Tag: marvel cinematic universe

Just in time for Halloween, Agatha All Along concluded its nine-episode run with a two-part finale that featured dueling witches, Death incarnate, and one sarcastic, purple ghost.

On Wednesday night, the WandaVision spinoff released its eighth and ninth episodes simultaneously, as Agatha Harkness and the remnants of her coven reach the end of the Witches’ Road at last. And almost all of them get what they desired the most when they first set off on their perilous journey: Jen reclaims her powers after discovering that it was Agatha who bound her 100 years earlier; with Agatha’s help, Billy locates Tommy’s soul and places it in the body of a drowning boy. Only Agatha is left empty-handed, as she returns to her home in Westview as powerless as ever, demanding her “prize” from Rio as if she’s just been cheated in a carnival game.

Instead of an action-packed final episode, as per MCU tradition, it’s the penultimate installment that features a climactic final battle between Agatha and Rio, the latter of whom is the very personification of Death. Billy, wearing his full Wiccan costume for the first time, arrives to save Agatha from Rio just in time, and he even lends her a bit of his power. But Agatha ultimately gives herself up to her former lover with a literal kiss of Death in order to allow Billy his second chance at life.

More crucial than the war of the witches is the series-altering twist that the eighth episode offers: Billy creates the Witches’ Road. Much like Wanda Maximoff, Billy can use his Chaos Magic to turn his fantasies into a reality. Although he didn’t realize what he was doing at the time, Billy transformed the imagery that decorates his bedroom—much of it composed of famous witches from pop culture—into an actual Witches’ Road, bringing the ballad to life.

While the penultimate episode is a standout in an entertaining season of MCU TV, the finale itself is disappointing by comparison. “Maiden Mother Crone” goes all the way back to 1750 to tell the tale of Agatha Harkness and how her son, Nicholas Scratch, was taken from her. The finale shows a softer side of Agatha as she loves and cares for her only child during his brief time on Earth, but it also skips some of the more interesting aspects of her backstory, such as how she became lovers with Death, how she obtained the Darkhold, and even how she became pregnant with Nick in the first place, the last of which remains an untold story in the comics as well. (Really, it feels like we were robbed of a meet-cute between Agatha and Death. Aubrey Plaza is left mostly on the sideline in the finale, as Agatha All Along fails to expand on her character in any compelling way after revealing Rio to be as important a figure as Death.)

Agatha All Along ultimately sacrifices a deeper look into Agatha’s origins and her relationship with Rio in order to allow enough time to set up the next step in Billy Maximoff’s journey, with the ghost of Agatha Harkness now serving as his guide. But creator Jac Schaeffer still pulled off another strong MCU series to build off of the success of WandaVision and carve out a new corner of the cinematic universe that revolved around magic and witchcraft.

As the last live-action Marvel Studios project of 2024 comes to a close, let’s break down some of the biggest moments from the show’s two-part finale and examine how Agatha All Along sets up the future of magic in the MCU.

The Truth about the Witches’ Road

At the end of the eighth episode, Agatha All Along reveals the truth about the Witches’ Road and its creator, Billy. When Wiccan returns home after a very eventful 24 hours, he looks around his bedroom and begins to recognize objects that represent the trials that he and the rest of Agatha’s coven faced on the Witches’ Road. He sees a poster of Lorna Wu, a figurine of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz (and the upcoming Wicked), a Ouija board, and other pieces of evidence that signify that his interests served as the inspiration for the Witches’ Road’s designs. And to drive the point home, Agatha All Along weaves in brief flashbacks from the preceding episodes, in which Agatha drew attention to the fact that she already knew that Billy was responsible for creating the Road.

In WandaVision, Wanda turned the sitcoms she watched as a child with her family into a safe haven for her to cope with her grief as an adult. In Agatha All Along, Billy was desperate to both find his brother Tommy and escape the clutches of the Salem Seven, and so he used Chaos Magic to create a world of his own without any real intention or formal training in witchcraft—just as his mother did.

