Agatha All Along Ending Explained: What Was Missing From Agatha's Backstory With Death

The Agatha All Along finale reveals that the legend of the Witches' Road was a ballad invented by Agatha and her son Nicholas to lure witches into a trap, steal their powers and keep the two of them alive. The penultimate episode had already delivered a twist in the style of The Usual Suspects: the entire road was Billy Maximoff's imagination come to life.

Agatha's final deal with Death was so salty that even after Agatha's demise, Death refused to show her face and left Agatha on this mortal plane as a ghost. She becomes a companion to Billy in his search for his brother Tommy, similar, you could say, to Agatha's role as a ghostly companion to Wanda Maximoff in James Robinson's 2016 Scarlet Witch comic storyline. All of this left me asking what exactly Agatha's backstory with Death is, and whether it was removed from the series. Here I'll answer as many questions as I can using the little details the show left us. The final two episodes answer most of the questions, but they leave a few pieces missing, or really just one big piece.

Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End reveals Billy built the Witches' Road

At the end of episode 8, Rio, also known as Death, brings Alice to an afterlife. Billy and Jen realize that Rio is Death and Agatha's ex-lover. Agatha and Death establish that Billy disrupted the sacred balance by inhabiting the body of William Kaplan, and Death wants to fix that. But Billy must voluntarily offer himself, because if he's killed he will just reincarnate in another body and they won't be able to find him. He would reincarnate because he is a manifestation of Wanda's grief, which equals love persevering, meaning Wanda's magic was so powerful it will always live on in whatever vessel it can find.

Agatha agrees to help Billy locate Tommy but plans to let Death take Billy if Death will never show her face to Agatha again, even when she dies. So Agatha, Jen and Billy circle back to the start of the road and enter the final trial, the Earth trial, where they must grow something in a windowless morgue. Jen realizes it was Agatha who helped the doctors in the 1920s bind her, casting a spell for money, though Agatha claims she didn't realize at the time that the binding spell was for Jen. Jen unbinds herself and escapes.

Agatha helps Billy mentally locate Tommy, and Billy sees flashes of a mystery boy being bullied at a lakeside location, resulting in an accidental drowning. We don't see the face of this new Tommy, but Billy indicates that Tommy has no one to love him. Agatha uses a teardrop and a dandelion seed that reminds her of Nicholas to grow a new dandelion, which is enough to escape into her backyard and a battle with Death. She takes Lilia's advice to duck at the right moment but struggles, and Billy returns in his complete comic accurate Wiccan wardrobe to help. Neither is strong enough. Agatha initially offers Billy, but Billy gets in her head and asks if this is what she did with Nicholas, so Agatha surrenders herself into a kiss from Death and dies.

Billy built the Witches' Road from his and William's bedroom decor

Death lets Billy go home, and in a reveal sequence akin to The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense and, sure, the final twist of Sharp Objects on HBO, he realizes the whole road was his creation. He used decor and figurines from his and William's bedroom along with the reality manifesting magic he inherited from the Scarlet Witch. The trees and leaves were decor from Billy's room and William's bar mitzvah table centerpieces, which is why Billy said the road was just like he imagined it when he first traversed it in episode 3. The shifting colors of the road were perhaps meant to be like a rainbow, and maybe an expression of Billy's queer identity.

Jen's beach house was based on a poster in Billy's room, and Alice's house on posters in his room, including one of Fleetwood Mac. Agatha's sleepover was filled with the triangular string lights Billy had in his room, along with board games like Ouija. Lilia's castle was based on the tarot cards and the Wizard of Oz figurines and posters he had. Every first clue that initiated a trial was found by Billy, and he was always the one pushing the others along, like when he demanded Agatha finish her wine. After Jen told Billy the theory that Agatha traded her son for the Darkhold, that's what Agatha saw in Nicholas's cradle.

Normally this kind of battle would appear in a Marvel series finale, but this show changed things up and placed it in the penultimate episode, leaving the finale for other, more emotional reveals.

Maiden Mother Crone shows the ballad was Agatha and Nicholas's lie

Episode 9 finds Agatha in 1750 in labor with a baby son. She struggles with the delivery, Death arrives to claim the child, and Agatha begs Death not to take him, asking for more time. Interestingly, we do not learn who the father was, how Agatha first met Death, when, where or how Agatha acquired the Darkhold, or why exactly the Salem coven put Agatha on trial 57 years earlier in 1693. I'll get to that below.

