Agatha All Along Episode 7 Reaction: Lilia's Tarot Episode Is a Technical Masterpiece

Agatha All Along episode 7 is arguably the best episode of the series and probably in the top five of any Marvel Disney Plus episode we have seen. On the shots, the edits and the sound alone, "It's a technical masterpiece for sure."

Every shot in Lilia's episode is built to disorient

Nothing felt like excess. Every shot seemed designed to make you feel what Lilia feels: not just confused, but disoriented. Writing it meant understanding the objective sequence of events while grounding everything in Lilia's point of view as she lives it. Her first lesson is something she experiences as an older woman at the end of her life, sent back into her younger self. That reads as a signal to her that she was meant to live out of sequence: you cannot control it, you just see it.

This may be an example of why the MCU is a more thematically significant place when destiny exists. If you say we exist in a multiverse where timelines branch into infinite possibilities, that kind of zaps life of its meaning; the preference here is for destiny, which can be twisted and looped back on itself to give characters catharsis. After roughly five centuries of watching everyone die, Lilia stops hiding from death and finds her end.

A tightly wound structure with linked lines

Lines Lilia scattered across the season, like "Alice, don't try to save Agatha," were spliced together perfectly, and other connections we had not even clocked turned up too. It "felt like a tightly wound music box of an episode," almost a Wes Anderson style construction. Lilia is centrally framed in her moments of clarity, while her confusion plays out in left or right and over the shoulder shots, a way of showing she can finally focus instead of being distracted by the periphery.

Patti LuPone deserves an Emmy for Lilia

Patti LuPone deserves an Emmy for this episode, and the writing, direction and editing deserve recognition too, though the prediction is it would probably be nominated for costume. Seeing LuPone so vulnerable stood out. It recalled her Mama Rose in Gypsy: the number that makes the show is not the belt everyone remembers but the reflection on "scrapbooks full of me in the background," and this episode is Lilia going back through those scrapbooks. Conveying confusion and clarity without going over the top is such a difficult task for an actor, and her performance was delicate and nuanced. Even Jen's interruptions and the Salem Seven were moving pieces that mattered. "I am obsessed with this episode."

The Rio reveal and a satisfying end for the Salem Seven

The Rio reveal landed, though finding the Funko Pop early softened the blow. The line "Don't you recognize me" works both ways: Rio has travelled the road with them, and she has appeared countless times in Lilia's visions. Keeping her at a distance in shadow, with a hint of a skull over her face, was creepy.

Jen surviving into the finale is interesting. The teaser shot of Jen coming out of the ground in Westview had not yet appeared, so maybe she does not die, and as the High Priestess she may need to stay alive to keep teaching. Then there is the Salem Seven's end: Lilia flipping the tower card so they fall upward into knives was one of "the all-time best power moves I've ever seen in the MCU."

What do you think the image of witches falling upward into knives means?