Agatha All Along Finally Tells Billy Maximoff's Story, and It Earned a Combined 9.0

This episode of Agatha All Along finally told us Billy's story, and it earned a combined score of 9.0 from me and my co-reviewer. It filled in how William Kaplan became Billy Maximoff, and it ended on a confrontation with Agatha. I couldn't stop talking about the episode after I watched it.

Spoilers follow for the episode and the show so far.

Agatha All Along does in one episode what lesser shows cannot do in a season

Agatha All Along does not cease to amaze and surprise me. I say that because it really comes down to one question for me: is this the same company that brought out the likes of The Acolyte? That was such a bomb, a horribly put together and poorly constructed show. Then you get to this, and Agatha is written really well.

It does in a single episode "what other shows lesser shows can't do in entire seasons." The previous episode cemented that our buddy Teen is actually Billy Maximoff, and at least from everything going on, including the crown, Billy looks like Wanda's kid. This episode took that and caught us up on his story, the kind of storytelling you would expect to see in Rick and Morty. In moments, it filled in who he is. I say moments, but this is a long episode, around 46 minutes, and the bulk of it is spent getting us caught up to where we are currently.

William Kaplan died beside the shrinking Hex, and Billy woke up

The parts I want to focus on are the very beginning and the very end. In the beginning, Billy was a guy named William Kaplan. We see him start his life out at his bar mitzvah. After that, he and his parents are driving in a car and there is an accident. It happened on the same day that Wanda's Hex started to get small again, and they were right near it. They could see it receding through the trees, so we have proximity.

They hit a tree, and just as William is passing away, you hear the voices of the two children from WandaVision: good night Billy, good night Tommy. He seemingly gets sucked in, and the next thing you know, William opens his eyes. Somehow, it's Billy. The energy, Billy.

They did the thing, the complicated storyline from the comics. That version is way more complicated. I think they were brilliant here, because they simplified the heck out of it, making it way simpler than the comic book version.

Lilia planted the sigil at Billy's bar mitzvah

As Billy is figuring things out, we see he crossed paths with everybody from the coven. At his bar mitzvah, he goes into a tent that was set up for a lady reading tarot cards, and it is Lilia. She is the one who put the sigil on him. She goes into a weird kind of trance, takes a little thing out, makes the sigil and puts it in his pocket.

The minute she wakes up, she forgets what she was doing and why she did it. But because of who she is, there is this inference in her eyes. Asked whether she knows who it is, she says no, and yet she realises what that means, or could mean. I felt like that was interesting.

Ralph and a Scooby-Doo style hunt for Agatha

After the accident, everything ping pongs through until you finally get to where Billy meets and figures out Agatha. It's unreal.

As he gets older, he gets his boyfriend involved in a very Scooby-Doo way. They go to meet somebody with information, who tells them they can just call him Ralph. And no, it's not Quicksilver. He is so wired out, and as they try to talk to him, he tells them what he remembers. He is the one who clues Billy in about Agatha, and that is when Billy starts doing his research.

The interrogation and hallway scenes read differently from Billy's side

From there we get to everything we already saw, only this time from Billy's side of it. We get to the interrogation scene from his perspective, and all the crazy stuff Billy was saying makes more sense, because he was the one outside of everything that was going on. It runs through him doing the release spell, Agatha locking him up in the closet and letting him out.

Remember the hallway scene? Asked who he is, he answers that his name is William Kaplan, then, asked to say it again, that he is Billy Maximoff. Agatha couldn't hear it at the time because of the sigil, but in this new context it reads differently, if that makes sense. Again, this episode is very, very good.

Agatha tells Billy that breaking the rules made him a witch

At the very end, we meet back up with Agatha as she crawls out of the mud and the muck. She gets out, confronts Billy, and they have an amazing conversation, because she has sussed out what he wants: he wants his brother.

She basically tells him he is the epitome of what a witch is. He survived, the way witches have been doing for centuries. So he broke the rules, big deal. That is what kept him alive, that is what makes him special, and that is what makes him a witch and an amazing one. It was "what a weird affirmation." I can't imagine this is someone he wants an affirmation like that from, but he also can't help but feel somewhat flattered, such as it is.

A 9.0 score and a tug of war between Agatha and Billy

This episode "pushed us in a way that I wasn't expecting," and I was really excited and happy for it. I couldn't stop talking about it afterwards. As a result, our combined score came to 9.0. I thoroughly enjoyed everything they are doing.

I also want to go a little further into what I am seeing in Agatha's motivations. She has already figured Billy out, and she is pushing to move on to the next place, while he insists he needs her. There is this weird tug of war, because according to everything we have heard, they both could technically make it to the end. But it seems clear that making it involves sacrifice on some level, and having a coven there gives you cannon fodder.

So now you have these two. He tells her he doesn't trust her, and you can see in her eyes that she gets it, that she totally gets it. Very interesting stuff.

If you know the comics, how does this version of Billy's story fit with what you have read there?