It’s wild looking at the fall 2024 television season and seeing both Marvel and DC shows getting acclaim as they enter their respective back halves. HBO’s The Penguin is getting phrases like “best of the year,” and “Emmy contender” thrown around; meanwhile, Agatha All Along is the dark horse breakout that many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are pleasantly surprised to be enjoying so much. As the discourse about both series flows, there is one thing that is true about both of them, collectively: they are performance-driven shows, built on two very talented lead actors.

And with their respective levels of success and/or acclaim, Agatha All Along and The Penguin are proving that some new-age theories about entertainment are dead wrong, and the old ways are still true: franchises are built primarily on star power, not necessarily just the power of IP.

Let’s just step back and look at this: The Penguin and Agatha All Along were initially met with overwhelming skepticism. The question of why either show needs to exist was asked often and repeatedly, with the only real answer being the strength of the performances of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb/Penguin in The Batman, and Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. That didn’t seem like enough to justify spinoff series for two minor characters – but both Penguin and Agatha have been wise to take those central performances as foundations, and build on them with entire ensembles of acting talent.

Penguin is giving Sofia Falcone actress Cristin Milioti the breakout she’s long deserved, and all but locking her for the Emmys next year; it’s also earning praise for Rhenzy Feliz, a young actor who has been trying to break through in projects like Marvel’s Runaways. Agatha All Along is both reminding fans that Aubrey Plaza is a top-tier talent while breaking in new Marvel franchise talent like actor Joe Locke – who is just now breaking out with the reveal that he’s Scarlet Witch’s son Billy Maximoff, the magical Young Avenger known as Wiccan. Those standout supporting actors are also bolstered by many talented veteran actors, with a list that includes the likes of Clancy Brown, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mark Strong, and Michael Kelly for Penguin, and Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata and Ali Ahn for Agatha All Along.

The buzz on both shows makes it undeniable that the individual performances and character interactions are taking precedence over any in-universe ties, crossovers, or cameos. Now granted: by the time Penguin and Agatha both come to an end, one or both shows may get the biggest signal boost from some kind of late-game crossover or game-changing reveal for the franchise. Yet it feels like Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Agtha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer (no dots to connect there…) are much more interested in focusing on complex and layered characters, created by actors who have the talent to deliver on them.

Marvel Studios and DC Studios are hopefully taking note that the old star-driven franchise model isn’t yet as dead as many declared it to be. Loyalty to an actor and their performance as a character will get audiences to engage with even the most unlikely IP concepts. Farrell and Hahn’s now-proven ability to go from supporting roles to carrying shows also proves that no casting should be taken frivolously, as any breakout performance is potentially a new spinoff project of some kind. For the actors, it should be well-earned validation (and future leverage) that the craft is still a valuable commodity.

The Penguin airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max. Agatha All Along streams on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along brought back a familiar face from WandaVision this week and should probably spawn a popular piece of Marvel merch. Episode 6 decided to give us Billy Maximoff’s extended backstory for everything that happened in WandaVision until now. In doing so, Joe Locke’s character enlisted the help of Evan Peters’ Ralph Bohner. Now, MCU fans of the Disney+ shows haven’t heard that name in a while. But, the Quicksilver actor cameoed again and relayed a lot of the Westview details to Billy and his boyfriend. He also told the kids that Agatha Harkness basically lured him in, took his house and ruined his life. The witch seems to have laid claim to all his stuff and that includes his wardrobe. Agatha’s shirt choice near the end of this episode stems from this otherwise innocuous comment. 

When Billy tries to break into Agatha’s house, he runs afoul of the WandaVision antagonist. She catches him trying to escape with her family amulet and then interrogates him. But, rather than the sleek TV procedural we saw these events through in Episode 1, it’s just in her living room. She’s got a toy water gun and Kathryn Hahn is wearing a Bohner Family Reunion t-shirt. (The shirt reads “pitch a tent” for good measure.) So, once that image made its way to social media, Marvel fans had a field day. They’re calling for the shirt to get tossed into production so they can own such a goofy suggestive statement on their chests. It makes sense, that AvengersCon gear moved after Ms. Marvel. Something similar could happen here too. The viewership numbers on Agatha All Along have been fantastic so far.

Agatha All Along: Marvel’s Wandavision Cameo Merch Is Something That Every MCU Fan Should Want

The man responsible for this iconic shirt decided to bless us with the rationale behind this delightful costume choice. Daniel Selon Hopped on Instagram to share his thoughts about making this wild t-shirt. It turns out, the costume designer talked to Kathryn Hahn about the backstory for Bohner and that’s where the design of this delightful top came from. , throughout the run of Agatha All Along, we’ve seen the titular witch squatting in Westview at that familiar abode. This episode even mentions the fact that Bohner’s physical media collection got stolen by Agatha. ( if you pay attention to the scene where she tapes Billy up and throws him in the closet, those Blu-rays are hanging out in the background.) This is just another layer of laying it on thick that she took over this man’s house and wouldn’t let it go.

“Here’s an origin story for you: Kathryn brilliantly asked me, ‘where did Agatha’s clothes come from? If I’ve taken over Ralph Bohner‘s house, whose clothes am I wearing?’ So we decided that for the lucid version of the interrogation scene, we should see her wearing something that existed in Ralph’s closet,” Selon revealed. “I thought, he’s definitely a graphic t-shirt kind of dude and I bet there’s an old family reunion t-shirt in his dresser drawer. How about a camping theme? Jac and the writers brainstormed some jokes, my team sketched this graphic and here we are! Privately I wondered, are we really going to squeeze a boner joke into this dark and mysterious show about witches? Is this the best job ever? The answer to both questions was YES!”

Ralph Bohner Fits Into The Grand Marvel Tradition Of Tying Things Back In

Of course there’s no such thing as an MCU title not tying back into the main story lines that have helped establish all of these different shows and movies. But, Agatha All Along is special in that regard because it decides to revisit an element from an older MCU show that was a bit divisive in its time. (Mostly because the audience worked themselves into thinking that major reveals were coming for the future of the MCU from WandaVision instead of it being a story about Scarlet Witch and Vision alone.) Moments like Avengers: Endgame having to revisit Thor: The Dark World come to mind. Fans might want to prepare themselves now for that moment in Avengers: Secret Wars when for some reason Secret Invasion plays a role in the wildness. Just like those moments, there’s always a measure of lemonade to be made from the varying fan opinions.
How did you feel about Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Marvel fans are now blaming a new character for the carnage of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Agatha All Along Episode 6 revealed that Lilia Calderu was the one to put the sigil on Billy Maximoff and that opens up quite the can of worms for Scarlet Witch fans. On one hand, the older witch was clearly trying to protect Joe Locke’s character from witches like Agatha Harkness. But, at the same time, she indirectly set all of that wildness after Wanda Maximoff got the Darkhold into motion with her little spell. Calderu couldn’t have dreamed that all of this would tumble down this way. And still, here we are with a dead Scarlet Witch and a young boy on a quest to reunite with his brother. (Oh yeah, and multiple casualties over in Earth-838!)

Billy Maximoff just wanted to have his palm read, and this all led to him receiving that bad news from the divination witch. From there, she discovered his identity and placed a sigil on him so that no one could locate him and use his latent power for nefarious purposes. One problem, that means his mother wasn’t able to find him at the tail end of WandaVision. She took the Darkhold because of the loss of her family and desire to reunite with the boys. Who knows what happens if she discovers that a boy a few towns over somehow magically acquired Billy’s soul. (There’s also the lingering question of what happened to Tommy in all of this…) Still, maybe the Scarlet Witch doesn’t decimate that parallel Earth if she had been aware of her son.

Marvel Fans Blame New Character for Doctor Strange 2 After Agatha All Along

Wanda Maximoff’s characterization is a topic that still ignites an immediate firestorm online anytime it’s brought up. The Darkhold is corrupting influence and she simply wasn’t in the mental state to stave off its evil allure. But, after WandaVision, any attempt to make the Scarlet Witch a villain was going to ruffle some feathers. This reveal of Lilia Calderu as partially responsible for the domino effect fits right into these moments of characterization. Poor Wanda is just a passenger on this wild ride we’ve all gone on. For director Jac Schaeffer, it’s more complicated than all that. It’s both the reality of wielding such power and making the decision to employ special abilities. She told Deadline about that dance this week.

“Yeah. I mean, I think that these moments like Agatha siphoning Alice’s power, Wanda creating the hex, these moments of big power … I don’t like being like, ‘They have no control, and the power is controlling them,’ but I do think it’s always a discussion, and I think that’s what big feelings are, to me,” Schaeffer clarified. “The big power expressions are just metaphors for big feelings, so to answer your specific question about him blasting them off the Road, there will be more unpacking of that in later episodes.” 

“But what I do hope is clear from Episode 6, is that he does not have a handle on his power. From both the blasting to the telepathy, that is not something that he can actively control,” she adds of Billy. “He can’t, at this point, seem to actively control any part of it, which makes him the perfect person to be with Agatha. And also, it’s the scariest situation.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Still Falls On Wanda, But Fate Is At Play Too

Interestingly, Schaeffer’s read seems to indicate that this whole situation is caused by Wanda. She had a choice about the Darkhold and got seduced by its power. Our girl isn’t completely spotless here. However, the strings of fate are moving all the while. It feels like a previous iteration of Agatha All Along probably had someone pulling the strings, but those plans have probably changed! Mephisto fans should be excited by the prospect. But, it’s hard to tell for sure. However, none of that really undoes Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or the damage Wanda has caused in recent years. Maybe she’ll come back and we can see how Marvel addresses all this new information by the end of the show?

Do you feel like it’s really Lilia’s fault? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Over the two most recent episodes, Agatha All Along answered a bunch of major questions about the mysterious Teen played by Joe Locke, first by revealing in Episode 5 that Teen is actually Wanda and Vision’s son, Billy Maximoff and then in Episode 6 revealing exactly how Billy exists at all when Billy and his twin, Tommy were supposedly erased when the Hex fell. We also found out that Billy doesn’t want power from The Witches’ Road at all — he just wants to find his brother.  With Billy back, fans naturally are eager to see Tommy return as well but now we have the same question that Billy has in the series: where is Tommy Maximoff?

Functionally, the “how” of Tommy Maximoff’s survival is likely to be similar to Billy’s. We now know that Billy survived the fall of the Hex because, as his existence was being erased, just outside the Hex young William Kaplan was headed home from his Bar Mitzvah when his family was involved in a car crash. William Kaplan unfortunately died, but Billy’s soul was able to move into William’s body, causing him to be reborn. Given that Agatha All Along followed Billy’s Marvel Comics backstory, it’s pretty likely that the how of Tommy’s existence post-Hex will be similar — the comics aren’t very specific about the mechanics of Tommy’s reincarnation so Agatha All Along probably won’t linger too long on the details. It’s the where of it all that actually matters and this is where things could get interesting.

Tommy’s Story in Comics is Connected to the Young Avengers

In the comics, Billy finds Tommy as part of recruitment for the Young Avengers. While Billy isn’t specifically looking for Tommy as part of the Young Avengers, the team does locate Tommy being held in essentially juvenile detention for people with powers after an incident in which Tommy vaporized his high school using his powers. At the facility, he was texted and experimented on, something that the Young Avengers freed him from. It was later that Billy and Tommy realize they’re twin and, thus, their identities. If we had to guess — and that’s kind of the point here so we’re going to — Tommy may be enduring something similar in the MCU. If that is the case, what The Witches’ Road might give Billy at the end (provided he survives) is not Tommy’s exact location, but the path by which to find him.

That idea, of course, leads us to an even bigger bit of speculation: Agatha All Along could lead to the creation of the Young Avengers. While the MCU has already introduced numerous characters traditionally associated with the Young Avengers and even went as far as to, in The Marvels, show Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) reach out to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to seek out other young heroes and start a new group, a proper “Young Avengers” hasn’t yet happened. If Agatha All Along doesn’t end with The Witches’ Road leading Billy directly to Tommy, it could instead see him connected with Kamala and Kate, leading to the creation of the Young Avengers and sending them out to find others. It’s something that would leave the door open for Tommy to have his own comics-accurate backstory as well as set the stage for a future MCU project (and one that fans have been clamoring for for years.)

It’s also worth noting that Billy’s boyfriend’s name is Eddie. That’s a name that’s really quite close to Teddy and, in comics, Billy’s boyfriend is Teddy Altman, aka the Young Avenger Hulkling.

Could the Quest to Find Tommy Be Part of The Multiverse Saga?

If Agatha All Along doesn’t directly lead to the Young Avengers, however, the show has already provided a path for Agatha All Along to connect to the larger “Multiverse Saga” beyond merely being a WandaVision spinoff. One of the things that was established at the end of WandaVision was that Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) heard her boys crying out for her somewhere in the multiverse. This, of course, led to the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. While it might be a little weird to have one of the twins exist in the main universe and the other have ended up in another reality, Episode 6 of Agatha All Along saw Billy admit that he can feel Tommy, but he can’t find him. That could be a clue that the other Maximoff brother is in a different reality — essentially a so close yet so far away sort of situation. Maybe the end of Agatha All Along will lead to Billy and Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) on a multiverse adventure. You know, if they somehow manage to trust one another.

Wherever Tommy is, now that we’ve established Billy’s existence and centered Billy’s reason seeking out Agatha and for walking The Witches’ Road around finding his missing twin, it’s almost guaranteed that the story begun in WandaVision won’t be over with this latest Disney+ series. It’s just a question as to where the road will lead us next.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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The final few minutes of Marvel’s WandaVision are among the most heartbreaking in the entire MCU. In order to free the people of Westview that she’d trapped, Wanda Maximoff made the choice to give up the family she’d created, moving on without her sons Tommy and Billy. Not only were the two boys real to Wanda, but the post-credits scene for WandaVision teased that they actually existed somewhere else. As Wanda hid out in a log cabin in the mountains, searching for answers in the Darkhold, she heard the boys calling out to her.

That moment seemed to hint at Billy and Tommy living in another reality somewhere across the multiverse. That was addressed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, as Wanda tried to take over her life in another universe and get her boys back. After the most recent episode of Agatha All Along, however, that WandaVision post-credits scene feels a little different, and seems like it could be hinting at the Billy and Tommy we now know exist in Earth-616. WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along! Continue reading at your own risk…

The fifth episode of Agatha All Along confirmed what many fans assumed — that Teen was actually Billy Maximoff. A week later, the sixth episode filled us all in on how Billy ended up in Agatha’s company. It was revealed on Wednesday that the spirits of Billy and Tommy managed to escape Westview when the hex collapsed. These souls that Wanda created out of her love managed to make it out into the real world, but neither of them had bodies to possess.

A young man named William Kaplan was in a terrible car accident just as the hex was collapsing, and Billy’s soul found a way into his body, bringing it back to life and inhabiting it as his own. We still don’t know where exactly Tommy ended up, but Billy is 100% certain his twin brother is also alive somewhere in the world.

So what does all that have to do with Wanda? This new revelation about Billy and Tommy actually makes Wanda’s story — and that post-credits scene — even more tragic.

Wanda traveled the multiverse looking for her sons. She killed people in order to accomplish her mission. She lost herself for most of that journey. Ultimately, she came back around and left the alternate-reality Billy and Tommy with their family, shortly before losing her own life.

That story is already a heart-breaking one, but it gets even sadder knowing what we now know. Billy and Tommy were right here, the whole time, not very far from Westview. Sure, they look different than they did when they were Wanda’s boys, but they’re very much alive. She could’ve found them and connected with them without ever leaving the country, let alone the universe. She lost everything when she didn’t have to.

You could probably use this new information to read that WandaVision post-credits scene a little differently as well. With Billy and Tommy’s souls still on the same plane of existence as Wanda, they could’ve been subconsciously calling out to her, looking to reunite their family.

When she says goodbye to her sons at the end of WandaVision, just before the hex collapses, Wanda tells them, “We could never leave each other, even if we tried.” That turned out to be more true than Wanda realized.

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Agatha All Along finally revealed who put that sigil on Billy and Marvel fans are shocked about the identity of that witch. Episode 6 of the MCU show explained that Lillia Calderu was the one to “put a sigil on that boy.” Yes, Patti Lupone’s character said those words earlier in Agatha All Along and now they’ve taken on a new meaning. During those earlier trials on The Witches’ Road, Joe Locke’s character was shrouded in secrecy as the other coven members couldn’t quite decipher his identity. However, Episode 6 makes it clear that Agatha really knew all along. Billy Maximoff is the product of the hex breaking down and the boy’s soul being bonded to poor William Kaplan’s body after a tragic car crash. Viewers can see that Calderu’s divination magic allowed her to see the catastrophe.

Confronted by that morbid future, Calderu decided to scrawl down a quick spell on a tile and slipped it into the boy’s coat pocket. Someone grabs his jacket and gets it back to Billy as they’re evacuating his bar mitzvah. As it would happen, the Westview Incident (i.e. The Hex from WandaVision) is happening nearby and the illusion is becoming unstable. Billy and his parents flee in their car and a general panic ensues among the people leaving the young man’s party. As they’re navigating the way home, the Kaplan family unsuspectingly drifts into oncoming traffic and Billy’s mother has to swerve to avoid a truck that is barrelling down on the family sedan. Unfortunately, that quick jerk of the steering wheel sends the car careening off the road and hits a tree. Which jumpstarts our narrative for Agatha All Along.

Agatha All Along Reveals Who Put the Sigil on Billy

As the car sits with massive damage, both Kaplan’s parents are okay. But, their adolescent son is in rough shape. He was in the exact place to take the brunt of that crash into a tree. After his heart stopped beating, young Billy Maximoff’s soul swept into his body. Now bonded, William woke up yelling for his brother Tommy and was disoriented from not being in the Maximoff house in Westview. From there, he lives three years under a new identity with strange powers. Upon digging into the Westview anomaly, he figures out that Agatha Harkness is the person he should be looking for. Ralph Bohner cameos and mentions meeting Billy before and tells the kid about Tommy. Now, with that information, the young witch sets off to find his brother down The Witches’ Road.

Billy meets up with all the other witches as Agatha Harkness is assembling this coven and now viewers know that he’s met most of them before in random ways. He followed Jennifer Kale as an influencer, Alice was one of the emergency workers that saved him after the accident, Sharon called him a hooligan after breaking and entering, and Lillia Calderu worked at his bar mitzvah. It’s an interesting game to go back and think how this knowledge colors his interactions with each witch. (It also raises the possibility that he’s met Rio Vidal before too… Something to ponder as we continue!) There is also some wiggle room when it comes to interpretation here as we don’t see who returned Billy’s coat during the evacuation.

Is Billy’s Sigil Just A Misdirect For A Larger Mystery 

Could Rio really be responsible for the sigil? It’s a little unlikely at the moment. It really feels like Calderu’s scrawling is your ultimate culprit. But, it also feels like Aubrey Plaza’s absence is there for a reason here. Her visage is obscured when we see the events from earlier in Agatha All Along from Billy’s perspective. Sure, we know he’s the long-lost Maximoff boy now. But, it sure does seem like director Jac Schaeffer and the creative team are hiding an even bigger reveal when it comes to Rio Vidal. This entire exercise is now feeling more like a red herring than ever. A sidequest devised to keep the fanbase focused on the red ball in one hand while the other picks your pocket. We’ll know more as Agatha All Along screeches towards that Devil’s Night finale. 

Were you shocked by Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along dropped a ton of lore this week and upended one of the most popular pieces of evidence about Rio Vidal’s true identity. Episode 6 is all about Billy Maximoff and how he ended up on The Witches’ Road. One of the big reveals was who placed the sigil on the boy, and it ended up being Lillia Calderu! The divination witch read Billy’s future and tried to protect him. In her haste, she decided to place the sigil on the boy so that he wouldn’t be in danger of some other witch finding him and using his tremendous power for their own gain. However, the power of the sigil makes it so that she wouldn’t remember his identity either. This revelation means one of the earliest clues about Rio Vidal’s true nature was not what it seemed on first blush. The fan base is absolutely shocked by these developments.

