Agatha All Along has one major problem

[@evaserration6223]

As much as I liked this show and Kathryn Hahn, this show had me wishing that Patti Lupone played a comic-accurate Agatha Harkness as she brought so much gravitas to her own role.

[@MaxEdrox]

Now that you mention it, Patti Lupone really looks more like the Cómics version of Agatha 😮

[@Thed538dhsk]

Wdym, how would her role be similar to a comic accurate Agatha? I know Agatha from X-Men evolution

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@MaxEdroxhow so? I felt when Hahn was in the outfit in ep 2 she looked like a perfect Agatha harkness

[@nikkimurphy1737]

​@@Thed538dhskagree I just feel like people simp for her so much. She's a great actress but not for Agatha

[@Thed538dhsk]

@nikkimurphy1737 I'm a simp for her but I'm open to another actress to play Agatha the character. I know Agatha from X-Men evolution who was a mentor to Wanda and rogue in that show. So I'm interested how could LuPone play the character. Lilia doesn't feel like Agatha imo from X-Men evolution and other than being a woman with white hair I don't see why she could play a better version of Agatha? Especially given the context of Wandavision and how Agatha was portrayed in that show

[@Creek932]

Personally, I'm tired of the insistence for every villain to be "sympathetic" or "redeemed." I found it refreshing that this show never shied away from Agatha's villainy. It's what I was always hoping for in the Loki series, but that show unfortunately tried way too hard to make him into a hero.

[@jonathanhibberd9983]

I think they walk the line perfectly between making her sympathetic and giving her moments of redemption, without nerfing her. She's not a good person. But she has good in her, and the potential is there for a redemption.

[@marclopez9287]

YES! that't that e biggest reason why I didn't like Loki as much as I thought I would. Based on the main timeline, this version of Loki would have probably gotten there eventually, but I still hated the fact that he lost a lot of edge along the way,

[@redbyrd247]

Personally, I like the fact that they redeemed Agatha because she wasn't a villain in the comics. She served as nanny for Reed and Susan and as a mentor and teacher to Wanda in the comics, even helping her down the 'real' Witch's Road in the comic. They only recently made her a villain in the comics to mirror the MCU which actually ticks me off.

[@hpalpha7323]

It's very hard to make the *main character* irredeemably evil, even Walter White has moments of regret

[@mujiescomedy279]

Loki’s never really been a full villain though. From the beginning everything he did was out of jealousy. Yes he was bad but get rid of Thor and Loki’s reason for villainy goes away

[@YoungMovieReviews]

I love that Agatha is a jerk the whole time because of what happens every time we get a movie or series about the villain. We find out that "oh no, they're not bad; they are just misunderstood." they have been a bit of a cry out there of, why can't the villains just be villains. Agatha is kinda giving us that

[@dante6985]

I love Agatha too and appreciate that Marvel let her be a villain. At the end you find out she's much worse than you think. To me it's it's kind of the antithesis of what Disney's m.o. ("Cruella", "Maleficent" or "LokI'): While she's not without *some* redeeming qualities for the purposes of the story, she murdered dozens of innocent witches. Part of her penance is teaching Billy how to use magic (and saving his brother). But I'm interested to hear Vera's thoughts regardless.

[@ThePlayTyperGuy]

@@dante6985 Agatha is an anti-villain who does the wrong thing most of the time but is somewhat redeemed at the end with a selfless (or perhaps less selfish act).

[@kandi3361]

if you want villains who are just villains, you get something like in Thor 2. A completely flat character. besides, the thing with agatha's son didn't rehabilitate her or am I wrong? agatha was already killing witches before she lost him

[@dante6985]

@@ThePlayTyperGuy Exactly.

[@dante6985]

@@kandi3361 Or you get someone like Hela: evil, unsympathetic, and a joy to watch onscreen. Malekith in the comics is a Joker-esque figure. It's a shame the MCU didn't capture that energy and went "forgettable mustache-twirler" with him, but his villainy wasn't the cause of him being forgettable or otherwise uninteresting.

[@RainCityWhispers]

I can see your point with Sharon and Alice's deaths feeling pointless, senseless, and even cruel. The way I see it, it kind of fits one of the themes of the show though. One of the main characters and antagonists is Death itself, and a turning point in Agatha's relationship with Death and with the world is the sudden loss of her son. Agatha says it outright in Ep 8 when Billy is questioning if he's murdering a random boy to save his brother: "No, Billy. Sometimes... boys die." The message is that Death doesn't always have to have a rhyme or reason or pattern. Sometimes, like in Lilia's case, it DOES have a purpose. She sacrificed herself to protect her coven. Other times, people just die and it doesn't make sense and it doesn't have to. I have lost both of my parents in the last 7 years and I can tell you one of the WORST things I heard was "it was God's plan" or "these things happen for a reason/to make us stronger/etc." Sometimes, people die and it sucks and we aren't owed a rhyme or reason. But it is our responsibility to process that grief in healthy ways, and Agatha was a prime example of what NOT to do. She made her pain everyone else's problem and threw up a tough facade of being this evil bad witch to keep herself from actually confronting her pain. That said it's nice to hear a more negative opinion of the show because I love it and most of my friends do and the reviews I see are mostly positive so it's nice to see a negative take that doesn't center on the fact that almost the whole cast are women, especially women of color, older women, and queer women, and the one primary male character is super duper gay.

[@ThePlayTyperGuy]

I think the series had actual stakes, as opposed to Doctor Who’s most recent finale when I knew that we’d get a magic reset when characters we liked died. I don’t think it’s cruel that Sharon and Alice died. I think it just created consequences.

[@gamewrit0058]

I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm glad that you and your friends had a good time with the Agatha show. 💜

[@etherealtb6021]

I thought the deaths had story points, but they were definitely cruel.

[@zemoxian]

@@etherealtb6021 I think the cruelty of the deaths was the point. It defines the characters of Billy and Agatha. Agatha took those witches to the basement to kill them all on the spot. There was no road to go to. She dragged Sharon down there as well. She was probably going to be killed as well if the Seven didn’t get her to eliminate witnesses. I’m actually curious why she sent Billy upstairs. Wouldn’t he have been another witness? Did she really think he’d slow down the witches coming to kill her? Or had she already taken a liking to him at that point? Perhaps thinking he might be her resurrected son or perhaps moldable into a sidekick or something? Assuming she successfully fought off the Salem Seven and he survived? It also characterized Billy who created a mystical Saw escape room environment that led to the deaths of three women. He did it magically and unintentionally. He has to come to terms with his grief and the extent of his power. I’m also concerned that he’s taken her on as his ghastly mentor, knowing how untrustworthy she is. I’m wondering how that’s going to work out. I found Agatha sympathetic, I think because I felt her pain both when she was quiet and possibly honest and when she was boisterously evil and entertaining. It’s like she’s been constructing this version of herself as the villain as armor against the world. The problem is that you can never be sure how much of it is a con? It makes me wonder if her mother and coven were right about her from the beginning? Or if turning on her the way they did twisted her perspective towards witches thinking they’re all going to eventually turn on her and kill her. I also wonder about the origin of Agatha and Death’s relationship. Did she manipulate Agatha into killing witches as well? Apparently, in the comics that’s the whole thing that led to Thanos killing half of life in the cosmos. Agatha may have started out bad but Rio’s influence may have made her worse. For an immortal as old as the universe she seems impatient to meet everyone in it and seems to want to hasten things along. In the end it seems Billy used that tiny fragment of her sympathetic nature to defeat her and stop her from killing more witches (including himself.) I don’t understand why he volunteered himself to save Agatha. I guess he found her more sympathetic than I did. But I think that touch of humanity was enough for her to take that calculated risk and sacrifice herself instead.

[@theamyway4832]

@@ThePlayTyperGuythis! Empire of death frustrated me to no end with the lack of stakes and clear reset that was coming. As you’ve put, there were consequences. It also speaks to real life. Some of us (like lilia) are ready for death, but others (like Alice), aren’t. I think it’s refreshing that a show went ‘death waits for no one’. Death is permanent and any instinctual choice can land you with her.

[@Zach90888]

Obviously your opinion is valid. However, watching this video I just kept thinking “Two things can be true at once” I don’t like Agatha, I have no sympathy for anything that happened to her. She’s evil, and I enjoy watching her be evil. The way I read the last episode is not to feel bad and “redeem” her, I feel more like it’s an explanation of why she is a bit soft on Billy in particular. She enjoys his company, but will kill any other witch, because she doesn’t care. Still, interesting view, can see why that might not work for others as much.

[@Altmetalpunk]

Right, this series may have followed agatha but it was about setting up Wiccan. Agatha is power hungry. I like the comparison of ghost agatha being her Gandalf the White where NOW she's gaining enlightenment because she not only isn't searching for power, she CANT search for power.

[@saphcal]

yeah i think this is how i feel.

[@zenithquasar9623]

While this is true, the show does not do enough to show that she is actually, really evil…but almost justifies it by letting her live or not pay for her deeds. Like as she kept saying she “survived”! As if her individual survival at the cost of hundreds, perhaps thousands people she killed over the centuries, somehow make it all justified! What is the moral of this story? A covenless, awful killer can have no consequences for her actions?! I loved this show, and obviously masterfully made, but evilness of Agatha taints everything. Even singing Witches’ Road is tainted by it, given the chilling fact that it is a lure to kill witches in droves.

[@angelr5694]

@@zenithquasar9623 you think that showing her killing witches for centuries and about to kill the main coven that we follow throughout the series isn't showing that she isn't evil enough? And even in her explanation to Billy, still not really caring about Mrs. Heart? That's interesting. Sometimes people just kill. Sometimes evil is just evil. Sometimes bad is just bad. You were told in episode seven death comes for it all and it's just that simple. Some thing that I find interesting is that people are looking for more of a grandiose purpose/moral but that's not what life is.

[@calebmarmon1310]

@@angelr5694 It’s a piece of fiction, so it’s all in the tone and presentation. Stories have themes and an underlying morality to them, whether or not they are explicitly stated.

