Did Agatha All Along Really Just Kill Off Everyone?

The fifth episode of Agatha All Along, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”, debuted Wednesday night on Disney+ and with the episode bringing the Marvel series to its midpoint, there were a lot of crazy things that went down. Not only did the coven discover that they weren’t as safe from the Salem Seven as they may have thought they were by being on the Witches’ Road, but the third trial ends up being Agatha’s trial which sees a spirit demanding that Agatha be punished, a surprising death, and in what might be the most dramatic turn of them all, we finally got the reveal of Teen’s identity — and a major status quo change for the entire coven. The episode was, to put it mildly, a lot and it’s going to have a lot of people wondering did Agatha All Along really just kill off the entire coven? Head’s up, spoilers beyond this point.

Let’s break it down. During the trial, the coven has to use a Ouija board to contact a spirit. That spirit claims to be death and says that Agatha needs to be punished. In the course of the entire ritual — and because they took their hands of the planchet — Agatha ends up possessed by the spirit of her mother, Evanora, who then attacks the group and warns them against joining with Agatha. She also tells Agatha that she was born evil and that she should have been killed as an infant. Evanora possesses Agatha again, but this time, Alice intervenes and tries to save Agatha, blasting her with her powers. That is, unfortunately, where things go off the rails. Agatha ends up absorbing Alice’s magic, only stopping when Teen figures out who the spirit behind the Ouija board really is. When he calls out the name Nicholas Scratch, a stunned Agatha stops but it’s too late and Alice is dead. Agatha flees but is confronted by Teen who questions being a witch if it means killing for personal gain. It’s then that Agatha tells Teen he’s like his mother and suddenly, Teen manifests powers. A seemingly controlled Lilia and Jen apprehend Agatha and throw her off the road where she’s quickly absorbed into the mud, but they don’t fare well either. Teen blasts them with his power and they, too are thrown into the mud and absorbed.

Take that in for a moment: Teen has seemingly been confirmed to be Billy Maximoff/Wiccan and not only that, but Alice Wu Gulliver is also dead and Agatha, Lilia, and Jen departed from the Road and were sucked down into the mud. On the surface, it looks like Agatha All Along just killed off the entire coven — but did they really?  We know that Alice does appear to be dead. Her passing comes not as a result of straying from the Witches’ Road, but from having her powers drained from her by Agatha, which is something we know has killed other witches. That said, the one thing we do not know anything definitively about is what happens if you do stray from the Witches’ Road and end up dragged down into the mud. It is possible that there is something worse that happens in that scenario, but that the witches are not actually dead. Additionally, it is worth noting that not everyone in the coven was chucked off the road. Strikingly absent from Teen’s little power display was Rio. Rio does not appear to have been a part of that moment — either having not yet emerged from the trial or just otherwise not in close vicinity so even if Agatha, Jen, and Lilia are off the board so to speak, Rio is not and that could be significant.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Rio joined the coven on the road by coming up through the ground when she was summoned. It isn’t impossible to imagine that we will see the witches return and, after all, Rio is the coven’s green witch. Rio could bring the others back up to the road, perhaps so that the coven can continue their journey — though after the events of this week’s episode, the coven’s dynamic will most certainly never be the same even if they do get to finish their journey on the Witches’ Road together.

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