Agatha All Along 1×7 & 1×8 Review: “Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End” and “Maiden Mother Crone”

Agatha All Along‘s last two episodes hit Disney+ together, and the two are both an ending and a beginning. 

Warning: This review contains SPOILERS!

When we had last left the show, we had just learned that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) is actually Death – and that she comes for everyone eventually.

In “Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End”, we start in on Ali (Alice Wu-Gulliver) as we saw her last. Death is there to claim her, and she realizes she fulfilled her goal and died protecting someone.

We then go back to the road, right after we left off from Lilia’s sacrifice. Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and Death have a nice little chat that shares the info that Agatha is trying to distract Death from Billy (Joe Locke). Death isn’t happy – he is ‘disrupting the sacred balance’ stealing a life, and she can’t have it happen again for Tommy. But he’s powerful enough to where Agatha can’t just kill him: he has to offer himself willingly.

In the ensuing scenes, we find out that Agatha is the one who bound Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata). But Jen is determined to save the other two since she failed to save the others, and she performs an unbinding spell and disappears.

We find out that Tommy isn’t at the end of the road – he needs a body to fill, just like Billy did. Agatha tries to help Billy fix that, but he leaves when he realizes he would have to kill a boy to make it happen.

We then get to what looks to be the climax of the episode: Agatha escapes the room to see Death, and they start to fight. (There’s a fun bit where we switch to two of the neighbors basically saying, “Oh, no – not again.”)

It’s kind of your standard ‘big boss’ fight we’ve seen time and again in a Marvel production. The fight is filled with tricks – but in the end, Agatha kisses Death and dies, which releases Billy from Death’s plans.

The scene skips to Billy back in Westview, going back to his parents and becoming ‘William’. As he gets changed in his room, though – the camera pans to him noticing various aspects of it: the Lorna Wu poster, Wizard of Oz figurines, a Ouija board, etc. We then get the true twist of the episode: he is definitely Wanda’s kid and can turn dreams into reality – and he was the one who made the Witches’ Road real.

Overall, the episode starts out a bit slow. But once it gets going, it doesn’t stop. Locke is excellent as always, and Hahn and Plaza have chemistry out the wazoo.

As with the last episode, it pays off hints I didn’t see were hints earlier in the season. The reveal makes the episode… and makes the series. It feels like a season finale, the culmination of all things: but of course, we still have one more episode left.

Like a good mystery, it shows clues you may have missed. And you are paid off for thinking. Unlike some shows (I’m looking at you, Sherlock series 3 and 4), the twist actually fits what we had seen before and it’s not just thrown in there to shock you.

In “Maiden Mother Crone”, we finally get some of Agatha’s back story. It’s 1750, and we see Agatha – very pregnant and obviously giving birth. Before she is done, however, Death shows up. Agatha begs her to not take her baby, but all Death can do is ‘offer time’.

Nicholas Scratch (Abel Lysenko) is a frail baby (and eventually child), and the show implies that Agatha’s killing of witches helps both him and her live. However, as he grows, he remains an innocent – and seems upset at his role in luring witches to their doom. As they walk to their next destination, he starts singing – and hey, that tune is VERY familiar! It’s a variation of the ballad. In a montage, we are shown Agatha and Nicky spending time with each other, and the ballad slowly becomes the one we heard in episode 2.

Nicholas finally declines to lure a witch away, but tells his mother with a cough that he’s willing to do it tomorrow. When they fall asleep, Death comes for him… and he goes willingly.

As Agatha is burying and mourning him, she is approached by a woman – wanting to know the way to the Witches’ Road that she’s heard of.

We then see Agatha time and again gather a coven, gets them mad enough at her to attack, and steal their power. Again, and again, and again – throughout time. When we finally get to our group, she’s about to lay the smackdown – but the portal shows up on the floor. The Road is now real.

Billy tries to banish Agatha, now a ghost, but she refuses to go – not wanting to face her son. Billy puts a memorial to the three witches who died on the stone of the opening to the Witches’ Road, and we end with Agatha offering Billy to help find Tommy.

As much as this definitely felt like an ending (up until that cliffhanger), the episode feels ‘short’. While this may have started out as Hahn’s show, Locke has now become vital to its success.

The episode shows that Death isn’t evil: she did what she promised, and she was even kind about it. It also shows the lack of commas in the episode title is intentional: Agatha is the maiden, mother, and crone – all in one. It also shows that the deaths of Ali, Lilia, and Mrs. Hart – while pointless – are still significant. They will be remembered.

I’ve been seeing some chatter in the fandom that this was a ‘bury your gays’ moment. I heartily disagree. The ‘bury your gays’ trope is when a gay character is killed as a punishment for being gay, and this show killed the others as well. Additionally, Agatha may be dead – but she is definitely not gone. As the MCU’s ‘official’ first LGBT-friendly show, I feel they did a great job.

“Maiden Mother Crone” is a good final bow: it’s the show’s attempt to show that all things have a beginning and end, but to quote Semisonic, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” It ties it even further to WandaVision and the MCU but leaves enough on the table for the story to be continued.

I loved every episode: it was tightly written, smart, and heartfelt. I look forward to seeing Locke and Hahn’s journey in other MCU outings.

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.

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary