sacrifice the Scarlet Witch to a winter god after she and the Vision happened across New Salem while talking about starting a family.

The Ghost of Agatha Harkness

The Agatha Harkness ghost appeared for the first time from beyond the grave when she helped Wanda channel her magick powers to defeat the Seven. After Wanda wielded her probability-altering Hex powers to become pregnant, Agatha’s ghost reappeared in The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 to warn Wanda about a threat arriving on Halloween, when the veils between the mortal world and the spirit world are thinnest.

On Halloween night, a pregnant Wanda used an incantation to summon Agatha’s spirit in The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #5. The undead Salem’s Seven captured Wanda and, in the dead realm of the demon Samhain, who sought to obtain life through Wanda’s magick and the life she created: her child. It was in this realm that Agatha, in her human form, sent Samhein’s dark forces into the corpses of Salem’s Seven to prevent the demon’s transfer into the body of Wanda’s unborn child. Agatha then passed on to her “long-awaited rest in peace.”

The Resurrection of Agatha Harkness

After the events of Vision Quest — where Wanda’s synthezoid husband had his memory wiped when he was dismantled and put back together as the emotionless, all-white Vision — Agatha returned in the flesh in 1989’s Avengers West Coast #50 to assist in governing Vision and Wanda’s twin sons, Tommy and Billy Maximoff (who were born in 1986’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #12).

In Avengers West Coast #51, a resurrected Agatha told Wanda that death was a “terrible inconvenience” for a true witch such as herself. Agatha explained she returned because she was concerned about the twins, and it was revealed that the children disappear from existence whenever they’re not in Wanda’s thoughts. Because Wanda’s powers couldn’t create true life, she unconsciously snared souls for the twins — fragments of the demon Mephisto. When Mephisto reabsorbed his missing pieces into himself, effectively erasing the twins from existence, Agatha defeated Mephisto and wiped the twins from Wanda’s memory to spare her the grief of losing her children.

Wanda eventually remembered her children, causing her to suffer a mental breakdown that disassembled Earth’s mightiest heroes in 2004’s Avengers #500. In Avengers #503, it was revealed that Wanda killed Agatha for erasing her children. Wanda attacked the Avengers when her former teammates confronted her about the fantasy she conjured to bring back Billy and Tommy, and Doctor Strange used the Eye of Agamotto to show Wanda the truth.

After an amnesiac Wanda atoned for her crimes and reunited with Billy and Tommy — who reincarnated as the Young Avengers Wiccan and Speed — during Avengers: Children’s Crusade, Agatha’s ghost returned as Wanda’s spirit guide in 2015’s Scarlet Witch #1.

The Trial of Agatha Harkness

When Wanda discovered that Witchcraft was broken, the Scarlet Witch and her ghostly mentor set off down the Witches’ Road, a plane of existence where only witches can tread. There they encountered the spirit of Wanda’s biological mother: Natalya Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch before her.

Natalya later revealed that Chaos — a cosmic entity whose being is at the heart of her chaos magic, the oldest form of witchcraft — was the cause of Witchcraft’s sickness.

As Maiden (Wanda), Mother (Natalya), and Crone (Agatha), the trio healed the goddess of witches when Natalya sacrificed her soul to save Witchcraft. She then resurrected Agatha once more, returning her to life in her more youthful form in Scarlet Witch #14.

All episodes of Marvel’s Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.

The post Agatha All Along Finale Explained: Agatha’s Ghost appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along may not have delivered on every front (Mephisto!) but it did give a lot of Marvel Cinematic Universe fans something they’ve wanted since seeing the first trailers for the show: Wiccan! From the moment that actor Joe Locke was cast as “Teen” in Agatha All Along fans bet on the return of Scarlet Witch’s son Billy Maximoff from WandaVision, in his grown-up and full-powered form as the mystical hero “Wiccan.” The show made us wait until the last episodes to see it, but when the moment came, it was definitely worth it for Wiccan fans.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Agatha All Along Episode 7 gave Billy a grand entrance as Wiccan, as he intervened in Agatha’s battle with Death (Aubrey Plaza) and saved her life (at least for a moment). As the kids like to say, Joe Locke ate that moment, and Agatha cemented its introduction of Wiccan as a new mystical powerhouse of the MCU.

