Looking back at Agatha All Along episode 5 and my theory on Teen's plan

Agatha All Along episode 5 was where the show turned into a killer show, and I mean that in both senses: people were being killed, and it was becoming an awesome show. The big reveal at the end was that Teen had been playing everybody all along. He finally showed his true self, he even wore a crown like his mother does, and I believed at the time that he was trying to bring his mother back.

Agatha All Along has since finished its season, with every episode released by November 19, 2024. What follows is what I made of episode 5 when it aired, including the theories I had about Teen, Rio, Nicholas Scratch and the Salem Seven.

Teen was revealed as Billy Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch's son

Notice that Teen snapped when Agatha finally mentioned his mother, who is the Scarlet Witch. By this point we knew Teen was Billy Maximoff reincarnated. Everybody wanted something from the Witches' Road. Agatha wanted her powers back. The other witches wanted to turn their luck around. Teen originally said he wanted power, and he played it off like he didn't have any and was only learning.

He used a spell book and seemed to know only analog magic, the kind you have to physically do. We had seen that throughout the show, with Alice drawing circles around others to protect them and Jennifer healing his wound with a physical spell. As it turned out, Teen knew magic and knew it very well, which came as little to no surprise given he is the son of the Scarlet Witch.

I was also fully convinced by this episode that Aubrey Plaza's character Rio was Death. There were so many signs in the previous episode and in this one. The show also changed the Salem Seven's origin story for the MCU, and I thought that worked given what we already knew about Agatha.

Alice's death and why I thought Rio stayed behind

I was bummed out that Alice died. Maybe she wasn't completely dead after all. Rio was nowhere to be found at the end, and I'd heard theories that she stayed behind to possibly resurrect or save Alice in some way, since she is Death. I hoped that was the case.

Sadly, I thought it was more likely she stayed to get Alice's body. When Agatha forced Rio to tell her plan, Rio said that Agatha kills and then she collects the bodies. So I was pretty sure that was what she was doing by staying behind.

How Agatha figured out who Teen really was

Agatha took Alice's powers, which killed her, but the trial was complete, so she left. Once back on the road, she tested whether she could use magic, and she could. I thought this was why she knew who Teen really was. She could have known the entire time, but my guess was that with a little magic back, she could probably sense supernatural things and where that magic came from.

Since the Scarlet Witch is such an anomaly and Teen is her son, he has some Scarlet Witch DNA inside him, and Agatha could probably sense it. She probably guessed before, but until she had her magic she couldn't know for sure. It's important to note that her magic didn't seem fully back, or at least not very strong.

Teen then ran out and yelled at Agatha for killing Alice. She said she couldn't control it, and she looked like she was being honest. When he told her not to lie to him, she said she wasn't. It did seem like she had been bonding with the other witches, so I believed she was telling the truth and didn't mean to kill Alice.

When Teen said killing other witches wasn't what he wanted, Agatha got creepy, and big shout out to Kathryn Hahn for playing this character so well. A smile came across her face, she went up to his ear and asked, "are you sure?" Teen looked confused and panicked. Looking at Agatha's face, she almost seemed disgusted that he was the Scarlet Witch's son, since she hates the Scarlet Witch after what happened in WandaVision. Then she dropped the line "you're so much like your mother." I believed Agatha had wondered whether he was her son or the Scarlet Witch's son, and once Rio confirmed he wasn't hers, she probably knew.

The comics background and the ages three and up Easter egg

In the comics, Wanda has two kids, Billy and Tommy, the ones we saw in WandaVision. She loses them when she finds out they were parts of Mephisto's soul and he takes them back. Later the two kids are reincarnated, eventually realize they are Wanda's reincarnated children, and reunite with her. That was what we believed was happening with Teen.

There was an interesting Easter egg during the Ouija board scene. When asked what was on the back of the paper, Teen said ages three and up. Technically, his reincarnated self would be about three years old, because the events of WandaVision took place about three years earlier.

My theory on Teen's plan and the sigil

Teen clearly seemed to know he was the Scarlet Witch's son, since he put on the same type of crown she wears. I assumed his plan the entire time was to get to the end of the Witches' Road and get what he desired most: his family back, meaning his mother and his brother Tommy, also known as Speed.

He had been playing dumb because he needed a coven to get on the path, a rule the show established. He knew Agatha wanted to walk the road to get her powers back, and that she had been down it before and would know how to navigate it.

On top of that, I thought he put the sigil on himself so he wouldn't seem suspicious. When people asked who he was, he didn't have to come up with anything. He could simply talk and nobody could hear it. As Agatha explained, the sigil also works on the person who cast it, so if he used it on himself he wouldn't remember doing it. I thought it was pretty genius.

