Agatha All Along Episode 6 Finally Explains Billy, but the Flashback Left Us Itching to Move Forward

Agatha All Along episode 6, Familiar by Thy Side, finally lays out who Billy really is, and our verdict is that it was a fun episode that still left us a little frustrated. It is a flashback episode, so by the end we are more or less in the same spot as we were at the end of episode 5.

The flashback answers Billy's mystery and stalls the road

We enjoyed finding out exactly what happened: the car accident, the collapse of the Westview anomaly, and Billy Maximoff's soul landing in William Kaplan's body. Lilia's palm reading, with its lifeline broken in two, made more sense once the truth came out. It recalled the flashback episode of The Penguin, which was excellent too, though this kind of episode "does leave you as an audience feeling a little bit like frustrated" because the story does not move forward. Still, the cliffhanger meant a week's wait, and the summary was: "with each new episode I am just loving this show more and more and more."

Kathryn Hahn's Agatha keeps gaining depth

There were doubts about Agatha's performance at the beginning, though there was also the point that she was playing a caricature of a certain type of character. As the episodes have progressed, that changed. In the final scene there was a moment where her eyes seemed full of tears, a sign of conflict: she seems to feel like a mother towards Billy while battling her tendencies to be Agatha. Billy, meanwhile, had little to say in that scene, and when you do not have as much to say it is actually a lot harder sometimes, and he held his own against her.

The mind reading we wanted to see more of

It was a little surprising that Billy never told anyone about his power, but that choice also made sense, since the kind of mistake Peter Parker makes handing his tech to Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Spider-Man had seemed likely. There was hope of seeing Billy's perspective on the journey, secretly reading the witches' thoughts while playing ignorant: "I would have sat there for another 3 4 minutes." Everyone he has read so far has been a normal person, so maybe Agatha has some kind of protection.

Evan Peters, the kick, and open questions

Agatha's kick drew a huge laugh, and shows arguably should pause for laughter the way Spider-Man: No Way Home gave audiences a moment when Andrew Garfield appeared. There's hope it is not the last of Evan Peters, though that might be wishful thinking, and the other view is that it is. Other thoughts: whether Billy might one day give the body back, like the ending of Meet Joe Black; whether Wanda could return, since we never really saw her body; and where Vision went, which the writers may still be trying to figure out.

Should Billy ever tell William Kaplan's parents the truth, or let them keep believing he is their son?