This week’s Agatha All Along, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power”, marked the midpoint of the Disney+ series and it was the wildest episode to date. The episode saw not only a shocking death among the coven, but the revelation of Teen’s (Joe Locke) real identity right before he tossed Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Lilia (Patti LuPone), and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) off the road entirely and watched as the witches sank into the mysterious mud. While the events are a lot to unpack — and the unexpected death of Alice (Ali Ahn) — feels very much like not only a hard shift for the series with this dark turn, Episode 5 may have also raised a major question about everything we know about Agatha Harkness and it’s possible we may not know the witch very well at all.
When it comes to what we know about Agatha actually begins in WandaVision. In the eighth episode of that series, “Previously On”, we learn that in 1693 a coven of witches led by Agatha’s own mother, Evanora, tried to kill her for practicing dark magic but instead of dying at the hands of the coven, Agatha drains their magic and their life forces, killing the coven instead. That act is revisited, in a sense, in the second episode of Agatha All Along, “Circle Sewn With Fate/Unlock Thy Hidden Gate”, when Agatha explains to Lilia that she can only take another witch’s powers if she’s blasted by them. The explanation serves to clarify why Agatha hasn’t simply just stolen powers now that she’s out of Wanda’s spell, but it also ends up being a bit of foreshadowing for Episode 5. In Episode 5, the third trial of the Witches’ Road is said to be Agatha’s and revolves around a spirit declaring that Agatha must be punished. The ghost of Evanora shows up and possesses Agatha briefly, then declares that Agatha was born evil, and moves to possess her again, presumably this being part of Agatha’s punishment. However, Alice attempts to intervene and attacks, using her powers to expel Evanora from Agatha’s body. The act does save Agatha, but Agatha quickly begins absorbing Alice’s magic, resulting in her death.
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While this may seem very much in keeping with Agatha’s previous actions — absorbing the magic of others and killing them for her own gain — and certainly is read that way by the others, particularly Teen, if you watch the episode carefully there is something a bit more nuanced there and it suggests that we may all be critically misunderstanding Agatha’s powers. When Alice initially blasts Agatha and the power absorption begins, Agatha looks truly horrified and briefly appears to be trying to resist, though in short order we see her start to draw more and more power. When it’s over, Agatha looks stricken and even horrified by Alice’s death and quickly leaves the challenge. Briefly alone on the road, Agatha is clearly shaken and when Teen arrives shortly after and confronts her, Agatha tries to explain herself, insisting it was accidental, though the young man won’t hear it.
Here’s the thing, though: I think Agatha is telling the truth. Agatha is very clearly too shaken by Alice’s death for what happened to have been intentional and, more than that, Agatha did seem to genuinely struggle against taking Alice’s powers when it started, though she was quickly sucked into it. One can’t deny that Agatha doesn’t appear to be relieved or even glad to have power again, but she just doesn’t seem very comfortable with how it went down. Additionally, the only other time that we’re aware of Agatha draining another witch to her death came in a similar situation — when Agatha’s own life was at risk. When Agatha took the magic from the coven attacking her in 1693, those witches were trying to kill her. It’s possible that Agatha took their power reflexively as she tried to save her own life. What this could mean is that Agatha really cannot control her ability to absorb the powers of other witches. It could simply be an automatic reaction to being blasted, like a self-preservation instinct that kicks in that she has little to no control over.
If we are misunderstanding Agatha’s power and it’s something that she doesn’t really have control over, this changes a lot about our perception of Agatha. Agatha may not be quite as sinister as she’s been presented as and while this certainly doesn’t absolve her of the things we can confirm she’s done — she did still kill Sparky after all — knowing more about her powers offers us a way to look at the witch through a trauma informed lens. If Agatha can’t really control her powers, much of the vitriol and malignment that she’s experienced in her life, including what she got from her own mother, was undeserved. It is absolutely something that would make her jaded, but she would also probably lean into her potentially undeserved reputation as a form of armor. If people mistrust her and think she’s “evil”, they’re less likely to attack her and thus, she’s less likely to accidentally take another life when her powers are triggered again.
What’s perhaps most heartbreaking, though, is that if we are misunderstanding Agatha’s powers, it makes Alice’s death all the more tragic. While Teen assumes that the coven has a disregard for life when it comes to the acquisition of power, thus making being a witch a selfish affair, Agatha genuinely accidentally killing Alice is just one more overall misconception about witches and another unfair malignment that has held them back and made them reviled for centuries. It’s the kind of misconception that breeds division even among a group that needs solidarity now more than ever and could even make the remainder of the journey ahead even more treacherous for everyone involved. If they survived being thrown off of the Witches’ Road, that is. Only time will tell.
Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
