Agatha All Along S01E09 Review: No One Mourns The Wicked

Agatha All Along, Season 1, Episode 9: Maiden Mother Crone

And now, for the season finale. Whereas the previous episode gave us the big superhero-vs-supervillain punch-up, "Maiden, Mother, Crone" takes a bit of an interesting twist on the superhero show formula by giving us an emotional end... and a superhero's origin story. Done far more effectively than the rather embarrassingly shoehorned attempt they did more recently in Echo, with the simple fact that for a show whose original performance hinges almost entirely on the actress's performance as a secondary character in a previous show, Agatha All Along has managed to hook me along the journey down the Witches' Road. 

I don't think it's a perfect show like what a lot of Agatha All Along's most vocal supporters have been hailing this as. There's still a fair bit of questionable decisions and underdeveloped characters. But it most certainly delivered more than what I expected. Which is a huge win, especially with the recent state of Disney-Marvel. It was far more entertaining than Echo, than She-Hulk, than What If season two, and most certainly than Secret Invasion.

Of course, we still do have to talk about this final episode, which is a bit of a flashback and a coda to the previous episode. I did complain last episode that one of the show's bigger weakness was that in a bid to keep Rio "Lady Death" Vidal mysterious, she remains frustratingly a cipher. And... we get a flashback to 1750-era Agatha Harkness, who's about to give birth in a random forest when Rio shows up. The two are already familiar with each other, and Agatha begs, begs for all she's worth for Rio to please let his child live. Rio gives Agatha's child time, and then she's gone. 

And we go through a bit of a slow montage as Agatha's child, Nicholas Scratch, grows up. Nicky is used by Agatha as a way to get into witch covens, to lure witches out of taverns, to pose as a sickly mom and her child... before she kills witches to absorb their power. Nicholas is young, but even as a young boy he is sometimes confused on why they can't just hang around with the witches. Agatha's response, of course, is to immediately respond that no, they have to kill the witches before they kill her. As the show seems to heavily imply, it's more of a defense mechanism that Agatha herself refuses to entertain the thought of ever shutting off... which may or may not be true, really. 

We also get the genesis of 'The Ballad of Witches' Road', because it's apparently a song that Agatha made up for his own son to sing... with the important distinction that some of the words were there to refer to the two of them -- 'coven two', instead of 'coven true', for example. It's... it's the third episode in a nine-episode season that relied on the song as a climax, which really kind of made me wish that one of the previous iterations of the song hadn't been a full performance in a way. 

And the two are happy... but then at some point death's extra allotted time is up, and while Agatha sleeps, Rio takes Nicholas away. A peaceful death, which elicited a reaction that was anything but from Agatha. But as Agatha buries Nicholas, a young witch shows up... and apparently Agatha's traipsing across the countries have led to a distorted myth spread all across the witch community that there is such a thing called the Witches' Road, and that is where Agatha is trying to gain ultimate power. And Agatha uses this... to kill more and more witches. This was how she got as powerful as she was circa-WandaVision, and this was exactly what she was planning to do in the season premiere before the Witches' Road actually manifested. 

And... again, it's a story that doesn't really hold up, I think, under scrutiny. Agatha and Rio's interaction in episode one is perhaps the biggest question mark I have that can only be handwaved with 'they're exes, eh?' and I also find it rather hard that no one's ever fact-checked that the Witches' Road is real or not... but it does explain a lot of Agatha's irreverence towards the Road compared to the other witches, and it's a neat enough twist. 

Of course, in the present day, Wiccan is visited by the ghost of Agatha. Because of course you can't keep a good main character down, and while the show is vague on whether this was a deal that she made with Rio/Death or if it's something else, she's a ghost for now, spotting a more traditional-comics accurate appearance. Wiccan is horrified at the idea that he made the Road and led indirectly to the deaths of Alice, Lilia and Sharon... but Agatha gives a rather backhanded reassurance that Wiccan actually saved Jen in a certain point of view, since Agatha would've killed all four of them without a second thought if the Witches' Road didn't appear. I like that at least Agatha's psychopathy is kept around, even when she's in this more cooperative form. 

Wiccan attempts to banish Agatha with her magic, which could also be a good closing to this series, to have Agatha be punished, in some way, for all of her villainy. But she refuses to go, seemingly by nothing but sheer force of will... and in perhaps one of the few honest lines she's had this series, she yells that she can't face 'him', or Nicholas. Wiccan is shaken just a bit by that... but Agatha immediately turns around and offers her services as a spirit guide. They could, after all, make a good team to continue Wiccan's journey to find Tommy, wherever he ended up. They set off together into a glowing portal, and the series ends. 

And... that's it for Agatha All Along. It's an unconventional end to an unconventional series. It's experimental, it's weird, it's not perfect, but you could really feel that it's made with passion and care. That the actors wanted to be there, that they knew which parts of the story they wanted to tell the audience. I wasn't particularly optimistic about this show when I came in to it, but at the end of it, I was pleasantly surprised. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Agatha's ghostly appearance at the end -- in a purple dress with white hair -- is how she looks in the comics, both in the older comics and in modern, post-WandaVision ones. She also served as a ghostly spirit guide (albeit a much more traditional and less snarky one) to Scarlet Witch in the comics. 
• Nicholas Scratch is Agatha's grandson in the comics. However, unlike his relatively harmless appearance here, comics!Scratch is a full-blown villain.