When Agatha Harkness was putting together her coven, she took the teen around to all the different witches within the miles radius around Westview. Their early trip to Lilia Calderu left them with a list of names to pursue on this journey. A bunch of Marvel fans’ eyebrows went straight up when she drew a black heart instead of a name for one of the entries. Of course, their imaginations jumped right to Rio Vidal. But, it seems as though the black heart might be from Lilia remembering Billy and not being able to write down his name. It really fits when you think about it and feels so crushing as she was trying to prevent this exact scenario from taking place. Yet and still, destiny came for Billy and she could only protect him for a little while longer.

Agatha All Along Just Debunked a Popular Rio Vidal Fan Theory

Rio Vidal might really never have been meant to travel down The Witches’ Road with the coven at all. Mrs. Hart looks like she was the plan at Green Witch and the other women just panicked when Sharon bit the dust in the first trial. As Rio Vidal crawled into frame, it became clear that the witches did summon her, but this wasn’t a part of Lilia’s roster earlier in the series. The small detail had some Marvel fans believing she could even be Blackheart or some other comics deep cut. (That one theory was massively aided by the idea of Mephisto finally making some sort of appearance in Agatha All Along after being teased multiple times in WandaVision. Now, that theory has taken a bit of a hit as well.

Aubrey Plaza has been very mum on what’s going on with her Marvel character. Despite the relative silence out of Marvel Studios, the fans think they’ve already got this one figured out. A couple of observant viewers noticed that some of Rio Vidal’s costume design slots in nicely with the Death tarot card that debuted earlier in the series. As an existing Marvel Comics character, that does make a measure of sense. Other moments with the Green Witch lock into place too. Her approaching Billy tentatively after his close call in Episode 4, Rio’s disappearance after Alice’s demise, her absence from Billy’s flashbacks during this episode? It’s all very suspicious when you stack it all up. There’s also the matter of her longstanding unspoken relationship with Agatha, and fans think that links back to the death of the Harkness witch’s son.

Rio Vidal Isn’t Blackheart, and That Means The Death Fan Theory Still Has Legs

The bottom line here is that Rio Vidal isn’t going to be some sort of wild pull like Blackheart. Death is much more reasonable guess in this scenario. In addition, a Mephisto appearance seems a bit unlikely, so adjust your expectations accordingly. (Challenge level: impossible.) Plaza’s palpable chemistry with Kathryn Hahn will prove enough of a reward without some massive third act swerve. But, the latest episode helps set Marvel fans on the right track of expectations as the finale looms larger and larger. There are other surprises lurking in Agatha All Along. However, they might not be exactly what people were expecting in those first few chapters.

What was your favorite detail from Agatha All Along Episode 6? Check out all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook!

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Agatha All Along Episode 6 “Familiar by Thy Side” was the much-needed flashback episode, which explains how Billy Maximoff went from being a little superpowered boy conjured up by Wanda Maximoff’s Hex powers, to a powerful magic-user of young adult age. Not only did we get caught up on how Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) got to this point, but we also got to know why he decided to walk the infamous Witches Road with Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), after freeing her from his mother Wanda’s enchantment spell.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Agatha manages to save herself (and only herself) from Billy’s attack on the coven at the end of Episode 5. After pulling herself free from the mud pit, Agatha interrogates/instigates Billy to explain what he’s after at the end of the Witches Road. Billy won’t give up his reason, but Agatha sniffs it out by process of elimination: not his mom (Scarlet Witch), not his dad (The Vision), but his twin brother Tommy.

Billy reveals that after having his “soul” possess the freshly dead boy Billy Kaplan, he can still hear his brother’s soul calling to him from somewhere he can’t determine. He plans to get to the end of the Witches Road to find “what’s missing,” which (to him) is Tommy. Agatha is a means to an end for Billy, who fully remembers his time both befriending and battling her in Westview and knows not to trust her.

This Billy Kaplan/Billy Maximoff/Wiccan origin mirrors the character’s convoluted Marvel Comics history, in which he and Tommy are at first magical conjuring aby Wanda that are eventually revealed to be shards of the devil Mephisto’s soul. Even though the twins are erased (or reclaimed by Mephisto) they are reborn into the world in physical bodies years before Wanda and Vision ever got together, growing up separately as “Billy Kaplan” and “Thomast Shephard.”

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Billy get to the end of the Witches Road with Agatha and find out that Tommy is already reincarnated on Earth (thereby setting up Wiccan’s next mission in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Or, Billy gets to the end of the road and gets his wish, and Tommy is brought back, setting up something like the “Children’s Crusade” arc from the comics, which saw Wiccan (Billy), Speed (Tommy) and their Young Avengers teammates go on the hunt for Scarlet Witch so that she can help Billy gain control over his powers. That storyline revealed Wanda to be a prisoner of Doctor Doom, and included many of the major characters related to Scarlet Witch, like her father Magneto, brother Quicksilver, and former beaus Vision and Wonder Man. With MCU fans still wanting Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch back in the franchise, it seems like a smart direction to take with this storyline.

Agatha All Along streams new episodes Wednesday nights on Disney+.

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We’re officially entering the third act of Agatha All Along, the latest Disney+ series to be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A sequel to the events of 2021’s WandaVision series, the show has not only carried on the unique journey of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), but folded in plenty of mysterious new elements. Much like WandaVision, Agatha All Along has also been at the center of a number of fan theories, particularly those concerning what connections it might have to the larger Marvel Universe. This has included plenty of suggestions about a potential antagonist waiting in the wings, whether that be the infamous devil Mephisto, Agatha’s estranged evil son Nicholas Scratch, or someone else entirely. However, with six out of Agatha All Along‘s nine episodes out into the world — does the story we’ve seen thus far need a “big bad” in order to be effective?

Admittedly, there would be plenty of narrative potential in fully folding Mephisto or Nicholas Scratch into the culmination of Agatha All Along — both characters have been referenced by name at least once in the series thus far, and bring their own complicated baggage when interacting with other Marvel characters. There are also ways that either villain could make their way onto the show’s final episodes, whether being tied to Agatha herself, whoever appears to be magically manipulating Lilia Caldru (Patti Lupone), or the whereabouts of the seemingly-departed Tommy Maximoff. Plus, the story of a benevolent evil man trying (and eventually failing) to suppress the powers of a group of women would certainly resonate with a number of viewers.

But at the same time, the story that Agatha All Along has been telling seems dense enough without pivoting to either of these men. The series’ Witches’ Road has allowed for Agatha and the members of her coven to tackle their biggest failures — not through a direct conflict or a supervillain to repeatedly punch, but through well-orchestrated trials of the self. In the process, we’ve discovered many of the insecurities surrounding the characters, whether they be Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) dealing with the legacy of her mom, or Agatha reckoning with the countless deaths she caused over the years. While Mephisto or Nicholas Scratch could very well be the domineering force behind these trials, it might be more interesting to lean into the “man vs. nature” and “man vs. self” kinds of conflicts that the series has already presented for its characters. It would prevent Agatha All Along from defaulting to another “gotcha” twist ending and dense flashback to confirm its big bad, after the reveal of Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke) was already handled so well in Episodes 5 and 6.

If anything, the existing elements at play within Agatha All Along could provide a satisfying final villain for the show to end on. The Salem’s Seven, a shadowy group who were reestablished as the children of witches that Agatha killed during the Salem Witch Trials, have only been sporadically established in the show thus far. There’s also the loose cannon of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), whose true identity has prompted lots of theories in and of itself. And finally, there’s also the chance that Agatha All Along could live up to its title and have the true villain be… Agatha all along, helping establish the character as a less-heroic part of the MCU’s future.

Ultimately, the Mephisto and Nicholas Scratch theories are an interesting testament to the fact that, by and large, the female-fronted Disney+ shows set within the MCU have been surrounded by these massive theories about the arrival of male characters. WandaVision, of course, kicked down the door with the countless questions about Mephisto himself, the mysterious aerospace engineer, or a last-minute cameo appearance from Stephen Strange / Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). 2022’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law directly poked fun at fans who wanted to see Bruce Banner / Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Murdock / Daredevil (Charlie Cox), while still being subjected to speculation about larger roles for Emil Blonsky / Abomination (Tim Roth), Samuel Sterns / The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson), and beyond. To a degree, it is unsurprising that the conversation around Agatha All Along has often been more about the men who could appear in it, and less about the cast of characters who are already in it. It might take a bit of magic for that kind of discourse to go away — but in the meantime, Agatha All Along might not need to play directly into it.

The post Does Agatha All Along Even Need a Big Bad? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Being a quasi-sequel series to WandaVision, Marvel’s Agatha All Along was bound to pick up most of that show’s loose plot threads at one point or another, at least when it came to Agatha or Westview. We’ve learned a lot about Agatha in the first five episodes of the show. In Episode 6, which was released on Wednesday night, fans got to see another one of those loose ends tied up, thanks to the return of one of the most controversial characters in MCU history: Ralph Bohner.

You remember Ralph. don’t you? A cliffhanger in an episode of WandaVision seemingly revealed the return of Wanda’s brother, Pietro, only this version wasn’t played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The character who appeared was played by none other than Evan Peters, who had portrayed Quicksilver in the Fox Marvel universe. This appearance indicated that the Fox X-Men characters were already starting to seep into the MCU and that the universes were potentially colliding, but the other shoe eventually dropped and Pietro was revealed to be nothing more than a creation by Agatha.

A lot of Marvel fans were furious about the reveal, mainly because of the Peters stunt-casting. In hindsight, it feels like a brilliant decision by Marvel to set up a big multiversal story only to pull the rug and remind everyone that WandaVision was never about that. But there are plenty of Marvel fans who disagree and still hate Ralph Bohner for it.

Well, if you’re a Ralph hater, we’re sorry to inform you that Bohner is officially back. Wednesday’s new episode of Agatha All Along focused entirely on Joe Locke’s “Teen,” who was revealed at the end of last week to be none other than Billy Maximoff. Episode 6 showed what led Billy to Agatha and the Witches Road (which we get into here). He needed a little help uncovering some of the truth about Westview, so he found someone online who claimed to have lived there during the Anomaly.

That person turned out to be none other than Ralph Bohner, who has become a total mess since we last saw him in WandaVision. He tells Billy that he ran away from WestView when he had the chance, so he remembers things that the rest of the townspeople don’t. That said, no one believes anything he says about his time in Westview because who would believe a man rambling about an entire town being locked inside their own bodies and forced to participate in sitcoms brought to life?

Ralph also reveals that Agatha essentially stole his life after he left. She took over his house, kept all of his things, and commandeered most of his existence, leaving him with nothing. Remember when she was wearing the Bohner family reunion shirt earlier in the season? He’s been trying to put his life back together, piece by piece, but it seems like he hasn’t had much luck doing so.

Letting Ralph be a guy on the brink of an absolute breakdown at all times allowed for Evan Peters to really bring out his comedic talents. This frustrated, fully realized version of Ralph Bohner was hysterical every second he was on screen, hopefully proving to a lot of fans out there that he always had the potential to be a fantastic MCU contributor.

The post Agatha All Along Hilariously Brings Back One of the MCU’s Most Controversial Characters appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along is ramping things up in some major ways, fleshing out the magical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the process. In addition to continuing the story of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the show has folded in Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed with great fanfare in the final moments of Episode 5. The majority of the series’ sixth episode consists of a flashback to the origin of Billy’s current status quo — and it was actually surprisingly accurate to the pages of Marvel Comics. Major spoilers for Episode 6 of Agatha All Along below! Only look if you want to know!

Initially, Locke’s version of Billy is introduced as Billy Kaplan, a Jewish teenager having his bar mitzvah in the town of Eastview. While at the party, Billy has his palm read by Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone), who warns him that his life is about to be split in two, and appears to place a mysterious sigil on him. The party is then cut short by news of the Westview anomaly, which sends Billy and his parents driving home in a hurry — so much so that they crash into a nearby tree. Billy dies in the car accident, just as the souls of Billy and Tommy Maximoff appear to be erased by the destruction of the Westview hex.

In reality, the soul of Billy Maximoff is reborn into Billy Kaplan’s body, and he awakens and gets acclimated to his new-old life. Three years later, Billy begins to personally investigate the circumstances that led to his rebirth, researching aspects of the Westview anomaly on various web forums. Through this research, and a clandestine meeting with Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters), Billy eventually begins to discover his true identity — and the role that Agatha Harkness could have in helping him reach his goal to find Tommy.

While this story arc might seem slightly convoluted on paper, it is actually surprisingly reminiscent of how Billy Kaplan is introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics — albeit, without the WandaVision tropes like the hex. In the comics, Billy and Tommy Maximoff were originally introduced as Wanda and Vision’s children in the 1980s, only to have their lives ended prematurely by the dark lord Mephisto. The villain wiped both Billy and Tommy from existence and absorbed their energy into himself, later gaslighting Wanda to believe that the children were really figments of her imagination all along.

Eventually, this is revealed to not be the case at all — in actuality, Billy and Tommy were believed to have been reborn in the bodies of two ordinary teenagers, Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd. In Billy’s case, in the pages of Young Avengers, he is an ordinary Jewish teenager who accidentally activates his powers while fighting school bullies. There have been debates in the years since over whether or not that reincarnation was real, much less what happened to the actual Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd when the soul transfers happened. But the majority of Marvel characters recognize these versions of Billy and Tommy to be Wanda’s children — and now, it appears the MCU is doing the same.

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along’s latest episode revealed how Billy Maximoff survived the Hex in WandaVision. Last week, fans were shocked to learn Joe Locke’s Teen was actually the Scarlet Witch’s son. With that knowledge in-hand, Agatha All Along took us on a trip down memory lane this week. Spoilers beyond this point from this week’s episode, “Familiar By Thy Side”! Read on only if you really want to know!

The episode opens with a flashback but it’s not to “Teen” as we know him. Instead, we’re taken to the bar mitzvah celebration of William Kaplan. Amid the party, which has a magic theme, he visits a palm reader who turns out to be Lilia Calderu. Lilia sees that William’s life will split into Billy’s. Before sending him back out to his party with reassurances about the future, she slips a rune in his pocket on which she has placed the sigil. However, the party soon stops as the “anomaly” around Westview is changing. The next we see his family driving near Westview as Wanda’s Hex was breaking down. The distraction causes an accident that kills William Kaplan but at that moment, Billy’s soul is teleporting from that little boy inside of Wanda and Vision’s house and becomes bonded to the older teenager. William Kaplan survives, but now he’s Billy Maximoff… in William’s body. That’s how he’s been able to survive in this world without a “container” for the wayward soul. It’s a certifiably wild development, and one fans are going to discuss into the ground in the ensuing days. This is amongst so many more mysteries that are still on the board for the show.

For a refresher, Wanda Maximoff created the Hex after losing Vision in Avengers: Infinity War. The two were supposed to live in Westview, New Jersey and begin their lives together. However, after the synthezoid was out of commission, she used her chaos magic to warp reality to a sitcom where Vision and her boys were alive and well. Agatha Harkness realized what Wanda was doing and conspired to take her powers for her own gain. Wanda, Vision, Billy and Tommy ended up being able to stop her. But, in the end, holding all those people hostage wasn’t very heroic of Scarlet Witch. She freed all of them and they still hold resentment for that experience, as we saw earlier in Agatha All Along. (If we really go back to Westview at the end of the series, how will they react to another supernatural showdown within the city limits?) It feels like the trouble is just getting brewing.

Billy and Agatha have a stern confrontation at the tail end of Agatha All Along’s fifth episode. It’s clear that both sides have been hiding a bit of information from each other. The more mature witch knew that her young familiar was actually the son of the Scarlet Witch this entire time. Meanwhile, Billy has been playing coy about his identity and power level for a while as well. That cute little spellbook was basically misdirection. Fans had been wondering about his identity for weeks now. Every Darkhold mention and Nicolas Scratch Easter egg created just a sliver of doubt among the viewers. But, now there is no doubt. Billy Maximoff lured these women onto The Witches Road. He said it was for power, but clearly there’s more to gain here as he’s got some scary abilities just like his mother.

Agatha All Along Hid Wiccan In Plain Sight

For weeks now, Agatha All Along has been playing in viewers’ faces. Billy was the most logical reveal for Joe Locke’s Teen. But, last week confirmed it. It’s a delicate dance with a show featuring a major mystery to balance that surprise with fan expectations. Some people are interested because a Marvel Comics favorite is here. Others, argue that the reveal should have been out in the open from the word go. Director Jac Schaeffer is understanding of all of these elements. She told Entertainment Weekly, Billy’s identity was not something they were trying super hard to misdirect from. Instead, how Agatha Harkness reacts to that information is far more interesting. Also, what does this boy want from her and The Witches’ Road in general? All things to ponder as we continue towards the finale.

Schaeffer argued about the sigil weeks ago, “This is what I would say: That’s not the first place I’d look. It’s not entirely irrelevant: But there are other places to look.”

“I don’t like hiding things from the audience, just to then be, like, ‘Boo!’ There’s no artistry to that,” Schaeffer mused. “So when we talked about obscuring who he is, the first question is, why? What is the utility of that? The answer is, it’s about the effect that his mystery has on Agatha. What does that do to her? How does it motivate her? How does it hit her emotionally?” 

What do you think about this change from Billy’s comics origin? Is it something else? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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The Witches’ Road grants those who travel it and survive its trials with whatever it is they desire most at the end of their journey. On Agatha All Along, the mysterious Teen gets Agatha Harkness to assemble a coven to unlock the Road, with each witch seeking something important from the journey. Teen’s reason for wanting to walk the road isn’t made clear at the outset, but last week’s episode, “Darkest Hour/Wake They Power” cast the entire journey into a whole new light. “Teen” was revealed to really be Billy Maximoff and now, given his family’s history with Agatha, everything we thought we knew is now up in the air.  But we also have a bitter question: What does Billy really want from The Witches’ Road?

According to Joe Locke, who plays Billy, the former “Teen” is definitely not looking for power. He has power, he demonstrated it last week with that big reveal of his identity and he’s been lying to everyone this whole time — especially Agatha.

“We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie,” Locke told ComicBook. “He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?”

If power isn’t the goal, Billy clearly is looking for something else and a few ideas come to mind: revenge against Agatha for what she did to Wanda in WandaVision, to bring his mother back, or to find his brother, Tommy. Let’s break those possibilities down

Billy Wants Revenge

One of the things that could be Billy’s motivation for walking The Witches’ Road is revenge — or more specifically to see Agatha pay. Agatha is, in a very real sense, the architect of much of Billy’s suffering. Her actions in WandaVision not only pushed Wanda to fully come into her power, but one of the consequences of all of that was the taking down of the hex, seemingly destroying Billy, Tommy, and Wanda’s version of Vision. While we still don’t know how exactly Billy survived that, the situation still caused Billy to lose everything in some fashion. His mother is gone. HIs father doesn’t exist. We have no idea where his brother is, if he survived. For Billy, getting Agatha on the Road could very well be a way to let the Road test the powerless witch and make her endure suffering as part of the journey, forcing her to experience a fraction of what he has lived with. It doesn’t necessarily grant Billy anything tangible at the end of the Road, like the power he claimed he was seeking, but watching Agatha suffer — and potentially not even survive — might be heart’s desire enough.

