It’s been a week since the finale of Agatha All Along and while our time walking The Witches’ Road is done, there are still plenty of mysteries to unpack and questions fans want answers to. One of the largest questions left unanswered involves not Agatha or Billy or the rest of the coven, but rather a character we barely got to know: Nicholas Scratch. Since the finale took viewers into Agatha’s past and showed Nicky’s birth, fans have wondered who the boy’s father is. The series never directly answers that question, but fans have their own theory — and now it seems like showrunner Jac Schaeffer is subtly confirming it. In an interview with Backstory Magazine (via ComicBookMovie), Schaeffer suggests that Nicky is the child of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and none other than Rio Vidal/Death (Aubrey Plaza).
“I will say that when we were casting sometimes, we were like, ‘Does that kid look like Rio? Does that kid look like Aubrey Plaza?’” Schaeffer said. “Fans and viewers, yes, are picking up on our brainwaves for sure.”
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Those brainwaves Schaeffer are referencing is the prevailing theory among fans that Death is Nicky’s “father”. The idea very quickly picked up traction when the finale showed Rio appearing before Agatha while she was in labor and then with Agatha’s comments after the baby was born that she had “cast no spell” but had instead made the child “from scratch”. The theory got even more poignant with Nicky’s death as a child. Just before his passing, the young boy abandoned the usual scheme of killing witches by claiming that his “mother needed him home” and then, when Death did come for Nicky, not only did she instruct him to go back and kiss his mother goodbye — twice — but they walked away holding hands. For Schaeffer, fans caring so much about Agatha and Rio’s story as well as how Nicky may intersect with that is something that she didn’t expect, but she hopes we get to unpack more of it.
[RELATED: Agatha All Along: What Really Happened to Nick Scratch?]
“I didn’t anticipate that the shippers would be so fervent,” Schaeffer said. “You never know how anything is going to land or if people are going to care. The amount of people that care is staggering to me. It’s my hope that in the MCU there’s more unpacking of the Agatha & Rio backstory.”
Schaeffer’s comments are also just the latest on the question of Nicky’s parentage, though while Schaeffer does seem to be suggesting the intent behind the story being told in Agatha All Along in regard to not just Nicky but Agatha and Rio’s history, she’s also acknowledged that the story could be out of her hands at this point. In a previous interview with Variety, Schaeffer detailed how the writers worked out Agatha and Rio’s backstory — including considering Rio as Nicky’s father — but ultimately didn’t cover it all, leaving it for another day.
“That’s a story for another day, but ultimately for me, it’s irrelevant in this story,” Schaeffer said, adding “The truth is that even if I did have an answer, I don’t cover it in this property. So, it is fodder for another story for another day, that I maybe don’t have control over.”
While Rio being Nicky’s other parent isn’t MCU canon (yet) the idea of it makes Agatha and Rio’s overall story and interactions in Agatha All Along even more heartbreaking. Rio, as Death, having to take Nicky from Agatha gives context to why there is so much animosity between the two when we see them fight in Agatha’s kitchen in the series premiere as well as makes that tender moment on the Road in Episode 4 when Rio has to tell Agatha that Billy (then merely Teen) isn’t her son absolutely devastating. And, of course, there’s that final exchange between the pair, when Agatha kisses Death to save Billy as it sees the former lovers coming back together in a moment that may in no small way be influenced by the loss of the son they shared and lost.
Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.
