Agatha All Along Easter Eggs and Theories From Alice's Trial

Episode four of Agatha All Along, titled If I Can't Reach You, Let My Song Teach You, was Alice's trial, so that title definitely makes sense, and I wanted to walk through some Easter eggs and things I kind of noticed. With the series halfway through at that point, I had thoughts on Alice's rock ballad, Lilia's tarot cards and premonitions, a possible echo of Loki in Rio's story, and who might end up as the spirit guide.

Toward the end of this piece I get into things that had been leaked, mainly through Funko, and I'll flag that section clearly before it starts so anyone avoiding spoilers can stop there.

Alice is different from her comic counterpart, and that's okay by me

Alice is definitely different from how she was in the comics, but that's okay by me. It's a different telling, and we get different tellings in Marvel all the time. It's not a big deal.

In the comics she imbues her weapons with magic, and we got a taste of that here with the knife and with her drawing the circle for protection, which was really cool. I hope we get to see more of that, though I think we probably won't.

Alice's rock ballad turned 'witchy music' into a protection spell

The episode gave us a new rock ballad, and it was really cool. The coven sings it in the style of a rock ballad, and it protects the coven and destroys the curse on Alice and her family.

As somebody who is goth, who is witchy, and who has been listening to metal, rock and emo music since I was little, that was a really cool thing to see. When you're in that scene, people tell you it's Satan music, it's witchy music, and so on. So seeing that kind of music used as a protection spell was really, really cool, and the song was filled with so much love, love for her daughter and all of that.

Witches and witchcraft are also musically inclined, so I felt we'd see a lot of music, considering how many Broadway and musical people are involved. Patti LuPone has been on Broadway, and I was sure Lilia's whole thing would be somewhat musical, because it has to be: it's the Wicked, Wizard of Oz kind of thing, so it's going to have some sort of musical element to it.

My theory: Lilia is taking on Agatha's role from the 2016 Scarlet Witch comic

One of the bigger points I'd been thinking about as the series progressed is that Lilia, Patti LuPone's character, is taking on Agatha's role from the 2016 Scarlet Witch comic. In that comic, Agatha was there as a ghost to guide Wanda through the process of getting to the road and walking the road.

We have that in Lilia, an older woman who is kind of keeping the peace but is also very much there as a guide of some sort. She's very much taking on that motherly, guiding role, which is what I'd say Agatha is to Wanda.

We also saw one of Lilia's premonitions come true. She'd said something like she didn't get along with them but she, and then a blank. That blank turned out to be the I love you guys moment from when they were all poisoned and dealing with the poison in the first trial, which was really cool.

I wondered whether all of her premonitions would fill in like that, or whether they go together. At that point we still didn't know what her premonitions technically are: whether they're some other beings, whether they're ghosts, or whether that's just how her mind works because of witchcraft. The cost of witchcraft would be so cool to see, because I'd love it if her cost for doing witchcraft is that she has those premonitions.

Why I'd rather the spirit guide be Lilia, or even Wanda, than Sharon

I hope Lilia makes it through the road. I don't know if she will, though, because Agatha is a ghost in the comics. On the let my spirit guide you idea, while people think it's Sharon, I think it would be better with Lilia.

Sticking with the 2016 comic, a lot depends on who Teen is. Everybody thinks Teen is Billy. Rio does tell Agatha that's not your son, so Teen is not Nicholas Scratch. Whether that's because he's an agent of Mephisto, or because he's Billy Kaplan or Billy Maximoff, we didn't know yet.

If he is Billy Maximoff, there's a thing from the Scarlet Witch comics I really want. On the road in the comics, Wanda meets the spirit of her mother, not because her mother had died but because she had walked the road at one point as well. The first version she meets doesn't know who she is; later she meets her mother again, after she knows who she is.

So if the spirit guide is not Sharon, and it's not a Lilia who has passed, I'd love it to be Wanda, who passed away destroying the Darkhold, guiding Billy, her son. It would fit the maternal love of that song. I'm also sure we'll get Agatha's mommy issues, for lack of a better term: her issues with her mother and being cast aside because of her powers. With maiden, mother and crone, the mother is there, even if it's just as their guides, essentially.