The Road Will Bring Wanda Back

While seeing Agatha suffer certainly feels like a real goal, Billy’s heart’s desire might be something less aggressive and much more deeply emotional. Billy might just simply want his mother back — so much so that he may have made an arrangement with someone else to get it done. One of the things that is interesting about Billy is that we meet him somewhat in conjunction with Rio. Agatha is still deep under Wanda’s spell in that first episode, imagining that her life is essentially a police procedural, but the two strangers that enter the picture and bring her out of it are Rio and Billy. That can’t be a coincidence. It is possible that Billy made an agreement with Rio — or perhaps even someone else (cough, Mephisto, cough). Getting Agatha out from under the spell would still leave the witch vulnerable as she has no powers and getting her on the Road could allow Rio and whoever else is coming for Agatha to have a better shot at taking her down. For Billy, walking the Road may be less about what the Road can give him and more what whoever he’s serving can — and if various theories about Rio’s identity pan out, that could be bringing back Wanda and others he loves.

Billy Is Just Trying to Get Tommy Back

It’s the idea of getting back a lost loved one that also presents a third possibility: maybe Billy wants the Rod to bring Tommy back. For Billy, getting to the road might not be some grand scheme. He may have simply needed a witch with experience on The Witches’ Road — in this case, the infamous Agatha Harkness — to get him there and after that it’s just a matter of surviving to the end so that the Road can grant him his twin brother back. The twin bond is a powerful thing and it would make sense that Billy would do almost anything to get his brother back. With this in mind, Billy may never have intended on revealing himself or his powers. He may have just wanted to walk the Road, get his brother, and then move on with his life finally no longer missing his other half, as it were. This would explain why he’s largely kept things low key up until the third trial as well as why Alice’s death impacted him so much. Her death pushed him a little too far, causing him to reveal himself and lash out because, from his perspective, Alice was the witch most like him and the one that he got the closest to on the journey to that point. Her death — also because of Agatha, much like the loss of his own family — simply pushed him too far.

Heading into Episode 6, there are a lot of unknowns. We don’t know what happened after Billy chucked all the witches (except Rio) off the Road and into the mud. We don’t know how Billy survived the hex or even how he was outside of it (as was teased in the midseason trailer). We also don’t know exactly what he wants — but with just four episodes remaining, and with Billy’s identity revealed, the path to finding out seems to have presented itself and hopefully we’ll start getting answers as to if Billy wants revenge, his mother, or just to bring back his twin.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes drop Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along star Joe Locke brought some darkness to The Witches’ Road last week and the series’ director took some time to talk about it. Jac Schaeffer has been leading folks on this journey with Agatha Harkness since the WandaVision days. She told The Wrap that the close confines of this coven has made every one of these witches a little bit on edge. Last week, everything finally boiled over after Agatha took out Alice Wu-Gulliver in a moment of chaos. That led to Teen tossing the remaining coven members into the muck of the road. As icing on the dastardly cake, Joe Locke’s character has been revealed as Billy Maximoff, and will spark a ton of emotions from some of the coven as well. (Provided they ever make it out of that mud to finish out these trials.) Schaeffer has noticed that her witches have taken on a bit of an edge from the moment they all stepped onto the road. It seemed like things were going okay after Alice’s trial in Episode 4. That quickly left the building after that magical confrontation. All of this is on purpose though, and we’re going to have to keep watching to learn more.

“It’s more about a coven itself, and the idea of blessings and burdens alike, and that witches in a coven are ride or die, but also, given certain circumstances, will also stab each other in the back,” Schaeffer argues. “That was, from the beginning, something we were interested in, because witches are coded as villains, right? Like treacherous, self serving, villainous, evil, violent, duplicitous, right? That’s the thing.”

“So it was important to us we weren’t doing ‘It’s a girls weekend! And it’s all about bonding and loving each other!’ We very much wanted the bonding,” The director recalled. “I mean, that campfire idea, I wish I could remember which of my brilliant writers came up with the campfire idea, but it was very early, and I was like, ‘100% However we do it, we’re getting these witches around a campfire.’ And I’m an enormous fan of Jaws, so I’m like, ‘We’re doing a scar comparison. We need that vibe.’”

So we’ve established that Billy Maximoff is a big meanie now. But what does that mean for the rest of the trials on The Witches’ Road? Last time we checked, the rest of the coven was still down there in the mud and with no real plan to escape. An exclusive clip that Marvel released with ComicBook earlier today hints that there might be a way out. But, nothing is certain right now. We also had the chance to sit down with Joe Locke and ask about where his relationship with his friends stands after all that drama in Episode 5. The Agatha All Along star is keeping details close to the vest. However, he did have something fun to say about Billy’s motivations moving forward.

“You’ll have to find out this week!” Locke teased me. “We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie. He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?”

Clearly, the Agatha All Along team is still hiding some pretty massive Secrets behind all of these teases. From our count, there are still the mystery of Rio Vidal’s actual identity, what’s going on with Mephisto, Agatha’s powers being restored, maybe a Scarlet Witch resurrection, and for good measure, the future of the magical side of the MCU, all still on the docket. It’s a little bit wild to expect Agatha All Along to pull the curtain back on all of these mysteries. But, you can probably bet that 3 to 4 of them will get their conclusion in this Disney+ series.

Do you think Billy Maximoff is the secret villain of this show? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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While fans of Agatha All Along are still reeling from Teen’s identity being revealed, there’s still the matter of the major death that took place in the last episode. Alice (Ali Ahn) died when Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) began siphoning her magical powers, leaving Joe Locke’s Teen, aka Billy Maximoff / Wiccan, enraged and out for revenge. If it weren’t for Alice’s death, Agatha may not have figured out that Billy is the Scarlet Witch’s son. Those events are the springboard for the final episodes of Agatha All Along, and one of the players involved is exploring what it all really means.

ComicBook spoke to Joe Locke following the big Wiccan reveal in Agatha All Along, with the Heartstopper star diving into how Alice’s death impacts Billy and the series going forward.

“I always saw that scene as the last time we see Teen in his true, full innocence before he goes and tries to kill three of his friends,” Locke joked. “The last time you see your fully innocent Teen until the reveal of ‘He’s been lying this whole time!’ And, I think it’s that, that pushes him over the edge. I think he has a very optimistic sense of people and, maybe wrongly so?”

He continued, “Alice, as a character, is the one that I think Teen bonds to the most and the quickest. She lets him in before she lets anyone else in. He feels so betrayed by Agatha that she could do that to Alice. Then, this debate if she could control it, or meant to, or not. But, that’s something that is for the audience to decide. He certainly thinks that she could have stopped it.”

He then spoke about all the emotions at play when it came time to film the death scene with Alice.

“It’s quite an emotional scene to film, seeing your friend on the floor, actually looking dead, because again, practical makeup,” Locke points out. “Yeah, it was quite emotional, in a good way. It was fun, not weird, a sadistic fun way.”

Agatha All Along trailer has a surprising WandaVision callback

The midseason trailer for Agatha All Along features Kathryn Hahn’s titular Agatha Harkness referring to Teen as Billy Maximoff. We see footage of upcoming scenes remaining in the Disney+ series, including a look back at Billy, an Eastview resident, witnessing the red hex that Wanda Maximoff cast over Westview in WandaVision. Billy then screams as his mother swerves to avoid hitting a car on the road. The flashback ends with the car slamming into a tree. Eagle-eyed fans may remember Agatha mentioning a fatal car crash that happened in Eastview earlier in Agatha All Along. It looks like Billy was involved in that crash, which led him to search out Agatha so he could follow her down the Witches’ Road.

What is Agatha All Along about?

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…

The series 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.

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Agatha All Along star Joe Locke addressed possibly joining up with the Young Avengers at some point down the line. ComicBook talked to the MCU star after his dramatic reveal at the end of Episode 5 of the Disney+ series. He’s officially Billy Maximoff now, and that leads to some serious questions about his Marvel future. One of the biggest ones is his status with the formative Young Avengers. The end of The Marvels saw Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel getting a hold of Kate Bishop to form the team. Could they be in need of another sorcerer? (Assuming America Chavez will be along for the ride?) Locke says he’s down for anything, but also mentioned that Marvel Studios hasn’t said anything to him just yet. When they call, he’ll put on his crown. However, that moment hasn’t happened yet. So, he’s just waiting here like the rest of us for the news.

“I don’t know. I mean, I obviously would love for that to happen because I love working with Marvel and I love Billy as a character and would love to carry on playing him. But, I don’t know anything about it,” Locke explained in our interview. “If that’s their plan, that’s great and I absolutely love that. But, they don’t tell me anything. Like, that’s not even me keeping anything. I’d love to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing all this!’ But, who knows? You know, it’s very early days.”

The Marvel Stars playing it cool but it seems obvious that we’re headed to some sort of young Avengers project here in the meantime. Before we can get to all that, Billy needs to be trained though, as his power seems to be a little wild after his interaction with Agatha and the rest of the coven at the end of Episode 5. In the comics, “The Children’s Crusade” storyline is directly powered by Billy and Tommy’s search for the Scarlet Witch. The Young Avengers need to find Wanda to help avert catastrophe and with Avengers: Secret Wars on the near-horizon, it makes a lot of sense to try and start working out the tea leaves for ourselves.

The Young Avengers Begin To Assemble

Young Avengers is always a topic on social media surrounding Marvel properties. The MCU has made it a point to feature a ton of legacy heroes in Phases 4 and 5. Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Billy, Ironheart, and Skaar have all appeared over the last 4 years. There’s been an anticipation for the Young Avengers to really assemble ahead of whatever’s been going on with Avengers: Secret Wars. Iman Vellani is your tentative leader of this team of younger Marvel heroes. She talked to ScreenRant about who Kamala Khan should recruit to the cause next. Honestly, America Chavez would be a nice pick for the Ms. Marvel star. Xochitl Gomez would probably fit right in with the Young Avengers whenever they get a project too.

“I just want to see them interact. I think they’ve left so many of the younger character stories open-ended, and to see fans start shipping people together, it would be something like, I want to see Kamala interact with America,” Vellani said during our conversation. “I want to see Kamala interact with Patriot, I don’t know. Just all these random people. And so yeah, I think there’s so many different avenues you could take with this.”

It’s getting a little bit hard to ignore the numbers of the Young Avengers members that exist in the MCU right now.With Billy and toe it’s becoming even more probable that we’ll see the team unite sometime in the near future. The overall success of Agatha All Along and Joe Locke’s profile already with Heartstopper should also make a youth Marvel team-up an easy sell for audiences. Seeing fan favorite actors bantering back and forth has always been a bread and butter move for the MCU, and the Young Avengers project (whatever shape it takes) would follow in those footsteps. So, there’s just a lot for the fans to be looking forward to.

Do you think we will get a Young Avengers announcement here soon? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along Episode 6 premieres tonight and Joe Locke is ecstatic to talk about all the fallout from last week’s shocking reveal. ComicBook had the chance to ask about keeping the secret of Billy Maximoff all this time. It’s been a couple of years since the Heartstopper star found himself cast in the MCU. He’s dealt with a long road to get here, and his big moment knocked most viewers’ socks off. The 21-year-old is no stranger to stardom at this point, but keeping these Marvel secrets can be tough for even the most seasoned of veterans. (Hello to Mark Ruffalo, if he’s reading this.) During our conversation, Locke talked about finally seeing himself in a crown, setting up a Billy group chat with WandaVision‘s Billy Julian Hilliard, and what the prospective Young Avenger wants at the end of The Witches’ Road.

Our new Billy was in a great mood to talk to me after the events of Episode 5. The young actor is all energy early in the afternoon and, after commiserating about messy rooms, we dig into Agatha All Along’s big secret finally being out in the open. Namely, he’s playing Wiccan in the MCU, or at least Billy for right now. Fans have been frothing at the mouth trying to untangle this mystery for weeks now. Locke has been deflecting and demuring whenever asked about his stint as “Teen.” Marvel Studios and everyone in the production have tried their best to keep this secret, but we can finally talk about it. 

Keeping the Billy Secret

When I ask the Marvel star about an Instagram post he made the morning after Episode 5 aired, about keeping this secret for two years, he corrects me and says it’s been longer than that really. Clearly, we’ve all been waiting for Billy to make a grand re-entrance into the MCU. Locke exclaimed, “More than two years, two years and a month!” When I joke and ask who’s counting, the young magic-user smirks, “Me.”

The Heartstopper phenom admits that it’s a strange feeling to finally be able to talk about his MCU character. “It feels really weird,” Locke admits. “It feels like every time I keep talking about it, I feel like I’m going to get tackled by the ‘Marvel Police.’ I don’t know. It’s been drilled so much into me to not talk about it. It’s amazing to be able to talk about it, but it also feels like I’m breaking all the rules.”

“I think that is one of the best lines ever. It’s also the way that Kathryn plays it. Her mouth in that scene?… Every time I watch it, I don’t watch myself, but I watch her.”

All of that is completely understandable. Marvel Studios is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to preserving these secrets. To have the young star walking around with that massive secret for more than two calendar years is a lot of pressure. But, Locke wears it all well. With every “Teen” mention in those interviews before the premiere, he never let it slip. You could probably say Locke is a natural at keeping those details close to the vest. 

As we’re laughing about how bizarre the situation is, Locke confirms that we’re allowed to call his character Billy and we both let out an audible cheer. He smiles, “I got scared there for a second!” But, it’s all clear right now as we switch gears to Kathryn Hahn’s dramatic moment where Agatha Harkness reveals that she knows who Billy’s mother is. Locke has nothing but praise for his costar’s delightful command in such a dramatic flashpoint for the show.

“I think that is one of the best lines ever. It’s also the way that Kathryn plays it. Her mouth in that scene? The way it did [Locke imitates the movement]… Every time I watch it, I don’t watch myself, but I watch her,” he admitted. “She’s just in many different emotions and deciding whether she’s going to say it or not. She’s just incredible and I think it’s such a great way to reveal it.”

You Should See Me in a Crown

When talking about Episode 5, you also have to ask about the moment where Billy gets his crown. I wondered if the headpiece was practical. After all, it’s fashioned a lot like Scarlet Witch’s diadem. To our surprise, it’s actually real. But, everyone had to be super careful handling the prop. Locke explained, “It’s actually 3D-printed, and they only made four of them. I think two of them snapped in half in transit because they were so fragile. So, when I was wearing it, it was very much like, ‘Don’t fall over!’ They talk about the superhero power, and wearing it, you feel super powerful.”

“It’s actually 3D-printed, and they only made four of them. I think two of them snapped in half in transit because they were so fragile. So, when I was wearing it, it was very much like, ‘Don’t fall over!’ They talk about the superhero power, and wearing it, you feel super powerful.” – Joe Locke on his crown

“Like, every time I took it off, they would have to re-do my hair. So, I might as well just keep it on all day. I just walk around feeling really cool and powerful,” Locke recalled

Of course, the topic of the coven in limbo had to be addressed, too. It sure seems like they’re dead at the end of Episode 5. But, who would Billy walk the road with? Locke chuckles, “You’ll just have to find out. Maybe the rest of the series is just me walking the road by myself?” I joke about skipping down the road like in The Wizard of Oz and he corrects me, “Evilly!”

The World Needs the Billy Group Chat & Wanda Back

In an effort to start the Billy group chat, I ask if Locke has spoken to Julian Hilliard yet. (Hilliard played Wanda’s son in WandaVision, for those who need a refresher.) The Agatha star replied, “No, I haven’t. I would love to! Yeah, we should. We should have the Billy group chat!” 

Maybe the MCU’s resident Billys can trade tips on blue, glowing hands. Locke tells me that his magic is actually practical in that scene from Episode 5. He began, “I don’t actually think that was CGI, I think they use some sort of electrical, practical thing. And then I just put it on, I might be wrong? That was definitely what they were planning on doing. They were definitely planning on using two electrodes and then placing that in, rather than using CGI.”

“I’m yet to meet her. Obviously, I would love to.”

– Joe Locke on Elizabeth Olsen

As the man bringing Wanda Maximoff’s son to life, the Scarlet Witch couldn’t be absent from this conversation. Locke says that he still hasn’t spoken to Elizabeth Olsen, but there were some pictures sent from the set. “I still haven’t,” the 21-year-old says when I mention meeting the Avengers star. “I think, when we did that day, Jac [Schaeffer] and Mary [Livanos] sent pictures of me in the crown. But, I’m yet to meet her. Obviously, I would love to.” So, social media will just have to wait for the eventual picture of those two together. That will probably melt the Internet. 

Alice’s Sad Ending in Agatha All Along

Lost in all of this shuffle is the death of Alice Wu-Gulliver in Episode 5. Ali Ahn’s character forfeited her life trying to save Agatha. For Locke, that scene has significance alongside the loss of a new friend in the story they’re trying to tell.

“I always saw that scene as the last time we see Teen in his true, full innocence before he goes and tries to kill three of his friends,” Locke joked. “The last time you see your fully innocent Teen until the reveal of ‘He’s been lying this whole time!’ And, I think it’s that, that pushes him over the edge. I think he has a very optimistic sense of people and, maybe wrongly so?”

He continued, “Alice, as a character, is the one that I think Teen bonds to the most and the quickest. She lets him in before she lets anyone else in. He feels so betrayed by Agatha that she could do that to Alice. Then, this debate if she could control it, or meant to, or not. But, that’s something that is for the audience to decide. He certainly thinks that she could have stopped it.”

“It’s quite an emotional scene to film, seeing your friend on the floor, actually looking dead, because again, practical makeup,” Locke points out. “Yeah, it was quite emotional, in a good way. It was fun, not weird, a sadistic fun way.”

What About Mephisto? Young Avengers? Tell Us!

The “Sigil” binding Billy’s identity still hangs as one of the biggest mysteries left and Locke isn’t letting that one out of the bag just yet. “You’ll have to find out this week!” But, he does have some small admissions that he can make. “We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie. He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?” When I joke about aggregators getting a hold of that, Locke quips, “That’s the fun to work out before things get rolling!”

Billy’s costume in Episode 5 was a major hint at his identity from the moment the fans saw his ’80s getup. Red and blue with a headband just screams Wiccan for the people who love the comics. But, we’re not exactly there yet. Still, the star got a kick out of that reference. “I feel like the biggest [hint] for me is Episode 5, the costume. That outfit, and then there’s quite a few others. I think people were expecting this to be the big reveal of the season. But, strap yourselves in because there’s a lot more to come.”

One thing fans hope is still coming is the arrival of Mephisto. Locke is very amused at the prospect of the villain showing his face. “That was great. I feel like that was a very fan-service/wider MCU thing that I have no idea about. But, it definitely is fun to bring to life, as a fan of Marvel,” he admitted. “To be like, ‘Oh, we get to say his name!’ That means that maybe…like, who knows what that means for the future of that character?”

When it comes to the future, the ground has been shifting lately over at Marvel Studios. With Billy’s arrival, a lot of fans expect the Young Avengers to announce their presence in the near future. But, for Locke, he’s not letting anything slip. 

“I don’t know. I mean, I obviously would love for that to happen because I love working with Marvel and I love Billy as a character and would love to carry on playing him. But, I don’t know anything about it,” the actor deadpans. “If that’s their plan, that’s great and I absolutely love that. But, they don’t tell me anything. Like, that’s not even me keeping anything. I’d love to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing all this!’ But, who knows? You know, it’s very early days.”

Were you shocked by the Wiccan reveal? Do you think Wanda’s coming back? Check out all the pop culture discussion at @ComicBook!  

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Agatha All Along Episode 5 really shook the table and Marvel Studios dropped an exclusive preview of Episode 6 here on ComicBook. You can watch Agatha Harkness and Teen’s intense encounter leading into whatever challenges The Witches’ Road has for this bedraggled coven next. As regular viewers are still reeling from last week, things have gone a bit sideways for our favorite coven. Joe Locke’s character has been revealed as Billy Maximoff. He no longer looks up to Agatha the way he did when the series started. It was only a matter of time before the fan-favorite witch bared those fangs again. The scene above featuring Kathryn Hahn and her protege shows off just how mercurial her character can be. In the same breath, Agatha All Along’s fanbase has long suspected that there’s more to “Teen” than the show was letting on. This new clip should only heighten that feeling moving forward.