The (presumed) series finale goes a step further to explore the origins of the famed “Ballad of the Witches’ Road” and its original songwriters: Nicholas and Agatha. (Not to be confused with the song’s actual Oscar-winning songwriters, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who cowrote the “Agatha All Along” bop in WandaVision as well.) Back in the 18th century, the duo would lure witches into Agatha’s web, allowing her to both feast off of their power and pile up bodies for Death as she tried to buy as much time with her son as possible. All the while, they would sing and develop the song that would grow into the ballad. And when Nick finally died of natural causes, Agatha kept the tradition alive for centuries, using the song—and the fable of the Witches’ Road—to prey on other witches.

In the series finale, Agatha returns in spirit form to explain all this to the confused Billy, who is just coming to terms with the fact that he’s essentially responsible for the deaths of Alice, Lilia, and Sharon Davis (even if Agatha will never remember the latter’s name). “Unlike your mother … sorry. Wanda … You actually did something interesting with your power,” Agatha tells Billy.

“You’re making fun of me,” he replies. “This is just one of your tricks.”

“The ballad was the trick,” Agatha says. “It was just a con to lure other gullible witches. The song doesn’t mean anything, it never did. The Road wasn’t real until you made it real.”

The reveal of the Witches’ Road’s true nature stands as the biggest twist of the season, while also creating a clever thematic connection to WandaVision that echoes that series’ narrative structure without simply recycling it. WandaVision was a mystery box of a series that forced the viewer to question everything from the pilot’s opening moments, whereas Agatha All Along packaged its greatest mystery in secret, using Teen’s (not-so-mysterious) identity as a smokescreen. And just as WandaVision paid homage to decades of sitcom history by switching its TV inspirations from week to week, Agatha All Along used its various trials to celebrate classic fantasy and horror films. In the end, the Witches’ Road was Billy’s version of the Westview Hex, as the fledgling superhero continues to take after his mother without even realizing it.

Agatha the (Unfriendly) Ghost

Agatha Harkness is no more. But her spirit is very much alive.

After showing up in Billy’s room in the final moments of the eighth episode, Agatha returns in the finale in all her ghostly glory. True to form, one of her first moves as a specter is to try to slap Billy across the face. Twice. Even in death, Agatha is one of the most unserious protagonists ever to grace the MCU. And, thankfully, her story isn’t over quite yet.

While the silliness of her return dampens the dramatic impact of her death, Agatha now assumes a role her character has often held in the comics: spirit guide to a powerful witch. (And her brown hair has even turned a silverish white to match her comic book look in full.) In the comics, Agatha has died, become a ghost, returned to life, and died again. And just as she does in life, in death she trains the Scarlet Witch in the ways of witchcraft.

Marvel Comics

In Agatha All Along, Billy attempts to banish Agatha’s spirit before sealing off the door to the Witches’ Road that remains in Agatha’s basement in Westview. (It’s hard to blame him for wanting to get rid of a sassy ghost who’s trying to spirit slap him.) But Billy submits to Agatha’s pleas to spare her when she finally confesses that she isn’t prepared to enter the afterlife and face her son. And so the pair agree to form a new coven of two and embark on a quest to find Tommy.

It’s always possible that Agatha will eventually find a way to return to life, giving Kathryn Hahn’s purple witch another chance to shine in the spotlight. But at least for now, she returns to the supporting role that she often plays for Wanda in the comics, accompanying Wanda’s son as his much-needed mentor and witchcraft teacher. It feels as if Agatha All Along left a lot on the table with a character whose layers were only just beginning to be peeled back, but as long as Hahn is fine reprising her role in its new, ghostly form, there may still be time to learn more about the notorious Agatha Harkness.

Finding Tommy and the Future of Billy Maximoff

As Agatha All Along revealed at the end of Episode 6, Billy’s decision to travel the Witches’ Road—and, really, to create it—was driven by his desire to find his long-lost brother Tommy. In the penultimate episode, Agatha helps Billy use his powers to finally locate Tommy’s soul and find it a new home, just as Billy did with William Kaplan on the day he died in the car crash. Billy finds a boy who’s been pushed into a pool in a prank taken too far, moments away from drowning to death. He can sense that “there’s no one to love him” and that “he’s got no one,” possibly alluding to the character’s fractured home life and experience growing up in juvenile halls in the comics, in stark contrast to Billy’s upbringing with two loving parents. Now, Billy and Agatha just need to find the boy who will soon become Tommy Shepherd.

