Agatha All Along Finale Explained: Billy Built the Witches Road and Agatha Stayed Behind as a Ghost

The final two episodes of Agatha All Along revealed that Billy Maximoff created the Witches Road himself, and that Agatha ends the season as a ghost who refuses to move on. I think this finale is one of the best Marvel television has ever delivered, right up there with the WandaVision finale and the Loki season 2 finale. For me it was as good as watching a movie.

We've been having a spirited discussion about whether the MCU is back, and many have argued that Deadpool and Wolverine is the only exhibit necessary. My response is that's not Kevin Feige, that's Ryan Reynolds, and he's not sticking around. He might come back, but the MCU isn't his job, so I'm still a little nervous. When I see something like this, though, there's a word I'd like Kevin Feige to focus on: stewardship.

Jac Schaeffer's stewardship of the witch corner of the MCU

Just like Ryan Reynolds has done a wonderful job with Deadpool and Tom Hiddleston did with Loki, I think Jac Schaeffer is doing something quite special with the witch corner of the MCU. Not that many people are watching it, apparently, but I feel the quality is there, and it's very inexpensive. I hope this corner can survive. Loki had better ratings, and I'm surprised more people aren't watching. Maybe they'll binge it and discover it, because so much happened that I think has ramifications for the MCU going forward.

I also wondered which category Robert Downey Jr. falls into. Is he doing it for the paycheck, which is considerable, or for the passion and the stewardship? Maybe it's both, and I sure hope it is. Doom is a combination of magic and science, while Tony Stark is primarily science. The magic corner was expanding, with Doom coming, and maybe some people who weren't interested yet might start to get interested. Important groundwork was being laid here.

I saw some negative reactions to the finale, and I understand them. I know some were disappointed there's no Wanda, and I know Agatha and Rio fans were a little disappointed too. I hope going through it all makes that disappointment a little smaller.

Joe Locke's Wiccan costume finally looked right

When Billy was fully revealed in his costume, I laughed out loud at the screen. It was one of those special moments where something you love is adapted to another medium, and it's not only accurate but somehow improved upon. After all the hate Joe Locke received for being cast as Wiccan, I can admit now that his look had been a little off so far. When he floated down, I was so happy for him. There's so much detail work, not from what I'd call the MCU costume superstore, although maybe with better lighting we'll spot some of those shared elements that break the illusion.

Even after that great introduction, a couple of shots were still a little off, and here's my theory: Joe Locke is a new actor and hasn't learned his angles. This comes from the modeling world. Anyone in a visual medium needs to know their best side, so I'd encourage him to study this show and see when he looked his best. I remember reading about a well known actor who, when he was starting out, most wanted to be friendly on set with the cinematographer, to make sure he looked his best. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for Joe. When he hits the right angle, he's magic, pun intended.

Billy's crown, like Wanda's, looks perfect now. I loved the idea when it was introduced, but it didn't look as good as I wanted. The fact that it sparkles with his energy, like his power set does, is a great idea, and Wanda's crown never sparkled, so they need to add that effect for her. The eyebrows, the hair, the jawline, the swimmer's build: he looks perfect. I also think he and Loki would get along, or kid Loki, who I'd really like to see recast. I think that's some of the worst casting ever, which is strange since the actor who played another version of Loki was so well cast.

Billy cheated death and gained the power to body hop

Billy knows how to brood, which is why he and Agatha get along. They both have a darkness in them, and they're both killers. Death had a great time in these last two episodes as the bodies piled up, but we learned that was a distraction to keep Rio from realizing who the boy was. Billy had cheated Rio. He cheated death and stole a second life.

The MCU has also given Wiccan a new power: he can body hop. Agatha figures out that Rio can't just kill William Kaplan, because Billy Maximoff would simply jump to another body. To me that's an MCU changer, because he can not only jump bodies himself but also put his brother's soul in a different body, and potentially other souls. I wonder if this will come up later in the MCU. Back on WandaVision, Tommy and Billy asked Wanda if she could bring back the dead, and it's interesting that Billy ended up doing it himself.

