Looking back at Agatha All Along episode 7 and the care behind Lilia's tarot farewell

Agatha All Along episode 7 was everything and more to me, because it gave Lilia a story built with care and love. When a character comes from a comic with very little information, as Lilia does, the writers often make it up and it's not good. Lilia was so good that I was absolutely floored and flabbergasted by this episode.

When it aired, two episodes were left. I loved being a witch in this one: so much inclusion, so much love and so much witchcraft lore. Here are my thoughts on the episode, its Easter eggs and what I expected from the end of the series.

The coven's Disney costumes mirror Lilia, Agatha, Jen and Billy

Many of the characters are dressed as other characters, all of them under the Disney umbrella. Lilia is the good witch, or Glinda from Wicked, depending on where you look from. That is poignant for her, because she can be seen two ways but is almost always good. In The Wizard of Oz she is a guide and protector of Dorothy. In Wicked she is mostly a friend to Elphaba, but she is a bit selfish when it comes to protecting herself and her own livelihood.

That relates to Lilia's unwillingness to keep living the way of a witch, getting a coven and using her magic. She says being a fraud is easier, which in some ways connects to Glinda. Agatha, in the same vein, is dressed as the Wicked Witch and also Elphaba, depending on your view. Elphaba is a misunderstood witch and the Wicked Witch is an evil one. That is similar to Agatha herself: a misunderstood witch who wants to make a good name for herself, until it backfires and she accepts that no good deed goes unpunished.

Jen is the witch from Snow White. As much as I wished she was Mother Gothel, because the quest for eternal youth and power would be so reflective of Jen, especially with her skin care line, the Snow White witch still fits. Jen does everything in her power to get her powers back, whatever the cost to other people, like her lawsuit, where she has hurt people trying to regain her power.

Billy is Maleficent, who is a fairy and not a witch depending on your source, and supposedly the Mistress of All Evil. That reflects Billy's journey. He is the son of the Scarlet Witch, and much of the coven is afraid of him now that they've seen his power and know who his mother is. Like Maleficent, there is ultimately good underneath. Despite the black heart, he still has a good head on his shoulders and a good heart.

The time jumps are divination, not the multiverse

The episode bounces back and forth in time. Even though I'm the Loki girly, this isn't multiversal and it has nothing to do with my beloved God of Stories. This is purely divination and witchcraft.

It moves between the trial at the tarot table, Lilia's mother, and the tunnel where Jen tries her best to work with Lilia's gaps in time and functionality. Jen does a good job of staying on the same page as Lilia, even though Lilia keeps flipping pages and even flipping the book.

Lilia's sacrifice echoes her comic book death

Her sacrifice is similar to her death in the comics. There, she sacrifices herself in battle so Strange can fight and win, and she dies at the hands of a gargoyle. In the show she dies trying to defeat the Salem Seven, and she only defeats five of them. Two ran free, so the question was what would happen there.

That ties to Agatha's line that mercy is overrated: you shouldn't let people run free. I was interested to see how that would come back to bite them, because nothing in this story has failed to come back and bite us.

When they show Death, she might be holding a crown of snakes, which is Lilia's crown in the comics. I thought that was interesting, but I don't know if that is what it is, because it's hard to tell. That's what it reminds me of.

The way this was written is such a respectful way to finish a character arc, and I'm endlessly grateful for the care and time everyone took to write, act and portray this death. There is so much room for senseless deaths of characters, and we've seen it in the Marvel Universe with Secret Invasion. Lilia's didn't feel like a wasted death. They honor and respect death and its passage, just like any good witch should.

The Tower, not Death, is the card to fear

During the tarot reading I was screaming, because they keep vilifying the Death card. If you know anything about tarot, Death is not scary. The Tower is scary. Once it was pulled I was terrified, and I knew she was going to die, because Death just means something is changing, while the Tower is so much worse.

It was cool to see her death play out like the Tower, with her falling the way the figures on the card do. This could have been a messy episode, because tarot is sometimes treated disrespectfully. They did such a good job. Even though Agatha calls it all a scam, the respect shown to tarot, for the people who enjoy it, was nice.

I loved how the scenes tied to cards, like the Three of Swords, which was Agatha's, relating directly to the scene of Billy dying. It's such good cinema.

The episode's openly queer humor felt like my own friend group

Bless this episode for being so openly queer. The jokes follow the same pattern as me and my friend group, so I enjoyed it. There's the line "if you want straight answers go find a straight lady", there's "I love bad boys", there's Agatha's pause on being Billy's mother's ex best friend, and there's Billy's queer pun. It's fundamentally like all your friends going to brunch.

I'm glad to see this after waiting so long for things like Loki to be openly queer and not getting that joking. You have to have this kind of comedy if these characters, as I hope, are going to take the helm of Young Avengers, where they make those jokes all the time. I saw a reflection of my own life with my queer friends in there.

It was cool to finally see that on a Marvel show, because we've been suppressed for so long, cut for time and cut for censorship. Here we could unapologetically be who we are and make the jokes we make in real life.

My theory was that the next trial would be Billy's

We'd seen some hints at the last two episodes, and I believed the next trial would be Billy's. Many people said it would be Rio's because they're in a morgue, but it could also be Billy's for the same reason, because William Kaplan should have died.

I thought this would answer his question as the traveler: is he William Kaplan or Billy Maximoff? Many fans had been upset that he'd been called one or the other. My guess was that what he'd get from the Road was to become Billy Kaplan and accept it. He isn't William, because he doesn't have William's memories, and he isn't Billy, because he doesn't have Billy's memories. He exists from three years ago, and the only mom he's known in those three years is his mother more than the Scarlet Witch is.

In the comics he doesn't call Wanda mom. He calls her Wanda or the Scarlet Witch, and only very rarely, every once in a while, mom. That isn't something he's comfortable with, and I said he wouldn't get comfortable with it in this series. Sorry, Wanda stans, but that's just not Billy yet. If he doesn't even have Tommy, that's not something he'd accept right then.

What I did think was that he would accept being Billy Kaplan: both of those people and a new person, a different being entirely, who doesn't have to be chained to his past either way.