I do think these witches and Teen definitely have this relationship with their mothers, and if that's Wanda, I think she should be the guide who gets them to the end, even if she's not alive. I know that would hurt a lot of fans, myself included, but I think it would be a very cool way to incorporate her. I love Sharon, I do, but I don't know that I want her to be the guide, because she doesn't know anything about the road.

Lilia's three tarot cards so far, and why the Tower is the one to fear

We'd already seen three tarot cards come up for Lilia. Going off the top of my head, so I might be wrong: it was the High Priestess when she met Jen, the Three of Pentacles when she met Agatha, and the Three of Swords when Teen was injured. These were very prominent.

I don't know whether Lilia uses these the way Mr. Lancer in Danny Phantom kind of swears in the moment, or whether they're her premonitions. I love that her premonitions are weirdly vague and that we don't know what's going on with her. I was really excited for her trial, so we could figure out what's actually going on with her, and I think that will be really fun.

The modern interpretation of the High Priestess is that it represents the unknown, mystery, intuition and the subconscious mind, which could tie to Jen being bound, or it could simply have been a thing. The Three of Pentacles represents teamwork and collaboration, which makes sense right before the coven is formed. The Three of Swords has a very heavy hand in accidental deaths and the like, and, obviously, Teen is bleeding out on the table, so that's definitely the connection.

I do know there's a spread of tarot cards that relate to the show, including Death and the Tower. Many people think Death is the scary card, but the Tower is the one you should fear. Death means change, different things, new beginnings. If we see Lilia call out the Tower, that's when we should be concerned, because it means destruction and chaos and all these things that are not good. Seeing it in the spread of the show's tarot themes, I'm excited, I can't wait to see it, and I'm scared.

Rio's scar may echo Loki's story, the way Deadpool and Wolverine did

Spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine here if you haven't seen it: the sacrifice the two title characters make is very similar to the sacrifice Loki made for his friends. It had the same beats as Loki's sacrifice: I'm locking myself in a room, I'm going to do this without you, I'm going to keep you safe.

The other thing I noticed is that when Rio talks about her scars, she brings up that another person is her scar: she hurt somebody she loved, which is Agatha, and that's the scar she bears. And, setting aside being a crazy Loki fan girl for a moment, I promise, it reminds me of Mobius and Loki's conversations about how you deal with a burden, how you deal with a purpose that isn't glorious. Mobius says scar tissue.

If Loki is the one holding all of the timelines, is Loki's story, his love for his friends and all of that, slowly seeping into other Marvel things? There's a very big parallel across all these stories, with all these found family tropes and all this love coming around, and it feels like his little personal experiences are floating into them. I think I'm going to keep a little notebook of those moments and see what's going on.

Spoilers: what the Funko leaks suggested about Rio as Death

Spoiler warning: from here on, I'm talking about things that had been leaked or confirmed, specifically things leaked by Funko, such as Wiccan and Rio being Death.

Rio says she's doing her job, and Death's job is taking bodies, taking souls. But if she's working for somebody higher, would she? Agatha had a Salem flashback coming up, and I wasn't sure whether it was part of her trial, but Rio is wearing a green cloak with period accurate clothing. I didn't know whether we'd get a flashback showing Rio meeting Agatha, but that silhouette, and her being younger, made me think that maybe being Lady Death isn't something she started out doing.

She might be taking on a role like Leah did. Leah is in Journey into Mystery; she's Loki's friend and she ends up as the right hand of Hela. I wondered whether we'd see something like that, with a different figure of Death, be it Mephisto or somebody else, and Rio taking on that handmaiden kind of role Leah had in the comics.

We keep saying her name isn't Rio, that she's something else, that she's Lady Death. But I wondered if there's something more, because there's always a curveball. We've been told one thing, so where is the surprise going to be? They always hide some sort of surprise.

If you were a coven member, what would your duty be? Would you be a protection witch, or a green witch?