Wiccan’s MCU Costume Explained

As you can see in the photos, Marvel Studios’ costume design team hit another home run in terms of realizing a comic book costume in live-action. Obviously, the show had to make minor changes to the fabrics and textures of the costume and its accessories (like the headband/crown) to make them work in live-action, but all the signatures are there. That includes that shoulder cloak-and-hood piece with the buckle clasp; the black leather(ish) pants, shirt and boots, and a belt that looks like it’s right out of the comics. The headband was tweaked from the rune-inscribed metallic piece in the comics – but only as an ode to the MCU legacy of Wanda Maximoff when she finally manifested her full powers as the Scarlet Witch (in the final WandaVision episodes)

What Is Wiccan’s MCU Future?

The Agatha All Along finale established Wiccan and gave him his first mission in the MCU – locating his resurrected twin brother Tommy Maximoff, in his new body. After finding Tommy, the sons of Scarlet Witch may go looking for a way to bring their mom back (after her fall in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness) – which was exactly what happened in Marvel Comics famous storyline “Children’s Crusade.”

RELATED: The MCU Young Avengers Team Is Nearly Complete!

Then again, Billy and Tommy didn’t go looking for Wanda alone – they had backup from their Young Avengers teammates. As we’ve broken down, Billy finding Tommy could be the last piece of the puzzle needed for the first iteration of the Young Avengers to be complete. So, team-building may be the next big thing for Wiccan.

Agatha All Along is streaming on Disney+.

The post Agatha All Along’s Finale Gives Billy His Comic Accurate Wiccan Costume appeared first on ComicBook.com.

One of the main plot elements in Agatha All Along involves the Witches’ Road, and we just learned how it came to be. However, its origin is not what the majority of fans expected. The season (series?) finale of Agatha All Along included several twists and turns, including Agatha Harkness’ surprising death and the fact there was no post-credits scene. But the main driving point of the series was for Agatha to assemble a coven to walk the Witches’ Road so she could get her magical powers back. Agatha and Billy did complete the Witches’ Road, but neither got what they wanted out of it. There’s a good reason for this, and it all ties back to the Road’s origin. Warning: spoilers for the finale of Agatha All Along beyond this point. Continue reading at your own risk!

So early on in Agatha All Along the series makes a point to let the audience know that Agatha has walked the Witches’ Road before, giving her the experience and knowledge to do it again. Agatha needs to regain the powers stolen from her by the Scarlet Witch in WandaVision, and Billy wants to reunite with his missing twin brother, Tommy. Once Billy and Agatha complete the second-to-last trial, they wind up back at the beginning of the road where they left their shoes. The Road took them in a circle, which left them confused. Fast forward a bit and Agatha sacrifices herself to Rio/Death, and Billy goes back home to Eastview.

[RELATED: Does Agatha All Along Have a Post-Credits Scene?]

When Billy enters his bedroom, he starts noticing his personal items also have connections to the Witches’ Road. For example, he has a poster for an album made by Alice’s mother, titled “The Ballad of the Witches Road,” a statue of the green-skinned Witch, a tree that looks eerily similar to one found on the Road, as well as multicolored leaves. We also get flashbacks of Agatha telling Billy that the Road doesn’t exist, Billy telling Agatha the Witches’ Road is exactly how he pictured it, and Lilia reading Billy (William)’s fortune, telling him, “You are the Magician. You have enormous potential, and the ability to turn all of your goals into reality.”

Billy slowly starts putting the pieces together, realizing that he is the one who created the Witches’ Road, just like his mother, Wanda Maximoff, created the hex over Westview.