[@Grimalkins]

Let me start by saying I COMPLETELY agree with your WandaVision take. I always have. It was so close to being a superb exploration of grief and denial, but then they went the villain route and Agatha ruined it, and I’ve always admired that you were one of the few to admit it. So when they announced she was getting her own show, and right up to the point where I watched the first episode, I was mystified by who on earth would want this? Then I was hooked, and now I think it’s the best show Marvel has done. Far from perfect, but pretty great. You’re not wrong about Billy being inconsistently written around the fake out “death” of Lilia and Jen during his reveal, too. Although you could argue that it’s an editing issue too because they were so keen to end that episode on a note that made it seem like he was going “bad” like his mother, and I feel the mistake was rooted in them getting hooked on leaving us with that for a week. It’s interesting that you used Hannibal as a comparison. I think it’s a great comparison, but not for the reason you think. On that show, Mads was second on the call sheet. Not first. You say if you’re watching it, you’re watching it for that character, knowing he is so completely irredeemable that he’s almost monstrous. But it’s actually a show about Will. Not only that, but Hannibal has extreme trauma in his past and at the root of his behaviour, and I think that’s where this is a good example, because it doesn’t make him a sympathetic character. Not at all. It doesn’t try to. It just accepts that everyone is complex. Everyone is a sum of more than one thing. I feel that’s what Agatha’s history did too. The loss of her son, her abusive mother… she’s more than a two dimensional wicked witch, but it doesn’t make me feel sympathy for her decisions or forgive her actions, and I didn’t feel the show tried to. She’s unrepentantly awful, like Hannibal, and that’s ok. Just like Hannibal, the show carries her name but I don’t think she’s the main character. It also surprised me that you felt the final episode revealed that she always intended to kill this latest coven. We could see that clearly right at the beginning. Her shock and surprise at the appearance of a door. The look of satisfaction when she made them angry, thinking they would attack her. It was always obvious she brought them down to that basement to drain them right there, and that there was never any intention to take them onto the road. The only reveal was how long she had been doing it - that she was always doing it. That the road didn’t exist at all. Regarding Alice’s self-acceptance being immediately followed by her death, yes that was cruel and I will admit it could have been written better, but Lilia’s death was an example of exactly the same thing - just with better writing. Because it’s the same again. Lilia had spent her life running from what she is too, and right at the moment where she realises that she loves what she is and embraces it - she dies. Just the same as Alice. I also thought the show was a wonderful display of what death is. In life, in the craft, in the tarot. Renewal and transformation, not an ending. I really think they had a couple of consultants to guide them in lots of aspects of witchcraft. Yes they fall into the “one of each kind” trope, but there’s a lot of positives. The way they address the offensive expectations, the way a lot of practices are grounded amongst the more theatrical nonsense. It was pretty good. I could talk for ages, but basically I don’t think the show was asking us to root for Agatha, to forgive her, or to even like her, sometimes her cruelty is shocking, sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes the fact that it makes you giggle makes you question yourself, and I like the show even more for that reason, and I’m relieved that she’s still awful and complicated after death. In real life people tend to act like people were saints when they die. A hundred times more if they died in a heroic or tragic way, hence we end up with that awful redemption in death trope. But people are complicated creatures. Even in death she’s still too scared to face her son, the one cruel thing in her history she carries guilt for is the one she’s not responsible for, because sometimes life itself is cruel, to her and to her son, with no rhyme or reason. I think that’s fascinating. Anyway - agree to disagree. No disrespect ever intended. Would love to hear your more detailed thoughts on Hannibal sometime - I’m sure you could convince some new people to watch what was a superb show.

[@Leoatotis-il9pq]

On us knowing that Agatha was going to kill the coven at the start: Yeah. In episode two, Agatha tells Lilia she only takes power when attacked and later that episode she baits the entire coven to do exactly that

[@shreeeeeeeeeeeeee]

Agatha is the anti-villain, and a foil to Billy, our main lead. “She was an awful person before she had a kid, she was an awful person after her kid died, and while she had her kid, she briefly tried to be better but as soon as he wasn’t there, she went back to being an awful person.” that’s the thesis of her character and WHY I love Agatha. To me, we’re not meant to love and empathise with her in a way that excuses her. We’re meant to constantly feel conflicted by her actions and her selfishness and wonder if she’d change. The only times she tries to be good is with her son, and sometimes through Billy. Her story is a tragedy. We wonder what she could’ve been if her mother didn’t raise her like she was evil and if her son lived enough to guide her back to being good. But it is what it is, and her death is a consequence of her actions, while also being a moment of growth in her character arc.

[@zenithquasar9623]

But it ruins the whole show! It takes away from everything the show is meant to be about. Even taints the queer trauma aspects, everything…

[@shreeeeeeeeeeeeee]

@ could you explain how it ruins the queer trauma aspect for you? /gen

[@Thed538dhsk]

She was a good mom but a serial killer while Nicky was around so Agatha was always predatory. But it's she awful. I'm torn because she does relish in being evil or the front she portrays on BUT she almost seems more like a wolf eating rabbits-predatory vs evil. I don't consider a wolf evil for feeding or hunting rabbits and Agatha preyed or hunted witches. She is a serial killer of witches but how is she separate from a spider that catches flies in a web?

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@zenithquasar9623how so?

[@kidkunjer]

Did she try to be better with a kid? She was a serial killer, dragging along a young child in her killing spree and groomed him to act as bait, making him complicit in her crimes. I would say she's just plain evil. And that's why she's one of my favourites in the MCU.

[@daniig3059]

One small point that I want to kind of bring up is that all of your examples of this doing this 'well' are all male. And point out how in a lot of ways we (all of us!) are trained to automatically treat male characters as more interesting, feel more about them, have more sympathy for them, and accept and enjoy the narratives of them being evil more. So few pieces of media center around female villains, and female villains like Agatha, and I do think that there's something both to us as the audience reacting certain ways and also the fact that media LIKE this show has less to lean on, less to look to, when it comes to a female character, that I try to consider for shows like this. And I didn't really take her time with the kid to 'excuse' her but on the contrary, showing that her being a 'mother' didn't change the fact that she was an awful person when so often in narratives, women will soften or turn away from good for their children. Letting her be evil throughout IS different.

[@samuelbarber6177]

I don’t know what Vera thinks of this film, but I think Gone With The Wind is a good example of a lead female character who is also pretty much evil. Scarlett O’Hara is not a very good person but, at least in my opinion, Vivien Leigh gives such a great, commanding performance that it’s kind of hard not to root for her.

[@ThePlayTyperGuy]

Exactly. Also, Agatha states in WandaVision that she takes power from the “undeserving.” She builds her witches road con to draw in witches wanting a short cut to power. She states that she didn’t go after Jen intentionally bc she did “important work.” I think that makes her no less relatable than Dexter, who is also a serial killer. To your larger point, having a female lead who is evil without excuse or manipulation and who dies doing one decent thing is very rare (though more often seen in male characters).

[@safirak7988]

I'm so glad I'm not the only to notice that! I hope Vera reads this, because I know she's up for introspection any time.

[@Wurmze]

I agree exactly

[@bjorx88]

This. I found it so refreshing to have this kind of character be a woman for once.

[@Jay32954]

Just to clarify something, Agatha didn't show up late in the game, in Wandavision. She was there the whole time. Even if you didn't like the reveal, it was definatly set up subtly.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

👆

[@verakrot]

I may be alone here, but i dont think that Nicky part was intended to redeem her. We know that she was cruel before and after. She may have motivation for her powerhunger, but this motivation would be always selfish. I think we got part about her son so we can understand why she chose to help billy. Not because it's a right thing to do, but because she sees her son in him. Also (and i hope so) i want to see some parallels with Wanda in the future. They both mothers who were ready to kill a ton of people for their childre. I what to see how marvel will show the difference between them.

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

Many people interpret the backstory as Agatha killing witches to keep Rio fed so she wouldn't take Nicky. The one day they didn't go after witches was when she took him.

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@HotDogTimeMachine385I think that's clear in the subtext. But that doesn't justify Agatha's actions to kill all those nice witches who just offered to help her and her son or just wanted their items back. And to turn the nursery rhymes her and her son made into a multi-century almost siren call to lure witches to their death is very very villianous

[@chrisblake4198]

I get how the connections are buried, but for me it worked. Agatha 'went bad' in the first place because of how her mother thought of her. I may have seemed different in WandaVision but that was Agatha as unreliable narrator. We learn the truth from her mother's ghost here. That gave me more than enough patience to let them peel back the layers and learn whether she was bad or it was distortion, and if she was then why. Then we learn she had her child on her own without stealing from anyone and it was a redemptive moment for her. She was determined not to be her mother. She didn't go back to killing for her own power, she did it to heal her child and prolong his life to survive until she was strong enough to do something more permanent. After Rio took him, she pressed on, either in hope of finding a way to get him back or because she couldn't stand facing him after failing to protect him (bit of both). I don't sympathize with her but I understand her. A woman so often betrayed she hides everything until she absolutely has to reveal it. Even in the end no one in-show knows the story of her child, it's just told as an unframed flashback. She doesn't win, but she survives after a fashion and moves on. It's a good reworking of the comic version I think.

[@gozerthegozarian9500]

Rio/Death was so wonderful, she re-opened my "Changing Thanos motivation for the movies suuuuuuuuucks!"-wound. How awesome would it have been to have Josh Brolin simp(er)ing around Aubrey Plaza and Aubrey Plaza giving zero fucks?

[@Thed538dhsk]

Except Rio does care. Even with Alice she wasn't manicial when escorting her soul to "the other side". Rio didn't take sadistic pleasure in taking Nicky. Rio is only manicial with Agatha because she's been on her trail for so long and wants to be embraced by Agatha. Even when Agatha passes away Rio sheds a tear and let's Billy go.

[@BalooSJ]

@@Thed538dhsk From what little we see of Rio, she appears to be an almost Pratchettian interpretation of Death (with the addition of her apparent feelings for Agatha). People die. But she's not the one who kills them, she's just there to take care of them afterwards. But she gets real annoyed when people escape the death they have coming to them, which is why she calls Billy abomination. So in this alternate version where Thanos is trying to court Death, I envision Thanos going "Hey, I'm going to kill 50% of the universe's population! Ain't I swell?" and Rio going "Geez, whatEVER."

[@Thed538dhsk]

@BalooSJ ohhh true. With this interpretation I could see that. Rio during the campfire in ep 4 says this is her job. So she'd probably consider it a busy day at the office and him causing her more work just to be able to flirt with her. Like a person visiting a McDonald's cashier and keeps ordering food just to be able to talk to the cashier.