Why I thought Teen threw the witches into the quicksand to save them

In the comics, Billy's superhero name is Wiccan, and he has powers similar to his mother's. He is incredibly strong because his mother is the Scarlet Witch, and when he used magic here, his finger and hand movements were similar to Wanda's.

I thought he might have been saving people at the end. There were possibly more trials left that the other witches had to complete to reach the end of the road, and he knew that. Yes, he probably acted emotionally, but the Salem Seven were coming for everybody and were a big threat, and he needed all the witches to get to the end.

So I thought he might have thrown them into that quicksand to save them while he handled the Salem Seven himself. It was just a theory. He was mad, and he hates Agatha for what she did to his mom, but part of me thought he was trying to save them a little.

The Ouija board rules pointed to Rio as Death

Rio, who was all but confirmed to be Death, had several interesting moments. When Lilia told the story of Agatha killing her coven, Rio defended her. That showed she cared for Agatha, but I believed something else was going on and that she wanted Agatha for something different.

In the next trial a Ouija board appeared, and Teen read the rules: do not use the board alone, do not speak over each other, do not taunt the spirits, and the interesting one, do not ask about Death. I believed that rule was there specifically to stop Agatha asking about Rio, the character Death, not about how people died.

The two of them were clearly tied up in something from the past, which I believed involved the death of Agatha's son, Nicholas Scratch. If Rio is Death, and I was pretty sure she was, she would have taken Agatha's son. In a previous episode Rio said she has a scar, and that scar is a person she hurt by doing something she didn't want to do but had to. I believed that was taking Agatha's son, and that scene made clear Agatha was the person she hurt.

The final rules were to always end your session with goodbye and never remove your hand from the planchette, or a spirit would be released. First, Agatha faked starting the board by saying Mother, Maiden, Crone. When the others caught on, she said it correctly, Maiden, Mother, Crone. She had mixed up the order on purpose.

Then came another huge indicator. Agatha asked who was with them, and the board spelled out Death. Rio laughed, knowing she was there. It didn't say the dead were with them; it specifically said Death.

Why I believed Rio wanted Agatha's spirit

The spirits said they wanted to punish Agatha. She took her hand off the board, got possessed, and the spirit appeared as a ghost. Rio said, "that is a ghost I hate ghosts." There was probably a big reason. As Death, she is supposed to bring spirits to the next realm, but ghosts are spirits who don't go, so if you're Death they would probably annoy you.

The ghost was revealed to be Agatha's mother, who said to leave Agatha with her and finish the road without her. Rio got angry and screamed no. Jen pointed out that a minute ago Rio was ready to slit Agatha's throat, and Rio replied that her mother can't have her.

I believed Rio wanted Agatha's spirit for herself. We knew from the first episode she wanted to kill Agatha, and the two had a romantic past. I assumed Death liked Agatha because Agatha killed many people, giving Death many spirits. I believed that when Agatha died, Rio wanted her spirit, and that was why she was there.

Nicholas Scratch was the real trial

The ghost jumped inside Agatha, and Alice used her powers to defend her. It worked, but Agatha took her powers, killing her. The Ouija board went wild, and it was Nicholas Scratch trying to communicate. Since he was communicating from the dead, that meant he was dead. As it turned out, the real trial was Agatha facing her son.

Teen yelled Nicholas Scratch out loud and Agatha stopped taking Alice's powers, but it was too late, or at least it seemed that way. Agatha left first, then Rio gave her an interesting look and looked back at the body. I couldn't determine whether Rio might try to save Alice or simply do her job as Death and take her on. I believed the show would probably reveal Rio as Death in the next episode.

The Salem Seven and a possible Mephisto link

In the comics, the Salem Seven are the daughters of Nicholas Scratch, which makes them Agatha's granddaughters. The MCU changed that, but it fit: Agatha killed their parents, so they wanted to kill her. In the comics Agatha banishes her son and they want to bring him back and get Agatha, so it isn't too far off.

One last thing: Agatha's mother, as a ghost, said Agatha was born evil. That brought me back to Mephisto. Maybe her mother made some kind of deal with Mephisto when Agatha was born, which is why she was born evil. Marvel Studios had confirmed in interviews that Mephisto would remain a looming presence in the MCU. Perhaps he had something to do with Agatha's birth, and maybe she really did trade her son for the Darkhold, after which Rio had to take him. I was sure that was the big story waiting to be revealed in future episodes.