“Ding dong, the witch is dead!”
In “The Wizard of Oz,” the residents of Munchkinland rejoice in song to herald the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. Wayward farm girl Dorothy Gale has dropped into Oz by unintentionally but rather precisely dropping a house on the witch, freeing the colorful clan of Munchkins from the tyrannical scourge of a witch who took pleasure in bending them to her will. Dorothy then watches as the Munchkins all but make her arrival to Oz a national holiday in real time, complete with a Lollipop Guild salute.
It is clear in just these few moments that, for the first time in many years, this is a world free from the threat of a volatile and selfish witch hellbent on taking from it what she wants. One has to imagine that among the covens of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, similar celebrations of glee are spontaneously erupting today after the two-part finale of “Agatha All Along.”
In the penultimate episode of the Disney+ series, Agatha Harkness (played with vicious zeal by Kathryn Hahn) finally meets her end after centuries of draining the life and powers from witches with whom she pretends to build a coven. During a fiery tango with her ex-girlfriend Rio, aka Death (Aubrey Plaza), Agatha takes the literal kiss of death to save Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) from being carted off to the afterlife –– a decision she later halfheartedly assures Billy totally wasn’t about him.
She dresses up this sacrificial act, perhaps the first one we have ever seen her make, as something else because even in death, Agatha has a reputation to uphold. “Agatha All Along,” a sequel series to 2019’s “Wandavision,” has essentially been an indictment of Agatha’s 350-year mean streak that begs the question: can a witch who kills witches ever be redeemed? Given that she has repeatedly shown that her disregard for her sisters in magic has not been eroded by time, the answer should probably be a resounding “Hell no!” and we would understand if her demise elicited the same musical euphoria as the Munchkins dancing on the Yellow Brick Road. But by the time Agatha Harkness’ body instantaneously rots and decomposes into a bed of flowers in shades of her signature purple, her death inspires something closer to sadness rather than cheer.
With this time granted by Death, Agatha melds her two primal instincts –– motherhood and survival. It’s an immediately familiar side of Agatha because we’ve watched her oscillate, even begrudgingly, between these two poles of her existence on the Witches Road as she became more protective over and envious of Billy and his growing power. She has an undeniable maternal instinct, even if she is suppressing it because of what happened the last time she let it be her guide.
As she and Nicky traverse 18th Century America, she feeds on witches and he gives her an unconditional place to put the love that her own mother and coven so traumatically discarded to their own peril. Along their way, they make up a song about traveling a fictional Witches Road together, a lullaby of sorts that Nicky performs in taverns to earn money and lure witches out of hiding for Agatha to feast on. But ultimately, the song serves as Agatha’s gospel when Nicky is claimed by Death in the night. Suddenly alone again, Agatha clings to the song and the legend that has inadvertently sprung from it among the witch community, using the idea of the mythical Witches Road as a means of gathering covens to seek the so-called prize at the end, only to then drain them of their powers. This cyclical siphoning becomes a ritual for Agatha, as illustrated by a truly incredible sequence that lets Hahn don through-the-decades drag as she proves that her savagery is timeless.
The Witches Road was never real though. If anything, it was a repository for the tragedy of Agatha’s life, a metaphor for the trials everyone faces along the path of living that can grant those who make it to the end some semblance of understanding and maybe even peace. The Witches Road wasn’t real until Billy’s immense power made it real, giving Agatha a chance to see her and her son’s creation in all its glory. Was Billy’s role in creating the road among the show’s best kept secrets? Not for those watching closely. But the sentimental meaning behind its realization was a surprise, and is among the reasons why Agatha’s story is more than just a witch’s tale. It’s a mother’s lament.
So with new context and understanding, we ask the question again: can Agatha be redeemed?
In the series’ final moments, Agatha appears to Billy as a wise-cracking ghost, sporting a silvery hairdo in her afterlife and pondering if this new shade of immortality looks good on her. She walks him through his own realization that, like his mother Wanda (Elisabeth Olsen), his magic spontaneously created the Witches Road as a means of reckoning with the lost boy inside him still looking for his family. She is there when it hits him that his creation led to the deaths of three witches –– Alice (Ali Ahn) by Agatha’s hand; Lillia (Patti LuPone) by her own hand; and poor Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) as collateral damage. She tries to soften the blow by reminding him that Jen (Sasheer Zamata) did survive and got her powers back, even if it was Agatha who unknowingly bound her magic in the first place.