[@gozerthegozarian9500]

@@Thed538dhsk True, but I meant "giving zero fucks" strictly in reference to Thanos: in the comics, Thanos is in love with Death, and wants to kill half the universe in order to impress her - she, meanwhile utterly ignores him, never even speaks to him. That's what I was refering to.

[@Jay32954]

I don't agree that Billy's characterisation is inconsistent. During his time in the witch's road, he was running on adrenaline and instinct much of the time, including when he presumably killed the others. Afterwards, He and Agatha don't simply move on like nothing happened. They had a brief but intense conversation/argument about and then moved on. Because they had to, because they couldn't afford to fully unpack what just happened. It was only after the whole thing was over that he had a chance to decompress and feel remorse. I'm not completely defending him, or the writing. But I think the logic stands up.

[@mrdr0161]

And in episode 6, Billy throwing them all into the mud was put down to an emotional outburst. He was furious with how they were treating Alice's death. Billy was the closest to Alice as a friend. He was mourning and everyone around him was just pushing it aside as if it Alice had just hit her head. And given they all survived it perfectly fine, and Billy made the road, it shows that Billy didn't actually want to hurt them

[@Chatrbuug]

I think it's also creating depth in his character with the outburst of Ep5 and backstory of 6: He's a pretty sweet kid, but he still wants power like Agatha calls him out on and he's been willing to use what he has to manipulate others. The complete context of the series showing why Agatha thinks the only way to gain power is by killing witches, and to ends that are ultimately only implied, and she's pushing him towards that because of that pseudo-parental connection. The show also implies that by the present, with Alice, Agatha may not believe she can control her absorbing, or she doesn't want to and either way it's intoxicating (another trope of the hardboiled detective is alcoholism). But she learns or accepts that that isn't the case when she stops taking his.

[@Rutanachan]

Agatha has two arguments for her: First she was utterly betrayed by her own mother and her coven, second she was faced with loosing her child soon after at the moment of birth. She made the decision to kill to keep her son alive, which isn't right, but it's this decision that put her on a path of a serial killer she never stepped down from. Since she killed before (even if it was in self defense), the bar to kill again was lowered. Still, she's a serial killer. She's evil. And I think even though the show showed that she had a few reasons originally, it still also showed that she's evil and always will be. So not liking her, IS TOTALLY FINE!

[@Batini]

Love your comment about "being nice to your kid is not enough". Too many horrible people in the world "looking out for number one" for me to believe even remotely that "loving your family" is a redeemable quality for atrocities.

[@dorothydamage1743]

Wrt Billy, I’d argue that deep down, even if he didn’t realise it, he did know that Jen and Lilia were safe. He created the road, and he also created the tunnel that saved them and led them back to him. He was angry, but he still saved them. I think he was inconsistent, but that was a clever way of showing ‘Billy’ instead of the ‘teen’ mask. With Sharon, her death was specifically due to Agatha and Jen’s cruelty. Agatha brought her along, knowing it should have been Rio. She was going to kill her either way. Jen was the one who took too long with the potion, and didn’t fulfil her duty to double Sharon’s antidote, which was called out. Agatha then shows her cruelty again by mocking three different times (including at her own trial).

[@NotUlpoadingAnything]

Jen also didn't add Sharon's hair to the potion, which is something everyone else had to do to make it work for them.

[@IdenNonya]

yeah, I don't think inconsistent is a bad thing (as humans aren't consistent). regardless, for someone who 'felt nothing' and 'moved on like nothing happened' (probably paraphrasing on one of those at least) he was staying oddly stationary after the events of- And, when Agatha brought up what he did the face he makes was definitely a reaction of somebody who was harboring feelings about it, he's putting up a front for Agatha (his body language changed, he's putting up hard walls for Agatha, but there's cracks) - at least that's my interpretation of it I think they've considered that tho, and in some sense it's understandable that they feel that way

[@victoriajankowski1197]

I felt like they where hinting that stealing power was some how required to keep her son alive, like he doesn't survive on real food, or his health was tied to it somehow, it seems hinted, but they aren't clear enough if that was the idea. Making that explicit would have changed Agatha's characterization, Agatha finally finds a 'good' thing in here 'evil power' only to loose her son anyways so she just looses it after and submits to her own evil, them along comes Billy to screw with her enjoying her evilness.

[@SirStrangefolk]

It seems very strongly implied that that Agatha killing witches either sates Death so the additional dead people can make up for Nicky not being taken (like Death said in Alice's trial "I get my bodies"), and/or distracts Death/keeps her busy elsewhere (near the end Death accuses Agatha of killing Alice to distract her from Billy). So as long as Agatha keeps killing witches, Death will not come to take Nicky, but when Nicky decides he doesn't want to kill witches anymore and they let the witches go, Death comes to get him.

[@Thed538dhsk]

I thought it was implied it's how Agatha also feeds

[@meiradoeshavealife]

I really enjoyed the show, it's one of my favorites at this point, but there were a couple things I found disappointing. Nothing to the degree of hating, tho. So far the only hate I've seen for AAA was from dudebros who will never accept that Marvel is making something that is not geared towards them and will keep complaining for as long as sun shines that a show made by women about women exists on the same planet as them. But this channel is not like that at all so I'm interested to see your take. EDIT after watching: it's an interesting take but I disagree with a lot of it. Overall Agatha was never supposed to be sympathetic or trustworthy. She was always supposed to be evil because the nature of her powers is killing others. She's not on the Road to save the other witches, she only cares for them as long as they are useful and in the end - she needs them all to die so that she can take their power. That's all that matters to her. Everything she says to the contrary is to distract people so they continue to be useful to her. Unlike Loki, who keeps saying he's a narcissist and then proceeds to be kind and loving, Agatha is a narcissist who doesn't need to say it out loud, because she needs people to trust her on SOME level so that she could use them when it suits her. People dying is just a natural consequence of her achieving her goals. When Nicky was born, she didn't try to become better. On the contrary - she was teaching him that to survive you need to learn that it's either you or others. She only loved him because he was born from her. I agree that she wasn't exactly the main lead of the story, it was one of the problems I myself had with this show. But overall, I didn't find her story to be told "too late" - the mystery of the real road was the core of her history, so it had to be told in the end. Overall Agatha is a different kind of Evil that we're used to. Whatever "redeeming" qualities she may have, they don't change the fact that she's evil, it just gives her a small layer of twisted humanity. She has some people she cares about but doesn't see it as a weakness, she sees it as an opportunity to get what she wants. Her grief is not pain, but rather hatred. Not because she is upset a life is lost, but because SHE lost something. So you're not supposed to feel sympathy towards her. You're supposed to see her as what she is - someone who in between small glimpses of humanity, at the core is untrustworthy, twisted and rotten, but nevertheless intelligent, sassy, and useful. When it comes to Billy - it's not that he doesn't care about throwing witches in the mud. His powers are subconscious and he's still a fickle teen. He created the Road, so his subconscious knows the mud is safe. But as a teenager who is still learning to deal with big emotions, such as death, he is upset that other witches aren't as sisterly and caring as him - they see death as part of the ride. He wasn't trying to kill them because in the back of his mind he knew he wasn't. He was kicking them out of his club because he was upset - just like real teenagers when they tell their parents they hate them and they are ruining their lives because the parents didn't allow them to go to Stacy's birthday party after getting a bad grade. About Sharon - I agree, it was cruel, but it was supposed to be. It shows just how little witches care about mortals, it's the starting point for Billy to realize that the coven isn't an all loving sisterhood. But Alice - her death, especially the postmortem scene gives away the point of it. She thought her life started only after she defeated the curse, but that wasn't the true. None of us knows how much time we get. But with whatever amount we have - we can put it to good use even in small things, even if we think we are useless, even if we're in pain ourselves. Alice's life didn't start after she broke the curse, she could always do something good, something useful to the world, and she did, and even though those actions weren't big, they were enough. It's cruel that she died so soon, yeah, but so is life. Not everyone's life is a satisfying narrative that allows to live a happy ever after after defeating their biggest demon. And this show wasn't meant to be the heartwarming cozy halloweeny witchy story. It gets dirty, literally. You're supposed to feel sad and feel like it's unfair when a person dies too soon. But Death is just a part of a cycle, the natural order of things. What you do with your life until then is up to you, so whatever painful obstacles you're facing, if you spend your time helping people, doing small acts of kindness, you're not wasting it. That was the point I got from it and honestly, I like it far more than the stories of "they died for the millions to be saved, so that's why their death means something" or "in their life they saved a nation and cured cancer". Smaller, seemingly insignificant lives aren't a waste. Overall, we don't have to agree on the show, I still like it, it's OK if you don't, peace.

[@subtlegong2817]

I viewed Agatha as a character the same way I view Vegita. Not actually redeemable but I hope that they will do the right thing anyway. She was remorseful about her actions to some degree. Unfortunately the actions she was remorseful for were actually genocide. Good that she did the right thing, doesn’t make up for what she did. That complexity made the show fascinating for me. Also it’s arguable that Billy was the main character. Sure, Agatha got the title of the show but Billy was the most important character, the character that drove the plot, and he is the character that everything in the plot served to benefit. It was Billy All Along.

[@Altmetalpunk]

I mean, youre not supposed to like agatha. This series was really about setting up billy and his future. Agatha is an antagonist. Im not going to go as far as calling her a villain but she's an antagonist. Agatha is a vessel for OTHERS to have self discovery. Even in wandavision she forces Wanda into therapy. Even in wandavision she was egging wanda and vision on to get them to where they needed to be. I get your opinion but I feel like this is really about personal taste far more than other opinions I've heard and read.

[@henrybelman7424]

She is a villian

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@henrybelman7424is she? Or is she like a spider that traps flies in its web? Remember the witches have to attack her or blast her before she can kill them. So in that way is it self defense aka why she tells Wanda she takes from the undeserving OR is Agatha just an apex predator again like a spider. A spider isn't necessarily a villain for feeding off of flies

[@SageWon-1aussie]

​@@Thed538dhskShe is a villain.

[@Thed538dhsk]

@@SageWon-1aussie how so?

[@mathewsydney8929]

She's a villain... she *chose* to groom her innocent child into being her accomplice in the serial murder of innocent people. By all reasonable measures, that's pretty evil behavior.