Billy Maximoff created the Witches’ Road with his mind

Another flashback shows Agatha and the coven singing the Witches’ Road song in her basement. Before Agatha can antagonize the other witches to attack her so she can steal their powers, Billy races in and sees the door to the Witches’ Road on the floor. As Billy and the coven enter through the door, you can see Agatha starting to put the pieces together in her head. She’s realizing that Billy created the Road, which means he must be one of the Scarlet Witch’s kids.

The Ghost of Agatha visits Billy in his room, and the two of them begin revealing all the clues that led to Billy creating the Witches’ Road. Agatha says the Ballad of the Witches’ Road was never real, and it was just a con to lure gullible witches. Since Billy made the Road, that means he’s responsible for Alice, Lilia, and Mrs. Davis’ deaths. Agatha reminds Billy that she killed Alice, and Lilia made a choice to sacrifice herself to stop the Salem Seven. Billy can say he saved a life since he expelled Jen from the Road.

Billy is more like the Scarlet Witch than we ever thought. While Wanda created the Westview hex out of grief for losing Vision, Billy created the Witches’ Road in a desperate attempt to find his missing brother Tommy. That’s a pretty impressive feat, but it also puts a bullseye on Billy. There will be individuals looking to take advantage of him or steal his powers for themselves. However, if Billy is powerful enough to craft the Witches’ Road out of thin air, then he is more than capable of defending himself.

The post Agatha All Along: The Real Origin of The Witches’ Road Revealed appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along brought us to the end of the Witches Road (so to speak), and in doing so delivered Billy Kaplan/Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) to the destiny of his own power. Billy officially became “Wiccan,” and started to realize the true potential of his power – like, for instance, creating the entire hex fantasy of the Witches Road from his life influences and predilections. After Wiccan’s official debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hardcore fans are checking yet another name off the roster list of the Young Avengers – a team that is now nearly complete (if not fully)!

In the comics, the original Young Avengers roster consisted of Iron Lad, Patriot, Hulkling, Wiccan Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Speed (Tommy Maximoff/Shepherd), and Stature (Cassie Lang) – with a young Vision (Jonas), Kid Loki, and Miss America (Chavez), all joining the squad later. Then there is the overlap between Young Avengers and Marvel’s Champions, a squad that featured Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Ironheart (Riri Williams), Nova (Sam Alexander Falcon II (Joaquin Torres), and Spider-Man (Miles Morales).

MCU fans have speculated – even expected – that the Young Avengers and Champions teams will be merged into one MCU Young Avengers project. And, if you do the headcount, it’s much closer to happening than some may think…

At this point in the MCU, most of the Young Avengers characters have either been introduced or are fully established in their hero forms:

MCU Young Avengers: Who’s On The Team?

Ms. Marvel – Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) is a bonafide breakout star of the MCU, having led her own Disney+ series, and a movie (The Marvels). She’s already out there recruiting the Young Avengers, with Kate Bishop being her first stop…

Hawkeye – Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop became an instant MCU breakout star thanks to her Hawkeye Disney+ series.

Wiccan – Billy Maximoff’s resurrection and mystical powers were fully addressed in Agatha All Along. The MCU hs a new baddest witch…

Stature – Cassie Lang has been in the MCU since Phase 2, and we’ve literally watched her grow into her heroic role as the size-changing Stature. Kathryn Newton’s debut as Cassie in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was one of few things that went right with that film. We expect her to be a star part of Young Avengers.

Ironheart – Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne) is about to lead her own Disney+ series in 2025, after debuting in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Most likely, the Young Avengers will get their science-tech genius on the roster by the end of the series.

Iron Lad – A younger version of Kang the Conqueror who comes to modern times and forms the Young Avengers to thwart his older self – so technically, we’ve already met the character in the MCU. Iron Lad gives Marvel Studios an easy way to replace Kang actor Jonathan Majors with a younger actor – and we wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen soon. Or, with Kamala being the one to gather the Young Avengers, and Riri on the roster, the MCU could skip the Iron Lad character entirely.

