Agatha All Along episode 5: is Rio's trial the real test?

Agatha All Along episode 5 packs in a lot of cool comic lore. It also shows Teen awakening powers that carry the thematics of Wiccan. Like every episode title so far, this one is a lyric from The Ballad. Here are the Easter eggs I noticed, along with the comic history behind them.

Agatha All Along (2024) stars Kathryn Hahn as Agatha, Joe Locke as Teen and Aubrey Plaza as Rio. Episode 5 moves the coven through a new trial on the Witches' Road, and it sets up a lot that could matter later.

The Salem Seven are the children of the witches Agatha killed

The episode confirms that the Salem Seven are the children of people Agatha had killed. They are the daughters of the witches Agatha killed. The episode also confirms they are the animals we've seen spying on Agatha through the first part of the story in Westview.

They got onto the Witches' Road because the door was left open. That idea comes back later in the episode, when the coven talks about using a Ouija board: you should always say goodbye. You should always close your spells, so to speak.

Is Agatha's trial secretly Rio's trial?

This trial is supposed to be Agatha's, but I'm not sure it is. I think it might be Rio's, because Rio hasn't been tested yet. My reasoning is that the only thing that can hurt Rio is Agatha being in pain of some sort. Take that as you will.

Rio was very chatty in this episode but also very serious. That could mean she's nervous about Agatha getting hurt because this is her own trial, or she could be nervous about Agatha getting hurt in general. Trailers have hinted that the two have known each other forever, since Agatha's Salem days, so Rio might have been there when Agatha's mom first died. Rio was having a good time until this episode. This is where she turns more serious, with a sense of: we need to do this, I need to take care of Agatha.

The Ouija board, Agatha's mother and the theme of motherhood

Teen finds the handbook for the Ouija board. It's a toy that was mass produced, so there isn't anything witchy or spiritual about it. It's a board game, though it's a scary one for anyone who is superstitious. That's the joke when Lilia reads the back of the box and sees an age rating starting at three. Very funny.

When the coven sits down for their Ouija session, it plays like a teen movie sleepover. Agatha is joking around and faking it for the first half. When she settles down, she gets freaked out, pulls away from the board and is possessed by the spirit of her mother. I've said before that one of the themes of this show is going to be your relationship with your mom. We have Alice and her mother, Agatha and her mother, and Teen and his supposed mother, Wanda, given all the theories going around.

While Agatha fights the possession, Lilia says she hated this the first time, and Teen says she's being weird again. That felt very out of place. Many of these characters are a little out of character in this episode, and they are very quick to turn on Agatha.

Agatha's mother's hatred versus Agatha's love for Nicholas

On the note of motherhood, Agatha's mother has spent centuries hating Agatha. Even if this is an apparition made to punish Agatha, since punishing Agatha is the theme of the trial, she has spent centuries hating her. The only thing Agatha wants is her son back. There's a theme of breaking generational curses and generational trauma here.

It's interesting to see because even though Agatha is so thick skinned and so performative, her love is still very much real, and it's very different from what her mother gave her. When we figure out what happened to Nicholas, I think that will be very important.

Teen saying Nicholas Scratch tells Agatha he isn't her son

When Teen goes to the Ouija board and says that it's Nicholas Scratch, I think that's the moment Agatha understands he isn't Nicholas. He can say the name, and the sigil kept him from saying his name. If she didn't know before, she definitely knew when he could say Nicholas Scratch. She had known because Rio said it, but this was the confirmation: that is not your son.

There's a moment, and I think it's when it solidly hits her that Teen isn't her son, where she resorts to rage. Rage is something that can protect her. She's also furious that Wanda has gotten everything she has ever wanted. Wanda has her son back, she has strong powers, and she essentially has the ability to cheat death.

Alice's death awakens Teen's Wiccan powers

Alice's death is the low point of the episode, and it affected Teen so much that he's now awakened. He has powers on the road, where there are no powers, and he's Wiccan, or at least he has the powers, the crown and the thematics of Wiccan. Nobody says here's Wiccan, but Agatha tells him he's like his mother, and that is Wanda. When Agatha picks up his chin and says it, the Scarlet Witch theme from WandaVision plays very lightly in the background. It's so cool to see these leitmotifs run through the series.

There's a lot of fun with the Wiccan possibility. His spell book is dropped, and Agatha tells him he has to take the training wheels off. In the comics, Wiccan makes up spells by repeating the words of what he wants the spell to do. If he wants to go home, he says take us home, take us home, take us home, and that's his spell. I think we'll get more of those Wiccan style spells, and I'm excited about that, because he dropped his spell book.