[@Yoruichi006]

Glad I'm not the only one. I really enjoyed the vibes, but the end felt really anticlimactic. They had been doing quite a bit of set-up over Agatha's son, and her character seemed so inconsistent throughout (wobbling between enjoying being evil to feeling grief and possibly being misunderstood), I thought there was going to be some kind of explanation fo all that and there just.... Wasn't. My mind keeps going back to how Rio asked Agatha why she was okay with all the rumours about her son, and she said that the truth was too horrible. But the truth is that she begged Death not to take him, Death gave her time, this did nothing to impact her way of living, and then eh died peacefully in his sleep... I felt intensely cheated by that finale because it was not worth the set-up. Also: As someone who does tarot, the Lilia episode was AMAZING! Throughout she had been dropping bits and mentioning cards. At every point they made sense, but then they made even more sense later. I had the feeling that her outbursts were out of time, and that set-up was paid off so incredibly well. It shows that they did actually know what they were doing. They just clearly did not know what to do with Agatha.

[@kc-lp6wg]

I intensely disagree and this was one of my favourite Marvel adaptations. I love that Agatha is not redeemed. I thought everyone did an amazing job.

[@CouncilofGeeks]

You did catch that I offhandedly mentioned I'm glad they didn't use her death to redeem her, yes?

[@jaimebergner]

I really came to love the show, it started off slow for me, I didn't care that much for the first 2 episodes. But from episode 4 on I was gripped and the last 3 episodes were total bangers for me. Right now AAA is number 2 for me, right after Loki. Wanda didn't stick the ending for me sadly. I found Agatha to be an interesting villain with sympathetic moments.

[@Dunybrook]

Not sure I'd change anything about it except for giving Jen a bigger role and include her in the final fight with Rio. Since it's a fantasy universe where we know there's an afterlife even the deaths of Sharon and Alice don't seem as cruel as they would in real life because their stories aren't over. If you think about it Sharon getting reunited with her husband and Alice with her mother might even be a kindness. Lilia's sacrifice seemed to be a watershed moment for both Jen and Billy. Before that Jen was content to see herself as selfish or cowardly and Billy was content to see himself as maybe a villain. The experience of witnessing someone being truly heroic appears to have been transformative for them both and maybe even Agatha learned something from it herself (hit the deck) and that's part of the reason she did give up her mortal life to save Billy. I love this show wholeheartedly and the more I reflect upon it the brighter it shines.

[@FaithLawless]

I did love Jennifer Kale's character arc and it makes sense that Billy had a similar one rather than it being inconsistent writting. Maybe 9 episodes wasn't enough and the whole thing was a bit rushed.

[@mrdr0161]

Agatha learnt from everyone. She used the healing spell that Jen used on Billy in the final fight. She used the protection ritual Alice used on everyone too. And she used Lilias advice. She carried a part of each of them in that fight, in a way, they all had their own part to play.

[@Dunybrook]

​@@mrdr0161 That's interesting symbolism. It did come down to her planting a flower to finish the final trial so even Sharon was in there.

[@mastersword648]

I fully disagree with this, I think it’s great that they didn’t defang Agatha or try and justify her actions at all, she was a full villain, who like all people had a motivation and emotional weaknesses, in this case being a son figure. I found her very fun to watch because it was unpredictable and I just liked her antics. Idk the deaths in the show kind of of the vibes of how are the deaths in the suicide squad are, where they’re still impactful, but the tone of the show is also a dark one so the characters might joke around about it (really just Agatha)

[@revenantravings]

She did say that not every character needs to be sympathetic or secretly right, the issue is she's not even a fun villain like Hannibal is. We need more true villains, but if one is the main character they need charm or at least a fun story for the audience to enjoy, and Agatha's charisma and plans just aren't enough for everyone.

[@chrisblake4198]

Part of my happiness with this is because of the meta assessment as a Disney/streaming series. When you compare this to the Acolyte or Secret Invasion, it's light years beyond either one. Even compared to Doctor Who as a season, it's a win. It tells a cohesive consistent story with no major duds in the episodes. It's got flaws, but it doesn't have any major foul ups, and that makes me happy.

[@glampixie]

She wasn’t just killing people because she wanted to or because she enjoyed it (while her son was alive). She was trying to appease Death (Rio) to keep her son alive. Rio mentions it multiple times that she needs to get her bodies no matter what. It isn’t adequately given exposition, that is certainly true, and that is definitely an issue with the show, that exposition (when needed) is lacking and when not needed to get something across to the audience there’s more than could ever be necessary. I do want to highlight that this is a byproduct we often see when Feige puts his “contribution” in to a story. Not saying we can blame him, but it does track. The parts of the show I did like, Alice, Lilia, Wiccan, Rio, and Jennifer were enough for me to enjoy the overall experience, even with its downfalls.

[@MissWascallyWabbit]

Ohhh, interesting...I missed that the killings were to keep her son alive... I only watched the show once, week to week, so I couldn't remember the hints from previous episodes. That's certainly more interesting than my initial understanding of that episode.

[@glampixie]

@ I found some parallels to the comic where Thanos courted Death, there are also interesting parallels to the Scarlet Witch series Vision and the Scarlet Witch (where Agatha was sort of a ghost mentor to Wanda)

[@drew116]

Soooooooooo glad someone shares my feelings on this show

[@Rutanachan]

Little addition, not as to defend her, but it's something you might not have picked up on. I don't think Agatha killed her mother's coven on purpose, it's just an inert ability of hers to draw power from witches that attack her. And the killings while her son were alive were to KEEP him alive. That was the deal she struck with death. To give her son more time, she would give death more souls. It's shown pretty clearly when her son is still a baby and is screaming up to the point where she kills the coven she comes across, and then the baby is silent again, probably because it doesn't hurt anymore. Everything afterwards though, that's all on her, see my other post.

[@DuskyPredator]

I do think a noteworthy thing about Agatha is that for her to take power and lives as seen in her backstory would have required that they attack her first. Those other victims of the road looking for shortcuts really gave into taunts. The only character we have seen killed by Agatha not from attacking her first was Alice, and I thought it shook her. The whole point of the road was her to take from gullible people, who couldn't handle not being worthy after chasing after it. Although Agatha still saw herself as a villain.

[@mathewsydney8929]

It's fascinating how many people will bend over backwards to make excuses for Agatha's behavior because the actor is funny, charming and lovable... sometimes pure evil manages to come across as funny, charming and lovable... and that's what makes them so chilling.

[@Benji-dt6ch]

i think people forget what the word "sympathetic" means. It means we're supposed to be able to sympathize with them, put ourselves in their shoes, and feel and understand what might drive them to do the things that they do. It does not mean we agree with them or would do the same. But it means we can understand and sympathize. Wanda is an example. Even though Multiverse of Madness wasn't great, it did manage to make me understand how Wanda would do the things she does, even if they're evil. Agatha All Along doesn't manage to do that for me, which is how I think it fails. We're missing a few crucial steps in making us understand why Agatha is the way that she is. Why did she start killing in the first place? It's implied it has something to do with her mother but we don't get much more than a few nods and the scene in Wandavision, which isn't enough. Nicky isn't a good explanation either since she was killing before he was born. And even after he died, I have a hard time believing grief could motivate her to kill for that long of a time, especially since she is so happy to kill and grab more power for herself. She seems completely selfish which is something I guess I can't sympathize with. The problem is that there is a confusing amount of work put into making her seem sympathetic even thought they don't succeed. If it was never the intent to make her sympathetic (made so we can feel what she feels and understand why she does what she does), why go through all the effort. Why include the scenes with her ghost mother? Why have her sacrifice herself at the end? Why dedicate an entire episode to her backstory? Heck, why write an entire show about her? I just don't like the people saying she's just evil and we're supposed to sympathize with her love for her son while accepting that she's evil. It seems to me that they're either implying that her mother was right and she was born evil (which, what?) or they just didn't go through the effort to show us why she's evil. (in which case, why even bring up the whole "born evil" thing in the first place?) And in a show named after Agatha Harkness, not getting to see that just seems like a shame.

[@Novrrider-mx6cs]

You see I think the problem is we don't see how her and death met I think death was so intrigued by Agatha that she made a deal with death so she wouldn't die when she was desperate and the deal was she had to kill a certain amount of people in the day. This is why she comes back at the beginning of the show because Agatha hasn't been living up to her end of the bargain due to being stuck in the hex. So then she knew she had to kill the coven so that way definitely didn't come after her. But Billy ruined that plan. And if you think about it this way it makes Agatha letting death kill her. Is her finally embracing the fact that she needs to die. And I honestly wish we got that scene in the show. Because I would have made everything so much more poetic if we just had that one scene.

[@brettmajeske3525]

@@Benji-dt6ch We know why she started killing, it was self defense. That is just the way her powers work, she can only kill someone trying to kill her. The real question is why she continued to kill? Was it the only way to keep death from her son?

[@EmpireGamingWynter]

I strongly disagree, personally. I love how they made her look like she had a hidden sincerity to her that kept us engaged the whole time, only to pull the rug out from under us at the end to say "no, she's just evil" and I like that and it actually made me like her more. I do really like Jen, Lillia, Alice and Sharon, and yeah I hate that Agatha tried to kill them but again, to me, it just adds to that reveal in the last episode. It really worked for me

[@mrdr0161]

I do like how Agatha used the things the coven showed or told her. She uses people's magic by normally absorbing it from them and killing. But here she used Lilias divination advice, Alice's protection ritual, Jen's healing spell and she only knows these because she listened, she got to know them, she understood their skill and learnt from them rather than just killing absorbing it

[@EmpireGamingWynter]

@@mrdr0161 I hadn't considered all of that but you're right. Her evilness is definitely layered. It doesn't justify her actions but to me it makes her more interesting than just someone who's evil

[@WiloPolis03]

Agatha reminded me of that one scene in the Doctor Who episodes Boomtown where the Slitheen spares one lady out of sympathy, but it's later revealed she hasn't actually changed at all and is still a murderer

[@CouncilofGeeks]

"That's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while on a whim, when the wind's in the right direction... you happen to be kind."