Billy and Agatha stand on the road, lit by a sickly yellow light. Both of them have been through the wringer on The Witches’ Road. Through multiple trials, the coven has escaped with heavy losses. However, this week finds these witches pushed to their limits. Teen tells his mentor that he will never trust her again after all that’s happened. Despite Agatha’s posturing, she needs him to finish out The Witches’ Road. So, they have to work together despite their fractured bond. In the same token, Agatha sees Teen as a naive child who never really grasped the consequences of what they were up against until right now. “Last one there is not a nice person” feels like quite a dig. But, then the younger boy hints there’s something evil lurking within him.

Agatha All Along‘s final chapters should be a hoot if there’s any indication. The series has been a mainstay on Disney+ during this Halloween season. Marvel Studios has reportedly seen its highest retention rate for a show ever with the latest MCU series. (If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably as hooked as the rest of us are.) Agatha All Along has also reignited Mephisto fever among fans who remember the hysteria of WandaVision. So, the theories are coming fast and furious on social media now too. Who knows where this Marvel series will end up going at this rate. Whatever the case, we’re in for one heck of a ride.

Agatha All Along Took The Gloves Off Last Week

Last week wasn’t the first time that Agatha All Along really shook up the fans, Episode 3 was a real doozy in multiple ways too. In that first trial on The Witches’ Road, the table had been set for some really gnarly stuff to go down. In order to let the viewers know how serious this was going to get, Mrs. Hart ended up getting killed off. A lot of WandaVision die-hards were shocked they would kill off Debra Jo Rupp’s character. Especially, because it happened so early in the run for Agatha All Along. Director Jac Schaeffer told Entertainment Weekly that it was important for viewers to be aware that this series has some teeth. So far, the show is living up to that pedigree after the chaos of last week. 

“It was so important early on when we figured out we’re doing the Witches’ Road, we’re doing this coven, the hilarious idea that we would bring a normie along,” Schaeffer began. “Debra Jo Rupp is a comedy genius. She can’t not be funny, but we do horror-comedy on the show. This show has teeth, and in the later episodes it goes to really dramatic places. It was important to signal that, it was important to make it clear that we’re not messing around, that people die in this show.”

“That we are theatrical, campy, broad, all the spectacle, all the fun, all the winking, all the meta, but that underneath it all, there is real grit to the story,” Schaeffer continued. “There is real meaning to it. I also think that is part of Agatha’s personality; she can do all the flamboyance, but she’ll cut you. It felt disingenuous to not really go there.”

What do you think is coming on this week’s episode of Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along Episode 5 “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power” ended with the big twist(?) reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is Billy Maximoff (aka “Wiccan” in the comics), the son of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch. However, the episode also had a sneaky name-drop to another mystical son: “Nicholas Scratch,” the son of Agatha Harkness!

The latest stop along the Witches Road saw Agatha and Co. pulled into a 1980s horror-slasher film reality, where the trial saw Agatha having to face literal ghosts of her past after a Ouija board summons the spirit of her mother Evanora. The spirit of Evanora is wrathful toward Agatha for murdering her coven and possesses her daughter’s body to kill her new coven. After Alice (Ali Ahn) exorcised Evanora from Agatha’s body, Agatha goes magic-vampire and drains Alice of her powers and life force. As Agatha is feeding, “Teen” notices the Ouija board spelling out the name “Nicholas Scratch,” signaling that another spirit has entered the room. Calling out the name stops Agatha in her tracks – with good reason.

Who Is Marvel’s Nicholas Scratch?

We did a full deep-dive breakdown of Nicholas Scratch’s Marvel history when Agatha All Along first premiered, but just to recap:

“In the comics, Nicholas Scratch is from New Salem, a secret area in Colorado where witches and warlocks escaped from the Salem Witch Trials. Nobody actually knows who his father is, and there are fan theories that range from demons to Mephisto to the idea that, like Wanda, Agatha simply conjured him into being. After The Scarlet Witch abandoned New Salem, Nicholas Scratch took over as its leader, and felt betrayed by his mother’s decision to leave the cloistered little magical world. Scratch dispatched a batch of New Salem witches out into the world to retrieve Agatha, so that she could return to New Salem, stand trial, and be executed for treason.”

Scratch’s obsession with vengeance eventually got him banished to the Dark Realm, but he would escape eventually, possessing various other Marvel characters (like Fantastic Four’s Franklin Richards); taking over places like the tow of Centerville and causing epic conflicts with the Avengers and other Marvel teams and characters – eventually even landing in hell, and working for Mephisto.

Obviously, there’s any amount of that comic book lore for Agatha All Along to play with. The show has been building clear themes about power and the daming compromises made for it – and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) seems to have a lot of bad karma to answer for. Having Billy Maximoff and Nicholas Scratch in the same story arc also makes this an interesting generational story, as both Wanda and Agatha’s time with the Darkhold have created magical offspring and legacies that will live beyond them.

Agatha All Along streams new episodes Wednesday nights on Disney+

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We’re officially halfway through Disney+’s Agatha All Along, and viewers are discovering new truths about Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven of Marvel witches along the way. Each of the Marvel Studios series’ episodes has been structured around a different facet of popular culture, with the recent fifth episode sending viewers back into the 1980s. In a lot of unique ways, Episode 5 of Agatha All Along was reminiscent of the era’s horror tropes — and here were some of the biggest connections.

The episode sees the coven approach the latest house (and trial) on the Witches’ Road — an ’80s-themed bungalow designed specifically for Agatha herself. As the coven suddenly dons ’80s-themed sweats and pajamas, they are presented with an Ouija board that seems to present them with the answers that they seek. They use the Ouija board to converse with the seemingly-dead Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp), and then later activate the ghost of Agatha’s mom, Evanora Harkness (Kate Forbes). This alone pays tribute to 1980s pop culture, during which Ouija boards rose in popularity, even inspiring movies of the decade such as Witchboard.

Agatha’s estranged relationship with Evanora, who is disappointed in her daughter for her overall reputation as a witch, can be seen as a take on the snarky parent-child relationships that were a hallmark of multiple genres of ’80s movies. Agatha getting possessed by her mother, which ultimately leads to her killing Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), is also a hallmark of ’80s horror, ranging from the Evil Dead franchise to the aptly-named Possession.

Even the final moments of the episode — when Teen (Joe Locke) activates his powers and appears to drown the remaining members of the coven, revealing himself to really be Billy Maximoff / Wiccan — can be tied to the countless twist endings of ’80s horror. From Friday the 13th to Sleepaway Camp and beyond, plenty of memorable horror movies of the decade ended with characters who were hiding in plain sight suddenly making villainous moves.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, 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…

In addition to Kathryn Hahn, Agatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

“One of the biggest was that it was Jac Schaeffer, because she created all of that,” Hahn explained to ComicBook earlier this year. “She kind of created this iteration of Agatha, because she’s all over the place comics-wise, and touches on so many worlds. And so, that creation of this Agatha was so beautifully crafted by her. But it was very important, to both of us, that it honored Westview and the world of Westview, and also started in reality of what would happen next. And so, it’s really about her gaining, not even her powers back, but them changing. She shifts.”

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along’s Episode 6 teaser left fans crushed about Wanda’s arc matching up to Billy’s. Yes, last week the Marvel TV show revealed that Joe Locke’s character was actually the son of the beloved Avenger. Still, so many questions remain about how Billy ended up alive after WandaVision and it looks like Marvel is bringing some answers this week. Agatha All Along Episode 6 is poised to take MCU fans back to the Hex and the closing chapters of Scarlet Witch’s Disney+ debut. People who watched WandaVision remember the spell that Wanda Maximoff cast over the entire town of Westview. That entire series was an effort for the Scarlet Witch to get her family back. Vision was a profound loss after The Infinity Saga, but her desire for her two sons was very pronounced by the end. Marvel fans can’t help but notice that the grown version of Billy might not have been too far away. It’s a crushing moment for people who just want to see the witch happy.

In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda went on a murderous rampage to secure variants of her boys. The universe of Earth-838 will likely never be the same after she killed Charles Xavier, Reed Richards, Captain Marvel, Captain Carter and Black Bolt in her quest to reunite with Billy and Tommy. (Not to mention the poor Wanda of their universe who everyone must be looking at with extreme skepticism!) Going through all of that when Billy was basically one town over in Earth-616? Woof. Just a brutal gut punch to realize. But, as most Marvel Studios teasers and trailers can be, there’s probably some key information being hidden from the viewers before Agatha All Along Episode 6. Wednesday is going to bring answers and we’re excited to see what other surprises Marvel has hiding.

In all this WandaVision fervor, MCU fans have also noticed that Agatha’s comments to Billy take on a new light after the teaser. Kathryn Hahn’s line reading of, “you are so much like your mother,” takes on new heights when you compare the young boy’s actions to Wanda’s in that previous series. Agatha All Along has hinted that Billy could have really been Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son. But, it turns out he’s a Maximoff. In grand family tradition at this point, he’s led some people into a dangerous situation for his own personal gain. Yes, Agatha wanted to go down the road to restore her powers. But, these other witches have put their lives on the line at the urging of Agatha and her familiar. It’s not exactly wrapping a whole town of people in a Chaos Magic Hex, but it’s still pretty reckless and morally ambiguous. So, the elder witch has some ground to stand on when she challenges Billy about his deception so far in this adventure.

One Of Agatha All Along’s Big Secrets Is Out In The Open

A lot of folks probably weren’t expecting the biggest surprises from Agatha All Along until the end. Sometimes, Marvel Studios can still shock the fans. Billy being confirmed just over the midway point in the series certainly qualifies. Joe Locke has to feel a tremendous weight lifted off of his shoulders with this new development. The entire promotional tour for Agatha All Along, he had to step up to the plate and lie to all of our faces. Now, the “Teen” actor can finally call his character Billy. Entertainment Weekly sat down with the Heartstopper star to discuss his newest maternal figure. It seems as though Billy and Wanda Maximoff have some other traits in common besides their magical abilities. Is the young witch a maleficent presence? We’ll have to tune-in and find out. 

“We talked a lot about playing with the gray area,” Locke remembered when asked about the big reveal “At the end of episode 5, we don’t know what happens to those witches, but he’s not doing a good thing. We played a lot with, does that make him a bad person? Is he a good person? Which then draws parallels to the motherly figures in his life.”

He added, “Wanda does evil things but isn’t necessarily evil. Agatha, questionably, is evil, but there’s more to that, as well. We know that he’s been lying to her, and we play a lot with those dynamics of how duplicitous he is. The facade of the fanboy teen, is that completely fake or is that actually still a real part of him? This is the stuff that I found so interesting in playing him.”

Billy Might not be a good person, but he didn’t want all of his friends to die at that moment. It seems like there’s a lack of control for the young witch, and luckily there are more episodes of the Disney+ series to go. Back in WandaVision, Agatha correctly argues that Wanda needed to learn how to control her powers to reach her full potential. At this point, the son is echoing the mother in some interesting ways.

Do you think the Hex helped create Billy? Is it something else? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along fans are taking a trip down memory lane to WandaVision in the show’s latest trailer. The big buzz coming out of last week’s Agatha All Along episode was the confirmation that Joe Locke’s mysterious Teen is Wiccan, one of Scarlet Witch’s twin boys from WandaVision. Fans had long speculated that Teen was going to be Wiccan, and while Episode 5 of Agatha All Along didn’t name-drop the words “Billy” or “Wiccan,” Agatha did tell Teen how he was so much like his mother, and we saw Wiccan grow a crown similar to the one worn by Scarlet Witch. With only a few episodes remaining, we now look at how the events in WandaVision impact Agatha All Along.

The midseason trailer for Agatha All Along features Kathryn Hahn’s titular Agatha Harkness referring to Teen as Billy Maximoff. We see footage of upcoming scenes remaining in the Disney+ series, including a look back at Billy, an Eastview resident, witnessing the red hex that Wanda Maximoff cast over Westview in WandaVision. Billy then screams as his mother swerves to avoid hitting a car on the road. The flashback ends with the car slamming into a tree. Eagle-eyed fans may remember Agatha mentioning a fatal car crash that happened in Eastview earlier in Agatha All Along. It looks like Billy was involved in that crash, which led him to search out Agatha so he could follow her down the Witches’ Road.

What happened to Wiccan in WandaVision?

Scarlet Witch magically created Billy and his twin brother Tommy in WandaVision. Still reeling from the loss of Vision in Avengers: Infinity War, Wanda Maximoff conjured a fairytale lifestyle for herself in the small community of Westview. Part of this involved a spell that brought Vision back to life and brainwashed Westview’s residents. Because of the nature of Wanda’s spell, Billy and Tommy aged rapidly during WandaVision, growing from small babies to young boys. They each demonstrated abilities similar to their mother and uncle, with Billy mastering magic while Tommy possessed Pietro’s speed.

Once Wanda became the Scarlet Witch and defeated Agatha in the WandaVision series finale, she dropped her spell over Westview, causing Billy, Tommy, and Vision to fade from existence. However, MCU fans witnessed alternate versions of Billy and Tommy in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when Scarlet Witch went on her rampage through the multiverse to reunite her family.

Wiccan is the latest Young Avenger to debut in the MCU

Agatha All Along joins a list of recent Marvel projects to introduce viewers to future members of the Young Avengers. WandaVision featured the twin siblings Billy (Wiccan) and Tommy (Speed); Eli Bradley (Patriot) appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier; Loki included Kid Loki; America Chavez was in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Kate Bishop fought alongside Clint Barton in Hawkeye; Ant-Man’s daughter Cassie Lang (Stature/Stinger) was in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; and we also have Agatha All Along teasing Teddy (Hulkling) in Episode 2.

The mid-credits scene in The Marvels also continued the MCU’s Young Avengers setup. The scene saw Ms. Marvel head to New York to recruit Kate Bishop, telling the young Hawkeye that she was putting a team together, similar to Nick Fury’s cameo in the first Iron Man movie. Ms. Marvel also referenced Cassie Lang when speaking to Kate Bishop.

What is Agatha All Along about?

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…

The series 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.

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Marvel’s Agatha All Along has released a new mid-season trailer, which gives us a preview of the back half episodes; as of writing this, Agatha All Along has aired 5 of 9 episodes, officially crossing over the halfway mark with Episode 5, “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power”. (SPOILERS!) The latest Agtha episode ended on the massive (read: obvious) cliffhanger twist that Agatha’s ‘pet’ sidekick “Teen” (Joe Locke) is indeed Billy Maximoff, the son of Wanda Maximoff the Scarlet Witch. Billy made his identity known in a display of magical power that has seemingly overwhelmed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and her surviving coven.

To celebrate the big reveal, Marvel Studios has now released an official poster of Joe Locke looking like his fully in his “Wiccan” era, the mystical superhero/Young Avenger that Billy grows up to be in Marvel Comics lore. Check out the Wiccan poster and new Agatha All Along mid-season trailer, below!

Many viewers of Agatha All Along saw the reveal of Wiccan coming from the moment Joe Locke was cast in the show. Locke clearly had a look that could be a live-action version of what Billy/Wiccan looked like in the comics – as well as looking like he could conceivably be the son of Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch.

As discussed on our ComicBook Nation podcast, the question was never really who “Teen” was – but more the question of how Billy Maximoff is back, and older, when WandaVision revealed he was just a construct that Wanda created with her hex powers. Those questions extend to how Wiccan is such a powerful sorcerer now, and (as the poster clearly reminds us) how he got to be wearing his mother’s crown. To the credit of Agatha All Along, Wiccan is just one of several mysteries that are keeping viewers locked in: what lies at the end of the Witches Road is still a major one – and of course, there are all the fan theories, about how Marvel characters like Scarlet Witch or the devil Mephisto could be involved. There’s also the major thread of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio and her true identity (Death?), as well as her history with Agatha and the fate of Agatha’s son that all need to be addressed.

This mid-season trailer for Agatha All Along does a pretty good job of bringing all of that mystery to the forefront, basically reminding anyone who’s been tuning in that there is a lot of reason to still be invested in the series – including some bigger magical battles to come. Agatha All Along’s greatest magic trick may be proving to its many doubters that the show holds a meaningful place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise – and possibly plays a pivotal role in the current Multiverse Saga story arc.

Agatha All Along streams on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along’s latest massive reveal makes the big rumor surrounding Avengers: Doomsday even more interesting. In case you missed it, Episode 5 of the Disney+ series told the audience that Joe Locke’s mystery Teen is actually Scarlet Witch’s son Billy. It’s a ground-shaking reveal for this series. But, maybe more interestingly, it lends some credence to the hottest rumor surrounding Avengers: Doomsday. Writers like Alex Perez from The Cosmic Circus have hinted that the next Marvel Studios team-up movie might adapt elements of The Childrens’ Crusade. This storyline heavily involves Billy and the rest of the Young Avengers heroes. They strike out to find Wanda Maximoff, because two of their teammates would like to know what happened to their mother. (That’s Wiccan and Speed for those playing at home. Speaking of, where is Scarlet Witch’s other son?) So, Billy would have to be around for that story to take place in the same way.

Avengers: Doomsday is one of the biggest moments on the foreseeable MCU timeline for a number of reasons. Take your pick of Robert Downey Jr’s return as Victor Von Doom, a sorely-missed Marvel crossover movie, or even more direct Multiverse Saga developments in a live-action project. If the rumors about Scarlet Witch being in a romantic entanglement with Doctor Doom are true, fans could toss Wanda’s long-awaited appearance onto the fire as well. There’s so much anticipation building around Joe and Anthony Russo’s big Marvel Studios movie. This development would only heighten things as we move toward the crucial moments of The Multiverse Saga. If the Young Avengers begin looking for Wanda by the end of Agatha All Along, don’t be shocked about that development.

A lot of credit should go to director Jac Schaeffer for managing to weave in these big MCU developments during Agatha All Along. The WandaVision creative force has tried her best to keep the spotlight on Kathryn Hahn and her coven. But, in a franchise this big, there are some story elements that need attention. Even when they come in unlikely places. Episode 3’s Mephisto mention shook the Internet, and revealing Billy as the teenager that’s been tagging along with these witches would qualify as well. Still, it’s a delicate balance for a creative team that wants to tell a story about Agatha Harkness and not just provide MCU updates every week. It would seem that they’ve done that here. Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter that Marvel president Kevin Feige helped make the call for Mephisto in the early going. So, the gears are always turning. 

Agatha All Along Laying The Groundwork For Children’s Crusade

When it comes to the Young Avengers, they already have a leader in Ms. Marvel. Iman Vellani sat down with ComicBook’s Phase Zero after the release of The Marvels to discuss getting the team together. During our chat, the actress revealed that The Marvels actually cut a sequence where Ms. Marvel had all of the heroes together. The theatrical cut of that movie actually featured Vellani speaking to Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop. A fun reward for fans who had been following these younger characters. Marvel Studios must have thought this was all a bit much too soon. But, in the time since The Marvels, more pieces keep getting added to the puzzle at different points. Bill is just the latest Young Avenger to pop-up after all these honor students keep cropping up.

“Yes, I mean, it was like pretty much the same lines,” Vellani told us. “I think they were trying their best to incorporate as many as they can. But, I think its better that we see Kamala actually form the Young Avengers starting from the beginning. Because, there was a version where they already exist and I was like, ‘That doesn’t make any sense’ and they were like ‘We know, we’re not gonna film this.’”

“But, yeah, I think it was really fun and I loved working with Hailee for just that one day that I got to meet her and see her and talk to her. She’s so… it was nice just having someone to relate to about the super suits and… you know, where the future of the Young Avengers lies,” she continued. “So, yeah I’m very excited. Hopefully, that turns into something real…. It’s my favorite part about the first Avengers film too. When Nick Fury and Scarlett Johansson, they all gather together, and they’re like ‘we’re a team now.’”