She also tries to comfort him by saying that he still holds onto some sense of moral superiority because she was going to kill them all in her basement on day one, as she had done countless times to countless witches before. Her frank admission reminds Billy that Agatha is not a nice person, even if her callousness is entertaining. He immediately goes to her house in Westview and plans to banish her for crimes, something she initially laughs off but ultimately begins to fear. It’s not because she’s afraid of the hell or nothingness that awaits her. It’s because, as she puts it, she can’t face Nicky if he’s on the other side. Billy sees the anguish in her eyes and instead decides to show her something that is not in Agatha’s vocabulary –– mercy.
She admits they could make a good team in the search for Billy’s brother, Tommy. A coven of two, when one of them is already dead, is much safer for everyone considering these two have a track record of killing members of their coven (though to be fair, his short history of that was more tragically out of his control).
With a new purpose, everything we know about Agatha shifts because with no real need to search for power (unless there’s value for that on the other side), she will now live her afterlife in service of someone other than herself for the first time since Nicky. Rio previously told Agatha that Billy wasn’t hers, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t muster that maternal instinct she suppressed. If anything, it might do her and the world some good if she channeled her energy into that relationship rather than her own hunger for power.
In the lead-up to the finale, there was some concern among fans that Billy’s increasingly expansive powers might steal Agatha’s spotlight in a show with her name in the title. After all, audiences first met Agatha as a supporting player in Wanda’s own grief-stricken trek through TV history. Now, she is acting as Billy’s spiritual guide as he seeks to piece his family back together. That ending might not curb those fears from fans. But this Agatha isn’t the same one murking things up in Westview, and that’s not just because she is translucent now.
Agatha has evolved. Sure, she has also fallen into old habits, clawed her way back from them and continues to flirt with the selfishness that got her a reputation in the first place. But walking and surviving the physical manifestation of the Witches Road that she and Nicky created as a means of connection and spirituality has changed her. She helped Billy find Tommy’s soul in his memory and seemingly guide it to a host body like Billy did with William Kaplan. She has faced the deep wound that is her perilous love with Rio by accepting Death, regardless of what may have been her motivations for it.
But the biggest indication that something has changed in Agatha Harkness is that she is no longer inaccessible to Billy’s telepathic connection. Earlier in the series, Billy told his boyfriend Eddie (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), that he can hear the thoughts of people he cares deeply about when they are in moments of great pain or emotion. Right before Agatha lays one on Death and is turned into compost, it seems as though she is going to let Rio take him. But he speaks to her telepathically and asks if this is how Nicky died, by his mother giving him up to serve her own agenda. Rio had previously asked Agatha why she lets people think all the horrible things about Nicky’s death, and she simply says, “The truth is too awful.”
Yet, in this moment, she can’t seem to bear Billy thinking she gave her son up so she could live because we now know, she would never have done that. So she proves it by doing it for Billy.
Magic can be toyed with, magic can be warped for darker pursuits. But we think Lillia and her tarot cards would agree with us in saying that magic doesn’t lie. Agatha’s mental wall dropping and letting Billy in proves she has made great strides to being more than just the nosy neighbor with a rune-laden cave in her basement. The ghost Agatha that walks into the light with Billy is someone who is willing to face her past and her scars, even if it takes time. With Nicky, there was never going to be enough time. But with Billy, she might get just enough of it to be ready to see her son again.
Agatha Harkness can be redeemed. Forgiveness is another story to be taken up with the witch community she struck fear in for a few centuries. We can ask them once they are done with their joyful renditions of “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead.” But redemption is possible because what made Agatha bad (however you define that word) was a desperate clinging to life and power. By relinquishing that quest and settling into her new ghostly state –– which, we agree with Billy, suits her –– Agatha can impart the wisdom she’s learned walking the proverbial Witches Road. With Wanda under a mountain of rubble at Mount Wundagore, she can’t help guide her son to harness his power. But Agatha can.
As “The Ballad of the Witches Road” says, “Primal night, giveth sight familiar by thy side. If onе be gone, we carry on, spirit as our guidе.”
If nothing else, that royal “we” is proof that Agatha, the so-called covenless witch, has come a long way. Now she’s got someone by her side. But we won’t be the ones to tell that in this case, we think she might be the new familiar.