Agatha delivers baby Nicholas. They find a new coven of witches in the woods, and Agatha drains them, using that power to sustain her life and Nicholas's. Six years later, she is using Nicholas in a scheme to lure witches into traps, and part of that scheme over the years is the Ballad of the Witches' Road, a made up myth that makes witches believe a road could grant their heart's desire. Nicholas begins to dislike the dishonesty and hurting other witches, and one day he decides not to follow through. That day he gets a death rattle, and that night he dies in Agatha's arms and is led off by Death into the darkness.

As Agatha grieves, a new witch finds her asking about the road, and Agatha spends the decades tricking witches with the ballad, getting them to blast her so she can steal their powers and kill them. That goes all the way to Agatha breaking free from Wanda's spell, Billy requesting another journey, and Agatha summoning the latest coven using the same bell six year old Nicholas had stolen in 1756. This time, because Billy has reality manifesting powers similar to Wanda creating the sitcom Hex, the door to the road actually forms, surprising Agatha. All series she was playing along, suspecting Teen had something to do with it, until Lilia's sigil broke and she knew Billy was Wanda's son. She didn't come clean sooner because she didn't want the others to know she had never gone down the road and that it was all a lie. Her mix up with the ballad's lyrics was a telltale sign: for her and Nicholas the words were always "of coven two," and for Agatha it was never "of coven true" because she was never truthful.

Ghost Agatha ends the series as a guide for Wanda's son

Because of her deal with Death, Agatha returns as a ghost with gray hair, similar to the ghostly form she takes in the 2016 James Robinson Scarlet Witch series that first introduced the concept of the Witches' Road. In that run, though, the road was a real realm shared by all witches, not a myth made up by one of them. Billy agonizes over the deaths of Alice, Lilia and Mrs. Davis, and it's pointed out that since the original plan was to kill Jen too and Jen escaped, it's a net positive. Jen, now unbound, simply flies away from Westview, perhaps never knowing the whole road was Billy's creation and Agatha's lie.

Billy draws a pentagram in Agatha's basement and tries to banish her ghost to the afterlife using her Maiden Mother Crone brooch, but she won't go because she finally confesses she can't face him, referring to Nicholas Scratch. That confession establishes the unresolved issues binding her here, and she is able to pick up the brooch as the Maiden Mother Crone vanishes, because Agatha has gone through those three phases of a mortal witch's life. Billy suggests Nicholas would have forgiven her, Agatha believes they'd make a good team, and the two go off in search of Tommy.

In some ways, being a ghost is the natural state of the spirit witch of this coven, and it's Agatha's destined transformation into her version of Gandalf the White, a spiritually enlightened guide for the young witch. In the 2016 run that is the role ghost Agatha serves for Wanda, so it feels right that she would serve it for Wanda's son. She finds her coven two, she's free from this forever dance with Death, and she has finally stopped her cycle of witch slaughter. In episode 5, when Evanora Harkness appears, Lilia establishes the rule that emotion ties ghosts to this plane because they have unfinished business. It seems Agatha cannot emotionally face Nicholas until she has helped Wanda's two sons reunite.

Marvel executive Brad Winderbaum said this series is part two of a trilogy with WandaVision that will end with VisionQuest, which will follow White Vision and Ultron. At the time it sounded like it would come in 2026, and I assumed it must also include Billy's search for Tommy; otherwise we might not follow up on that until a Young Avengers or Children's Crusade series in 2027 or beyond. Either way, ghost Agatha is a fascinating visual incarnation of the character who must now show up in any supernatural story the MCU has. Ghost Agatha needs to be to Marvel horror what Wong has been to Marvel, well, everything really.

Who was Nicholas Scratch's father?

The bigger questions center on what happened before the finale picks up in 1750. Agatha tells her newborn, "I spoke no spell I said no incantation you are made from scratch." It's a very sweet thing to tell a baby who will later have the name Nicholas Scratch, but it makes us wonder what she means. Does she mean the old fashioned way, using perhaps her succubus powers? Was there some man in early 18th century New England she conceived this child with?

One theory I'll throw out: Billy's internet research on Agatha included Abigail Adams on a list of witches, and Agatha mentioned disrupting the revolutionary era Daughters of Liberty. In 1750, John Adams was the 15 year old son of a deacon in the Massachusetts area, one year before he enrolled in Harvard in 1751. I'm just saying a love triangle with the future second president of the United States is possible here, albeit unlikely.