Wiccan is angry too, and he gets that rage from his mother. The way people have treated his mom is the way he reacts when somebody treats him poorly or kills his friend. Alice was the one person who cared about him on the road before everybody grew closer, the one person he bonded with, and now she's dead.

Reality warping and the 2013 Young Avengers comic

Wiccan's powers are reality warping. In the 2013 Young Avengers comic, Loki says that Wiccan's whims and daydreams can warp reality. I think Teen desired this, if it's real. It could also be a trial within a trial, so I don't know that it's technically real. It could be Wiccan reality warping his way into what he wishes he could do after Alice died. Either way, the episode shows him using many of Wanda's powers, like taking over people's minds and making them do what he wants. We've seen Wanda do that many times. "Mind control baby."

If Wiccan's powers end up warping the road so badly the coven can't continue, and if this is real, the 2013 comic offers solutions for a Wiccan spell gone wrong. One is to absorb his power and reverse the spell. In that run Kid Loki isn't strong enough to take on Wiccan's power, so he has to age up or borrow it. Another is to reverse the spell by itself. The last option is to kill him, because killing him reverses the spell. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, because "Wiccan has been my son for one episode."

From the same run, Loki tells Wiccan: "you are a multi-dimensional messiah you're going to rewrite the rules of magic and all the implications of that decision are going to Echo forward and backward across realities." Then Loki adds that it's no biggie. If the series is awakening a reality warper who will rewrite the rules of magic, it's cool to see him here, because the show is laying the foundations of magic, and they could change right before our eyes.

Wiccan as the Demiurge, America Chavez and a possible Young Avengers future

In the comics, Wiccan is the Demiurge, the being America Chavez worshipped as a kid because he saved reality. She later meets him, becomes his friend and joins the Young Avengers with him. She realizes he doesn't know what he's doing any more than anybody else, and that breaks her whole perception of heroes.

In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the statue was Wanda, and then there was also Wiccan. With two very prominent magical figures in play, I think they'll do the Demiurge idea for Wiccan, because he's so powerful. Does that mean a Young Avengers spin off? If we do get Young Avengers, I think they'll probably adapt Children's Crusade or the Mother storyline from the 2013 Young Avengers run.

Wanda's blank card and what Teen really wants from the road

When episode 5 aired, I firmly believed we'd see Wanda in this series. There's a blank card in the opening title where somebody should be, and it's over Westview, so I imagined that was Elizabeth Olsen.

The road gives you what you want most if you make it to the end. The whole series had set up that Wiccan wants magic. They're not at the end of the road, and he already has very powerful magic, so the question is what he wants. I believe it's his mom back. In many Young Avengers stories, he spends much of the time when his mother is dead or off the grid trying to find her with his brother Tommy, until he's told to live in the present. I don't want her to be dead, but I want her to be a spirit guide so badly, like a ghost. I hope we get a moment of her and Wiccan talking regardless. I think it would be very good.

There are other hints at things further on in the series that could tie into the comics. One scene shows Agatha with him in the same kind of gown Wanda wore when she was experimented on with the Infinity Stone. In the comics, Tommy was experimented on to become the ultimate super weapon. I wonder if they'll do something like that, or if it will reflect Wanda and bring him closer to her, with Agatha helping. Maybe she does decide to help. As for being drowned in quicksand, I don't know how you come back from that, but it's Marvel. My favorite character is Loki, so I never accept death in Marvel.

Spoiler: Rio as Lady Death and the handmaiden theory

Spoilers follow for Rio's true identity: Rio is Lady Death. My running theory is that Rio is like Leah in the comics. Leah is Loki's ex girlfriend and the handmaiden of Hela, and she was sent to the beginning of time to keep Loki from corrupting her. I'm focusing on the idea of a handmaiden of death, even if not Hela specifically, since Hela is dead in the MCU. I think they might start Rio out serving somebody, whether that's Mephisto or Death themselves. We don't know, but I think it would be cool, and many of the themes are there.

Thinking about the trial as a punishment for Agatha, having Death in the room is a little weird. Maybe it's whoever Rio worked for before becoming Lady Death, or maybe she isn't Lady Death yet and will become her at the end of whatever trial she faces, working for somebody in the meantime. That fits the handmaiden idea I have for Rio. Death wants Agatha punished, yet Death is right there and obviously doesn't want Agatha punished. Those are the very heavy comic themes I noticed in episode 5, some coming up, some hinted at and some I hope for in the future.