Agatha All Along 1×6 & 1×7 Review: “Familiar by Thy Side” and “Death’s Hand in Mine”

Episodes 6 and 7 of Agatha All Along start tying up the story with flashbacks and timey wimey goodness galore.

Warning: This review contains SPOILERS!

In episode 6, “Familiar by Thy Side”, we finally get to see the ‘origin story’ of sorts of the Teen (Joe Locke). Opening on his bar mitzvah, we find him as just your average kid – his name is William Kaplan, apparently – with loving parents, great friends, and having a fun time celebrating.

He sees a tent that offers palm reading and goes into it – and we find Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) as the palm reader. We get a few hints that William is not all he’s cracked up to be, as Lilia tells him his lifeline is broken in two, and that she’s the one that put the sigil on him.

As he leaves, it’s quickly revealed that this is no ordinary town, but Westview, and there’s news of something happening with the anomaly (in other words, the last episode of WandaVision). His parents seem more panicked than the other residents, grab William and drive away – only to land in a car accident.

Due to the crash, William ends up dying for a brief moment – and comes back ‘different’. He’s able to read minds and doesn’t remember anything about his current life. We see a brief flash of Alice (Ali Ahn) as one of the cops on the scene of the crash, and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) as a YouTuber that William’s been watching.

William tells his boyfriend Eddie (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) that he’s not William Kaplan, and that he has a dossier of clues that lead to what’s ‘really’ going on. In his investigations, he meets up with Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters) who mentions Agatha. But when William searches, he finds nothing under that name. He does another search, only to find a photo from the 1800s of a woman who pops up in time again and again (she’s apparently Jolene? I mean, I guess if I was going to leave Dolly Parton, it’d be for Kathryn Hahn).

William then goes on a journey into Westview, to the empty lot that was Wanda and Vision’s house. He goes forward with his plan to release Agatha from the spell she’s under that makes her think she’s in that episode of True Detective we saw in episode 1. We then have a sequence of seeing the chase from that first episode from ‘the other side’ – and unlike the gritty ‘actiony’ one we had there, this time it’s hilariously real – with fumbles and them experiencing pain. William is actually inept at this point (and can I mention again that Joe Locke is freakin’ adorable?) but is definitely after The Witches’ Road and the power that comes from it. He finally admits that he is Billy Maximov.

We then cut to the current storyline, where Agatha and Billy are back on the Road headed to the next challenge. Billy is powerful, yes, but still unable to control it – and Agatha states that Billy’s motivations are to find Tommy, the other Maximov twin. Billy had ‘inhabited’ the vessel of William Kaplan, and the car crash had snapped him out of it.

This episode starts to pay off some of the setups: not only the ones we saw earlier in the series, but ones from the MCU as a whole. We get to see Billy’s side of things and his (sort of) history. We also get to see that he’s balancing on the edge between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and Agatha really does seem to like him (as much as she likes anyone). This is Locke’s episode, and he runs with it like he’d been acting all his life. The episode also does a great job with the ‘outing’ of William/Billy. It’s sweet and treated as ‘just another relationship’ rather than a big deal.

Episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine”, ends up being centered on the character of Lilia, which in hindsight is clear from the start as it begins with her falling, wearing a gown that’s similar to the one Glinda wears in the MGM version of The Wizard of Oz.

We cut to Billy and Agatha on the road, talking about Wanda and Billy’s reason for being on the road (when asked whether Wanda is actually dead, Agatha says ‘Yes. No. Maybe,” and then when challenged on the ambiguity, says the great line, “Hey, if you want straight answers, ask a straight lady.”)

The road shows them another house / challenge, but this time it’s a stereotypical castle, looking gothic and mysterious. Like with the other challenges, when the two enter, their clothing transforms to match: with Agatha as the Wicked Witch of the West (‘you know she’s based on me’) and Billy as Maleficent. (When Lilah and Jen join them later, the theme continues – Lilah as obviously Glinda, an Jen as the crone from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.)

When Billy sees the sentence ‘your path winds out of time’, he assumes that this challenge is tarot – and since he knows about it that he’s the one that should do the reading. However, when he tries, a sword falls from the ceiling – which is filled with more swords ready to fall at further mistakes.

And then things go, to quote Doctor Who, wibbly wobbly timey wimey. The rest of the episode is cutting between the trial, Lilah and Jen’s journey to join them, Lilah as a young teen in Sicily learning from her mentor, and scenes from earlier episodes that were when Lilah was ‘acting weird’. You see: the flow of time is an illusion, and she experiences her life ‘out of sequence’. It apparently happened a lot when she was younger, but she put a stop to it “because all I saw was death.”

Turns out that this trial is one of divination, and Lilah is the one that should be doing the tarot reading. While reading it, we learn that Lilah hadn’t originally wanted to be in a coven: she wanted to be on her own. However, over the episode (and as we see, over the series) she had begun to accept the rest of the cast as part of her coven. She faces her trial – and succeeds, but only to sacrifice herself to the Seven following them to save the others. And we end at the beginning – her as a young woman, sitting down for her first lesson.

This is – hands down – the best episode of the series so far, in my perspective. It’s filled with easter eggs (everything from Jen calling Lilah Dory as a reference to Finding Nemo to the parallels to the traditional tarot deck). It pulls together a bunch of threads you didn’t realize were threads, making the rest of the series seen so far mean so much more.

My wife, who reads tarot herself, was impressed at how well done the information about tarot was. Not only did the various characters each have a different take (from it’s a fraud to that it’s about intuition) with Lilah noting that it takes time and care. The symbolism is excellent and fits not only the story but the theme of the show overall.

The show overall continues to be feminist: from LuPone’s constant issues with how witches are presented in culture to the fact that the cast still remains mostly women. And the LGBTQ component is shown as nothing ‘unusual’.

As the last episode was Locke’s, this one is LuPone’s – and it will come as no surprise that she handles it beautifully. As a time travel junkie, I know how hard it can be to do one well: and this was done well. It shows the possibilities of history, the surety of the unknown, the heartbreak of understanding, and the freedom of the unknown. It acknowledges that death is just another aspect of life – that, to quote the Welcome to Night Vale Twitter account, “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

I acknowledged in my review of episodes 1 and 2 that WandaVision has been my favorite outing from the MCU so far. This show is quickly becoming a challenger for that role.

We’ve got two more episodes to go, and I am both excited and sad about that. Excited, because I am eager to see how this story ends/continues, but sad knowing that we’re near the end.

Agatha All Along has a total of nine episodes and is available – as mentioned – on Disney+. More information about the show can be found both on the Marvel website and on Disney+’s website.

Author: Angie Fiedler Sutton

Angie Fiedler Sutton is a writer, podcaster, and all-round fangirl geek. She has been published in Den of Geek, Stage Directions, LA Weekly, The Mary Sue, and others.

She also produces her own podcast, Contents May Vary, where she interviews geeky people about geeky things. You can see all her work (and social media channels) at angiefsutton.com.

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