No spell and no incantation tells us Agatha must not have used witchcraft, sorcery, or knowing deals with Death or Mephisto to conceive this child. I suppose it's possible she met someone posing as a mortal man in mid 18th century Massachusetts who might have been Old Scratch or Mephisto, without realizing who he was, and Death is now trying to correct that imbalance by taking the son. Either way, there was probably a father, but I think the point of this scene and this line is that the father doesn't matter. Agatha is the one who carried him and delivered him.

Agatha and Death were already in a relationship by 1750

There must have been some history between Agatha and Death. When Death first appears as Agatha struggles to deliver Nicky, Agatha recognizes her: "it cannot be it must be please let him live please my love." Agatha and Death were therefore in a relationship before this point, and still in it at this moment, because Agatha calls her my love.

So why didn't this series show how Agatha and Rio met? And after episode 1 focused so heavily on the Darkhold, why didn't it establish any firm backstory for how Agatha attained it? Look back at Agatha's origin point in WandaVision episode 8, Salem 1693, and consider that this series introduced the Salem Seven as the vengeful daughters of that Salem coven who took on animalistic qualities. We can definitely deduce a very specifically shaped missing piece. It could have been a scripted scene that wasn't shot, or a shot scene removed from the edit. Run times vary on this series, but it's worth noting that episode 9 is 7 minutes shorter than episode 8.

I think the missing scene was set around Salem in 1693

I think it's possible episode 9 was going to open on a scene earlier than 1750, sometime around or before 1693. WandaVision only hinted at why Agatha was put on trial, with lines like "stole knowledge above your age and station" and "I did not break your rules they simply bent to my power." So Agatha's first meeting with Death must have happened before that. Meeting Death at a young age instilled her with this advanced magic to absorb power from witches when they blast her, and when she did it to the Salem coven, that was the first time, and it surprised her.

We needed a scene where Agatha was a girl, explaining why Evanora thought she was evil from birth, showing when she first met Death, was first seduced by Death and first acquired the Darkhold. And we needed a scene where the daughters first realized what Agatha did to their mothers. I don't know, maybe the producers thought it could be too similar to the flashback of the witches of Brendok in The Acolyte, who used the Force to magically conceive twins in a story that led to that all female coven dying. Maybe they instead just chose to begin Agatha's journey with her as a lone pregnant witch who conceived her son without magic in 1750. Part of this missing sequence would also be who Agatha made Nicholas from scratch with.

Showrunner Jac Schaeffer told TheWrap that further backstory between Agatha and Rio was discussed in the writers' room, and she implied their meet cute was close to what Jennifer Kale told Billy: that the two met over corpses, perhaps, Schaeffer implied, the bodies of the Salem coven at Agatha's trial. So I think a return to the aftermath of that trial and the origin of the Salem Seven was the scene that was missing.

The finale works as an Agatha and Billy story, less so as an Agatha and Rio romance

Ultimately, the finale did not answer every question, and I've covered enough series that I just expect that. If you view this as an Agatha and Billy series, mostly all the pieces lock into place. Billy and this coven stopped a dangerous witch from hurting anyone else, forced her to pay a price, and allowed her to transform into a new state that helps the younger generation, specifically an analog of the Scarlet Witch, as ghost Agatha seeks to resolve her own unfinished business. But as an Agatha and Rio romance, this finale definitely pulled punches and needed an extra scene or sequence to satisfy that arc.

If you came to the show as a lover of WandaVision, clinging in hope to the Wanda teases, that first episode now in retrospect feels like it's from a different series. It was a transitional step from the WandaVision era to signify the definitive end of the Scarlet Witch and of the Darkhold. Clearly the standout was episode 7, Death's Hand in Mine, the Lilia Calderu episode, perhaps on its own the best episode Marvel Studios has ever accomplished on Disney+.

For anyone who feels that episode means less now, that the deaths of Lilia, Alice and Sharon Davis were all for naught because they were part of a road that was first a trick and ultimately a random teen's imagination, I get it. I felt that way a little bit on Wednesday night. But reflecting on the series as a whole, Alice and Lilia needed this road to find an inner peace they otherwise never would have found, and the world needed their sacrifices to stop the cycle of suffering Agatha had been causing for hundreds of years. Wanda was able to pause Agatha's crimes with her spell, but after Wanda's death the world needed Wiccan to create the road and transform the worst witch into the greatest ghost. As for whether Sharon Davis ever amounted to anything more than collateral damage, to that ultimately unanswered question, I think this show would just answer: who's Sharon?

Which part of Agatha's history with Death would you most want to see on screen?