Agatha All Along Episodes 8 and 9 Review

This review contains full spoilers for Agatha All Along Season 1, Episodes 8 and 9.

As it turns out, it is Was Agatha all the time. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. The two-part finale of Marvel's “Agatha All Along” brings the story of “The Witches' Road” to a conclusion that, while rewarding, also feels frustratingly a little unsatisfying, depending on what kind of answers you're looking for. The series does succeed in tying up some of its mysteries and rounding out its characters, but one too many other important questions were left unanswered.

The main arc of the series revolved around the evil witch Agatha Harkness forming a mother-son/mentor-mentee relationship with the young wizard Billy Maximoff, and in that regard the final two episodes are a win. It seems that Billy's true superpower is seeing the best in people – even in unrepentant magical mass murderers – and it's a monumental feat for him to get through to Agatha, to the point where, for once, she actually acts selflessly. Agatha chose Rio's kiss of death to spare Billy, resulting in a tragically beautiful death, right down to the patch of purple flowers her body leaves behind.

Then of course we got the big twist of the show. I wasn't expecting it in the slightest and was overwhelmed when Billy realized he had unknowingly used his reality-warping powers to create Witch Street. Like mother, like son. With this revelation, so many of the show's stranger moments suddenly make perfect sense, like Agatha asking Billy if he was sure he would never kill to get what he wanted. Combined with Agatha's backstory in the final episode, where we learn how she came up with the ballad while raising her son Nicky (from scratch), it really shows how complicated this series' plot has been from the start.

While the main story concluded beautifully, some subplots unfortunately didn't fare so well. There are a lot of little things I couldn't address, but the biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that the finale (and by extension the show as a whole) doesn't explore with any satisfying meaning what Agatha Harkness is all about. Why does Agatha feel so guilty about losing Nicky when it wasn't her fault that he essentially died of natural causes? We're told that Agatha never addressed the false rumors about how she lost her son (like trading him for the Darkhold) because the truth was worse… but that's not true at all. Who could blame her for being a mother who wanted to spend as much time as possible with her little boy?

We also don't learn why Agatha's mother was completely convinced that her daughter was born evil. That could at least have explained why Agatha had no problem murdering countless of her kind over the centuries. I waited for a big reveal that would at least make me empathize with why Agatha became such a merciless murderer, but that answer never came. It feels like the series is missing a crucial piece of the Agatha puzzle, and as a result some of the emotional moments towards the end don't quite hit with as much oomph as they should. This is reminiscent of the finale of WandaVision, where it seemed strange that Wanda faced no consequences for kidnapping and torturing an entire city. “Agatha All Along” leaves me with the same feeling – some crucially necessary storylines are frustratingly missing.

Another part of the finale that feels a bit underplayed is Agatha's relationship with Rio, who we previously learned is the embodiment of death. Marvel readers know that it was Thanos who courted Lady Death in the comics, so I was curious to learn more about how she came to favor Agatha in the MCU. But that too remains unclear. Even in the flashback to young Agatha, the two are already lovers. Without knowing how and why they came together in the first place, it's hard to feel moved by their final confrontation. Still, there is a moment of standing up and cheering in the battle as Billy makes a grand entrance in full cartoon-style Wiccan gear. Simply put: he looks damn great.

Even if the character of death is not entirely satisfactory, the series' overall handling of death as a concept is well done. From Alice noting that it feels unfair that her life ended right when a new chapter was about to begin, to Agatha dealing with the traumatic loss of her boy, the series pulls no punches when it comes to it is about exploring how we inevitably process death. It was hard to watch Billy unwittingly be responsible for the deaths of Sharon, Alice, and Lilia, and it was equally touching to have their names carved in stone so they wouldn't be forgotten. The fact that Billy accidentally killed three people with his powers seems to be something that will stay with him for a long time as he continues his MCU journey.