<i>Agatha All Along</i> Gives the Coven Its First Test in “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials”

They’ve rushed right in, but now they actually have to walk the road…

Recap

The coven begins their journey, and Agatha lets the group know that everyone will have to face their greatest fear on the Road. Sharon has realized that perhaps she came to the wrong party and sits down on a tree root, hoping she can find her way back. Her bag is absorbed by the ground and she’s nearly taken with it. Agatha takes this moment to let the group know that they should never leave the road itself on their journey. Jen asks the Teen who he is, and the whole group learns that he has a sigil on him. Agatha insists that she’s got no idea who did it, or what his identity might be hiding, but that it’s a fun mystery all the same.

The group continue down the road to a Hamptons-y beach house, are redressed for the occasion, and given a card with a riddle—the answer to the riddle is wine. A bottle appears with five glasses, and as they search for a wine key, Jen takes the Teen aside and lets him know that Agatha is dangerous; rumor has it that she gave up her own child for the Darkhold. No one knows if he died or wound up a demon or a servant of some dark power. Once the bottle is open, Sharon downs her glass without pause and the rest follow suit, except for Agatha, who dumps her wine into a houseplant. A random timer appears and begins counting down thirty minutes. Sharon’s face begins to swell, and everyone else follows with the same symptoms. Jen asks about Sharon’s symptoms first since she’s ahead of everyone, but when the swelling goes down quickly, she recognizes the poison as Alewife’s Revenge, and knows that the next stages are a whole lot of discomfort followed by hallucinations and death.

The group realize that Agatha didn’t drink the wine and demand that she does so, since the entire coven must participate. Agatha beats on the windows to get out and cracks the glass, but when the Teen offers to drink in her place, she finally downs some wine. Sharon has a hallucination and passes out on a couch. Jen starts giving the group a list of the items needed to make the antidote and they set off in twos while Jen gets the “cauldron” ready in the kitchen sink.

The group begins hallucinating as they go; Alice finds her mother, devastated over the death of her grandmother and insisting that she must kill herself; Lilia sees Renaissance figures surrounded by death; Jen is confronted by a man dressed in doctor’s gear, who tells her she’s an “inconvenient” woman and tries to drown her in the sink. Lilia also makes a comment that they must “save Agatha.” Once all the items are collected, they reconvene in the kitchen and put Sharon on the table, noticing that the cracked window is starting to let in sea water—they’re under the ocean.

The group assembles the potion in the sink, and Agatha has her own hallucination when everyone is prompted to add their own hairs; she sees a cradle and finds the Darkhold inside. The potion is assembled, but it doesn’t turn the right color. Jen begins to panic, doubting her own abilities, but Agatha calms her—she insists that she always hated Jen, but left her alone because the work she does is too important. Jen remembers the final step to the potion; blood from someone unaffected by the poison. The Teen’s blood is given, and everyone drinks the antidote but the timer doesn’t stop running; they’ve forgotten Sharon. They feed her the potion as the last second runs out.

The oven in the kitchen opens, which Lilia has no interest in entering—but the windows break and the ocean rushes into the house, so they have no choice. The group fall down a slide and emerge back on the road in their original clothes. Sharon, the Teen realizes, has died.

Commentary

Given the awkward pacing on some of these MCU shows, I was worried that we might run through the entire Witches’ Road in a single episode. While I do wish the episodes themselves had longer run times, it’s great that we’re sticking to it for (hopefully) the whole ride.

Okay, I didn’t bring it up last week, but now we have to talk about the Teen and the child stuff and the possible outcomes this will lead to. We knew there was something about a kid from the premiere because of Agatha’s house in Westview having an empty child’s room. Now we have word from Jen that Agatha’s reputation centers around the idea that she exchanged her own child for the Darkhold, and that no one knows what became of him. And we can’t find out who the Teen is yet because someone doesn’t want any of them to know…

At first glance, I’m annoyed with this potential arc for two reasons: First off, Wanda’s arc was already about her children and what losing them did to her. Women can care about so many other relationships that are not offspring (or romantic attachments to men, the other favorite), and using them as the only motivation in their lives is plain lazy. The second reason is that, of course, the very worst thing that a woman can do is be a bad mom! Don’t you know that is the height of evil, not doing everything in your power to keep your children safe and happy?

And no, I’m obviously not saying that women should endeavor to be terrible parents; what I’m saying is that we often don’t know how to conceptualize evil in women without somehow making it about children. Every wicked witch and evil queen and nasty stepmother is a testament to this tired trope, proving that the worst thing a man can do is probably mass murder or genocide (strong maybe on that, really), but the worst thing a woman can do is be horrible to a young person who relies on her. Bad dads are commonplace, but bad moms are horror movie material.

Now, it’s still possible that the show is using this all as a misdirect, and we’re going to get something far more interesting out of Agatha’s backstory. We’re certainly being set up for a further reveal, and don’t have the entire picture yet. So here’s hoping that the picture is worthy of Agatha, and she doesn’t turn out to be a circumstantial villain who is only like this because someone took her kid away. I loved the moments in this episode where she shored up Jen, where she recognized Lilia’s suffering, because Agatha doesn’t need to be good, but she is a natural leader and can’t make anything of that impulse while she’s busy being out for Number One.

Which leads us to the Teen. The suggestion here is that perhaps he could be her long lost son, but that seems annoyingly tidy for the purposes of the plot. Among some fans, the assumption is that he will become the MCU’s version of Wiccan, a member of the Young Avengers. In the comics, Wiccan is Wanda’s son, Billy—but given the film universe’s penchant for twisting things around a little, the Teen could honestly be anyone beneath that sigil. I hope they do something fun with it.

We’re getting a little more info on the coven in general, and I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that the most visceral flashback was given to Jen? It’s realistic, certainly, but the fact that she’s the only one met with physical violence in the hallucinations seemed pointed in a way that deserved a lot more attention. In the last episode it’s mentioned that she’s well over a hundred, and yet the series hasn’t really dealt with the implications of that. If Jen was born in the United States—and I assume she was—then she has known a very different life from the rest of this coven.

It’s unclear if Lilia knows death in her past due to plague or something else, but on Alice’s side, we’re clearly dealing with familial mental illness. I’m very interested to see how this plays out because it’s the most intriguing backstory on paper so far—the idea of having a parent who has magic, but that ability doing nothing to aid them in their own struggles makes Alice’s journey that much more painful and intimate.

Is Sharon truly dead? I suppose that could go either way, but presumably it happened because no one remembered to add her hair to the dang antidote. It’s a perfect first loss, born of them not truly coming together as a coven yet. In any case, she wasn’t the fourth name on the list…

Tarot Readings and Witchy Thoughts

• Their argument for the Teen not drinking is that he’s not a member of the coven (then how can he seek any rewards from the journey?) and also that he’s underage! Which is mostly hilarious because… I mean, it used to be very common for teenagers to imbibe, and still is in plenty of countries. Curious as to why the Road would follow modern legality over what’s more common. The real answer is that this is a Disney show, but it’s still absurd.

• We don’t really need to see Sharon’s hallucination because we already know what haunts her; Wanda’s control over Westview. We hear her utter the witch’s name, and she’s promptly knocked out.

• Of course, the oven is in reference to Hansel and Gretel shoving the witch into the oven to kill her.

• That house was giving the perfect gross rich whitewashed beach vibe that I personally cannot stand. Jen complaining that she looked like one of her clients was right on.

Back next week!