[@WiloPolis03]

@CouncilofGeeks 💯

[@theamyway4832]

@@CouncilofGeeksI think that’s her draw for me, personally. Trying to figure out the extent to which she has feelings - like Villanelle in Killing Eve. Wish we’d come to a conclusion with that, but it’s ok that it hasn’t imo

[@aliwantizu]

Hello Vera. Sorry this is long! Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I by no means want to change yours or say that you're wrong; however, I do want to express a viewpoint that points to a few things that could (maybe, kinda sorta) counter your argument. Perhaps because you went into this already not liking the character it clouded your otherwise very good judgement that I get from your reviews? You claim that they "backfilled" Agatha's story concerning her son. I don't see it that way. They finally told us that story, but they actually included the grief since Episode 1. Even within her mind prison, she had his empty room. Parents who lose a child often leave their rooms as they were and never alter it. So from Episode 1 it was clear (to me at least) that his death was SO profound that it was a part of her even within the "fantasy" that she was living out. They mention or allude to him in every episode. It becomes very clear that she is connecting to Billy because of her lost son. She seems to have a "soft spot" for kids because the 7 witches hunting her were the children of the witches she "unalived" that was shown in Wandavision, but we learn in this series that she didn't go after them as well. Also, you claim that sometimes a villain should just be a villain and isn't redeemable (like Hannibal,) and they don't do that here. While her grief over her lost son does give her a bit of sympathy/empathy here and there, it is later undone especially in the last episode where it's revealed that she's just evil even with her son around...which just makes her a true villain. There are times when she lets her guard down and is Agatha the Person, but someone or something snaps her out of it and she "puts on her villain face" and becomes Agatha the Witch again. Examples: When Rio tells Agatha that Billy isn't her son, Agatha had let her guard down, and then puts on the evil witch persona. The same thing happens when the other witches are bonding and suddenly Agatha takes offense and snaps back into evil witch mode. It's great acting by the way to see her just change into Evil Agatha and you see the actual "hurt" she felt that causes her to go back into that persona. At the end, when Billy reaches her and asks if that's what happened to her son...we don't see the pain and change into a person from the witch, but we see the result as she gave up her life for him. I get why you and others wouldn't like her as a person or as a character, but for me at least, her only humanizing quality is that she cares about kids (especially hers,) but even that doesn't make her redeemable. Her softness to kids is her only humanizing quality, but it's not enough to redeem her. She is just a selfish, evil person. For me though, that's fine. She is a horrible person...but a pretty good character. Yes, the other witches had more compelling stories, but that's what made this series work. Had it been Agatha in a Hannibal like series the way the flashbacks in the final episode were where she's just absorbing all the powers from those witches, I don't think this series would have been this good. Agatha was the linchpin that all the other characters connected to which helped them become better characters to us viewers. Lilia's story was fantastic, Jennifer's was quite good, Alice's was short but effective, and Ms Hart just showed us that this series wasn't playing around. As for Billy, he is kind of an anti-hero considering what he has brought about, but Agatha is now just the "devil on his shoulder" and that could be an interesting thing to see going forward. Thank you for your thoughts and opinions, always thought provoking and interesting even if/when I don't fully agree with them!

[@dbandia]

Regarding Billie's inconsistency - have you raised a teenaged boy? Even just known someone who did something terrible in a fit of emotion? His inability to process anything in that moment of first real grief and guilt, does not seem in any way inconsistent to me.

[@CouncilofGeeks]

See my line of thinking is that "but X group do be like that" often falls on its face as a justification if you haven't demonstrated to me that this specific member of X group be like that. This is a defense I see frequently from fans and almost never from creators (at least not any I respect). If he is the kind of teen who can't process and shuts down... well you need to show that before depending on it in the story. That's what the set-up half of "set-up and pay-off" is. And how I understood Billy is... almost the opposite of that. He holds a lot inside yes, but it's not because he's not processing it, it's because he's afraid of rejection. He's very introspective, that's why he's even on this journey in the first place. So... if that explanation works for you, ok. But personally, I don't buy it.

[@dbandia]

@@CouncilofGeeks I disagree with you on almost all your opinions and keep watching because you explain your opinions well and your presentation is charming. So we can agree to disagree on this one as well.

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@CouncilofGeekswhere do you notice his hesitation of being rejected? I saw his hesitation not of rejection but of embracing the "abomination" as Rio says of what he is. He struggles with the idea he might've killed a boy to bring his brother back aka an abomination, his own existence as being Billy vs being William, and him killing the witches with his own mind. It's clearly his nurturing to be good but he struggles seemingly with being born evil or accidentally doing evil.

[@dante6985]

I'm not sure if I agree with the reasoning presented. "There's nothing redeeming about Agatha going into this". She's not the villain of WandaVision. She actually helps Wanda snap out of it and free WestView (yeah she has her own agenda and isnt trying to help people much, but her worst crime was messing with Ralph and "kidnapping" Wanda's kids (which again snaps her out of the illusion).). Via Kathryn Hahn she's interesting enough to capture my attention and enjoy the show, and that's all you need. But the thoughts are appreciated nonetheless.

[@IdenNonya]

They did have a point with a fight between Vision and Wanda (a proper alternative mentioned) would've probably been better. With Vision 'technically' being a representation of her own mind. Only 'problem' is that we wouldn't have gotten any of that Scarlet Witch (ancient prophesied) stuff Marvel wanted to set-up (a mention as an aside; I didn't mind any of the Agatha, Scarlet Witch stuff that snuck it's way into it's ending)

[@multiverserift]

Hating Agatha is kinda the point. Because she is the bad guy

[@Siansonea]

I liked the show, but I get your criticisms, and I have always had issues when the audience or people within the fictional universe of a story just ignore when a character commits literal murder as if those murdered people's lives didn't matter. I never got to the point where I was 'rooting' for Agatha, but I do like her as a character (not being familiar with her comics counterpart, for what that's worth). To me, she's unequivocally a bad person, and there's no real redemption for her in this story, even saving Billy from Death. Death never cared about Billy, he was always just a means to an end for her, a way to hit back at Agatha. What was missing for me was _why_ Rio and Agatha were so at odds. The Nicky situation can't be the whole story. I think we needed more of Agatha and Rio's relationship. And why did Agatha get pregnant in the first place? Even though we saw a lot in this series, and we know that Agatha is and apparently always has been a bad person, we still don't really know _why_ she is a bad person. Her mother obviously believed she was bad, but why? We don't know who Agatha's father is, for one thing, or how Agatha was conceived. We don't know how Agatha's training and upbringing as a witch went, only that she killed her mother and the rest of the coven when they were trying to execute her. What did Agatha do that made her mother believe that killing her own daughter was the right decision? And _why_ did Agatha do that thing? _Did_ Agatha actually do whatever it was? Is Agatha simply "possessed" by her "purple"? That needs to be made more clear. Agatha caught the interest of Death, but how, and why? And why does Agatha hate Rio _really?_ Agatha knows that the only reason she had any time with her son at all is because of Rio. Agatha knows that you can't ultimately cheat death, so why is she beefing with Death over Nicky? That just seems absurdly immature for someone as old as Agatha, who has herself been the cause of so much death during her lifetime. She has some nerve feeling like she got a raw deal from Rio, given the circumstances. For Rio's part, she did what she did out of love, but Agatha only ever seems to love Nicky. Everyone else is at arm's length at least. Again, why did she want a child? On a side note, one thing about Rio I found interesting was that she seems like she (mostly) has genuine compassion for those who have died when she comes to collect them. And she seems genuinely in pain over Agatha's rejection. She was kind to Nicky, and she was kind to Alice. She basically just showed up to troll Lilia and Jennifer, she wasn't there to collect their souls. Why did she do that? Rio's story is interesting, I'd like to see more. As for Billy, I think he is his mother's son. His empathy and compassion waxes and wanes, and when his power is flowing it seems like it mostly wanes. He seems to only have emotional clarity well after the dust settles. Like Wanda and Agatha herself, the power seems to be controlling him as much as he's controlling it. And even Agatha wags her finger at his belief that he is not seeking power and not exulting in his power. It will be interesting to see how Billy develops, the character has a lot of potential.

[@NoahMiller13579]

I think my feelings about Kathryn Hahn are mixing with my feelings about Agatha. Hahn is exceptionally talented and charming and it definitely impacts how Agatha is perceived. Agatha knows she is a bad person and she intentionally chooses to be a bad person. I also agree Billy is inconsistently written. (Aside from the points you mention, his relationship with the Kaplans is also inconsistent) I also agree that Sharon and Alice's deaths should have been handled better, or been avoided.

[@Thed538dhsk]

How are your feelings about Hahn mixing with your feelings about Agatha?

[@IdenNonya]

How so with the Kaplans?

[@JennaGetsCreative]

You made an excellent point in your callback to WandaVision that the series had no business bringing in an outside villain. I thought the Agatha reveal in WV was cute and fun but I didn't like what it did to the story. I think AAA continues to suffer the same way in that there's a lot of great story and great characters and great emotional connections for the audience, and the character of Agatha is misused. This is also just making me remember how much I wished WandaVision had been longer. Whether its media I read or media I watch, I'm always the audience member who wants to tarry with sympathetic characters a little longer, even though there'd be others screaming to get on with it 😅

[@Thed538dhsk]

But how could WV or AAA benefit from being longer? And what do you mean by longer, longer EPS like 1 hr eps OR do you mean more episides?

[@zemoxian]

I think Agatha tries to be the entertaining evil villain but it’s just a facade to cover the small fragile sympathetic fragments of her humanity. Much of it has been lost through suffering and betrayal. But enough seeps through that Billy, Nicky, Rio, and at least some of the audience can relate to her. I’m on the fence with her. I can see she’s in pain and feel for that. And part of me keeps hoping she can be better than she is. I can see that Billy finds her sympathetic. I’m concerned that he’s chosen her to mentor him on his journey to find Tommy. Can she really be anything other than a bad influence on him? She’ll probably help him to survive since that’s her claim to fame, but other than that, what’s redeemable about her? Overall, I was entertained and I am definitely curious about where this might be going.