Patriot – Eli Bradley was introduced in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (played by Elijah Richardson) as the grandson of former Captain America Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). With Isiah set to play a pivotal (and possibly final) role in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, we suspect we could also see Eli pick up his grandfather’s legacy in a post-credits scene.

Kid Loki – Kid Loki was spotted as one of the many Loki variants hanging out in the Wasteland during Loki Season 1. With adult Loki (Tom Hiddleston) now occupied holding up the Tree of Life, the MCU needs a new trickster to emerge.

Miss America – Dimension-hopping America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) was the MacGuffin of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and is now just hanging around Kamar-Taj, waiting to be recruited by the Young Avengers.

Nova – Nova has his own MCU project in development, and if it’s based on a younger Richard Ryder or the Sam Alexander version of the character, then they could bring much-needed cosmic power to the Young Avengers squad.

Falcon II – Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres/Falcon will officially suit up in Captain America: Brave New World. After that, he’ll be ready to fly high with the Young Avengers.

Speed – Tommy Maximoff was brought back to life in a new body during the final episodes of Agatha All Along. The show ended with Billy and Agatha’s ghost headed off in search of the body Tommy’s soul has now inhabited. Speed will be here soon enough, and could complete the Young Avengers roster with his arrival.

Vision – The Vision Quest Disney+ series is in development, so there’s still every possibility that Billy and Tommy get some siblings in Vision’s robotic children, Vin and Vivian – or Vision gets retooled into a more human version of himself. Either way, the Young Avengers have several ways to get their android team member.

Spider-Man – There are a lot of complications to work out, but Miles Morales could be making the jump from the animated Spider-Verse films into the live-action MCU. Young Avengers would be a great place to feature him.

Hulkling – Theodore Altman’s Kree/Skrull hybrid character becomes a pivotal figure in Marvel lore (a galactic emperor) – not to mention being Wiccan’s man. So far, it’s uncertain if the MCU will introduce him or not.

When Will We See A Young Avengers Project?

As you can see, the MCU Young Avengers could make their debut as soon as Phase Six. That said, it’s more likely that Marvel Studios could make Young Avengers one of its big films coming in 2028, following Avengers: Secret Wars and the expected franchise reboot.

For now, you can watch the various members of the Young Avengers getting their start in various Marvel projects streaming on Disney+.

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A trailer for the Agatha All Along finale promises answers to many of the show’s lingering questions, while also teasing the Scarlet Witch. Wanda Maximoff has loomed over Agatha All Along, as the show brings back Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness and one of Wanda’s sons, Billy Maximoff, aka Wiccan. Many questions heading into the finale were Rio’s Death, what will happen once they reach the end of the Witches’ Road, and who will live and die. For those who watched the two-episode finale of Agatha All Along they got those answers, and as for the rest, they can watch the trailer to get a sneak peek.

“You’re so much like your mother” are prophetic words spoken by Agatha to Billy. When Agatha All Along finally revealed that William was Billy Maximoff, he also donned a crown similar to the one worn by the Scarlet Witch. While we didn’t get to see Wiccan’s full costume, the Agatha All Along trailer does show Billy with a comics-accurate Wiccan suit. “Experience every twist. Experience every secret. Experience every episode. Now streaming,” the trailer states. If you didn’t stay up Thursday night to watch the two episodes of Agatha All Along, some of the footage could be considered spoilers, but there are many secrets left to uncover once you’ve watched them all for yourself. You can check out the trailer below.

[RELATED: Does Agatha All Along Have a Post-Credits Scene?]

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… Agatha All Along 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.

