Looking back at the Agatha All Along episode that said Mephisto's name

Agatha All Along episode 3, "Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials," was the episode where Jennifer Kale said the name I'd been waiting for, Mephisto, which at the time felt like it might be the first and perhaps only time the MCU would ever say it. Hearing it sent me into a state of euphoria, but on a closer look the episode was also packed with details, references and clues, so I went through it scene by scene. The series finale aired on October 30, 2024, and what follows is how I read the episode back then, before any of it was settled.

The Witches' Road was built practically, like The Wizard of Oz

This was the episode that showed us the show's episodic structure, with each trial along the Witches' Road working kind of like its own escape room built on a pop culture reference to sisterhood and witchcraft. Showrunner Jac Schaeffer said the idea came from the original trials witches would have to go through, including a fire trial and a water trial.

When Agatha told Teen the road "suits you," I thought she meant not just his goth vibe but the DIY nature of his approach to witchcraft. The road set was done practically. Behind-the-scenes featurettes show trees designed to illuminate colors like teal, bent to look like hooded ghosts, and the team talked about using miniatures for background locations seen from a distance. It was all meant to evoke the practical nature of Victor Fleming's 1939 The Wizard of Oz, which used a lot of the same techniques.

Teen said he was 100% certain his parents were asleep, and I wondered whether that could mean they were dead. He kept talking about his parents, but we didn't really know what was going on with them.

I suspected Westview hid something underground, and that Sarah Proctor mattered

Sharon said she was a member of the Westview Historical Society, and I went out on a limb to say Sarah Proctor might be another member. My theory from the week before was that when Agatha went to the library to talk to the librarian version of Dottie during her Mare of Easttown spell, it might actually just have been Sarah's house, since Agatha's movement seemed confined to her and her neighbors' homes. Sarah Proctor, with a name dating back to the real Salem Witch Trials, could have kept the darkhold in her personal book collection.

Actress Emma Caulfield Ford was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the talk of a failed public transit system under Westview, a town that never seemed to have more than a few thousand people, reminded me of an old WandaVision theory of mine that there might be a hellmouth under Westview like the one under Sunnydale High. I wanted to know what was down there and what the beekeeper from WandaVision episodes 2 and 4 was crawling through.

I also asked why Vision chose Westview, New Jersey. The show implied witchy people were everywhere, but Lilia Calderu, Jennifer Kale and Lorna Wu's daughter Alice Wu were pretty high-profile witches to all be within a few miles of where the Scarlet Witch caused her big stir. I thought it was possible Vision's Mind Stone sensed a wellspring of magic there that would help unlock Wanda's true self.

The Scarlet Witch Updates account on Twitter pointed out a promo shot of Agatha kicking Teen out of the chair in the real world, outside the spell. That told me a future episode would revisit episode 1 from the point of view of Teen and the neighbors, probably including Sarah. Agatha still couldn't remember Mrs. Hart's real name, which I blamed on Wanda's spell being that effective, like a great TV show where we only know the actor as the character.

Teen's hidden name could fit Billy, and Jac Schaeffer called the sigil amateur

When Agatha said someone had put a sigil on Teen, his mouth moved as if saying one but definitely not more than two syllables, which could fit Billy, since the "lee" doesn't require the jaw to drop a second time. I'd laid out the evidence that he was probably Billy Kaplan, though I thought there was probably more to the story.

Schaeffer told TheWrap that "the original idea was that it was a redaction bar because that is what the spell is," describing it as a clumsy spell that shows its amateur nature. By calling it clumsy and amateur, I thought it kind of suggested Teen might have placed it on himself. Schaeffer also described the sigil as sans serif, in contrast to the serif witchcraft of the more experienced witches, the serif being the little tail on fonts like Times New Roman, while Arial is sans serif.

When Teen asked why someone would want to hide him, Agatha literally pushed him behind her body, hiding him from view. She claimed sigil magic was beneath her, but I thought she knew, or at least suspected, more about why he had it than she let on.

The trials matched the phases of the moon, one theory I got right

Agatha went down the line reminding each witch of their want: Jen to unbind, Lilia to reverse her fortunes, Alice to learn what really happened to her mom. It was very Wizard of Oz. Sharon, meanwhile, nearly got swallowed by mud just off the path, and Agatha explained that "I stray not from the path" meant literally never stepping off the road. That made me think the fallen leaves on the path, which seemed to change color further down the road in trailer material, might have a floor-is-lava logic protecting the witches from the forest's muck.

At the beach house, someone wondered if maybe this was the end, and Teen replied not to be such a bummer. That house did end up being the end for Sharon. After Teen's response, Agatha side-eyed him, keeping an eye on a kid who seemed to be enjoying this more than anyone. Lilia saw the door's carving matching the moon phases, and Teen saw the center circle's craters, meaning this house represented the full moon, the water phase. In our July trailer breakdown I'd speculated the trials might correspond to the phases of the moon, so that was one theory I got right out of probably a hundred wrong. Online correlations between phases and elements varied; some sites said the new moon was the water phase, but the full moon also made sense, since tides run higher than normal around then.

Big Little Lies, aspect ratios and the amulets

Inside, the six shifted into preppy country club attire straight out of Big Little Lies, and the HBO series even got referenced in the background as "Huge Tiny Lies." I didn't think there was any witchcraft in Big Little Lies, unless you count Meryl Streep's acting, but it's a show with a group of women and a dead body at the end of season 1. I thought of Debra Jo Rupp here as kind of the season 2 Meryl Streep scene stealer. The aspect ratio also shifted from widescreen on the road to a taller, more TV ratio inside, as WandaVision did to signal format changes.