[@IdenNonya]

Agatha seems to have this weird trait written into her where if there's an opportunity she'll instinctively grab power (do something self-serving), without much thought on it afterwards, something that's best exemplified with that moment with Alice and her death (tho she did seem not to have realised what she had done after the act). It's then showed with her 'development' of being able to stop herself with the drainage of Billy/William, something she's probably never done before in her centuries of existence; you couple that with what she did for him before, with finding Tommy, something that didn't and wouldn't benefit her at all in that moment -there's something there. Only to then bring us back to the 'Alice' deal with her willing to leave William to Death when things became opportune, again almost instinctually - through, likely conditioning of circumstance, Billy was then able to bridge their minds (something that's likely empathetic based) and ask her a question - her choosing to sacrifice herself signifies a true potential for change. So we'll see, lol Billy's at least the exception to everything for her, and she has developed a genuine bond with him (that he may or may not be so partial to) And, Agatha was able to push him to confront or discover things about himself that he couldn't (?), wouldn't have (?), before (oh, man I really like this show - and could talk for ages about it)

[@ChrystGryderMaakorey]

This is what I got out of the video… "The show/character should be A. Or it should be B. If it wants to be somewhere in the middle, then it needs to do this and this. It can't just be its own thing, because I don't like that." Very interesting take from a non-binary person, I must say. No hate (luv you and the channel) and we all have our own interpretations and opinions of things, I just found it very unexpected.

[@zenithquasar9623]

I disagree Agatha herself “wasn’t fun”. I kind of loved her being a jerk throughout the show, but that last episode makes her sooo evil, like more evil than Walter White, even more than Spike (probably the most comparable character), it makes even those fun scenes so awful for me in retrospect. I don’t want to enjoy someone this awful but charismatic…this is how atrocities happen! And happen right now in the world with the certain conflict!

[@Thed538dhsk]

I strongly disagree. These "charismatic leaders" who do atrocities aren't actually that charismatic. And I disagree with Walter White. She was irredeemable by the end of Breaking Bad. But Agatha is according to the show in a grey area imo. She isn't redeemed yet but as a ghost will this be her penace and overtime she is redeemed? Remember Agatha can only take the power from the witches who attack her, her power set is inherently defensive. If the witches didn't attack they had survived. Agatha baits them and they take the bait out of desperation or bring power hungry. Or is Agatha just like a lion eating it's prey?

[@mathewsydney8929]

The horror is how lovable and charming she is... everyone wants to see more of her... everyone wants to see that redemption... but she's just evil through-and-through... Although now that she's effectively Wiccan's spirit guide maybe they can lean into the complexity of a witch's ancestor-work when your ancestors were jerks while they were alive.

[@martianpudding9522]

It also bothers me whenever fiction depicts real salem witches. Like, real people were accused of witchcraft and killed and it feels like saying in your fictional universe that was justified. It's probably not that deep but it feels icky to me

[@CouncilofGeeks]

Yeah that's a big issue for me too, I've talked about it before when I did a video on American Horror Story: Coven a little bit back. I didn't bring it up here because that specific point didn't really come up much. It was more prominent in WandaVision honestly.

[@HandofOmega]

Disney has a real problem with actual "villain protagonists" (see Loki, Boba Fett), where they can't let them BE actual *villains*. Agatha is the first time they mostly get that RIGHT (ironically, just as WB is also doing this even better w Penguin)!

[@cliffcolter9161]

I really enjoyed the fact that Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) was such a horrible human being. I am so glad that they never made it clear why she killed all of these witches. Agatha is a serial killer full stop. While I listen to what bothers you, I find what you dislikes is what compels the character. Agatha is in the title but she is not the main character, Billy and Death are really the main characters. When Billy flings the characters in the mud pit... because he has created the road and deep down he controls this environment.... he could know where they ended up. Agatha is a Villain full stop and every time she isn't you know that something is up.

[@raymondbermudez555]

Agatha's self-hindrance was so annoying that i dropped the series. Episode 7 brought me back. Truly great episode. I felt something when seeing that episode.

[@loganrowan3620]

They should’ve spread Agatha’s flashbacks with her son throughout the entire season. It would’ve given us a reason to care because we’d be asking ourselves “why isn’t her son around anymore?” Then Rio’s reveal to be Death through Lilia, would line up at the same time with Nicholas being taken by her in the flashbacks of that episode making that entire reveal much more satisfying (even if predictable). They fumbled fully utilizing Agatha as the protagonist imo

[@Thed538dhsk]

How do you feel Agatha could've been better utilized as a protagonist?

[@brettmajeske3525]

@@loganrowan3620 Agatha was never the protagonist, she was always the intended antagonist. Billy all along!

[@martinmorles1]

Overall really enjoyed this series , the sets , characters particularly introduction of Wiccan was so good !! Love the twist with the road , as it fits with the oz inspiration they got going on, following the yellow brink road to meet the wizard no one has seen. Road was just rumors , whispers that circulated so much people believed it , when it was just a con brilliant

[@jackskellingtonsora]

I don't know what to tell you. I like Agatha. I think she's a fun, entertaining villain. Absolutely a net negative on the world. She's very much so the foil to Billy, the real protagonist of the show, who is trying to do good and trying to see the good in her when she definitely does not have any good in her at all. She lures people in, kills them, steals their power, rinse and repeat. That's her whole thing. She's never learned or grown as a person. She made her grief into everyone else's problem. Oh yeah, Alice's death was absolutely cruel. That was entirely the point. To me, it was supposed to show that Agatha was absolutely still evil, still an awful person, not redeemed at all and will not be redeemed by the show. She's very much so supposed to be the villain. Someone tries to protect her and what does she do? Kill the person trying to protect her.

[@theamyway4832]

I did also very much get the ‘addict’ vibes from her. I don’t think she wanted Alice dead or anything but just couldn’t help herself once she got a taste of power again.

[@SirStrangefolk]

​@@theamyway4832I think Death accused Agatha of killing Alice to distract her from Billy, so that could be part of it too.

[@RAHowes]

I enjoyed the show to a point. But my main issue is that its a show about witches their mythology (witches road), their power and their ways of surviving a world that hates them.. Only to have the single male in the show main cast to be the one that's all powerful and the cause of it all. They took the Road and the witches agency from them by having him create it. Full adult women still not as powerful as an underage teen. Unless the creators are trying to make a statement about woman's rights/choices and abilities for them to make them I do not understand why it could not have been called "The Witches Road" and have been a genuine rite of passage for the witches and a thing for them to face themselves and come into their own.

[@binkbonl]

I mean, the show is about a villain. She’s a villain, it comes on the tin. So it’s just a matter of taste not quality

[@anitrahooper5031]

Thank you for giving language to the issues I also had. My partner hates the celebration of characters who are intentionally bad & who who don't show growth from their experiences. It was ahard watch for him & he struggled with Agatha in Wanda Vision also. I agree that giving us insights to her trauma at the end was insufficient. Once it got confirmed (or maybe even before) that Teen was not her son, we could have gotten snapshots of her past. Additionally, once we learn her powers are all about taking from others, it would have been good to see the debate about why being covenless & taking powers is her MO. Not for sympathy of her, but to contextually her perspectives. 💜🙌🏾🌈✊🏾🌍

[@Yupthatsme_7D]

Very refreshing perspective and over encapsulated my final sentiments. Thank you

[@necronomiconjones8040]

Totally agree. Would say more but it'd be just repeating what you already said.

[@Rommy427]

I liked the show, but you clearly articulated why I couldn't really recommend it to a bunch of people. Both my husband and a close friend of mine would *loathe* Agatha so much that they would not be able to get into to it, even for the side characters (which admittedly were my favorite parts of the series... Justice for Alice!). For my friends who want a little Halloween fun and like the Sanderson sisters best when they are unambiguously the baddies, I'd cheerfully recommend it. I was there for the witch aesthetic and queerness. To me this felt like it maybe, could be, the lead up to a possible real redemption arc for Agatha someday, as the Mushu to Billy's Mulan. That might be an interesting story.

[@AllenWalker15735]

Agatha the fails as a protagonist because a protagonist needs to be able to motivate its audience into cheering for them to achieve their goals. Agatha's main goal is to kill people we like so why would we cheer for that. She could have been more likeable if she wasn't the main protagonist, kind of like Ursula from The Little mermaid. They are both Campy, evil and manipulative but Ursula works because she isn't being asked to be more than what she is.

[@theamyway4832]

I think their inability to fully pin down Agatha’s character was probably pressure from Marvel to make this more of Billy’s story than anything else - a point I’ve seen on Twitter a lot that genuinely makes sense to me. I love Agatha as a character because she never lets anyone close enough to really know her exact intentions, but I do wish the layers got peeled back a tad more by the end. I do feel the real focus was on Billy really, and I do think that was down to pressure from marvel to set up the young avengers.

[@theamyway4832]

But I have to say, I’m a sucker for a female character who seems to have zero feelings at all but probably does, somewhere inside. Plus, I like the idea of ‘survival’. To Agatha, her sense of survival probably derived from her mother attempting to kill her and her discovery of her own innate power stealing magic. ‘Well, another coven will probably try to kill me again. My mum said I was evil. Might as well be just that, then.’ I think she was probably killing people to appease Rio, too. To keep her away from her son.

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@@theamyway4832I think the ambiguity helps. 1. Is Agatha just a spider eating flies, a succubus witch consuming other witches to "feed"? 2. Is she a sadistic serial killer of witches 3. Is she just doing the killings as revenge for her mom and original coven so hurt people hurting other people 4. Or is she doing this to keep Rio at bay and not have to confront Nicky so a tragedy I think it's a combination of all 4 and ambiguous enough to allow viewers to decide on the interpretation

[@Thed538dhsk]

Was it tho? According to ep 7 the whole series was Lilia all along. And in ep 9 it is Agatha all along. But ep 6 & 8 recontextualize the whole series to be Billy's story. The show shifts perspective of who the main character is.

[@theamyway4832]

@@Thed538dhsk Yes, the open ending perhaps was ok. I DID love the mystery of trying to figure out her intent.

[@calebmarmon1310]

I basically agree with everything you said. I would add that part of my problem with her character is how often she was seemingly sabotaging her own goals of finishing the Road (something that only makes sense at the end). So for the entire show up to the finale, her actions and reactions didn’t line up with her character and situation. And then knowing her motivations just pushes her from strangely disconnected from the situation to actively hateable for putting all of characters we like through that, for the intended purpose of killing each of them for her own power.

[@fangsabre]

Yeah. Because you are supposed to hate her. She's hateable. The name of the show is meant to remind you who the villain is

[@calebmarmon1310]

@@fangsabre True, but for me it got to the point of annoyance/frustration, like how many audiences hated Jar Jar. I don’t love to hate her, I just want her to go get therapy somewhere else. (even though I do love the actress).