Do you think Children’s Crusade is on the way in the next Avengers movie? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along revealed a new version of Wanda Maximoff’s son this week and the actor that had the role before in the MCU reacted to the news. WandaVision fans grew to love Julian Hillard as Billy in the Disney+ series. On social media, the MCU actor praised Joe Locke for his performance in Agatha All Along Episode 5. While the name Billy hasn’t been said yet, it’s pretty clear that the mysterious teen is supposed to be Wanda’s son.  Hillard said, “Joe Locke is awesome y’all… I fully support whatever role he plays in the MCU.” It’s a kind gesture and garnered a lot of love for the younger version of Billy online.

So, the call is already there for Joe Locke whenever he wants it. Since this is The Multiverse Saga, there’s still a chance that both Billy’s could be on screen together before Avengers: Secret Wars is done and dusted. Interestingly, one thing that Hillard had on his vision board might now be on Locke’s to-do list as well: being a Young Avenger. The team continues to build in the background of all these Phase 4 and 5 Marvel Studios titles. Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Cassie Lang, Skaar, Billy, Ironheart and more have already found their way into the mix for whatever’s next. The Direct previously asked Hillard about joining up and he sounded thrilled about it.

“I’m up for anything. I think it would be cool to do more projects with Xochitl, and yeah, all the ones you mentioned too. I’d love to see some sort of Children’s Crusade adaptation,” Hillard admitted. “That’s my favorite Billy story. It would be fun to see Billy and Kid Loki interact, and Alligator Loki too. And, of course, can’t forget Teddy! Ooh, and Iron Lad!”

Agatha All Along Is Not Short On Surprises

Agatha All Along Has demonstrated that Marvel Studios has its eyes on the future with every passing episode. Remember the fervor back in Episode 3 when Mephisto finally got dropped into an episode of one of these Marvel TV shows. Moments like that are helping build the idea that the forward arching plan can move forward even in series where you would least expect it. One of the main theories dancing across the entirety of WandaVision was that Mephisto would appear at some point to be at the core of this problem with Billy and Tommy’s existence. Now, Agatha All Along is geared towards telling the story of our main character. But, it’s clear that Marvel has some other plans in the works too.

Director Jac Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter that the call to include Mephisto came all the way from the top. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, Marvel Television head Brad Winderbaum and executive producer Mary Livanos all had a conversation about including the famous Marvel villain in the latest series. With that level of communication, it would seem something is brewing with the demon somewhere down the line in the MCU. At any rate, fans reacted to that news with the kind of candor you would expect. Viewers are now hoping for a possible cameo from the actor who’s playing Mephisto before the end of this show. It remains to be seen if that will happen. But, anything is really possible when you dig down into it.

“It was a conversation with [Agatha] executive producer Mary Livanos, [Marvel’s head of streaming] Brad [Winderbaum] and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige], but it is a mention that is larger than me and this show,” Schaeffer began. “It is the larger Marvel-ness of it. So it is not about me bristling or having any kind of a reaction or agenda, mostly because that type of fevered discourse that is very, very rooted in the comics is not as interesting to me as the current story being told in the series at hand.”

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We’re over halfway through Marvel’s Agatha All Along, and the Disney+ series absolutely is not pulling any punches. The series aims to flesh out the magical side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe through the lens of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and her coven, which has included some unexpected and clever homages to Marvel Comics thus far. As the newly-released fifth episode of Agatha All Along reveals, the series’ plans have included given a major Marvel Comics group a new update. Spoilers for Episode 5 of Agatha All Along lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

The majority of Agatha All Along’s fifth episode concerns the Witches’ Road trial for Agatha herself — an ’80s-themed horror adventure that reckoned with her storied past as a witch. Prior to that, Agatha and the coven began to be attacked by a group of cloaked witches, who are quickly identified as the Salem’s Seven. As the coven reveals to Teen (Joe Locke), the Salem’s Seven are directly connected to the witches whose energy Agatha drained during the Salem Witch Trials. More specifically, the Salem Seven are the descendants of those witches, who are only alive because Agatha decided to spare their lives as children.

Who Are the Salem’s Seven in Marvel Comics?

This reveal for the Salem’s Seven differs a bit from how the group are portrayed in Marvel Comics. Created by Len Wein and George Perez in 1977’s Fantastic Four #186, the comic version of the Salem’s Seven are actually Agatha’s grandchildren, and the direct children of Nicholas Scratch. Armed with the ability to transform into magical beings resembling lions, snakes, and fish, the Salem’s Seven grow to become major antagonists of both Agatha, Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch, and the Fantastic Four, the latter of whom Agatha serves as governess for. The group was rebooted in the Ultimate Universe as a team of heroes, who were later revealed to be evil.

According to the end credits of Agatha All Along, the MCU’s version of the Salem’s Seven do share a naming scheme similar to their comic counterparts, with names like Snake, Crow, Owl, and Fox. That being said, there’s no telling at this point if Agatha All Along will lean fully into the group’s shapeshifting abilities from the comics, or if they will just be mysterious and creepy witches who continue to target Agatha and the coven (or, what’s left of them, that is). Either way, this new approach to the Salem’s Seven’s origin story definitely adds some personal stakes to their connection with Agatha, without having to directly answer exactly what is going on with the show’s version of Nicholas Scratch.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, 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…

In addition to Kathryn Hahn, Agatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

“One of the biggest was that it was Jac Schaeffer, because she created all of that,” Hahn explained to ComicBook earlier this year. “She kind of created this iteration of Agatha, because she’s all over the place comics-wise, and touches on so many worlds. And so, that creation of this Agatha was so beautifully crafted by her. But it was very important, to both of us, that it honored Westview and the world of Westview, and also started in reality of what would happen next. And so, it’s really about her gaining, not even her powers back, but them changing. She shifts.”

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along fans think they’ve figured out what’s coming in Episode 6, and Scarlet Witch fans should be excited. Episode 5 just revealed that Joe Locke’s Teen is Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. So, social media has been buzzing since the moment the pictures of that crown hit the timeline. But, some fans have already tabbed Agatha All Along’s sixth episode as a flashback sequence for the young witch. Cross referencing promotional materials, they discovered the Episode Guide graphic that Marvel Studios put out before the premiere has Episode 6 circled in red ink. With Wanda Maximoff’s son now confirmed for the show, it would make sense to have the Scarlet Witch get mentioned in the upcoming episode. Viewers were left to ponder how much Billy knew about his parents and the origins of his powers. It looks like this week will provide some answers.

Episode 6 could very well explain how Billy even exists considering his status at the end of WandaVision. Back in that Disney+ series, fans learned that Wanda Maximoff had conjured her sons Billy & Tommy and a version of Vision with the destructive power of Chaos Magic. Upon lifting her spell from the town of Westview, the boys and their father disappeared. (Not before a doppelganger of Vision flew out into the larger MCU. Yeah, WandaVision was wild.) However, it’s established that other places in the multiverse have variants of Billy and Tommy. So, Wanda threatened to destroy every universe to be reunited with them and paid for it with her life. Maybe, Teen is a variant? Could it be Mephisto striking a bargain with the Scarlet Witch? Or is it something else entirely? We’re probably about to find out in Agatha All Along Episode 6.

The next installment of Agatha All Along is poised to set the table for the road to the series finale. We’ve already seen Billy in a crown, so we need to know where he came from and why he lured Agatha Harkness down The Witches’ Road. If Episode 6 is indeed a flashback to the path that led this boy here, it would go a long way to answering some important Scarlet Witch questions while simultaneously giving us some answers about why Agatha has been keeping him around. With the line of, “You’re so much like your mother” still bouncing around in everyone’s skulls, Marvel Studios could turn up the heat even higher if it decides to link back to Scarlet Witch with the upcoming episode. This is Agatha’s tale, but it’s become clear that she and Wanda Maximoff are intrinsically linked in the MCU. Billy has become a bridge for all of those connections to come into the light again.

Agatha All Along Has Been Teasing More Scarlet Witch Details

For weeks, Agatha All Along has dangled those Scarlet Witch Easter eggs for anyone paying attention. A lot of MCU fans are fully locked into  the WandaVision spinoff series because of the possibility of Wanda Maximoff returning. It isn’t the only reason, but it certainly hasn’t hurt matters. Director Jac Schaeffer knows that people really want more information about what’s going on with the Scarlet Witch. But, she’s encouraging them to remember that Agatha All Along is about Kathryn Hahn’s villain, not our favorite Avengers. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, she acknowledged the long shadow that Elizabeth Olsen’s character is casting over the show. It’s only natural the writer of WandaVision would be expected to help bring back an MCU favorite. Despite those thoughts, we’re focused on Agatha now.

“There was a lot of consideration. That’s a great way of articulating it: her shadow. Agatha is not a character who’s going to stand in anyone’s shadow. So this is emphatically Agatha Harkness’ show,” Schaeffer told the outlet. “However, we are in the WandaVision corner of the universe, so Wanda’s legacy has threads in this narrative. But, yeah, it is about Agatha. It’s about her journey, it’s about the truth of her, and that is very much our focus with the show.”

In everything leading up to Episode 6, that’s been true. While there have been overt references to Wanda Maximoff, the focus has stayed on Agatha Harkness and her familiar. But, as Joe Locke’s character revealed his identity this week, it’s only natural that fans might want to get some bread crumbs about the Scarlet Witch. While a full-blown cameo seems like a longshot at this point, there’s still some hope out there for any information that Marvel Studios sees fit to divulge. For now, the wait continues. But, Episode 6 could bring a ton of excitement if Teen’s backstory ends up explaining what’s going on with Wanda.

Do you think we get a big Scarlet Witch moment during the next Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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The ComicBook Nation crew reviews the new cult-horror flick Terrifier 3, and discuss the pivotal new Marvel Cinematic Universe character revealed in Agatha All Along’s new episode! 

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PLUS: DC’s Absolute Batman launches its debut issue; the DC Universe has cast John Stewart/Green Lantern; James Wan’s mysterious new show Teacup has dropped and the Batman (1989) Universe will continue!

Terrifier 3 Review – Is it Really That Grotesque?

ComicBook Nation’s Evan Valentine went out and saw Terrifier 3 and had this to say about it:

Terrifier 3 is now in theaters and Art The Clown has given horror junkies his bloodiest, goriest, and downright most jaw-dropping misadventure yet. While the third entry of the series might not be as long in runtime as Part 2, it somehow crammed in far more grotesque moments as the killer clown attempts to share his version of the holiday season.

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Agatha All Along Episode 5 had the most overt Scarlet Witch tease during this week’s tensest moments. While “Teen” is arguing with Agatha Harkness about killing Alice Wu-Gulliver, the older witch tells Joe Locke’s character that “you’re so much like your mother.” When that happens, some sonically gifted Marvel fans detected a small snippet of Wanda’s Theme from WandaVision. If that’s not underlining who our beloved “Teen” is at this point, I don’t know what to tell you. So, clearly, Locke is playing Billy and will be the Marvel hero Wiccan by the end of this show. And, if Wanda Maximoff’s son is here, does she turn up by the end of the show? This is all wild stuff if you’re a big fan of the Scarlet Witch and hoping for a return before Avengers: Secret Wars. Agatha All Along’s theories just keep multiplying as the weeks go on.

Billy being on the board so early comes as a shock to a lot of Agatha All Along viewers. In the Disney+ model/format, the costume change or heroic entrance happens in the second to last episode usually. In introducing Locke as Wanda Maximoff’s long-lost son so early, the show managed to outsmart the fanbase because of those expectations. Billy telling Agatha that witches shouldn’t hurt other people for their own benefit draws a direct comparison to how the Scarlet Witch behaved in Westview during WandaVision as well. The MCU did gesture towards those facts during Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and had Wanda sacrifice herself to save the multiverse. But, there’s still some examination that could happen there.

Scarlet Witch’s return is something that’s taken over social media in the weeks that Agatha All Along has been on the air. The first episode of this series was not shy about tossing some very meta references to the audience. A red haired “Jane Doe” dressed just like Wanda Maximoff from her last MCU appearance? The name W. Maximoff on a library book card used as a toe tag? The red hair cascading down from the dead body in the morgue? Agatha and John Collins looking directly to camera when talking about how their victim got crushed? The Scarlet Witch teasing radiated off every frame. But, this takes things to another level. The viewer has to wonder if Agatha knew that Billy was Wanda’s son this whole time. If so, what does that mean for the Scarlet Witch’s MCU future. A great show continues to pile-on the mysteries at the halfway point. 

Agatha All Along Reveals Wanda’s Son is Alive Somehow?

This is far from the first week of Agatha All Along with a massive hint about Wanda Maximoff coming back. But, it is a concrete breadcrumb on the way to a Scarlet Witch resurrection. Everyone involved with this show has been asked about Elizabeth Olsen making her way back to Marvel multiple times. Including the actress herself! During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Olsen didn’t sound opposed to a future with the MCU. If she hasn’t heard about the fan buzz surrounding Agatha All Along yet, someone needs to tell her. It feels like the WandaVision fever is back in a massive way. All these hints probably should lead to a reveal at the end, but we’ll have to wait and see. Olsen is just hanging out like the rest of us from the sounds of things. 

“I mean, no, but I would love to pop up. I love Kathryn, I don’t want to leave her side ever, I’m so grateful she’s here tonight,” Olsen said earlier this year. The star added that she would love to reunite with Hahn as well as Paul Bettany (Vision). “We do think, ‘Gosh, we just gotta do it again!‘ We just had a really great time making that show, and with Paul, it was really a special time, so we would love to get the gang back.”

So, for now, we all wait for the eventual Scarlet Witch return. After the events of Agatha All Along Episode 5, the chances of seeing the MCU favorite again feel like they’re sky high. Nothing is for certain until the bell sounds though. Previous Marvel Studios Television series have built up a ton of intrigue before the finales couldn’t quite tie everything up in a bow. This is the biggest positive for Agatha All Along, they’ve gotten the Billy/Wiccan reveal out of the way so that other theme and story beats could take their place at the ending. Without needing to address Joe Locke’s character as a big secret, we can get onto other business.

Do you think Scarlet Witch is coming back at the end of Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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This week’s Agatha All Along, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”, marked the midpoint of the Disney+ series and it was the wildest episode to date. The episode saw not only a shocking death among the coven, but the revelation of Teen’s (Joe Locke) real identity right before he tossed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Lilia (Patti LuPone), and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) off the road entirely and watched as the witches sank into the mysterious mud. While the events are a lot to unpack — and the unexpected death of Alice (Ali Ahn) — feels very much like not only a hard shift for the series with this dark turn, Episode 5 may have also raised a major question about everything we know about Agatha Harkness and it’s possible we may not know the witch very well at all.

When it comes to what we know about Agatha actually begins in WandaVision. In the eighth episode of that series, “Previously On”, we learn that in 1693 a coven of witches led by Agatha’s own mother, Evanora, tried to kill her for practicing dark magic but instead of dying at the hands of the coven, Agatha drains their magic and their life forces, killing the coven instead. That act is revisited, in a sense, in the second episode of Agatha All Along, “Circle Sewn With Fate/Unlock Thy Hidden Gate”, when Agatha explains to Lilia that she can only take another witch’s powers if she’s blasted by them. The explanation serves to clarify why Agatha hasn’t simply just stolen powers now that she’s out of Wanda’s spell, but it also ends up being a bit of foreshadowing for Episode 5. In Episode 5, the third trial of the Witches’ Road is said to be Agatha’s and revolves around a spirit declaring that Agatha must be punished. The ghost of Evanora shows up and possesses Agatha briefly, then declares that Agatha was born evil, and moves to possess her again, presumably this being part of Agatha’s punishment. However, Alice attempts to intervene and attacks, using her powers to expel Evanora from Agatha’s body. The act does save Agatha, but Agatha quickly begins absorbing Alice’s magic, resulting in her death.

While this may seem very much in keeping with Agatha’s previous actions — absorbing the magic of others and killing them for her own gain — and certainly is read that way by the others, particularly Teen, if you watch the episode carefully there is something a bit more nuanced there and it suggests that we may all be critically misunderstanding Agatha’s powers. When Alice initially blasts Agatha and the power absorption begins, Agatha looks truly horrified and briefly appears to be trying to resist, though in short order we see her start to draw more and more power. When it’s over, Agatha looks stricken and even horrified by Alice’s death and quickly leaves the challenge. Briefly alone on the road, Agatha is clearly shaken and when Teen arrives shortly after and confronts her, Agatha tries to explain herself, insisting it was accidental, though the young man won’t hear it.

Here’s the thing, though: I think Agatha is telling the truth. Agatha is very clearly too shaken by Alice’s death for what happened to have been intentional and, more than that, Agatha did seem to genuinely struggle against taking Alice’s powers when it started, though she was quickly sucked into it. One can’t deny that Agatha doesn’t appear to be relieved or even glad to have power again, but she just doesn’t seem very comfortable with how it went down. Additionally, the only other time that we’re aware of Agatha draining another witch to her death came in a similar situation — when Agatha’s own life was at risk. When Agatha took the magic from the coven attacking her in 1693, those witches were trying to kill her. It’s possible that Agatha took their power reflexively as she tried to save her own life. What this could mean is that Agatha really cannot control her ability to absorb the powers of other witches. It could simply be an automatic reaction to being blasted, like a self-preservation instinct that kicks in that she has little to no control over.

If we are misunderstanding Agatha’s power and it’s something that she doesn’t really have control over, this changes a lot about our perception of Agatha. Agatha may not be quite as sinister as she’s been presented as and while this certainly doesn’t absolve her of the things we can confirm she’s done — she did still kill Sparky after all — knowing more about her powers offers us a way to look at the witch through a trauma informed lens. If Agatha can’t really control her powers, much of the vitriol and malignment that she’s experienced in her life, including what she got from her own mother, was undeserved. It is absolutely something that would make her jaded, but she would also probably lean into her potentially undeserved reputation as a form of armor. If people mistrust her and think she’s “evil”, they’re less likely to attack her and thus, she’s less likely to accidentally take another life when her powers are triggered again.

What’s perhaps most heartbreaking, though, is that if we are misunderstanding Agatha’s powers, it makes Alice’s death all the more tragic. While Teen assumes that the coven has a disregard for life when it comes to the acquisition of power, thus making being a witch a selfish affair, Agatha genuinely accidentally killing Alice is just one more overall misconception about witches and another unfair malignment that has held them back and made them reviled for centuries. It’s the kind of misconception that breeds division even among a group that needs solidarity now more than ever and could even make the remainder of the journey ahead even more treacherous for everyone involved. If they survived being thrown off of the Witches’ Road, that is. Only time will tell.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.

The post Agatha All Along: What If We Have Agatha’s Powers All Wrong? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Agatha All Along broke one of the most common Marvel rules this week and the show is one of the strongest Disney+ efforts to date because of it. Episode 5 of the MCU show brought massive reveals about Joe Locke’s Teen actually being Wanda Maximoff’s son Billy. The final moments of this installment set social media on fire. But, more importantly, they bucked a years-long MCU Disney+ trend. In a lot of the other Marvel Studios streaming programming, the big massive reveals are saved for the final two chapters of a season. Be it Sam Wilson becoming Captain America or Loki confronting He Who Remains. (Two times in that case!) Those last two episodes are always trying to catch the audience off-guard and it usually works.

But, this time, we’re getting the mystery of Billy out of here before 75% of the series has played out. He even got his diadem, just like dear old mom before the credits rolled. Director Jac Schaeffer and her team are clicking on all cylinders at the halfway mark of Agatha All Along. The Marvel fandom is as engaged online as they have been in a long time, and even attempts to ruin this surprise have fallen flat by the methods Marvel Studios had chosen to deploy it. After all, in most other MCU shows, Billy would have been a massive highlight saved for the final chapters. Now, fans are wondering what else might be hiding in the back end of the show if Wiccan has already been partially confirmed!

