Agatha All Along episode 3: how was Sharon's death foreshadowed?

Episode 3 of Agatha All Along, titled "Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials," is where the trials on the Witches' Road begin, and it ends tragically for Sharon Davis. I think the episode laid out each witch's deepest fear, foreshadowed Sharon's drowning again and again, and dropped the first spoken mention of Mephisto in MCU history. This breakdown covers the episode in full, so expect heavy spoilers.

The series (2024) stars Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke and Aubrey Plaza. Like the earlier episodes, this one takes its title from a lyric in The Ballad of the Witches' Road, and the title fits, since this is where the tricks and trials start.

Joe Locke's Teen contradicts what he said about his mother

As the group sets off, Sharon pulls out her phone and finds she has no service, which shows the Witches' Road exists on a completely different plane. Jennifer Kale then says someone has to call the parents of the mysterious teenager played by Joe Locke. Teen replies that if it's nighttime, as it is on the road, his parents would likely be asleep.

I found that interesting, because in the previous episode Teen told Agatha his mother had passed away. Unless he's comparing her death to sleep, it contradicts one of the few things we know about him. Maybe whatever spell was placed on Teen causes his brain to make up scenarios about where his parents are when those parents don't exist. If the spell stops him revealing accurate information about himself, then the only background we'll hear from him is misinformation.

Why anyone can be a witch in the MCU

When Jennifer asks why Sharon, who isn't a witch, is with them, Teen corrects her: anyone can be a witch with proper training. That's true. In the first Doctor Strange film, Strange learns from the Ancient One in Kamar-Taj that any human being with the desire to learn sorcery can become a sorcerer, so the same should hold for aspiring witches.

My reasoning is that every human being in the MCU carries a swirl of cosmic Infinity energy. The TVA called it a temporal aura in the first season of Loki, but whether you call it that, chi or chakra, this energy is at the root of all magic and superpowers in this universe. It's made of the same six Infinity energies that painted the 616 universe at the Big Bang. We see it best when the Dweller in Darkness drains Wenwu's life essence toward the end of Shang-Chi.

The more of this energy an entity drains from people, the more powerful it becomes. We saw it with Agatha in WandaVision, with Wanda in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with the Dweller in Darkness, and with Dormammu in the first Doctor Strange. I believe sorcerers and witches both draw from these inner energies, which is why people like Wenwu or the witches of Salem wither when it's drained, and why people turn into a rainbow mist when the TVA prunes them. It's part of my Marvel Trigger Theory: these energies trigger Marvels.

The Witches' Road works like a Star Wars fear cave

Lilia then realizes the road is meant to put whoever walks it through trials that make them face their fears. That reminded me of the fear-cave idea Star Wars uses. Luke Skywalker confronts his fear of becoming a new Darth Vader in the Dagobah cave in The Empire Strikes Back, and Rey faces her fear of being alone and parentless in The Last Jedi. Rick and Morty parodied the concept in the 10th episode of its seventh season.

It's a funny coincidence, since the witches went down a hole to enter the road. Like those stories, the journey looks set to help Agatha overcome a darkness within her and become a better person. Knowing your fear is knowing yourself, and this episode makes clear that Agatha's biggest fears are rooted in the consequences of her selfish, power hungry life, like the fact that she likely traded her own son for the Darkhold. After this journey, I think it's more likely than not that she becomes the good witch she is in the comics, so she can eventually be the nanny of Franklin and Valeria Richards once the Fantastic Four get to the 616 timeline.

Agatha hides Teen as the sigil comes to light

When Teen tries to introduce himself, the witches realize Agatha has hidden the fact that a sigil was placed on him, redacting key information from witches specifically. That makes me wonder why they didn't have Teen tell Sharon who he is so she could relay it, since as far as we know she isn't a witch.

When Teen asks why anyone would want to hide him, Agatha physically pushes him behind her. I found that an extremely intentional piece of symbolic cinematography, one meant to potentially show that Agatha may have been the one who hid Teen through her past actions, actions she had hoped to uncover quietly over the course of the journey.

How the episode foreshadows Sharon Davis's death

Sharon wanders off the side of the road, which is apparently a big no no, and finds out the hard way when her purse starts sinking into the ground, with her soon following. That's one of several ways the episode foreshadows her suffocating and drowning. Later she says "maybe this is the end" when the group reaches a house that appeared out of nowhere, and on entering she says "bury me in that kitchen." She would die in that kitchen.

The front door is themed after the moon, with a big moon at its center and 12 circles around it representing the phases. Teen notes the center is a full moon, indicating the water phase, which foreshadows the flood. I believe every trial will likely open with this moon design, because a trailer shows Agatha and Teen crossing a drawbridge with a slightly altered version that appears to have a waning crescent at its center.

Inside, the road changes their outfits, and Agatha immediately puts her hand over her brooch to check it's still there, a subtle sign of how much it and the mysterious lock of hair inside mean to her. Teen finds a card above the fireplace beneath a picture of two women swimming, more flood foreshadowing. Later, when Sharon suggests moving to the sofa, her head is framed inside another photo of a woman swimming in a pool.

Doors, blue flowers and a red second trial

Every door in the house has a big circle at the top layered over a rectangle. That could echo the moon theme of the front door, or possibly be a subtle nod to the Darkhold tower at Wundagore, which is designed similarly. The card is decorated with blue flowers like those lining the road when the group arrived. It seems to me the blue of this area marks the first phase of the trial.

When the group exits after completing the trial, the next stretch of road is themed red. The trailers had shown that this area, with red leaves and red tree roots, is where Rio Vidal emerges from the ground to join the witches, so at the time I expected more Aubrey Plaza in episode 4.