[@Thed538dhsk]

​@calebmarmon1310but according to this show therapy wouldn't and won't help Agatha. Wanda could benefit from therapy. But Agatha is almost a witch apex predator, a black widow that traps flies in its web. She and seemingly Nicky feed on the deaths of these witches.

[@Wrightbrain]

The one thing I didn't like was how dark everything was. I don't mean in tone...I mean literally in cinematography. My TV kept making it too dark to watch, so I watched the last episode on my ipad...and it was still too dark.

[@gamewrit0058]

15:00 I agree that it's not enough, just like an abusive parent "sacrificing" themself to "save" their kid doesn't redeem them. 💜

[@voltijuice8576]

Yep, like Shadow Weaver, some are being manipulative to the very end

[@nancyjay790]

Very interesting points. Thank you so much, Vera! I want to chew on this for a while. Still, thanks so much.

[@kdbcrafts4220]

Enjoyed the video and hearing your well thought out opinions/review even though I disagreed with most of it :P Thanks as always!

[@floraidh4097]

I agree with you entirely! I found the secondary characters so much more interesting than Agatha, I didn’t make it past the first episode when I thought it was just going to be about her. Then I put it on this week while I was sewing my son’s Halloween costume and I really enjoyed the other witches and to be left with just Agatha by the end with a sob story. It was not a redeeming feature in my eyes it was just like ‘I’m sorry, but there’s only so many murders that you can do before I am definitely not going to feel bad for you having lost your child.’

[@katl.7022]

I was expecting to have more disagreement with this video than I did seeing as I don't hate Agatha. Agatha All Along was the most I've personally been able to enjoy/get invested a Disney+ show since Andor. (Which it didn't even come close to, but my expectations were pretty low so I still had a lot of fun.) I think it's definitely one of those shows that I love in broader strokes but often find myself frustrated with the execution in specifics. Alice's death was easily my biggest frustration and I think it was the turning point were the show became a lot less fun for me. Episode 7 was still amazing though! Makes me think this show could've worked better in a more anthological format where each of the characters got a whole episode dedicated to them and there was less focus on Agatha and Billy.

[@saraha4531]

first video ive watched from you where i just outright disagree with your overall thesis and the reasons you use to back it up agatha is such a cool and fun character. its fine that you dont like the show but i think a lot of the fans genuinely think its a good story and love it for reasons beyond it being a gay witch show

[@lainycoop5888]

I agree completely! Especially the character deaths, Sharon and Alice. And the inconsistency of Billie's character. I also do not like Agatha, I realized this early on but there was some good stuff in the show that I enjoyed. I've never needed to like the central character of any show. I'm glad I'm not alone!

[@chriskagamine358]

22:49 For me, This would have been a million times better (/less terrible) if we had seen a full (aunts, cousins, etc.) family picture of Alice, and when Alice is talking to Rio about how she finally beat the curse just to die, Rio had then said (Instead of saying she died protecting someone) that she broke the curse not just for herself, but for everyone in her family. Rio saying she died to save Agatha is terrible because Alice died to save a genocidal (wants almost every witch dead). If she said she died right after sacrificing herself to save every woman in her family, it would feel like an important sacrifice (even if we're not attached to her cousin, cause they suck less than Agatha)

[@philippschmidt80]

I'm sorry, but saying there is something admirable or sympathetic about Dexter Morgan is absurd. He was a monster, targeting serial killers does not make it better, Dexter played jusdge, jury and executioner and punished others for the same things he was doing. He had zero redeeming qualities. Agatha genuinely loved Nicholas and has a soft spot for Billy, protecting him several times, starting in the second episode when she send him out of the basement so that he woudn't get killed. She's still a villain of course but unlike Dexter she actually has some good qualities even if she tries to hide them.

[@quintussystudios]

I think in Agatha's case, she's just the case of a terrible person being a terrible person. I mean sure she had some terrible stuff happen to her, she's still a villain at the end of the day. Which worked for me personally.

[@The-Busy-Beeeee]

Exactly i dont think they were trying to redeem her but simply show how shes human

[@WhitneyAllisonGG]

Also being an evil person doesn't mean you have some good qualities to you. Agatha Harkness is not completely evil 100% of her life she is not cartoony villain stroking her proverbial moustache.

[@brettmajeske3525]

To me i didn't see the same coding as Agatha was always a bad person. She only killed her first coven in self defense. There is no reason to think she was killing between that event and the birth of Nicky. It seems clear to me, and at least one other you tube channel, that Agatha was only killing witches to perserve nicky. The one time they fail to take out a coven, Nicky is taking by Death. Agatha is evil, but only to preserve her child. It is after that she becomes truly evil. I think the show was saying it was only after her true trial, she failed the one with the ouji board, that she has control.

[@Nightman221k]

I was satisfied with the series because I really liked Teen and wanted to see him succeed. I love Agatha as a character type. Charming and self serving with an undercurrent of mystery and hints at a better nature to her. But I also was disappointed to see that she was going to kill all the other witches and only spared Billy cause he reminded her of Nicky. It’s just sad cause I liked Sharon, Lilia, and Alice and didn’t want to see them die while Agatha basically got away with her actions.

[@nikkimurphy1737]

Your not supposed to like her. Not everything is rainbows and sunshine.

[@JohnDowson100]

I agree. She is a terrible person with a single Morality Chain (Nick, and Billy too as he reminds her of him). Period. The last episode doesn't try to make her sympathetic, it only explains her soft spot for Billy and why this colossal AHole decided to sacrifice her life for a boy she met 24 h earlier who is also the son of someone she hates. Agatha trough the series does not need to change for the better because everyone around her does. She is a sort of reverse Mary Poppins in a way, a cathalist for transformation by virtue of her shittiness.

[@nikkimurphy1737]

​@JohnDowson100 beautifully well stated! Especially around the last episode. I was so glad they added that episode.

[@DneilB007]

What I was expecting to see in the finale was that Agatha was getting bodies for Rio to “redeem” Nicky, and the moment that Nicky asked her not to kill witches was the night that when Rio came for him. It was hinted, but it wasn’t said, and it should have been said if that was the idea. As for the “born evil” bit, I thought it was hinting at Agatha being a mutant along the lines of Rogue.

[@fangsabre]

My feelings towards Agatha All Along ending can be summed up real easy. This show made me suspicious of her, but we forgot who this show is about as a character. The title told us as suspicious as we were of her, it wasnt enough

[@katielangsner495]

In the MCU ordinary people don't matter, & Agatha All Along magnifies this. The many murders Agatha commits are nothing to her 1 loss. Coven, community, compassion, courage--kindness is stupid, fair prey for the cunning. Selfish survivors alone make sacrifice matter. Death sort of matters, but life is for the exceptional ones--so individualistic. It's such a jaded, ugly, cruel view of the world.

[@Alhana_E]

I feel the failure to make Agatha sympathetic lies in the origin in wandavision. It's easy to miss, but she was attacked by another witch, which is how she discovered her draining power, and because that witch died, a group of witches, led by her own mother tried to kill her, for something that wasn't her fault. Which led her to not trust witches, thus, once she has Nicholas, she starts killing witches to keep her, and her child safe. Not a justification, by any means, but an explanation. She doesn't seem to revel in it till nickey "dies".

[@hiccuphufflepuff176]

I was obsessed with the first version of the song when it first aired. It was a beautiful, haunting anthem for the witch corner of the MCU, but now it's turned into a painful reminder that a con-artist murdered hundreds of women for believing in something that didn't exist, and the betrayal of that climactic scene of the protagonists beginning their adventure revealed to be a bunch of disposable marks getting lured into a serial-killer's basement. I think they wanted it to become a tragic theme of Agatha's relationship with her son, but the let-down from what it was before just can't be overshadowed.

[@Nme1709]

I liked it a lot, but it is fine that you didn't. We do not all have to like the same things. I agree that they tried very hard to make her sympathetic at the very end. Most of the final episode could have been inserted much earlier into the season and been better. You would have lost the mystery surrounding Nicky, but that was never a central mystery of the show, and I think it would have developed the central character more fully and earlier, which perhaps might have solved some of the issues you had with her.

[@calebleland8390]

I can only assume it's maturity that I can now here atake I don't agree with and get upset. Or maybe it's just that you actually defended your position in an articulate and thoughtful way. Personally, my wife and I loved this series, and I can't wait to see where this leads. I'll agree, a lot of what I was attracted to was the aesthetic of it, but I thought the writing was solid (especially after I was so disappointed with Secret Invasion), the cast was great, and I was invested in Billy's character. Yes, Agatha was evil for evil's sake, but I feel like she couldn't help that. I never felt like her mother referring to her as being born evil was from her queerness, but in her interest in acquiring dark magic. Yes, this was a deviation from the comics, but I don't have a problem with that, which is another way I've grown. I hope we get to see her ghost help Billy on his journey to find Tommy and help Wanda on her journey towards redemption.

[@andrewlonghofer]

I genuinely wished for an ending along the lines of using her end-of-the-road wish to get all the people who died back. Cheesy, hacky, but would have been better than what we got. And I also wish that Rio would have been more of an agent, able to give and take life more according to her will, rather than being constrained to fulfill some inevitable thing-imagine if she had been back there with Alice bringing her back because Agatha cut her short. And I also wish that what was “too horrible” had been more explicit-I took it to mean that Agatha’s regret is asking for time that she shouldn’t have had, and for her to extend that lesson of imposing her will on other people and the universe at large being the issue. And I *ALSO* wish that Agatha’s taking-other-people’s-powers was entirely involuntary, something that happened as a defensive reflex, and her evilness was just a destructive coping mechanism to keep her from getting too close to anyone that she might inevitably hurt. All of these would have been preferable.

[@MorganBriarwood]

THANK YOU! I really hated Agatha in Wandavision. At first she was a fun red herring but she spoiled the ending like you said. Here, too. I don’t like her. But I did enjoy the show. It’s Billy’s story and would be better framed that way (almost is…) but that might have spoiled the it-was-him twist. I guess we can’t have everything. Hoping to see more of Billy, though!

[@TheRealWalkingDude]

I agree.