Jennifer Kale's amulet looked like a potion bottle. The jewelry artist who designed Lilia's called it the Sun tarot card, representing love, joy, satisfaction, accomplishment and success; I'd earlier guessed the Queen of Cups. Alice's looked to me like a heart, which might connect to the Three of Swords. Rio's, the curved dagger she carries, is also carried by Death in the Death tarot card.

Sharon's "bury me in that kitchen" was more foreshadowing. Agatha's "please God not a baby shower" made sense if she sacrificed her baby boy for the darkhold, and the episode ended with her crawling toward a crib. The riddle pointed to wine, and the Spanish red they found had a name that, spelled slightly differently, could read as a version of Red Queen.

Nicholas Scratch, and the name Mephisto

Jen asked Teen if he knew Agatha "traded her own child for the book of the damned." That confirmed for me why the library card on the corpse belonged to a book whose first letters spelled darkhold, written by an author named Andrew: the corpse was a projection of Agatha's sacrifice of her son Nicholas Scratch. I thought this could be what angered the Salem witches. It also gave context to an unresolved WandaVision episode 5 moment about fixing something that was dead, and the fact that Agatha was cradling a corpse in her arms as she was asking made me think she might have been dwelling on Nicholas. Maybe her previous trip down the road was to get her son back.

Jen seemed to hint that some trace of Nicholas was possessing Teen. I stuck with my theory that he was Billy Kaplan of Eastview, future Wiccan, possibly in the car accident behind the "near death in Westview" article dated December 14, 2023, seen under Joe Locke's name in the credits, and maybe saved by a spirit, possibly Nicholas Scratch.

Then Jen said it: "they say he might be dead others say he might be a demon or an agent of Mephisto." It didn't feel real, and I didn't care if it was the only time or a one-time pity gesture to nerds like us. But I said I'd be surprised if the show actually linked Nicholas Scratch to Mephisto after saying it this early; I thought the writing would hint more cautiously, unless they were planning a big cameo, maybe revealing that's who Rio Vidal was. There was room in the cast billing: the credits had shown two open slots after Ali Ahn before "with Debra Jo Rupp," Patti LuPone and Aubrey Plaza, and Sacha Baron Cohen had been rumored to play Mephisto in Ironheart. The biggest names after the lead come at the very end.

It could also just reference the name's historical devil associations. Marvel introduced Nicholas Scratch as Agatha's son and leader of the Salem Seven in Fantastic Four #185 in 1977. His last appearance was 2006's Marvel Knights 4 #26 and #27, where he posed as Doctor Strange to summon Shuma-Gorath, was banished to hell by Franklin and Valeria Richards, and agreed to become an agent of Mephisto in a coming war.

Watching it a dozen times, Teen's reactions stood out: denial, then tension, then something downright hostile in his eyes, his hand clawing angrily or anxiously. It could just be him grappling with truths about his idol, but I thought part of him felt threatened about being exposed. He got more urgent and forward after this.

The poison, the order of drinking, and Sharon's prayer

Agatha said "you bet" when Teen asked for wine; if she was projecting Nicholas onto him, she was fine with him endangering himself. Sharon drank first, including the second pour meant for Teen, so she was kind of his sin eater. Alice finished second, Jen sniffed hers, Lilia nursed hers, and Agatha poured hers into a plant, and that was the order the effects took over. Alice said she got her tattoo, which Teen recognized as warding off spells, at Red Rocks, rumored to be haunted. I thought it might be a rune like the ones Agatha and Wanda used in their final battle. When Teen said his trauma also happened at 13, I thought he might mean the December 2023 near death, since he's 16 and the show is set in 2026.

Agatha's glass refilling recalled Doctor Strange's spell on Thor's mug, and drinking it all reminded me of Dumbledore's potion in Half-Blood Prince. I wondered whether the flood would have been as much of a threat if Agatha hadn't cracked the window. When Sharon begged "let him breathe," she wasn't repeating her WandaVision words; I thought it could be what she felt then, or a prayer to Wanda when her husband actually died, and that Agatha might feel a twinge of jealousy that someone sought Wanda as a hero.

Three traumas, three ways witches were persecuted

Alice saw her mother Lorna drink poison, believing in a blood curse that reminded me of It Follows and Final Destination. Jen's vision used a single shot shifting the kitchen to blue lighting, a domestic horror trick from Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense, where a doctor, played by Scott Butler, called her "an inconvenient woman" and drowned her. I felt he might have done something unethical that Jen threatened to expose, and wondered if he's still around as a sorcerer; I hoped for Michael Stuhlbarg's Nicodemus West. Lilia followed her younger self to a house where her teacher, her maestra, sat rotting, imagery like The Nun, and I wondered if she taught Lilia witchcraft. Between Lorna's fire, the doctor's water and that earthly house, we were kind of seeing three ways witches were persecuted, burned, drowned and buried alive, each kind of taking a different elemental form.

Agatha, last to drink, followed a crying baby to find the darkhold, either a metaphor or literally how it happened, a scene taken from Rosemary's Baby. I thought Teen knew what she saw. Agatha then sliced Teen's palm for blood without hesitation, the oven nod recalled Hansel and Gretel, and the water slide escape seemed a homage to The Goonies. When Teen revealed Sharon was dead, Agatha's "Who's Sharon?" showed she was still unsure of her reality.

Which clue from this episode do you think mattered most?