Billy didn't kill Agatha and didn't bring her back, but he allows her to stay. As for where Wanda is, I always knew and wanted this show to be about introducing Wiccan to the MCU. I've said that since the show was just a glimmer in Kevin Feige and Jac Schaeffer's eye, and they succeeded. Agatha and Rio definitely did not get a happy ending, so if you were in this for them, I can see why you'd be sad. But this show isn't about those witches. It's about Billy Maximoff.

Wanda, Doom and what I expected next

Some wanted the redhead, but I was sure Wanda would return, most likely in Avengers: Doomsday. Maybe Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom would be the one to bring her back with his mix of magic and science. It's the least he could do after his Tony Stark hurt Wanda so badly so many times. At first I didn't want to see that, and I don't know if I want their relationship to have romantic elements like in the comics, but I could maybe see it starting to work. Jac Schaeffer's layers are what let us think, maybe.

Deep down, I think Billy is a little upset with Wanda because she let him and his brother die. Apparently he doesn't know about her murderous rampage through the multiverse, or that she sold her soul to the Darkhold to try to bring them back. Like mother, like son, and apparently babysitter. Billy also left Westview putting his hood up just like Wanda did, although he drove off in a car, which I think is hilarious. It was a blue car, and that was some product placement.

Billy made the Witches Road real, just as Wanda made Westview

Just as Wanda inadvertently dealt with her trauma by creating an alternate reality and putting everyone around her through hell, so did Billy. He materialized the Witches Road, although Agatha and her son created the song. So she created it and he made it real, which makes them a team, and I think that's fantastic attention to detail. The song began for fun, then became bait, a fake promise to lure witches and get them to lower their guard. Her son didn't like it, and it weighed heavily on him, but after his death Agatha leaned into it with murderous glee to feed herself for centuries, in a montage I thought was really well done.

When she assembled the coven in her basement, she was going to kill them all as usual: bait them, laugh when the road didn't open, make them angry enough to attack, then steal their power. This time the road appeared, and that's when Agatha knew the teen was Billy Maximoff, because she found herself in another Maximoff illusion. It wasn't so much experience walking the road as experience navigating a Maximoff illusion, which to me is incredible.

I think she protected Billy for many reasons. She maybe cared about him a little from when he was a boy, I think he reminded her of her son, she thought something useful might come of it, and she didn't know how powerful he was, since Wanda trapped her in a spell for years. I'd heard in the last couple of days before the finale that this was Billy's doing, but I was impressed by the breadcrumbs. Billy was always the one who found the next challenge, and it was exactly how he imagined it. Agatha's line that he really is a Maximoff, or none of this would be so dramatic, now makes perfect sense.

Billy is partly responsible for Sharon, Alice and Lilia

Billy was, in a way, responsible for killing those three witches, though not directly. Alice died protecting Agatha, only for Agatha to kill her, and as Rio points out, a protection witch died as she lived. Lilia sacrificed herself taking the Salem Seven with her, but I think it was arguably Billy who put her in that position. Agatha makes a good effort to explain it away by saying he saved one, since she was going to kill all of them.

Jennifer survived and learned it was Agatha who had bound her a hundred years ago. The doctor didn't know how to bind a witch himself, so he wrote to Agatha. Knowing who bound her, Jennifer reverses it with an unbinding ritual and gets her stunning pink magic back. She climbs out of the dirt almost like climbing out of her grave, then flies away from Westview the way Wanda did. Westview and Eastview also call to mind the Wizard of Oz's Witch of the East and Witch of the West.

I still think Billy is partially responsible, and maybe that's why he sets an example by forgiving Agatha. It was touching that he closed the road and made it a grave for those women. Billy killed them by accident, but Agatha knew exactly what she was doing for a very long time.

Ghost Agatha is straight from the comics, but her look needs work

That's why Agatha is afraid to see her son in the afterlife, having used his song to do what he didn't want. Was that actually his voice telling her to stop in that challenge? We won't know for sure, but maybe. So she insists on hanging back as a ghost. Ghost Agatha comes straight out of the comics, and the Witches Road storyline featured her, which has clearly influenced this show. But I think she's too ethereal here; you can barely see her.