[@mere2394]

I’ve definitely enjoyed projects about side characters like Echo and Agatha more than projects about established characters like Nick Fury and Obi-Wan Kenobi

[@DawnOfDragonz]

I definitely agree about being turned off that Agatha's MCU character came in place of a more comic faithful depiction, ESPECIALLY because when Wandavision aired we really didn't HAVE any good female friendships shown in the MCU (apaparently Yelenia and Kate sort of remedy this from what I hear but I was never interested). I would have loved an Agatha that became Wanda's ally instead and have a rich character from there but ugh. And yeah, that this show was clearly greenlit to bounce off how much people like Hahn's performance didn't give me much faith either. honestly, surprised it's not just a cashgrab, glad to hear there seems to be some heart here.

[@CristalyRama]

I absolutely agree with everything you said. Nothing more to add. ;)

[@Ironorchids]

So there is this Abridged series called Hellsing Abridged. Go watch it. That is what Agatha All Along and Disney were desperate to do here. They failed miserably and I loved hate watching every moment. Thanks, Vera ❤ edit: spelling

[@thenamelessdragon]

Completely get all the criticism and I *mostly* agree. Agatha worked for me mostly because I enjoyed her presence in Wandavision (mostly before the twist) so much that I viewed her more as an interesting caricature that got humanised a little in this show. However, I agree that if you don't like the character feel, you're not getting much out of this. However, this show isn't just Agatha, it's Billy too. Despite the title, you can't call this "the Agatha show," it stars both of them pretty equally. I'd argue though, based on the structure, that the show didn't want to be character-focused. Yes, there's character in it, but I agree that either Agatha or Billy should have been an open book the entire time so you had a central character. Also, I didn't love the format of slowing down the plot for three episodes of the series to do character detours. I liked Billy so at least his episode was mostly okay, but the first and the last dragged for me. Totally agreed on the Billy inconsistency, but for me it was because I felt like after episode 5 the show was *telling* the audience that he was a bad guy now, but in a show where the other protagonist has a body count of 11 + a dog by that point, trying to paint a guy who got pissed and chucked some people into the mud as evil was a little frustrating. They really needed to decide whether they wanted two "evil" protagonists that mirrored each other, or for Billy to be the "good guy". Also, hard agree on the deaths. I've seen so many people talk about how the deaths have meaning and all this, but they were definitely handled poorly. Especially because the three side characters who died were the ones that were built up the best and Jennifer had this vague thing about a guy who bound her power and that was it. I didn't even start *liking* her until episode 7 and that was through her support of Lilia. When it got to the end and she escaped, I was annoyed and surprised. I have a feeling that if your audience is pissed at your final girl for surviving, you didn't do the best. TL;DR: Technically this show has two main characters, not one. The deaths were actively bad. The show was obviously built around the plot twists, everything else was warped to support them (even though they were good twists, this hurt the show a little).

[@meiradoeshavealife]

Oh yeah, Jen deserved more time. I hope she will return at some point.

[@jonathanhibberd9983]

I think you watched this with a far different perspective than I did. There seemed to be 3 main stories they were telling: Billy & Agatha's, Death herself's, and all in the framework of a mystery. 1) first is the framing of the show as a mystery. They told us this in episode 1. Mysteries aren't about character growth. They are about circumstances and figuring out the underlying connections. SPOILERS for Knives Out. Compare the episode where we see what happened with Billy, to the revelation that Marta was the "killer". There was a similar sense of "congratulations! You solved the puzzle. But what are you still missing?" And then, like the final confrontation with Ransom where we see everything spelled out; we see Billy's room and Agatha's backstory, giving us the final pieces that were missing. 2) You have the establishment of the relationship between Billy and Agatha. But they needed to firmly set that dynamic, otherwise we may be tempted to think Agathat is the protagonist. She's not. Billy is. Agatha is there to be the antagonist. She's not a good person, but Katherine Hahn is just too charming. I think without Alice's death specifically, we might feel more sympathy for her than we should. At the same time, it looks like they may be setting up a redemption arc for her, so they can't make her irredeemably evil. It's a tough balance. YMMV, but I think they pulled it off. They set us up with a fun dynamic between the two that they can use in future projects. 3) One of the big take-aways that was in almost every episode is just how cold death is. The show starts with a dead body alone in the woods. A meaningless death. Sharon, Alice, Nicholas - all meaningless. But you also have Agatha and Lidia, both who chose their deaths, and both who had satisfaction in them. And there's that moment with Rio and Alice, where Rio is trying to comfort her as best she can. Trying to give a little meaning to an otherwise meaningless death. So even when the death itself is cold and meaningless, Death is compassionate - as much as she can be.

[@fobwatchful]

I DON'T agree, but I *DO* understand! I don't think we were ever meant to admire Agatha Harkness, just understand her as a character. In that regard, this show worked for me where "The Acolyte" did not. But as always, I still appreciate your thoughts and comments.

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

"Burned at the stake" haha, nice one Vera 😄

[@2012Pictures]

I don’t agree with every point but you made a compelling argument 🤷🏾‍♂️

[@QuaePanemEtCircenses]

As pissed as I am about Alice and Sharon, Death was introduced in this series and here are various ways we can meet her. We can be ready and at peace like Lillia, we could beg for more time like Alice, it could be an accident like Sharon or Billy, or necessary sacrifice like Agatha. It’s a smart way to introduce death and I predict we’ll see her sparingly though Marvel properties when big juicy deaths are portrayed

[@matthewche]

Agatha All Along is the best Marvel show in years! I loved it. ❤❤

[@spencerpommier806]

I mean X-Men 97 just came out

[@MagickP00dle]

​@@spencerpommier806 X-Men 97 is so good it feels like a fluke. I can't blame someone for forgetting or not realizing that it's technically part of the MCU.

[@Elwaves2925]

@@MagickP00dle It's also possible they haven't seen it. I've watched all the MCU shows (I think) except for that one but that's because superhero animations have never gelled with me. I also never read their comics, so I didn't bother with it.

[@XavierRD]

​@@spencerpommier806I think I'm all alone in that X-men 97 was good but... not as amazing as everyone seems to say? I've always taken it as people being happy to have accurate X-Men media, but the pacing was too fast as they burned through entire storylines in sometimes single episodes and didn't stop very often to focus on the characters in a way what allowed me to connect with them. Madelyne was probably the biggest example for me on this. Almost no build up, her story just happened and then ended.

[@christopherpoff4117]

For what it's worth, as someone who enjoyed the show a lot and who does enjoy this portrayal of Agatha, I was not put off by your take. In fact, I don't disagree with it at all -- it's just the aspects of the character you dislike, don't put me off. That said, I don't think we're ever supposed to find any aspect of Agatha redeeming, actually. I do view her as a victim of her power, in that she was born with a power that only works by usually killing people, and I think if you take that in isolation as a character shaped by circumstance and not even a metaphor for anything, I do find it compelling that she has a lot of compelling reasons to be evil. It is still however her choice and I absolutely agree, whenever she says she can't stop, she's lying (though I do think she also fools herself because she's made it her normal). I get that it's a deal breaker. You're never supposed to imagine she's ever actually good, even her actions for the few characters she develops feelings for are tainted by her beliefs (which in turn are tainted by the nature of her powers but she still chooses to use them). I view her the same way I view Rygel on Farscape. I hate what he is and what he represents generally. But I wouldn't want the show to not have him. Especially because his puppeteers and voice actor were amazing, but also because non-heroic characters have an important place in mature storytelling.

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

Ok, but many people interpret Agatha killing witches so Rio would be fed and wouldn't go after Nicky, and the one day they didn't do it Rio took Nicky.

[@shelkartmarne]

"I don't agree, but I understand" I loved the show, but you make good points. Agatha didn't bother me that much but I also had trouble getting my head around her. It kind of felt like she was just hanging out way past most of the MCU in trope-land, where she is just "the witch-killing witch" and I couldn't really form an opinion on it. I came out of WandaVision thinking that maybe the first time was self-defense and afterwards she was just eating Raw Power to level up, but even if we've seen every single time she did it (but they seem to be implying she kills on the rate that other people wash their cars), the gains seem marginal for the cost. Agatha All Along does have an implication that she's a Bad Person for thinking that there could be any gain worth killing over but even then, they play it like a category she may or may not belong to rather than choices she is or is not responsible for. Again, I'm pretty sure it's literally in the text that she gets more powerful from it - I just never saw any evidence of that (aside from maybe going from "zero magic" to "some magic" after Alice). She doesn't seem to need it in a vampiric way, she doesn't seem to have a Dark Compulsion to kill, she doesn't even seem to get much of a kick out of it. She DOES seem to sincerely suffer from the appropriate ostracism and isolation that comes from the practice. She seemed to think her son wasn't being stupid for wanting her to stop. Why does she do it? So I had trouble looking too hard at Agatha (limited to the serial murder - the jerk selfishness that definitely does not turn off when lives are at stake did work for me), but I had enough fun with pretty much everything else that it got a pass in my book. EDIT to add a couple of thoughts now that I've been stewing on it: I had been reading the exaggerated movements when she steals magic as just "superhero choreography" but I could maybe see it as just being THAT fun to do. I would have expected it to come off more lewd if that had been the case, but something-something-Disney... Also, Rio shows up right at Nick's birth. She and Agatha are already obviously close and she only backs off because she doesn't want to hurt Agatha like that. It is possible that we've only scratched the surface of that initial "What's going on there?" reaction so many had when first seeing them together. So at this point I can headcanon that somehow Death found out about her lethal talent and got her into all this and It Was Really Good In The Beginning, Before It Got So Out Of Hand. Still not solid stuff, but enough that I can more easily hand-wave it.

[@nettie607]

My partner & I agree with you completely. Thank you for this, Vera!

[@BruceWayne-hr7vm]

I don't necessarily agree with your points concerning Agatha herself but I can see your point of view. Regarding other talking points though like Alice's death and the inconsistency with Billy that I do agree with fully. I ended up liking the show overall but think it could have been so much better than it is. Thought the episode with Alice's death down to the "Billy" reveal was quite bad

[@aarononeil9832]

I will say this at the very least; while this show did sell me a little better on Agatha just being outright evil, I do still wish we had the more nuanced comic accurate version. I second the comment saying Patti Lupone would have been brilliant for that, I'm not a huge MT person but I gather she's an absolute legend in that world and it was a delight to have her bring that brilliance into this world.