Agatha All Along is the second live-action series to debut on Disney+ this year, following Hulu’s Echo. It’s a spinoff of WandaVision that brought back the fan-favorite Agatha Harkness, while also introducing a future Young Avenger in Wiccan. Naturally, the Agatha All Along finale does do some setup for Young Avengers, but what fans really want to know is does Scarlet Witch show up? We won’t spoil that here, but Agatha All Along does nail the landing in the finale, while also teasing some Marvel projects down the line.

If you’ve seen the finale of Agatha All Along, make sure to share your thoughts with us on social media @ComicBook!

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Marvel didn’t pull any punches with Wednesday night’s two-episode Agatha All Along finale. The series delivered a dramatic and twist-filled ending, pulling the rug out from under everyone at the conclusion of Episode 8, before turning back the clock in Episode 9 and giving us the whole story. The status quo for Billy and Agatha has been reset, and fans are understandably still plagued with questions. One of the most puzzling surrounds the status of the Witches’ Road, and whether or not it actually exists.

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

The conclusion of Agatha All Along‘s eighth episode revealed that the whole Witches’ Road that was featured on the show was actually created by Billy, though he didn’t know he did it, a lot like how Wanda created Westview without completely meaning to. The flashback-heavy Episode 9 then showed that the Witches’ Road was only a scam that Agatha created in order to lure covens into giving her their powers. It wasn’t until Billy got involved that an actual Witches’ Road appeared.

There’s a time in this two-part finale where it feels like the Witches’ Road was simply a construct of Billy’s mind, but that’s only partly true. The Witches’ Road wasn’t real until Billy made it real. Once he did, it stuck. Everything that happened on the Road, everything that happened on Agatha All Along, actually happened in the MCU. It wasn’t just made up.

[RELATED: Will Agatha All Along Get a Season 2 on Disney+?]

Billy might have created the Witches’ Road on his own, but he created a real, tangible thing. That’s evident by the end of the series, as he shuts the physical door to the Road and uses the door to create a memorial for the witches that were killed throughout the journey.

In theory, this means the Witches’ Road could be accessed again, if need be. Billy would probably have to be involved, but every door that is closed can theoretically be opened again. He created something so complex that it has actual rules for escape. There’s nothing at the end actually giving you the thing you seek, but it allows you to look within yourself and within others around you to find what you’re looking for. Both Billy and Jennifer Kale were sent out of the Witches’ Road after accomplishing their goals, though neither came in the form of a gift. Jennifer was able to unbind herself from Agatha’s spell to get her own power back, while Billy used his own powers to locate Tommy and help him find a new body to live in.

There’s a good chance we don’t see the Witches’ Road again in the MCU, but its return wouldn’t be impossible. What we do know, though, is that everything that took place on the Road was very real.

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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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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.

RELATED: Agatha All Along: Does Wanda Return in the Finale?

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.

RELATED: Agatha All Along: Does Mephisto Show Up (Or Did We Get Played Again)?

“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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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.

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

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.

The post Agatha All Along: Does Wanda Return in the Finale? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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.

RELATED: Agatha All Along: What Happened to 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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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.

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.

[RELATED: Agatha Harkness’ History With Mephisto, Explained]

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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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.

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.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: Is The Witches’ Road Billy’s Westview Hex?]

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+.

The post Agatha All Along Finale Reveals Shocking Truth About The Witches’ Road appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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.

[RELATED: Marvel Reveals Every Disney+ Release Date for 2025]

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.

The post Agatha All Along: What Happened to Tommy? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: The Witches’ Road, Explained ]

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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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?

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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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.

“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.

[RELATED: Agatha All Along: Did This Week’s Tragic Death Bring Back a Major MCU Character?]

“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.

The post Paul Bettany Offers Major Update About Vision Series (And Reveals Why He’s Watching Agatha All Along) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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.

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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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.

“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.

[RELATED: Did Agatha All Along Confirm Scarlet Witch is Alive?]

“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.

The post Agatha All Along Showrunner Has Bad News About Those Coven Deaths appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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.

“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.”

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.

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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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.

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

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 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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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.'”

“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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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.

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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