In true MCU fashion, Agatha All Along ends with Agatha providing the audience with a tease: “Let’s go find Tommy.” Without any official announcement of a direct follow-up to Agatha All Along, it remains to be seen when or how the continuation of this story will take shape, but the path has been laid for it—starting even before this series began.

Marvel Studios has been slowly assembling its team of Young Avengers across its TV shows and films for years, with 2023’s The Marvels finally confirming the upcoming project’s existence and the teen supergroup’s first three members: Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), and Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton). Wiccan and Speed (Tommy’s superhero alter-ego) are prominent members of the Young Avengers in the comics, and it seems like only a matter of time before they join the rest of the MCU’s next generation of superheroes.

Given the trajectory of Billy’s story in the MCU, it appears increasingly likely that Marvel Studios could adapt a popular storyline in the comics, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. While the 2010-2012 miniseries by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung bears the name of the Young Avengers’ parent group in its title, it’s really a story about the Young Avengers, with Billy at its center as he struggles to control his powerful, reality-altering abilities. Billy, Tommy, and Co. search for Wanda Maximoff, who had been missing since she lost control of her powers and who rewrote the entire Marvel universe in the House of M series, not unlike what she did to Westview in WandaVision. In Children’s Crusade, Billy and Tommy reunite with their mother for the first time since their souls occupied new bodies and they became superheroes.

Marvel Comics

While the context would have to be significantly changed to fit within the greater MCU narrative, Marvel Studios could adapt elements of The Children’s Crusade to center either on Billy searching for Tommy, or on the Young Avengers as they attempt to resurrect Wanda after her apparent death in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. What with Wanda’s obvious connections to the world of Agatha All Along and its leading characters, many viewers expected that Elizabeth Olsen would reprise her role as the Scarlet Witch for the show’s grand finale. But such a star-studded return would have surely overshadowed a story that belonged to Agatha and her pet-turned-student Billy, and Marvel can now save that tale for when the timing is right.

Whatever journey lies ahead for Billy and the soon-to-be-reborn Tommy, it’s also unclear whether Schaeffer will have a direct part in shaping it. With Schaeffer busy with Agatha All Along, Marvel Studios tapped another showrunner to lead the second WandaVision spinoff, Vision Quest, across the finish line. And Schaeffer recently told Deadline that there isn’t anything else in development with her and the powerhouse studio: “I’m not working on anything right now for Marvel, but it is my hope that there will be more for [Billy], both because I’m such an admirer of Joe [Locke], and because I think the character is really interesting.”

Given the success of Agatha All Along, which received strong reviews and promising viewership numbers that increased as the series went on, it would be a mistake on Marvel’s part to simply let Schaeffer go after she created two of Marvel’s most popular streaming titles, especially considering the scarcity of consistency and creative direction across the vast majority of Marvel Television’s shows. Schaeffer has proven that she is exactly the kind of filmmaker that the studio needs to lean on as it continues to revamp its approach to storytelling on the small screen.

Agatha All Along may not have had the most satisfying conclusion when it came to its protagonist, but by repackaging much of what worked in WandaVision in a clever way, Marvel added another quality entry to its TV library. And by expanding on the untapped world of witchcraft, using some incredible practical sets and effects to capture it, Agatha All Along became the latest Marvel project to demonstrate that not every MCU project has to look or feel the same in style or substance. Including Billy, the ghost of Agatha, and Jen Kale—who’s flying off into the sunset somewhere—there are now even more witches in a world full of superheroes, as the supernatural continues to find a place in a multiverse that is still (somehow) only scratching the surface of how dynamic and diverse it is in the comics.

Although nostalgia may be in for now, Marvel Studios will need to continue to innovate if it hopes to survive the superhero fatigue that has contributed to its dwindling box office and streaming numbers in recent years, especially as James Gunn’s DCU reboot looms. If Schaeffer and Hahn can turn a minor comic book character like Agatha—and one catchy jingle—into another streaming hit, there are still plenty of narrative avenues Marvel can capitalize on that don’t rely on a mutant or returning star to carry the company.