All of these developments helps explain how Agatha All Along is doing so well on Disney+. We’ve gotten reports and word from Marvel Studios itself that the series is the lowest budget show of this new era. In addition, Agatha’s solo outing also has the highest retention rate of the MCU shows. That means people got caught up in the curiosity around the premiere episodes and decided to stick around. Maybe, a big part of this positive appeal is how different the entire enterprise feels to other superhero TV? (And in its own way, a vindication of the subtle goals of Phase 4 to craft a big tent where there’s a little something for everyone in the MCU.) If the rest of the show can entice viewers the way the first five chapters have, Agatha All Along could find itself alongside WandaVision as the class of the Disney+ Marvel offerings.

Agatha All Along Exceeds Expectations On Disney+

Every week it seems like Agatha All Along finds a way to exceed expectations. Some MCU fans believed that the WandaVision spinoff series wasn’t going to be an essential installment in the Multiverse Saga. However, the latest MCU series has proven to be surprising in Phase 5. Agatha All Along probably got greenlit because of the dynamite performance of its predecessor. Flashback to 2021, and there weren’t many Marvel fans that weren’t partially in love with Kathryn Hahn’s nosy neighbor. Fast forward to late 2024, and that seems to still be the case among a ton of the viewers out there. ComicBook asked Marvel TV head Brad Winderbaum about following-up WandaVision and he called the decision a no-brainer because of the creative team involved with the project.

“Well, it really comes down to Jac [Schaefer, showrunner]. And Jac brought that world to life in WandaVision. And Kathryn Hahn embodying that role, I mean, she became an icon on screen,” Winderbaum told us. “Agatha was always a side character. She’s a villain in WandaVision. But like Wolverine showing up in an issue of Incredible Hulk, you never know what the audience is going to respond to. And Agatha was no different. So, as soon as Jac became inspired, we all just went down the road with her.”

For Marvel Studios, it’s been really important for fans to be able to enter Agatha All Along without having the requirement of watching WandaVision beforehand. Yes, people might be coming from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and other MCU titles to visit Westview again with Agatha. But, it’s important to remember that not everyone that picks up their remote and scrolls over to Disney Plus has followed every single bit of Scarlet Witch’s MCU history since Avengers: Age of Ultron. Striking that balance is key, and Agatha All Along is doing a great job of making room for newer viewers.

“I mean, I would say that if you know the MCU, it might justify a few things that happen in kind of a prologue way,” Winderbaum added. “But if you’re coming to it straight from WandaVision or you’re coming to it, frankly, never having watched another Marvel show before, you get the information you need about the characters you need for the journey.”

How did you like the big Agatha All Along reveals? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

The post Agatha All Along Breaks MCU Disney+ Rule and It’s the Smartest Thing Marvel’s Done This Year appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Five episodes in, Agatha All Along has been a hit for Disney+, with the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe project taking audiences back to the world first introduced in WandaVision as it follows what’s next for Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) after Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) left her powerless. But while the series is taking viewers on a journey down the mythical Witches’ Road and giving them new characters to be fascinated by thanks to Agatha’s rag-tag coven, the series is doing something else: giving fans a great new song that they just can’t get out of their head. “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” has already become a bonafide Billboard hit, but the song — written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez who were also behind WandaVision’s “Agatha All Along” — isn’t just a banger of a tune. The song also has strong ties to the plot of the series as well.

ComicBook recently sat down with Anderson-Lopez and Lopez to talk about “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road” to find out about how they made their own magic with the song and it turns out that the song not only had to combine elements of the story it’s so integral to with witch lore and more, but the creators had a very creative way of figuring it all out. The duo explained that Lopez read the scripts of the series sent to them by creator Jac Schaeffer out loud and acted out each role in the car while Anderson-Lopez drove.

“Jac sent us eight episodes that were all sort of drafted and it was a summer we were working really hard and the only time we had was when we were driving and I’m the driver in our family,” Anderson-Lopez said. “So, Bobby read every episode playing all the characters beautifully and I could just see how much we were going to love this story and that sort of set the tone for how smart and subversive and campy and joyful the whole thing was.”

Lopez explained that once they had a feel for the story and the characters, they then started coming up with the vibe of the song — starting with the 70s-inspired Lorna Wu version of the song.

“And then we had talked with Jac about a lot about the kind of song that they wanted it to be and we all agreed that we were going to start with the 70s ballad, Lorna’s, because that one was the kind of the most complex and it also needed to sound like it was a number one hit, which is a very daunting thing to be asked to write a 70s hit,” Lopez said. “So, we started there and we knew that there’s these songs, you know, the Fleetwood Mac was one thing she tossed out and Hotel California, there was there’s certainly like a type of song from that time period that casts a spell and we wanted to do that. So, we really started with this vamp… and then Kristen went into her office, kind of locked the door and laid everything out on her writing bed.”

“I have a writing bed and I had like three different screens up, a thesaurus and like 10 pieces of paper with important plot points, dialogue, witch research that needed to be brought into everything and then I knew that I had to take all that but turn it into a love song that would have been a hit,” Anderson-Lopez said. “So what was fun was… doing the puzzle of how I could take all of these words and all these elements and have a through line, which the through line of that song is a little bit of how scary it is to love somebody, how like you don’t know if it’s going to go foul or fair like and then also we had the fun of like knowing the bridge had to be a protection spell, that the bridge had to be this whole other element.”

The writers said it took them just around six weeks to write all of the versions of “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road”, which seems like an impressive feat considering that there are multiple versions of the song in the series. But what might be most interesting about it all goes back to how the duo got their feel for Agatha All Along in the first place. While Lopez read all of the characters as he acted out the episodes in the car, it turns out his favorite character to read for was Lili Calderu, who at the time he didn’t realize was going to be played by Patti LuPone.

“I really liked reading Lilia for some reason and I didn’t know it was going to be Patti LuPone so I sort of did I did sort of more of a Brooklyn kind of voice,” he said.

And of course, “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road has since gone on to give LuPone her first Billboard hit song. LuPone has previously charted on a chart that focuses on albums, but “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” debuting on the Digital Song Sales chart at No. 22 is her first song. Maybe there’s actual magic in the Ballad after all.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9 pm ET.

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Agatha All Along hit its midpoint this week with Episode 5, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power” and it was an episode that was full of developments. Not only did Episode 5 see the tragic death of Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) and the revelation of Teen’s (Joe Locke) real identity, but the episode also saw a major status quo shift when the rest of the coven were thrown from the road by Teen, certainly making fans wonder exactly what is coming next. However, the episode also saw the return of the Salem Seven as the terrifying group chased the coven but it’s the reappearance of the group that has prompted quite a few questions — including one about the real nature of Agatha’s trial.

When the coven enters the third trial, they quickly deduce that it is Agatha’s trial and it certainly seems that way. The coven has to use a Ouija board which puts them in contact with a spirit claiming to be Death that says that Agatha needs to be punished. Everything that happens in the trial is very centered on Agatha, specifically the ghost of her mother, Evanora Harkness, and even the death of Alice when the latter blasts Agatha with her powers in an attempt to expel Evanora from her body. However, if you really think about the third trial and contrast it with the first two, there is something a little off about it, almost like it’s not necessarily Agatha’s trial at all.

In both the first and second trial, the witch at the center of it gained something or their specific powers were an integral part of things. The first trial was centered around Jen (Sasheer Zamata) who had to figure out not only what was happening to them with the poisoned wine, but then had to dig into her knowledge of potions to save them — something that was meaningful because Jen has been bound and, therefore, without her power for a long time. The second trial was focused on Alice and ultimately ended up being about ending a family curse through the use of a protection spell, specifically her mother’s version of The Ballad of the Witches’ Road. Coming out of that trial left Alice with closure about her mother and freed her from the curse. The third trial, however, didn’t really serve to do anything for Agatha. It was bent on tormenting the witch with her own trauma and while one could argue that she got power back with the death of Alice, the trial simply didn’t have the same vibe as the previous two.

If the third trial really wasn’t Agatha’s real “trial”, that could point to something else as being the real thing that Agatha will have to face before her time on the Witches’ Road ends and that thing may well be the Salem Seven. The group showed up on the Road in the episode, having made their way there after a door was left open when the coven summoned Rio, but while the group is determined to attack Agatha, it’s the actual eventual facing of the Salem Seven that could be the real trial because of their connection to Agatha’s past. Rio explains to the coven that the Salem Seven are the children of Agatha’s original coven. As fans will recall, Agatha killed her original coven — and we’re reminded of this in the episode’s opening — when they attempted to kill her for using “dark magic”. Apparently, after Agatha killed the coven, she chose to spare the children but it would seem that they have become bitter over the centuries — Rio describes them as being feral.

Given the very personal connection Agatha has to the Salem Seven, the real trial for Agatha may be facing them herself to deal with what her actions in 1693 caused for them. That isn’t to say that what happened in the third trial wasn’t significant, but it just feels like there is something more that Agatha needs to face that just being tortured by a spirit that is revealed to be her son Nicholas Scratch. Even if facing the Salem Seven isn’t Agatha’s official “trial” however, it’s pretty clear that some sort of showdown is coming and that it will be significant. The only real question at this point is when that showdown will happen and how; after all, Teen did chuck the entire coven off the road and into the mud which seemed to consume them all, including Agatha, at the episode’s end.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays at 9pm ET.

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Agatha All Along had another MCU death this week, and the way that moment ties into WandaVision makes it even more heartbreaking. Ali Ahn’s Alice Wu-Gulliver dies trying to save Agatha Harkness from her ghostly mother. That’s right, Evanorra Harkness is back as an apparition this week and still played by Kate Forbes. True to her name, the older Harkness witch is out here causing trouble and possessing her daughter during the latest Trial of The Witches’ Road. (The Wizard of Oz has been referenced numerous times over the course of this series…) Agatha’s personal struggles include the loss of her son, NIcholas Scratch and facing down her own family trauma in the form of Evanorra. While the rest of the coven discovers the key to escaping Agatha’s trial, Alice steps in to save her when the elder Harkness takes control of Kathryn Hahn’s character for the second time this episode.

Alice puts up a good fight in the magical struggle, but she’s drained of her powers in the exact same way we saw Agatha suck the life out of those Salem witches back in WandaVision. Teen is noticeably distraught by the loss of their new friend. Meanwhile, the Harkness curse has claimed another victim and it’s not clear if Agatha has control over her magic-leaching abilities. When everyone is taking a moment to understand what happened to Alice, Kathryn Hahn’s witch just scampers up the ladder to continue down the road. It will be a couple more weeks before we get to see the Harkness curse defined in full. Evanora argued that Agatha was evil from the moment she was born. Could she have more in-common with Alice than we could have realized at the start of the series? It sure seems like it.

But, there’s another layer of family trauma being passed down in this week’s Agatha All Along. Teen was revealed to be Billy. Agatha directly told him “you’re so much like your mother.” That directly points to Wanda Maximoff being the mysterious parent that the entire Internet has been speculating about. Billy argues that witches shouldn’t hurt other people for their personal gain. But, then the boy goes and tosses the entire coven into the tar pit of The Witches’ Road because he got mad. (That’s some Scarlet Witch-level power if we’ve ever seen it.) Billy is going to have to wrestle with the complicated legacy of both his mother and his mentor moving forward in Agatha All Along. Mothers and children are proving to be a major theme here and there might be even more intrigue coming as this MCU series settles into the homestretch.

Agatha All Along Says Goodbye To Alice In A Shocking Sequence

Unfortunately, because of the massive reveal at the end of Agatha All Along Episode 5, some people are just going to gloss over Alice’s death. But, Ali Ahn really deserves her flowers for showing some real fire as the Blood Witch in Agatha’s coven. Last week, her trial was one of the most fun installments of Agatha All Along yet. Alice’s strained relationship to her mother because of a generational curse was something that a lot of viewers could relate to. It feels like the writers probably gave the witch that measure of closure ahead of the tragic fate waiting for her in Episode 5. (Not to mention another signal to the fans that anyone and everyone is vulnerable in this show. After all, Agatha herself was literally tossed down into the murky soil of The Witches’ Road by the end of this episode.) It’s going to be weird to be missing multiple members of the coven after things had seemingly turned a corner.

Clearly Marvel Studios wanted to prepare the fans for the tragic events of Episode 5 this week. Ahn talked to The Official Marvel Podcast about her experience going down The Witches’ Road so far. Episode 4 was her trial and Alice played a massive role i n solving the generational curse and demon that was trying to pick off the coven members one by one. She also got to sing “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” as a 70’s cover song. The fans appreciate all the costume changes and the new versions of the popular song.

“She’s got a lot of armor because she’s really mushy on the inside. I think that’s really interesting to see, if you can fight your inherited defense mechanisms,” Ahn explained. “I think everyone can relate to ‘Mommy Issues’, right? Everyone’s got a little ‘Mommy Issues.’”

When it came to the actual performance of the ballad, Ahn was absolutely prepared for a live performance if need be. “I was practicing my little hiney off on this rented keyboard because I wasn’t sure if I was playing the song live, I didn’t know what it was going to be,” she continued. “But, it’s cool! We got to be in a band together! It was so fun. And that song is amazing. It felt like such an honor to play an original song like that.”

Were you expecting that death during Agatha All Along this week? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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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.

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We are officially halfway through Agatha All Along, Marvel Studios’ newest and spookiest new Disney+ series. In addition to continuing the events of WandaVision, the episodes thus far have raised some fascinating questions about their colorful cast of characters. One of the biggest has been the true identity of the show’s mysterious Teen (Joe Locke) — and it looks like we finally have our answer. Spoilers for Episode 5 of Agatha All Along below! Only look if you want to know!

The episode takes the coven through their latest trial, an emotional reckoning for Agatha themed in the aesthetic of an ’80s teen slasher. As the rest of the witches begin to learn about Agatha’s deadly past — as well as her strained relationship with her mom, who appears as a ghost to haunt her daughter — things suddenly take a turn for the worst. Agatha drains Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) of her magic, appearing to kill her in the process, which upsets Teen. When back on the Road, Teen confronts Agatha about Alice’s death, taking issue with the idea that witches can kill as long as it serves their own personal goals. Agatha coy remarks that Teen is “just like [his] mother”, and he retaliates in a major way, trapping Agatha, Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) and Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone) beneath the Road’s muddy surface. Teen is able to do so thanks to light blue energy that radiates from his fingertips, as an ornate crown magically appears on his forehead. While it is never said outright, this seems to visually confirm the prevailing fan theory — that Teen is secretly an older Billy Maximoff / Wiccan, one of the sons of Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).

Granted, Episode 5 of Agatha All Along does briefly present some red herrings for Teen’s identity earlier in the episode. Another prevailing theory has been that he is secretly Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son who she traded to Mephisto years ago — which could be another alternate way to read the “just like your mother” comment. But all signs seem to point towards Teen being Billy, from his mysterious past (which is not unlike the Billy Maximoff/Billy Kaplan switcheroo in the comics) to the visual similarities between his crown and Wanda’s Scarlet Witch ensemble. Hell, even the outfit he wears during the ’80s-themed trial resembles the comic-accurate Wiccan costume, down to the headband. While we’ll most likely have to wait until Episode 6 of Agatha All Along to get a definitive answer — and to discover the fate of the coven’s other witches — the ending sets up some major stakes for the remainder of the season.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, 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…

In addition to Kathryn Hahn, Agatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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All things Beauty dominate both our lists this week! An error book again ensnares the masses as they chase the forbidden fruit. Fantasma is riding the wave of popularity, while Lady Death is receiving serious attention. We may have our Amadeus Cho of the future, but Halloween is taking some attention as fans check in with a longtime stalwart of the genre, with just a pinch of Bride of Frankenstein. Don’t fear what goes bump at night; it’s merely this week’s Top Ten!

Want to know what comic books are trending each week and why? COVRPRICE.COM uses live sales analytics to identify and compile the most robust market price guide, highlighting the weekly top trending comics. No opinions. Just data. Each week, they present a newly updated list of the TOP 10 COMICS trending in the aftermarket. These trends are due to rumors, fan-favorite covers, story-driven content, and content-related news.

1: THE BEAUTY #1 | IMAGE | AUGUST 2015

It took a week for the market to catch up, but it’s been on a tear since then! At the tail end of September, it was finally announced that FX ordered this book to series and attached some big stars to the project. However, adaptation rumors began circulating back in 2020. Sometimes, it takes that long for projects to land and start getting made. Consumers opened their wallets at the site of actors like Evan Peters being attached to the project, and it’s been off to the races since! We tracked it at a high sale of $115 for a CGC 9.8 copy and a current NM raw price of $8.

2: X-MEN #5 – ELIZABETH TORQUE – ERROR (1:25) | MARVEL | OCTOBER 2024

Good golly, the community loves them an error/recalled book. This book does nothing to buck the trend, as fans immediately flocked to their LCS or the aftermarket to secure a misprinted copy. It’s simply designated issue #1 on the cover when we’re on issue five of this run. But, when collectors can secure an error copy of a variant issue, they’re going to do their damnedest to secure a copy. We tracked it at a high sale of $100 for a CGC 9.8 copy and a current NM raw price of $30.

3: PILOT SEASON: THE BEAUTY #1 – JEREMY HAUN – REGULAR | IMAGE | OCTOBER 2011

Beauty #1 holds the top spot on this list, but many have overlooked this book, which came out four years prior. The Pilot Season books were a way for Image to conceptualize a series and gauge fan interest. This was one of those books, with The Beauty first debuting a month before Image gave audiences a closer look. Fans have been looking to this issue as the first appearance of the Beauty, but that distinction is held by the #11 spot on our lists. We tracked it at a high sale of $32 for an NM copy and a current NM raw price of $26.

4: HELLO DARKNESS #3 – PAOLO RIVERA – VIRGIN (1 PER STORE) | BOOM! STUDIOS | SEPTEMBER 2024

This book was hot last week, and that’s not surprising. Fans adore these one-per-store “Thank You” variants, especially those with half-naked women on the cover. It certainly catches the eye and did so enough two weeks running to warrant a spot on this list! We tracked it at a high sale of $93 for an NM copy and a current NM raw price of $73.

5: GHOST RIDER: ROBBIE REYES SPECIAL #1 – GERARDO SANDOVAL | MARVEL | OCTOBER 2024

Fantasma has been steadily hyped for months, and with this book, she’s finally here! It marks her first FULL appearance as a new member of the Ghost Rider community. We’ve highlighted this book several times since it began circulating that she would make her full formal debut within. Now that she’s here, she’s enjoying a healthy aftermarket. We tracked it at a high sale of $18 for an NM copy and a current NM raw price of $12.

6: THE BEAUTY #1 – JENNY FRISON | IMAGE | AUGUST 2015

All covers for this book have been heating up since receiving the ‘optioned’ treatment—especially those with superstar artists contributing their work, including Jenny Frison in this book. Let’s be real: Frison is one of the hottest names in the game, and this book debuted right when she was REALLY picking up some traction. Her fanbase has only grown, thus, a higher volume of those looking to check multiple boxes with their pickup. We tracked it at a high sale of $175 for a CGC 9.8 copy and a current NM raw price of $35.

7: MARK SPEARS MONSTERS #1 – MARK SPEARS – COVER E – BRIDEZILLA | KEENSPOT ENTERTAINMENT | SEPTEMBER 2024

With Halloween around the corner, we’ll see many covers that inspire the ‘holiday’ cross this list. But this book has been in the Top Ten for weeks now, and that’s not by mistake. It kicked off a spooky season as fans around the country started receiving their copies of this limited Kickstarter edition variant featuring the Bride of Frankenstein. It quickly jumped up charts everywhere as those who missed out scrambled to secure a copy. We tracked it at a high sale of $147 for an NM copy and a current NM raw price of $61.

