REVIEW: ‘Agatha All Along’ Episodes 8-9

From start to finish, Agatha All Along is the most fully realized Marvel series, barring X-Men ‘97. There have undoubtedly been high points throughout their tenure despite the overall fatigue. Loki delights even though they strip the essence of the titular character away from him. And fight scenes from the original run of Daredevil remain impressive. WandaVision, up until its final episodes, delights while playing with genre and form before mightily dropping the ball. The greatest surprise of the most recent series from the studio is that it sticks the landing and does so with a clear, pre-determined goal in mind.

Agatha All Along Episodes 8-9 delivers a fully realized finale. It’s deliberate and demonstrative of a story with specific, well-thought-out intentions. So often, the worst of Marvel feels like it’s being written as it goes. In Agatha All Along, the ending is what the story is working toward. It shouldn’t sound so, ahem, marvel, but for the studio that so often fumbles its landings, it’s noteworthy here. Everything that came before and the coven’s journey along the witch’s road is fatefully predetermined.

Of the two, Episode 8 suffers the most as it works both in tandem with the series highlight, Episode 7, and as a setup for the finale. There are individual solid moments, however, as Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Billy (Joe Locke), and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) journey to their final trial. Here, Jen learns that Agatha is the one who bound her. She can perform an unbinding spell, her rage palpable through Zamata’s powerful performance. After so many of the coven have died, it’s nice to see one leave victorious. Having regained her powers, she disappears, leaving only Billy and Agatha to complete their quests.

Early in Agatha All Along Episode 8, we learn that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) views Billy as an abomination — someone who got a new life through death. As Death herself, Rio believes Billy belongs with her, and Agatha seemingly agrees to deliver him. But for as wicked as Agatha is, her turbulent moral code lacks consistency. During the trial, she helps Billy locate Tommy’s soul and a body to house it in. They find a drowning boy, and a grayness permeates the sequence. It’s technically a win for Billy, as finding his brother was his mission while traversing the road. But it also spells potential tragedy as he wonders if he somehow killed that boy to save his brother.

Hahn delivers a bruising delivery soon after Billy, too, has disappeared: ” Sometimes boys just die.” It opens the wound the series festers upon, leading into the finale. In her own way, Agatha sacrifices herself with a literal kiss of death with Rio. This leads us to the melancholic end, where we learn of Agatha’s true backstory and the tragedy and death that clings to it.

One of the better elements of Agatha All Along is how it refuses to excuse Agatha’s actions. She is very much an antagonist and Episode 9 shines a light on just how far she’s willing to go to maintain her hold on power. We meet her as she’s giving birth to her son, Nicholas. Death appears, warning her that she will take him from Agatha. Agatha begs for time, and all she wants is more time.

This palpable grief seeps into the finale as Agatha grapples with loving someone who she knows is destined to be taken from her. In a lovely bit of writing, Agatha looks at her son and says that no magic was used to create him — he was made from scratch.

Agatha then spends the six years of his life harvesting the essence of her coven’s magic. She isn’t good through the virtue of loving someone. Instead, she relies on petty cruelties and murder to keep her and her son alive. It makes for a much more well-rounded character, especially once the flashback ends. We’ve watched as Agatha and Nicholas spend time writing the Ballad of the Witches Road, a children’s song they trade liens on. But once he dies and Death whisks him away, Agatha transforms it. Now, it’s a beckoning chorus that lures witches in. Agatha promises witches to show them the Witches Road, knowing it’s make-believe, to steal their power.

This makes the reveal all the more satisfactory because now we know why Agatha was so shocked in Episode 2. The road shouldn’t exist, meaning Billy made it—just like Wanda built their town in WandaVision. In the future, Billy mourns the realization that by creating the road, he played a role in Lilia, Alice, and Sharon’s deaths. Locke does tremendous work in these final sequences, the subtlety of his grief and conflicting emotions playing out across his face.

He and Hahn — back as ghost Agatha — have a wonderful, dynamic chemistry as they both reckon with their parts in their journey together. Even as Billy tries to banish Agatha, he’s compelled by her pleas and concern about seeing her son again. His kindness prompts an unlikely reveal that sometimes, that kindness is what makes Billy remind her of her son. That tenderness, cut by Agatha’s biting commentary, makes for such a fabulous character. Marvel easily could’ve softened her edges, so thankfully created, Jac Schaeffer maintained that acidic charm.

The finale ends on a cliffhanger as Billy and Agatha set off to find Tommy, landing its greatest emotional punches. Agatha All Along Episodes 8-9 refreshingly feels like a proper conclusion. As it deals with the unyielding heaviness of grief, motherhood, found family, and self-discovery through trauma and triumph, it’s the perfect conclusion to one of Marvel’s greatest achievements to date.

Agatha All Along Episodes 8-9 are out now on Disney+.