Her look is truly awful. She goes from fabulous to frumpy. I can't believe Kathryn Hahn looked in the mirror and didn't tell them they'd hit it out of the park with every other look, and while it's understandable to miss one, what a one to miss, especially since she looks fabulous as a ghost in the comics, and Marvel Comics has been promising a redesign many assumed the MCU was moving toward. She had a different look with each challenge, so why not a greatest hits of her looks over the centuries?

Her outfit does suddenly have a lot of blue, which ties to her nails. With no powers, her nails were white, and after absorbing Billy's power they were blue. I like the idea of your power reflected in your manicure. In all the covens we see, there's no other blue witch, just as there's never another red witch, and I think perhaps the blue witch is as unique as the Scarlet Witch. Since purple mixes blue and red, it's like Agatha was always meant to be a bridge between mother and son.

Why Agatha sacrificed herself, and how Tommy came back

A witch lives outside the rules, and I think that's what Agatha means when she tells Billy he'll have to get used to this feeling. He thinks she means killing, but I think she means breaking rules. Agatha volunteered to sacrifice herself, then changed her mind, classic Agatha. Then Billy asked if this was how her son died. He'd only heard the rumor that she traded her son for the Darkhold, but Agatha was asleep when Rio came for her son. I think his words make her do what she wishes she could have done then: trade herself so her son could live. Maybe that's why Rio did it while she slept.

I loved the exchange where she tells him he's not bad, he says neither is she, and she says, "you're the only one who thinks so." I think she sees him as a surrogate son, but ironically she's more like him than her actual son was, and Billy is maybe more like Agatha than Wanda. Wanda has always been apologetic about her powers and rejected the witch lifestyle. Her illusion is all about herself, while Billy's is about witchcraft and making legends real. I don't think Wanda would have allowed an innocent boy to die so someone else could live, even her own son.

When Agatha helped Billy harness Tommy's soul and transfer it into a boy about to die, Billy asks, "Agatha am I killing this boy so that my brother can live." Agatha makes an excuse that reflects her own pain: "sometimes boys die." A witch survives, and that's exactly what Billy did. The new body seemed like a redhead, and younger than Joe Locke, which is an interesting choice. Billy senses the boy was bullied and alone. Those bullies will be surprised when super speed kicks in, but Tommy will be alone, and he's not a witch. Will he appreciate what his brother did or feel it's wrong?

Agatha's death, the flowers and Jac Schaeffer's rule on death

Agatha didn't get what she wanted from the road, but she planted a seed she'd saved, watered with her tear, and it grew into a flower that went from yellow to purple. I'm not quite sure what it symbolized, but I do think Nicholas Scratch will return someday, maybe older. That's too good a name and too cool a character, and he was an adult in the comics.

Rio came to collect, upset that Agatha had tricked her again. Billy had powered Agatha up, so we got a showdown, but as Agatha says, you can't fight death. Agatha sacrifices herself for Billy with a kiss of death, and since taking Rio's power kills you, it killed her. She sank into the ground as flowers popped up: mostly purple, plus yellow and orange, so it was almost as if she was buried with Lilia and Alice. Jac Schaeffer said she wanted death to be very final, which is why the other witches aren't ghosts.

Aubrey Plaza's Rio is a new element for the MCU

Rio delivered amazing moments. She can go wherever she pleases, into Wanda's spell and in and out of Billy's, ripping a hole in his illusion like she was in on The Truman Show. Their relationship seemed very toxic, but can you have a healthy relationship with death? Letting Agatha keep her son without saying how long was incredibly cruel, though Rio sees death as part of the cycle of all living things. She's not heartless, just matter of fact.

Aubrey Plaza as death is peak casting. She looks killer, cackles like a pro, and the skull effect gets better, particularly in sunlight. I can't wait for a love triangle with Thanos, Deadpool and Rio; imagine the jokes Ryan Reynolds can make about having to compete with Thanos. Rio surely won't leave Agatha and Billy alone. I wonder why Billy didn't ask Rio if Wanda was really dead; maybe he doesn't truly want to know, or didn't want to give death a head start on Tommy.

I love this show from beginning to end. It gave me Wiccan and so much more. Comics have never done much with Wanda, so when she does show up, she'll have an incredibly strong mythology to build off of.

What did you make of Billy's choice to save Tommy?