8: SVENGOOLIE: 45TH ANNIVERSARY BOO-NANZA #1 – PHOTO (1:10) | GEMSTONE | OCTOBER 2024

For the uninitiated, Svengoolie has been a TV horror show coming out of Chicago since 1970! Primarily appearing on MeTV, Svengoolie has occasionally appeared in comics. As the spooky season is upon us, we got another Svengoolie book celebrating their monumental anniversary with an IRL photo of the crew for this 1:10 variant. Written by Sven and the team, longtime fans we’re quick to secure a copy on the aftermarket! We tracked it at a high sale of $50 for an NM copy and a current NM raw price of $35.

 9: CAPTAIN MARVEL VOL.1 #26 | MARVEL | MAY 1973

Agatha All Along sure is playing it close to the chest and only offering brief hints of certain identities. But that’s half the magic, and so far, they’ve kept the community guessing regarding the identity of Aubrey Plaza’s character. Recently, there has been heavy theorizing online that she is Lady Death, who first appears in this book. That sent fans running toward the aftermarket to secure a copy! We tracked it at a high sale of $450 for a CGC 9.6 copy and a current NM raw price of $50.

 10: AMAZING FANTASY #15 | MARVEL | JANUARY 2006

It has felt like an eternity since rumors began to spread that we would see Amadeus Cho, AKA Totally Awesome Hulk, appear in the MCU. There have been moments when it made sense, but nothing concrete has shaken the market until now. Recently, a new rumor has begun to take root claiming that Logan Kim of Ghostbusters: Afterlife fame will be cast as the character, helping to set up the Champions in the MCU. Whether that comes to pass is up in the air, but there were those not waiting around to find out! We tracked it at a high sale of $350 for a CGC 9.8 copy and a current NM raw price of $101.

The post Top 10 Comic Books Rising in Value in the Last Week Include X-Men Error, The Beauty, and More appeared first on ComicBook.com.

At the end of WandaVision, while Agatha Harkness had clearly become a fan-favorite character there was one thing about the duplicitous witch that was without question: she’s not exactly the good guy. Sure, Wanda had the residents of Westview trapped in her hex, but Agatha was no innocent, having sent a fake Pietro into Wanda’s life, killed Sparky, and even tried to take Wanda’s magic and powers for herself. Agatha’s status as not exactly being a witch’s witch was made even more clear when we got to Agatha All Along, given the way the other witches reacted to her and alluded to her past devious acts. But while it’s clear that Agatha has a less than positive reputation and has done some questionable things, four episodes into Disney+’s Agatha All Along we’re starting to see a different side of the witch, one that calls into question what exactly she’s done in her past and how it may impact her now. These subtle revelations beg the question: is Agatha All Along a redemption story for its titular witch?

From the very first episode, Agatha All Along begins to paint a slightly more sympathetic picture of Agatha. While still under Wanda’s spell, we start to see Agatha as human. There’s a moment in the premiere where she looks sadly at a child’s bedroom, suggesting that she’s suffered some sort of loss of a child.​ The idea of losing a child is brought up again in the third episode when Jennifer Kale cautions Teen not to trust Agatha because the witch had previously traded her child for the Darkhold and we later see Agatha hallucinate a crib but, instead of a baby in it, it’s the Darkhold. It’s something that unsettles Agatha and we get a further glimpse of her pain.

It’s the fourth episode, however, where we get a deeper idea that perhaps Agatha isn’t the villain we’ve come to think of her as. When the second trial results in Teen being gravely injured and his life at risk, Teen’s situation clearly distresses Agatha who is shown to have a growing bond with the young man. We also are told that there is a complicated history with Agatha and Rio, including that they had once had a relationship that was fractured over something that Rio had to do. And when Rio tells Agatha that Teen is not, in fact, her long lost son, we see that have an emotional impact on Agatha.​

All of these elements come together to paint a more detailed picture of Agatha than what we’ve seen before, but they also are starting to show her as a woman with feelings whose motivations for wanting her power back — and for wanting to take Wanda’s power in the first place — could have come from her own place of grief. It’s not impossible that the reason Agatha wanted to take Wanda’s power at the end of WandaVision not to simply be powerful but to use chaos magic to bring back her child. If that is the motivation, it’s one that is similar to Wanda’s motivations in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s also, while not misguided, not unsympathetic – a mother’s grief and need to do absolutely anything for her child is powerful. However, much like the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness saw Wanda realize the error of her ways and thus destroy the Darkhold whilst sacrificing herself in the process, Agatha All Along could be setting Agatha up for a similar redemption.

Because we don’t know the real reason Agatha is on the road — and it is possible she never wanted to walk the road in the first place since she was planning to just take the powers of the other witches she assembled for her “coven” — as the journey down the Witches’ Road continues and we get further into the trials, it is possible that we will see more and more moments in which Agatha’s humanity will be revealed. Each trial is an opportunity for the show to reveal more about Agatha and potentially put her in positions where she will make choices that are less self-centric and more for a larger good. The end result could lead us to a place where the witch everyone loves to hate ends up being a witch that earns genuine respect – and may come out the other side very different than when we embarked on this journey with her.

If Agatha All Along is ultimately a redemption story for Agatha Harkness, it is something that would be very much in keeping with stories not only in comics writ large, but in the MCU as well. Many of the characters in the MCU have had, to varying degrees, redemption arcs where we’ve seen them go from either very flawed characters to genuine heroes or outright antagonists who have become something more. Giving Agatha a redemption story would also leave the door open for the character to have a larger role in the MCU going forward as well. There’s simply a lot more one can do with a character when they aren’t just a villain. Whatever the case, the deeper we get into Agatha All Along, the more we learn and while there is a great many mysteries remaining one thing is for certain: it’s interesting to see where the road leads.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes arriving Wednesdays.

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Agatha All Along’s director shed some light on that mysterious “That boy isn’t yours” line from Episode 4 and teased some more story for Rio Vidal. Jac Schaeffer has been busy with the latest Marvel TV series. But, she told The Hollywood Reporter that there are some answers coming with Teen. Fans are going to have to keep watching though, as the mystery might not be as straightforward as people on the Internet believe it to be right now. Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is at the center of the mystery and the director is also promising some answers when it comes to the latent romantic tension between the green witch and Agatha Harkness. It feels like things are bubbling under the surface. However, that boil is coming and the cauldron might not be able to contain that trauma. Fans are probably thinking that’s music to their ears. But, it’s a little mixed for the witches in question.

“Well, first she says, ‘That boy isn’t yours.’ Let’s see, how do I answer this? This is where things get sweaty right in the middle of the show. I just think it’s about the dynamic between Agatha and Rio,” Schaeffer teased. “At this point in the story, it’s impossible for them to find each other, and that’s the real question. Obviously, they have so much chemistry and they have so much heat, so what’s the problem? That’s really what that scene points to.”

So, there’s clearly something between Agatha and Rio in the past. But, how far back are we talking here. Viewers are aware that Kathryn Hahn’s witch is older than she looks. Could Rio Vidal be an acquaintance from her Salem days or is this fling more recent. The question of Nicholas Scratch and how Agatha’s apparently dead son comes into play dangles over everything about this trip down The Witches’ Road. In the early going, a lot of Marvel fans believed that the show was pulling a fast one on them. But, now it’s much more likely that he’s not Nicholas Scratch and some other entity entirely. So, the question becomes who is Teen and why has this boy found himself at the core of a power struggle between these powerful witches. The next few episodes of Agatha All Along are poised to deliver some answers.

Agatha All Along Has Some Agathario Brewing

The uncertainty between Agatha and Rio is sure to come to a head before the season is over. During the same interview, THR asked about that aborted kiss near the end of the episode. The Internet’s been in a lather over that Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza lip lock for over a week now, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon. Schaeffer wanted to be careful about answering this one because it might spoil something coming down the line. However, she was quick to point out that there was more than just physical attraction between Rio and Agatha. This is centering around something real, something primal with these two women. Fans would do well to remember that Agatha All Along is really about power and how it affects relationships. Something to carry forward into the weeks ahead.

“Again, it is hard to really talk about this because there’s so much yet to unfold, but I appreciate the question very, very much, and I would like to try to answer it as best I can,” Schaeffer began. “I would just say that Rio’s interest in Agatha has a lot of depth to it. When we first see them together as their true selves in that fight at the end of 101, it’s all fun and games. It’s hair pulling and scratching and knives and sexiness, but there’s real pain and real yearning.”

Costume designer Daniel Salon said as much on his Instagram over the weekend. In an informative post the designer spoke about Agatha and Rio ’70s garb heading into the second Witches’ Road trial. There was a conscious decision to have both women in low plunging v-necks, not just for style, but also for physical storytelling. Both Agatha and Rio are baring more of themselves to each other than any point in this series previously. That closeness and nakedness was there on purpose to draw some attention to the nature of their conversation. Now that a lot more is out in the open, How does that affect the dynamic between these two? And, will it grow explosive over the rest of the series.

When do you think we’ll get an answer about Teen in Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along’s creator has shared some new details on the Mephisto references in the show so far. Jac Schaeffer is the woman behind the camera for Agatha All Along and she told The Hollywood Reporter about the decision to mention Mephisto in Episode 3. The entire MCU fandom lost its collective mind when the famous Marvel villain ended up getting a shout-out. For Schaeffer, that was a bit of fun for the fans, but also a concession to the larger Marvel Studios framework. That’s probably going to delight a lot of people watching out there who are trying to make sense of all the different mysteries swirling in the MCU right now. It also shows that the creative teams at Marvel are planning for the future when it comes to the often rumored demon. WandaVision was full of speculation about Mephisto rearing his head by the finale. Now, expect some similar expectations when it comes to 

“It was a conversation with [Agatha] executive producer Mary Livanos, [Marvel’s head of streaming] Brad [Winderbaum] and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige], but it is a mention that is larger than me and this show,” Schaeffer began. “It is the larger Marvel-ness of it. So it is not about me bristling or having any kind of a reaction or agenda, mostly because that type of fevered discourse that is very, very rooted in the comics is not as interesting to me as the current story being told in the series at hand.”

That sort of admission is going to raise every MCU fans’ antennae on the way through the rest of Agatha All Along. A lot of fans assumed that the Mephisto tease was something to toss the fanbase a bone on the way through a series that felt like it would have little connection to the larger MCU plot lines. But, if Mephisto was a big enough deal for Kevin Feige, Mary Livanos and Brad Winderbaum to step in and ask for his inclusion, something is probably up. Who could have dreamed that viewers would be getting full-throated mentions of the Marvel villain more than three years after WandaVision? Well, the future is now and the excitement for the final chapters of Agatha All Along is going to continue to increase at the rate we’re traveling along now.

Agatha All Along Teases Larger Plans For Mephisto

Of course, there’s also the feeling that Agatha All Along could end up disappointing the fans if Mephisto doesn’t show up during its run. (Schaeffer’s latest comment will only fan the flames on social media as the theorizing is at a fever pitch surrounding this show.) There’s been so much already teased from Scarlet Witch resurrections to Wiccan’s eventual entrance into the MCU proper. It’s a lot for one show to handle, to be honest. So, Schaeffer decided very early on that Agatha All Along should really be all about the title character rather than the other stuff going on with Marvel Studios. If the team told a great story about Kathryn Hahn’s witch, then the rest would follow. Through four weeks, the series is looking to be in great shape with the best retention rate of any Marvel Studios TV show and growing viewership week over week. 

The director talked about managing fan expectations two weeks ago with Entertainment Weekly. “It still stops my heart. My preoccupation is maximum viewer enjoyment, so I get nervous when people get ahead of it,” the director shared. “I have to trust that humans are capable of deciding what kind of experience they want. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that it’s a circuitous path, and I hope that that path is enjoyable.”

She sighs. “It makes me a little heartsick when I catch reactions of people who were ultimately disappointed by things. It gets to me a little bit,” Schaeffer added. “But in approaching ‘Agatha,’ it was not front of mind. I really can’t control that. That’s a level of fandom that is beyond my reach.”

In essence, Controlling what you can control is a good strategy for any creative endeavor. Things are not always going to go to plan or have the audience reception you expect. But, if you’re making these shows for the fans that really are invested in the characters at the center of them, Then you have less to worry about. Getting all the Agatha Harkness fans into the door from day one was the best thing possible for the show, because they’re telling their friends and family about how much they’re enjoying the ride down The Witches’ Road.

Do you think we’re getting full-blown Mephisto in Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Marvel’s Scarlet Witch ongoing series will soon feature Kathryn Hahn’s character from Agatha All Along on one of its covers. We’re coming up on the fourth week of Agatha All Along, with Agatha Harkness and her coven taking on the trials of the Witches’ Road. Marvel Cinematic Universe fans first met Agatha on WandaVision, where she squared off against Wanda Maximoff before she transformed into the Scarlet Witch. Kathryn Hahn’s portrayal of Agatha Harkness became so popular that she got her own spinoff on Disney+, and she has also seen her profile raised significantly in the comics thanks to some de-aging. With the connection between Scarlet Witch and Agatha greater than ever in the MCU and comics, it seems fitting that a Scarlet Witch comic will now have Agatha on its cover.

Marvel revealed an upcoming Marvel Studios Variant Cover for November’s Scarlet Witch #6, featuring Greg Hopwood concept art of Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness from Agatha All Along. Written by Steve Orlando and drawn by Lorenzo Tammetta, this highly-anticipated issue sees Wanda take on a mysterious new pupil at Agatha’s request. It’s the debut of Amaranth! But where did the young sorceress come from? And what could have spooked Agatha into giving up the chance to mentor her?

ComicBook had the exclusive first look at Scarlet Witch #6 and the debut of Wanda Maximoff’s new protege, Amaranth. Created by Jen Bartel, Amaranth was a part of Marvel’s New Champions Variant Cover program and will also join the cast of a New Champions ongoing series.

“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.”

Other variant covers for Scarlet Witch #6, on sale November 20th, include a foil variant by Meghan Hetrick, a variant by Iván Talavera, and a variant cover by Leirix that will also be available as a virgin variant cover.

What is Agatha All Along about?

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…

The series 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.

New episodes of Agatha All Along premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.

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Agatha All Along brought Rio Vidal to The Witches’ Road in Episode 4. Aubrey Plaza‘s witch could be hiding a secret identity though. Episode 4 had some more clues that Rio Vidal could be the Marvel villain Death hiding in plain sight. Mrs. Hart tragically died during last week’s potion trial on The Witches’ Road. The coven decided to lay her to rest really quickly and continue their journey. However, Jennifer Kale, Alice Wu-Gulliver and Lillia Calderu all insist that Agaqtha Harkness sub in a new Green Witch to take the place of Sharon. Once the spell is uttered, out comes Rio Vidal, straight from the hole they buried Mrs. Hart in. Of course, this sent a lot of eyebrows sky high after the murmurs swirling on the Internet last week. Could Aubrey Plaza really be playing Death and hiding her identity from the rest of the coven so well? Let’s look at the clues:

For starters, coming out of an unmarked grave seems like a very “Death” thing to do. In addition, so much about Rio Vidal in Agatha Harkness’s true relationship hasn’t been revealed to the viewers yet. It’s clear that Aubrey Plaza’s which harbors some sort of vendetta against our favorite troublemaker. Some enterprising young Marvel fans have noticed that the death tarot card created for Agatha All Along matches up with Rio Vidal’s character design. (Pay close attention to that dagger, it’s very distinct!) We also learn that the newest member of the coven is a Green Witch. Could the flow of life and death be closely related in the MCU? This would account for her life-based powers and no one would be any the wiser…

If Rio Vidal is really Death in disguise, it would also illuminate how she was able to tell that Joe Locke’s “Teen” isn’t Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s lost son. A large contingent of the viewers have been piecing together the clues about the situation surrounding Nicholas Scratch and the Darkhold in this show. Last episode, Jennifer Kale basically warned Teen that he shouldn’t be so quick to trust Agatha because of her possibly sacrificing her own son to gain access to power. All of this hovers over the motivations for keeping Teen safe and the lingering possibility of turning on the rest of this coven the second her needs are met at the end of The Witches’ Road. Death might be coming to collect, and that’s even more of a reason for her to take this dangerous journey to restore her powers. We’ll have to see how the rest of the show shakes out.

What’s Up With Rio’s New Look?

Agatha All Along brought Rio Vidal back into the fold in a massive way with Episode 4. Everyone was wondering if Aubrey Plaza’s character had been tucked away for the last few chapters of this story. But, not to fear, the Green Witch has subbed in and “she’s ready to do some damage!” There are more mysteries to unravel when it comes to Rio. But, for now, there’s an uneasy truce with our favorite coven.

The latest episode’s wardrobe change for the witch was sure to raise some eyebrows. (And even her look before the latest trial is very different from how Plaza’s character looked when she was introduced.) ComicBook took note of the tailoring and sat down with Agatha All Along costume designer Daniel Selon during the fan event for the Disney+ series. Selon ran us through all the distinct looks for each witch on the road. (Including our dearly departed Sharon! The florals will live forever.) The costume designer talked about how much care went into crafting the look for Rio Vidal. Hand dying different lace and gauze to get the perfect ragged look for our unhinged Green Witch was absolutely necessary. Check out the insight that the designer provided us.

“She is the green witch, and it was really important to draw from nature, to sort of bring about the inspiration for her costume. When you look closely, you’ll actually see there’s a lot of depth. We were looking for fabrics that were, you know, almost as thin as onion skin,” Selon told us while gesturing towards the layering in the piece. “So, you can see the layers of different foils and netting, and things that we put in layers to create the concept of a living garment. We hand dyed it. Every single thing is created by hand. Every color is controlled with hand dye and the entire garment is stitched by hand.” 

Do you think Rio Vidal is secretly Death? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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We’re midway through the run of Marvel’s Agatha All Along — and the series may have dropped its most unexpected Easter egg yet. Spoilers for Episode 4 of Agatha All Along below! Only look if you want to know! Towards the end of the episode, the ragtag members of Agatha’s coven are sharing their various battle scars from their decades (or centuries) of existence. Agatha points out one that was courtesy of a fight against the Daughters of Liberty, and when the other characters don’t recognize that name, she jokes that there’s a reason for that. Although the Daughters of Liberty were a real-life alliance during the American Revolution — something that Agatha could have possibly crossed paths with, given her long lifespan as a witch — there is a good chance that she is referencing the Marvel Comics group of the same name.

Who Are the Daughters of Liberty?

Created by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adam Kubert in 2019’s Captain America #7, the Daughters of Liberty spun out of the real historical group, who were trained in various skills to survive in colonial America, including learning the ins-and-outs of magic from Agatha. The group endured throughout history, with members including Peggy Carter and Harriet Tubman, the latter of whom served as the group’s leader, known as the Dryad.

In the modern day, the Daughters of Liberty group were reformed by Sharon Carter, in an attempt to absolve Steve Rogers of a murder he did not commit. The modern incarnation of the group included Misty Knight, Bobbi Morse / Mockingbird, Sue Storm / Invisible Woman, Jessica Drew / Spider-Woman, Ava Ayala / White Tiger, Maya Lopez / Echo, and Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow. While there’s no telling if a version of this modern incarnation of the group will exist in the MCU, Agatha’s acknowledgment of their shared past could certainly lay the groundwork for the all-female team to appear.

What Is Agatha All Along About?

In Agatha All Along, 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…

In addition to Kathryn Hahn, Agatha All Along stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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Agatha All Along has pushed its way to the head of the pack in one surprising Marvel Studios‘ metric. The Kathryn Hahn-led series is #1 in continuation rate amongst MCU TV shows. To put it plainly, more people are picking up Agatha All Along and sticking with it week over week than any other show in the Disney+ era of Marvel TV. Variety spoke to the head of streaming, TV and animation for the studio about the fast start for Agatha Harkness’s solo show. A bunch of press has realized that Agatha All Along is the lowest budget Marvel TV show that’s dropped since 2020. The latest Disney+ series has also managed to net 9.8 million viewers in the week it premiered and grow that number over time. That’s crucial for ensuring the show’s place in the pop culture conversation.

