Agatha All Along episode 6: was Agatha a killer for Death?

Episode 6 of Agatha All Along showed just how dark Agatha Harkness is, and it did that without Agatha even having to be on the screen, without Kathryn Hahn having to act. I believed there were two secret stories hidden in that episode: one about Agatha herself, and one about Agatha and Rio, or Death. The series (2024) stars Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza and Joe Locke, and these were my theories before the finale aired on October 30, 2024.

The short version of where I landed: the episode quietly revealed that Agatha is a mass murderer, and I believed she did it for Death.

Why I had no doubt Rio was Death in Agatha All Along

By episode 6 there was no doubt in my mind that Rio was Death. There had been so many teases from Marvel and so many signs in the series. The midseason trailer even revealed her full Green Witch costume, and in it she says the line "all roads lead to me." To me that meant Death. Everybody dies, and that's one thing we all have in common.

Even if you're Agatha Harkness and you've lived hundreds of years, it still seemed like witches would eventually meet their end. At least, that's what Death hoped for. The series made it clear that Agatha and Rio had a long relationship. They were obviously in a romantic relationship, and they had seemingly known each other for an incredibly long time.

At one point Rio even mentioned something about her mother putting Agatha on trial and trying to kill her. At the same time, it was clear that Rio wanted to kill Agatha. Things get pretty messy when you mix work with play, and I'll explain exactly what that means.

Ralph Bohner says Agatha hijacked his life

In episode 6 we meet Ralph Bohner once again, in disguise. He explains that his deal in Westview was way worse than everybody else's because of an evil ancient witch, Agatha Harkness. He says, "Agatha hijacked my life," and that she made him do really horrible things. We saw those things in WandaVision.

In this episode we could see just how damaged he is because of what Agatha did to him and how she controlled him. That pushes Billy to go home and search for Agatha Harkness online. At first nothing comes up. Then he searches "Agatha Harkness ancient witch," because that's what Ralph told him she was, and this is where things get interesting.

Billy comes across many different websites and searches. Common searches include whether witches are immortal, whether witches can die, and how to kill a witch. Much of this ties back to Death.

What the fake websites say about witches and the Salem trials

One site is about witches and aging. It says witches are apparently able to choose how they age and how they present themselves to humans. Some witches choose to stop aging at a certain point, staying roughly 30 years old visually for hundreds of years.

The site below it says its author had been researching the Salem witch trials, and that not many people know there are reports of witches who survived burning and drowning. The site is called Dreadit, which seems to be a play on Reddit, since it looks like a message board. A user posts a thread titled rumors of witches surviving the Salem witch trials, asking whether any survived, whether they're still alive and where they are, noting that witches can live for hundreds of years.

Another user replies that the Salemites, Evanora Harkness's coven, were prominent in the area. Evanora, we know, is Agatha's mother. That user says they've heard rumors that the young children from the coven escaped. We know those children to be the Salem Seven, and they're still after Agatha, so I expected more story about them eventually. Below that, someone else replies "look familiar" and posts a very old picture of Agatha Harkness.

Agatha at the Titanic, the Hindenburg and Dolly Parton

Billy runs a reverse image search on a search engine that, as far as I could tell, doesn't exist and seems to have been made up for the show. More pictures of Agatha show up, and the captions matter. Under the main picture on the left, the caption says Agatha was a survivor of the Titanic. On the right, a caption begins with a mysterious woman surviving something before it gets cut off.

Billy seems to click that picture, which leads to the Zeppelin explosion. It appears to be the same picture, with Agatha's face half cut off, so she was there for that incident too. Another result shows she was slapped by Dolly Parton and could be the real Jolene from Dolly Parton's famous song. A comment then says that of course she's Jolene, that Agatha Harkness is infamous, and points to the commenter's own site.

Billy goes to that site and clicks on Agatha Harkness. It says she was seen at various points in the early and mid 20th century, at the Hindenburg disaster and the Titanic. This heavily implied that Agatha was behind these disasters. Approximately 1,500 people died in the sinking of the Titanic. The figure given for the Hindenburg was 32, although sources online sometimes say 35 or 36. That's a big tally that Agatha seemingly caused, from only two events.

What the show was telling us, I believed, was that Agatha had been behind many disasters throughout time and had killed all of these people. We knew she killed other witches and that she was known as the witch killer. We didn't know she was behind major tragic events in the history of the Earth.

Agatha's work and play deal with Rio in episode four

That led to the second hidden story and a question: why did she do all these things? I believed the answer was that she did it for Death. Episode four had already established that if Agatha kills, Rio gets the bodies. In that episode, Agatha asks what if they call a truce and work together like old times, and Rio answers with work and play, as a question. Agatha says it could be nice and asks what happens next.

Rio replies that she gets the pleasure of seeing Agatha do what she does best, "kill all the witches around you," and then "you get your power and I get my bodies." To me it was clear that the play was the romantic relationship between them, and the work was Agatha killing so that Rio, or Death, could get the bodies.

I thought Rio used the word bodies generally. My guess was that she takes their souls rather than their physical bodies, but until we saw it, we had no idea. Either way, that seemed to be the disturbing relationship Agatha and Rio had. They were working together, and the work was killing people, mass murdering people and causing tragic historical events like the Hindenburg explosion and the Titanic sinking. I was sure there were many more they might reveal later. They were killing people while being in love with each other.

What Agatha got from her deal with Death

The only question I was really left with was what Agatha got out of it. Agatha and Death had clearly made a deal: Agatha kills, and Death gets the bodies. But what was Agatha's side? Part of me thought it could have been the Darkhold. Maybe Mephisto didn't give it to her, but Rio did. Or maybe Mephisto and Death were the same person in the MCU, which we weren't sure about either.

Maybe she got the ability to live as long as she wanted until Death herself decided to kill her. I thought there was probably something in that deal preventing Death from taking her, because at the very beginning, when Rio tries to kill Agatha, Agatha says, "you're not allowed."

So my theory was that they made some kind of binding deal: Agatha would kill many people for Death, but Death couldn't take Agatha, and maybe Mephisto was the one who bound that deal for them. I couldn't wait to see their real past or the big Death reveal. But one thing I felt sure of was that the episode had very secretly revealed Agatha to be a mass murderer, and I believed she was doing it for Death.