Agatha All Along episode 4: is Rio Vidal Lady Death?

Agatha All Along episode 4 followed Mrs. Hart's death at the end of episode 3, leaned hard on a musical number that didn't win me over, and stacked up enough clues that I thought Rio Vidal, the Green Witch, was Lady Death. Then a Funko box spoiled the answer, and I came away a little bummed at how obvious it all was.

Agatha All Along (2024) stars Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza and Joe Locke. This piece covers everything in episode 4 first, then the Funko spoilers at the end.

Mrs. Hart's death at the end of Agatha All Along episode 3

Is Mrs. Hart gone? That was hard for me to accept. My reaction was to tell her to wake up and get moving, because there was still work to do. With the pacing of this show, though, you have to move on quickly. I already knew Rio Vidal would eventually come back as the Green Witch, but I didn't expect them to kill off Mrs. Hart.

Episode three had given her a dramatic moment that called back to WandaVision. In that callback she was begging Wanda to save her husband while he was choking, which echoed the very first episode of WandaVision, where Mrs. Hart made her first appearance. Then came her drastic death.

At first I thought she died because the group didn't get a piece of her hair. Then came the reminder that she took two of the poison, so she probably needed two of the antidote. I don't remember the antidote ever working like that. I thought you took it and you were okay, but it knocked her right out. For the pacing of the show, fine. But this woman has had a rough life, and I don't envy it.

The clues that Rio Vidal is Lady Death

We did finally get Rio back, and I think the hints about who the Green Witch really is were piling up. When the Teen got glass stuck in him, Agatha looked straight at Rio and told her don't. There was also the exchange in the sound booth about taking powers versus taking bodies. With that many references to death and bodies, I thought it was Lady Death.

The campfire conversation added to it. When the witches talked about their scars, or what they had sacrificed, Rio described dating someone and something bad happening as a result. In the comics, Lady Death originally dated Thanos, and that led to him getting the Gauntlet and wiping out everyone. That's what I first took her scar to mean, since she talked about how dating them caused a big rift and hurt her.

I also think there's a parallel with Agatha. The MCU hints that Rio has some kind of romantic relationship with Agatha, and if Rio is Lady Death, that sets up the idea of Agatha flirting with death.

Agatha Harkness keeps surviving death

That flirtation shows up in how many times Agatha has survived death. She survived the witches coming after her, and we saw little clips of that. In the comics, she survived when Nicholas Scratch sent the Salem Seven after her. Four episodes in, I was still wondering where the Salem Seven were.

In the comics she survived again on the Witches' Road, when Wanda, Wanda's mother and Agatha fought to save Hecate, the goddess of all witches, and Agatha's mother brought her back from the dead. She also fought demons and got her youth back while fighting at the Academy. If you want to talk about immortality, talk about Agatha. That woman fights death, so it makes sense that death is always around her.

Lady Death being the embodiment of death shows how closely these two are intertwined and how often their paths cross. All of these hints led me to my theory.

Is the Teen Agatha's son? The sigil theory

Rio told Agatha to her face that the Teen is not her son. That could be Lady Death manipulating the situation to get Agatha. As much as Agatha flirts with death, I do think death wants Agatha's soul. They've been playing cat and mouse for so long that I feel like her soul, or her body, has been marinating just right for Lady Death.

So it could be manipulation, but I don't believe the Teen is her son. Agatha mentioned that the sigil works against both of them: it hides him from the Teen, and it would hide him from her too, which is why people don't play with sigils much. I don't think that's true. I think there's another reason the sigil is on him.

The Ballad of the Witches' Road felt too campy

I love musical episodes, but this one felt a little Camp Rock, a little Disney Channel Original Movie, with the idea that the power of music can save us all. I wasn't into it that much. I get it. I think it's cute, whimsical and fine, but I think they're overplaying the Witches' Road song.

I understand why it's hard to avoid. Their powers are bound, or they don't have them, or there's a plethora of other reasons they lack their full strength, so the show has to rely on practical, true magic rather than ordinary magic. They're also fighting all these demons, so I see why the story plays in these realms.

I still think the ballad could have been done differently, or not run as long. It took a lot from the episode and made it too campy for me. Maybe this was an episode I needed to vibe out to, and I would have enjoyed it more. It just wasn't for me.

The Funko spoilers: Rio as Lady Death and the Teen as Wiccan

Then came the Funko Pop spoilers, which hit my Twitter/X feed immediately, since most of it is Marvel news. The back of the Funko box confirmed that Rio is Lady Death. I was a little bummed, mostly because it was too obvious. I like to research and dig for information, and like an earlier WandaVision theory, this was less grandiose than all the time and energy I had put into it.

Maybe it's another way of saying Wanda is coming back, and that would be great. I knew there were plenty of hints about Elizabeth Olsen returning, and that a director was being sought for her solo Wanda film, so maybe this is another way to bring that back. I love that we got to see Hulkling, and with the Young Avengers being brought in, it makes sense to me.

But the Teen being Wiccan felt too on the nose. There's no fun, nothing to play with; it just is. The sigil adds a weird, fun hidden element, I guess, but I don't think it was necessary. Learning his name was cute. I just wish it was more.

Maybe that was my fault for digging into this like a scholar. This is the second time with WandaVision and Agatha All Along that I've researched and researched, only for the answer to turn out to be something simple, once even a joke. From now on I don't think I'll dig as deep. Even so, I couldn't wait for episode 5, more reveals and the third trial.