All of these developments have to be music to the ears of Disney brass that sounded the call for changes across multiple divisions of the company. Being a huge priority, Marvel Studios decided to streamline their offerings a bit and Agatha All Along gives viewers a sneak peek at what’s to come for the brand in 2025. Expect smaller scale stories on TV, which leads to more budget conscious choices. Brad Winderbaum, executive producer of the latest MCU series, told Variety that Daredevil: Born Again has learned a lot from this approach and is putting it to use already. That should make the show even more of a hit. Across social media, the fervor for Charlie Cox’s next appearance as the hero has only multiplied in recent months.

 In that same conversation, Winderbaum said that this sleeker approach is something they had plans to carry forward. “I can tell you it’s our least expensive show, and I think that was by design. We are looking to make these shows for a responsible cost. Frankly, it gives us a little bit more freedom creatively when we can bring them in at a reasonable budget,” Winderbaum said. “Like [Agatha All Along], for example, the show has minimal CG, way less than we’ve ever done before. It’s mostly practical effects, and I think you can feel it in the show.”

Agatha All Along Just The Latest Example Of Lower Stakes

It’s been a while since Marvel Studios signaled their intention to start hammering into more accessible storytelling. Before Echo released on Disney+, a press event for the brand touted Marvel Spotlight as a way to tell some stories that don’t have the sprawling connections that other Marvel titles on Disney+ before might have. (However, Charlie Cox’s Daredevil cameos and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin is a major player in the show…) Still, this was the first move that showed fans that Marvel was getting serious about their perceived “homework” problem. That series did better than expected and the company has windmilled this approach into the future. 

“Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity,” Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum said in front of a large crowd last year. “Just like comics fans didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic, our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.” 

Are you surprised people are loving Agatha All Along? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Marvel Studios’ latest TV series is racking up viewers on Disney+ and that’s a great thing for Daredevil fans. The streamer welcomed Agatha All Along to the platform a few weeks ago and the results are very positive so far. Kathryn Hahn’s show is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The WandaVision spinoff also boasted 9.8 million viewers the first week on Disney+. A win for Marvel Studios and fans who had been waiting to see Agatha Harkness return after a scene stealing run in that first MCU TV show. But, a small detail in a recent piece from The Hollywood Reporter is what should catch Daredevil fans’ eyes. Their piece says that Agatha All Along is the most budget-friendly Marvel Studios show to date. Could that detail be a big factor in some of the projects moving forward? It seems like things may be heading that direction.  

Daredevil: Born Again is a pseudo continuation of the Netflix Daredevil series. Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio and more are all back in the fold after that layover. The show was already a highly-anticipated Marvel title before the recent “retooling” over at Marvel Studios. But, now that changes have been made to make the show hem closer to the Netflix material, the hype is even higher. The budget for Born Again is much more likely to fall near Echo or Agatha All Along than Secret Invasion. (Mostly because titles like the Nick Fury show, Loki, and The Falcon and The Winter soldier had to deal with health shutdowns and other obstacles related to 2020’s health crisis.) So, the pathway is there to serve fans a popular character with other familiar faces. As an added bonus, a street-level hero like Daredevil might not warrant the kinds of VFX lifts that Loki or Secret Invasion carried. I hear rendering Hulks on-screen can be very costly, and there shouldn’t be too much of that here.

Street-level hero fans should rejoice in this development. Even though the franchise’s direction already seemed to be leaning their way regardless. (A quick look at 2025’s slate has Ironheart, the Red Hulk in Captain America 4, and The Fantastic Four as ‘effects heavy titles.’) Everything else is basically animated or people fighting with guns and fists. Much better on the budget. Even the oft-discussed Blade movie in development hasn’t been the massive money investment that some fans have decried online. (For what it’s worth, enjoying the movies and shows for what they are might be a better strategy there.) The downsizing budgets have come with some coincidentally well-recieved projects. That’s likely to continue as Marvel Studios heads into 2025’s slate. 

Daredevil: Born Again Is Going To Feel Like An Event

Without any budget talk, Daredevil: Born Again is one of the most anticipated Marvel titles of the last couple years. A good number of fans believe they would never see Charlie Cox or Vincent D’onofrio play those iconic characters again in that space. But, Marvel Studios heard all the cries from social media to “Save Daredevil” and here we are. This Summer’s recent D23 Expo saw so many fans get their first taste of the gritty action that Matt Murdock will be a part of when Daredevil: Born Again gets rolling in 2025. Viewer discretion is advised, as the new show will take full advantage of the mature rating settings on Disney Plus. For a long time, fans that’s a great thing but it might catch some viewers off guard.

Back when X-Men ’97 was just wrapping up, ComicBook talked to Marvel Studios Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation Brad Winderbaum. The producer would tell us about their decision to bring back Marvel Television. The company is hoping that future projects will become more accessible to audiences who might be intimidated by the long history of some Marvel characters.

“We want to make sure that Marvel stays an open door for people to come in and explore,” Winderbaum began. “On the heels of Endgame, I think there was, maybe, a little bit of an obligation to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything. As you know, as a comics fan, they’re designed to just pop in, find something that you like, and use that to enter you into the universe, and then you can explore and weave around based on your own preferences. So part of the rebranding of Marvel Studios, Marvel Television, Marvel Animation, even Marvel Spotlight is to, I think, try to tell the audience, ‘You can jump in anywhere. They’re interconnected but they’re not. You don’t have to watch A to enjoy B. You can follow your bliss. You can follow your own preferences and find the thing you want within the tapestry of Marvel.'”

What Marvel project are you the most excited about in 2025? Check out all the pop culture discussion at @ComicBook!

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Marvel fans are excited about another reference to Wanda Maximoff in Agatha All Along this week. Episode 4 of the Disney+ series saw the Scarlet Witch‘s presence still hovering over the series. Wanda seems like the “Red Haired Woman” listed on a record in this episode. Agatha Harkness‘s coven threw it back to the 1970s this week and their song-based challenge has taken the Internet by storm. “If I Can’t Reach You, Let My Song Teach You” sees Alice Wu-Gulliver facing her family trauma head-on. But, not without levity as the coven tries to figure out how to trigger this trial. While snooping around the groovy digs, a mysterious record draws everyone in. These witches discover that it’s Lorna Wu-Gulliver’s hit recording of “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.” But, the other songs might be more interesting to WandaVision devotees. “Red Haired Woman” is listed on there and the Internet went into a tailspin.

Week 1 of Agatha All Along brought more references to Wanda Maximoff, and that striking red hair, than seemed possible. From how Agatha’s “Jane Doe” was dressed to the blackened fingernails from wielding the Darkhold. Add in that mysterious library record card name-drop and you’ve got a mystery stew going. All of this has been a lot of fun for the WandaVision holdovers to theorize about. It feels like every week brings some other intrigue. We haven’t even mentioned the strange business with “Teen” and his true identity in Episode 4. (If he’s not Agatha Harkness’s boy, then who is he…?) There’s still a ton of speculation that Joe Locke’s character could actually be Billy Kaplan aka Wanda’s son Wiccan. So, you really can’t escape the Scarlet Witch of it all, even if you tried!

The creative team working on Agatha All Along know that the viewers are interested in a Wanda Maximoff return. In fact, they’re strategically teasing developments on that front. Jac Schaeffer went from writing on WandaVision to directing Agatha All Along. She was asked about the Elizabeth Olsen-sized shadow cast over everything in this corner of the MCU. While that’s definitely present, the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly that this is Agatha’s story at its core.

“There was a lot of consideration. That’s a great way of articulating it: her shadow. Agatha is not a character who’s going to stand in anyone’s shadow. So this is emphatically Agatha Harkness’ show,” Schaeffer argued. “However, we are in the WandaVision corner of the universe, so Wanda’s legacy has threads in this narrative. But, yeah, it is about Agatha. It’s about her journey, it’s about the truth of her, and that is very much our focus with the show.”

What’s Up With Teen? Is He Wiccan?

Agatha All Along isn’t content to just shake us up about the Scarlet Witch, it’s also turning those “Teen” mysteries up a notch. Joe Locke’s brave boy got messed up quite a bit during Episode 4’s trial. Despite looking amazing in a fur coat, he sustained some gnarly internal bleeding and a concussion as a result of being roughed up by a demon. “Teen” was literally on death’s doorstep as Agatha pleaded with Rio Vidal not to do whatever she was going to do… The witches managed to save the kid and there was a tender moment between our favorite trouble maker and her nemesis. But, it ended up being interrupted by the revelation that “Teen” isn’t Agatha’s son.

Jac Schaeffer knows that fans want to know the identity of the young witch. Since the first episode of Agatha All Along, it’s been one of the show’s biggest mysteries. Despite the fervor surrounding Locke’s casting, she ad the rest of the creative team aren’t trying to intentionally mislead anyone. Schaeffer told Entertainment Weekly that answers are coming and fans might have missed some other big clues in that first couple of episodes. 

“I don’t like hiding things from the audience, just to then be, like, ‘Boo!’ There’s no artistry to that,” Schaeffer mused. “So when we talked about obscuring who he is, the first question is, why? What is the utility of that? The answer is, it’s about the effect that his mystery has on Agatha. What does that do to her? How does it motivate her? How does it hit her emotionally?”

Did you catch this Scarlet Witch reference in the latest episode? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!

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Agatha All Along has managed to spawn a Billboard hit in just three weeks. Fans are streaming “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” and the song is climbing the charts this Halloween season. The Digital Song Sales chart has the Agatha All Along ballad sitting at number 22. That’s the first week of numbers available for “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road.” Marvel/Hollywood Records has managed to sell 2,000 downloads in the United States for the premiere episode’s week. Kathryn Hahn, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Debra Jo Rupp perform the whimsical song that sends them tumbling on their magical quest. Luminate provided the numbers to Billboard, and this chart performance is just another data point that proves Agatha All Along is breaking through.

Another quirk of this accomplishment is that, somehow, Agatha All Along has eclipsed a WandaVision record. In 2021, “Agatha All Along” had the pop culture world in a chokehold. The massive reveal of Kathryn Hahn’s witch as the antagonist of WandaVision resonated outside of the MCU’s usual reach. (It’s probably why this show even got greenlit!) But, back then “Agatha All Along” hit the Billboard charts at number 36. That means, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” has started out ahead of that viral moment on the Digital Song Sales chart. An impressive accomplishment for a show that there was open concern about from some corners of the MCU fandom. One core factor links the two together, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote both songs.

While the music seems to be guiding a lot of the fanbase, Agatha All Along has some bite to it. Before the show premiered, Hahn tried to tell Rolling Stone about balancing this softening villain with the joyous moments of song that permeate this Disney+ series. “Our wishes aligned. I wanted [Agatha] to not lose her acerbic nastiness. I wanted to actually see what lies beneath that weird, hard, mean shell,” Hahn recalled. “And also to have some music, keep the camp up. All the costume changes, all the stuff that I really loved about WandaVision, the element of performance in her — she really is a great old-school actor who loves putting on the ritz. I wanted that to be part of her still.”

The Ballad Of The Witches Road Is Intoxicating

Agatha All Along’s musical craze has not gone unnoticed. Just this week, Marvel Studios made sure fans could stream the coven’s cover of “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” and Lorna Wu’s original 70s hit on different platforms. Despite there already being multiple versions of this song out in the world, it doesn’t seem like we’re done with different spins on the age-old spell. There are some subtle versions between all these different takes on the ballad if you listen carefully. The “True Crime” version isn’t the same as the one Agatha Harkness and her coven performed to enter the magical realm. Expect even more clever tweaks as the weeks stretch on to Halloween.

Jac Schaeffer talked to Variety about what motivated her to get “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” into Agatha All Along. In fact, the idea of having the musical number again was a bit of an obsession for the director. Everyone at Marvel Studios saw the wild performance of “Agatha All Along” during WandaVision. It feels like the lightning has struck twice over there.

“I was chasing the song so hard, and it became a thing of, like, the song is the thing. I had this notion of the song working as a spell that gets you, the audience, to watch the show. I’m trying to entice you in the way that entertainment does, and to me, the song entranced me like a spell would,” Schaeffer teased. “That then fed into the idea that the song could be used as a literal spell in the show. I was really drawn to the song’s multifaceted purpose. And then, of course, I knew the Lopez’s would be up for that very specific challenge.

“We had sort of a temp song for a while because it had all these plot points in it, but it had no melody. It was a guiding track to the story. We gave that to them and said, “Please, please, please take these ideas and turn them into the iconic earworm you’re capable of producing.” And they did just that,” she added. “Writing a song that needs to serve both a thematic and a narrative purpose within the context of the story and to make it rhyme, catchy, and melodically rhythmic is very challenging. But they really enjoyed the puzzle that came with that challenge.”

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This week’s episode of Agatha All Along, “If I Can’t Reach You/Let My Song Teach You”, saw Agatha and the coven face quite a bit. Not only do the witches have to deal with the death of Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp) following the first trial and the arrival of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) as the replacement green witch, but they have to take on the second trial as well, a trial that leaves Teen (Joe Locke) gravely injured. It’s Teen’s injury that leads to a bit of vulnerability of sorts as we begin to see Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) start to believe that maybe Teen is her long-lost son but that’s an idea that is quickly shot down, eliminating one possibility for his real identity. Or… does it? Let’s discuss.

In the episode, while Teen recovers from his injuries sustained during the trial, Agatha and the other witches are gathered around the fire talking about their histories. Rio reveals that the “scar” she carries with her is actually a person, a woman, someone she cared about but whom she hurt when doing her job.  It’s heavily implied that the woman is Agatha and when the two have a private moment together, that is confirmed but when Agatha goes to kiss Rio, before the two women can reconcile, Rio drops a bomb on Agatha, telling her “that boy is not yours”

Rio seems to be saying that Teen is not, in fact, Agatha’s son Nicholas Scratch, who fans might recall has been mentioned as being the child Agatha sacrificed to gain the Darkhold. Agatha has also been seen in what one can only describe as a state of grief over her son previous episodes. Rio stating Teen is not Agatha’s rules out that popular theory about Teen being Nicholas, right? Perhaps, but it is also possible that more is at play. There is always the possibility that Rio is being dishonest. While we now know that there is a history between Rio and Agatha, we also know that there is bad blood between them as well. While Rio may have some genuine feeling for Agatha, she could also be telling the witch that Teen isn’t her son because she still wants to inflict pain on the other woman.

There is also the possibility that Teen is technically Agatha’s son but that because Agatha perhaps did sacrifice him for the Darkhold, even though he’s her son he also is not hers anymore because his soul belongs to someone else — like Mephisto. Remember, we did get that line about “an agent of Mephisto” in Episode 3. That could be coming into play here. This could also be a situation where we are dealing with someone from another reality. After all, the MCU is a multiverse. What if Teen is Nicholas, but not from this reality? That would mean that Rio is technically telling the truth in that he is not Agatha’s son even if he is actually Nicholas Scratch.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Rio is being straight with Agatha and Teen’s real identity is that of someone else, which means that we’re back at square one on sorting out who the character really is — but can do so with one possibility marked off the list.

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

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Agatha All Along is the first big piece of proof that Marvel Studios’ “creative retooling” is absolutely working. Over the last 12 months, a lot has been written about “fixing” the MCU. A number of articles detailed a change in approach for the studio in 2024. Nailing down a new overarching narrative, less projects released, and smaller budgets across the board were things that got discussed. Agatha All Along is a part of the first and third bucket items listed there. It’s one of three TV shows to hit in 2024 and it’s the smallest budget Marvel Studios TV title. Both factors could be a huge reason why the show is crushing right now. Agatha Harkness’s return to the MCU is getting good numbers on streaming and fan investment on social media is palpable in ways that it hasn’t been for a live-action MCU show since Loki Season 2.

Marvel TV head Brad Winderbaum talked to Variety about these developments. He’s been very encouraged by Agatha All Along‘s performance so far. The producer claims that the new MCU series has the best continuation rate of any Marvel show. So, viewers come in, they like what they see, and they come back for more. Positioning Agatha All Along near Halloween is probably helping with that quite a bit. But, Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza are pulling their weight and more with these performances. Despite a focus on being very accessible for new viewers, Agatha All Along has its cake and eats it too with callbacks to WandaVision’s biggest mysteries. So, there’s a little something for everyone. Winderbaum says that the lower budget is allowing them to take big swings.

“I can tell you it’s our least expensive show, and I think that was by design. We are looking to make these shows for a responsible cost. Frankly, it gives us a little bit more freedom creatively when we can bring them in at a reasonable budget,” Winderbaum argued. “Like [“Agatha All Along”], for example, the show has minimal CG, way less than we’ve ever done before. It’s mostly practical effects, and I think you can feel it in the show.”

Agatha All Along Takes Fans Back To A Fan-Favorite

Agatha All Along comes along at an interesting time in the MCU. Some fans have openly wondered whether or not Kathryn Hahn’s Marvel show would have even been greenlit if WandaVision had come along at a later period of Phase 4. The initial results have proved that worry to be completely unfounded. In essence, WandaVision was for real. So, when it came time to follow-up the Scarlet Witch’s series, Brad Winderbaum explained why Agatha All Along was a slam dunk.

“Well, it really comes down to Jac [Schaefer, showrunner]. And Jac brought that world to life in WandaVision. And Kathryn Hahn embodying that role, I mean, she became an icon on screen,” Winderbaum told us. “Agatha was always a side character. She’s a villain in WandaVision. But like Wolverine showing up in an issue of Incredible Hulk, you never know what the audience is going to respond to. And Agatha was no different. So, as soon as Jac became inspired, we all just went down the road with her.”

While Agatha All Along absolutely follows MCU titles like Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and WandaVision, there’s been a clear effort for this story to be accessible without watching that movie and the previous Disney+ series. A lot of the projects in the pipeline at Marvel Studios have begun to prioritize the experience of audiences who might not be up on every single little thing. Winderbaum thinks it’s a good goal to have. 

“I mean, I would say that if you know the MCU, it might justify a few things that happen in kind of a prologue way,” he said. “But if you’re coming to it straight from WandaVision or you’re coming to it, frankly, never having watched another Marvel show before, you get the information you need about the characters you need for the journey.”

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This week’s episode of in a 1970s-themed musical moment, but the episode was more than just about the challenge. Episode 4 of the Marvel series also brought Rio (Aubrey Plaza) into the coven as well as revealed just a bit more about Agatha’s past — and gave major insight into why Agatha and Rio were at odds in the series premiere. 

The episode saw Rio, after the trial and after Teen was seriously injured as a result of the trial, open up to the other witches about how the “scar” she carries from her past is a person she had to hurt because she was doing her job. That person, it turns out, is Agatha and when the two witches stepped away for a moment and almost kissed, Rio stopped the moment with a striking revelation about Teen’s identity, telling Agatha “that boy isn’t yours” — meaning he’s not her lost son. It’s an intense moment layered into a very emotionally charged scene and now, Jac Schaeffer explains that not only are Rio’s motivations deliberately unclear, but it was important to center that moment in the relationship between the two witches.

“It’s not meant to be entirely clear,” Schaeffer said (via TVLine).

“That moment, which is so loaded and so powerful — our intention for that moment is really about Rio’s relationship with Agatha. They’re on the precipice of reconnecting, but this idea of ‘the boy’ is something that comes between them.”

So, what is so special about the boy in question, Teen? His real identity remains a major mystery in the series and while there have been plenty of theories, one of the bigger ones has been that Teen is really Nicholas Scratch, aka Agatha’s son whom she allegedly sacrificed in order to gain the Darkhold. However, Rio’s admission seemingly calls that into question which may tip fan theories back in the direction of another major theory: that Teen is actually Billy Maximoff, son of the Scarlet Witch.

“It’s frustrating because I want to talk about all the amazing things in the show, but also the amazing things in the show are only amazing if the secrets are kept until they’re supposed to be,” Joe Locke, who plays Teen, said previously. “The reveals and the twists and the turns are only effective if they’re kept.”

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+.

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