The Reina wine may point to the Scarlet Witch

The riddle leads the group to a wine bottle in the middle of five glasses forming a pentagon, like the pentagon shaped door in Agatha's basement, meant to evoke the pentagram symbolism of witchcraft. The label is in Spanish. The brand is Reina, meaning queen. The text beneath roughly translates to prepared on the property, likely in Spain's Rioja region, followed by a designation of origin, the year 2016, what seems to be fit for a queen, and product of Spain.

Since the red wine is called queen, I'm inclined to believe it could possibly symbolize the Scarlet Witch's chaos magic, as Wanda Maximoff is the queen of chaos. The wine causes frightening visions, much like those Wanda gave the Avengers in Age of Ultron. The 2016 date could refer to when the world began to fear the Scarlet Witch after the Lagos incident at the start of Civil War killed people including envoys from Wakanda, with Tony Stark keeping her at the Avengers Compound. That's just a guess. It could also reference 2016's Scarlet Witch #5, where Wanda visits a vineyard in Rioja, which I think is a very plausible Easter egg.

Mephisto is named in the MCU for the first time

While looking for a corkscrew, Jennifer warns Teen that Agatha traded her own son to the demon lord Mephisto for the Darkhold. It's the first time Mephisto has been mentioned by name in the MCU. He's one of the most powerful demon lords in Marvel Comics, first named in 1968's Silver Surfer #3, a hell lord who warps reality, usually after foolish humans make deals with him. The most infamous example is One More Day, where he saved Aunt May in exchange for Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane.

Mephisto is often called Marvel's version of the devil, but there isn't one single devil figure in Marvel. There have been several, like Satannish, Hela, Mikaboshi and Cyttorak. Just as there are multiple gods, there are multiple demon kings.

Alice's curse and the Wu family women

On the sofa, Teen compliments Alice's tattoo. She got it in Colorado while her mother Lorna was performing at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and her mother made her get it to ward off curses, believing every woman in the Wu family was cursed. In Alice's later vision, her mother says she felt the moment Alice's grandmother died and that it was her turn now, because it would kill her too.

That "it" could likely refer to the demon that killed the comic book Alice's mother, a demon she promised to identify and avenge. Unlike the MCU, though, it didn't kill her grandmother in the comics, who was alive in 2016's Scarlet Witch #7 when Wanda visited her for information. So this curse appears to be new for the series. The Wu women also share a strong connection, much like the women in Ms. Marvel and Echo, where women appear to have a stronger generational power that bonds them.

Is Teen Billy Maximoff or Nicholas Scratch

When Alice says she got her tattoo at 13, Teen says a lot happened to him at 13. That lends some credence to theories that he's Wanda's mutant son Billy Maximoff, since mutant powers tend to manifest around 13. I personally don't think Teen is Billy, because there isn't a strong link between him and Wanda yet. If he turns out to be Agatha's son Nicholas Scratch, maybe some sort of mutation happened to him at 13. I'm just throwing out ideas.

The group then realizes the wine, Alewife's Revenge, was poisoned. Agatha suggests letting Sharon drink it all so she doesn't have to, putting her hair over half her face to show hidden motives. When Teen offers to drink instead, Agatha stops him and drinks herself, another example of her sparing him harm. It seems like Agatha either suspects or wants Teen to be the son she gave up, and she might be hoping the sigil means her son found his way back to her.

Lilia's strange message could come from Wanda

Sharon begins hallucinating, saying "Wanda, I'm begging you, let him breathe," implying she's reliving the Hex, when Wanda had her husband choke on food after he questioned Wanda and Vision's past. While Agatha and Lilia hunt for petroleum jelly, Lilia freaks out and appears to receive a message to save Agatha.

Part of me feels it's possible Lilia's gift for divination gives her an antenna for instructions from an outside entity, like Wenwu receiving messages from the Dweller in Darkness. Maybe it could possibly be Wanda reaching out after being buried in the rubble of Wundagore. WandaVision showed chaos magic can act like radio waves, the same kind of science Ant-Man uses to talk to ants, since Hank Pym appears to be a chaos energy specialist. Agatha told Wanda she'd one day need her, so maybe that day has come. That's all hypothesizing. I also noticed the Kale beauty products carry a double K logo that seems to parody Kim Kardashian's, which in my opinion shows what a fraud Jennifer is.

The visions reveal each witch's biggest fear

Near the sauna, a picture of a stork appears, a possible reference to the stork Agatha conjured when Wanda gave birth in WandaVision episode 3. Alice sees her mother screaming that she can't protect her from what's to come. Lilia follows a woman in a yellow dress who looks 16th century, around when Lilia was most likely born, to a room where a dead woman, possibly Lilia herself, opens her eyes as a cloaked skeleton appears. That could possibly be our second look at Death, after the statue at the Gates of Eternity in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Jennifer sees a man call her "an inconvenient woman" before trying to drown her. I believe each vision represents a fear. Alice fears becoming as unhinged as her mother and the curse leading to her demise. Lilia fears death, shown by her long, isolated life. Jennifer fears her vulnerability as a bound witch whom mortals could hurt. Agatha's vision reflects her fear of what her deal with Mephisto did to Nicholas Scratch, a choice she now seems to regret.

The oven escape and Sharon's tragic end

The house floods. To heat the sink cauldron, Teen suggests a sous vide machine, an idea from his father, another uncensored piece of his background. After a pep talk from Agatha, Jennifer remembers the final ingredient is blood of the unpoisoned, and Agatha cuts Teen's hand. Once they're cured, the house offers an escape through the oven, ironic since drowning and burning were how people used to get rid of suspected witches.

They emerge onto the red road. If the blue area was a water trial, this red one, entered through an oven, might be themed around fire, but only time will tell. Sharon drowns in the escape, and because five people are needed to walk the road, Agatha is one witch short, leaving room for Rio Vidal to step in, just as the trailers showed.