Agatha All Along doesn’t cease to amaze and surprise, and I say amaze and surprise because for me it really comes down to one question. Is this the same company that put out The Acolyte? That was such a bomb, a horribly put together, poorly constructed show. Then you get to this, and Agatha’s written really well. It does in a single episode what lesser shows can’t do in entire seasons.
I’m by myself on this one, but that’s only because Mrs. Know-It-All is a little under the weather. She was absolutely excited for this episode, I’m giving her rating along with mine, and she’ll be back for next week’s.
Last episode we cemented that our buddy Teen is actually Billy Maximoff, and between the crown and everything else that was going on, that looks like Wanda’s kid. This episode is where we find out Billy’s story.
The Rick and Morty Move
It’s the kind of storytelling you’d expect to see in Rick and Morty, and by that I just mean it went and, in moments, caught you up on Billy’s whole story. I say moments. This is a long episode, something like 46 minutes, and the bulk of it is getting us caught up to where we are currently. The two parts I want to focus on are the very beginning and the very end.
William Kaplan, and the Day the Hex Came Down
In the beginning, Billy was a guy named William Kaplan, and we see him start out at his bar mitzvah. After that, he and his parents are driving in the car and there’s an accident, on the same day the hex in WandaVision started to get small again. They were right near it. They could see it through the trees, receding. So we have proximity.
They hit a tree, and just as William is passing away, you hear the voices of the two children from WandaVision. Good night, Billy. Good night, Tommy. He seemingly gets sucked in, and the next thing you know William opens his eyes, and the first name out of his mouth is Tommy. It’s Billy.
So they did the thing. This is the complicated storyline I told you they were going to do, and in the comics it’s way more complicated. They simplified the heck out of what I just explained to you, way simpler than the comic book version, and I think that was brilliant.
He Already Met the Whole Coven
As he’s figuring things out, we see he has crossed paths with everybody from the coven.
At the bar mitzvah, they had a tent set up for the lady who reads tarot cards, and it’s her, the coven’s own fortune teller. She’s the one who put the sigil on him. She goes into a weird kind of trance, takes a little thing out, makes the sigil, and puts it in his pocket. The minute she wakes up, she forgets what she was doing and why she did it. But because of who she is, there’s this inference in her eyes. Do you know who it is? No, I don’t. And she realizes what that means, or could mean.
Then, as we circle through after the accident, Alice was the police officer who responded. Everything ping-pongs through like that until finally you get to where he figures out about Agatha. It’s unreal.
Scooby-Doo, and It’s Not Quicksilver
As he gets older, he gets his boyfriend involved, and it’s very Scooby-Doo. They go to meet somebody who has information, and you can just call him Ralph. It’s your boy. It’s not Quicksilver, and he’s so wired out. They’re trying to talk to him, he tells them what he remembers, and he’s the one who clues Billy in about Agatha.
That’s when Billy starts doing his research, and it gets us to everything we already saw, only now we see this side of it. We get the interrogation scene again, this time from Billy’s perspective, and all the crazy stuff Billy was saying makes more sense. “Ow, could we like maybe not with the physical violence?” He was the one outside of everything that was going on. Eventually he does the release spell, and from there it’s her locking him up in the closet, letting him out, all of it.
Only this time, remember the hallway scene.
“Who are you?”
“My name is William Kaplan.”
“Say again?”
“I’m Billy Maximoff.”
She couldn’t hear him at the time because of the sigil. In this new context it reads completely different.
The Affirmation He Didn’t Ask For
At the very end we meet back up with Agatha. She’s crawling out of the mud and the muck and the mire, she gets out, and she confronts Billy. They have an amazing conversation, because she has sussed out what he wants. He wants his brother.
And she basically tells him, you are the epitome of what a witch is. You survived, like witches have been doing for centuries. So you broke the rules, big deal. That’s what kept you alive. That’s what makes you special. It’s what makes you a witch.
What a weird affirmation. I can’t imagine this is someone he wants an affirmation like that from, but he also can’t help but feel somewhat flattered, such as it is.
The Verdict
Agatha All Along lands at a 9.0 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index this week, and that’s the combined score for both myself and Mrs. Know-It-All.
This episode finally pushed us, and it pushed us in a way I wasn’t expecting. I was really excited and happy for it. I couldn’t stop talking about it after I watched it.
What Agatha Actually Wants
I want to go a little further into what I’m seeing in Agatha’s motivations, because she’s already figured him out. She’s telling him we need to get to the next place, he’s telling her I need you, and there’s this weird tug-of-war because they both want something. According to everything we’ve heard, they both could technically make it to the end. But it seems clear that making it involves sacrifice on some level, and that the coven you bring along is your cannon fodder.
So now you have these two, and he’s telling her, I don’t trust you. And you can see it in her eyes. Yeah. I get it. I totally get it.
Oh man. Very interesting stuff.
Tell me your score and what you thought of the episode. If you’re familiar with the comic books, how does this jive with what’s in the comics? And if you could, leave Mrs. Know-It-All some get well wishes while you’re there. I’d really appreciate it, and I know she will too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
