House of R - 'Agatha All Along' Episode 5 Deep Dive | House of R

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

We fly together or not at all, and you know Mal and Jo love a broom! Our favorite witches are back to dive deep into the latest episode of 'Agatha All Along.' They start their spell-binding dive by talking about brooms, of course (17:30), before getting into everything from the latest trial (50:16). Then, they finish off with plenty of discussion around Teen, his true identity, and the ending of the episode (02:08:20). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producer: Mike Wargon Video Editor: Stefano Sanchez Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal, John Richter, and T Cruz Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Services not available in all areas. You were born evil. I ought to have killed you the moment you left my body. We have to go. Jeff, no, no. There's no flood here, there's no fire. The only danger to us in this trial is Agatha Hardness. Please take me with you.

Don't, don't let me leave her. Please. Don't go. Take me with you, please. Don't leave me with her. I can be good. Please. Welcome to House of Bar.

I'm Joanna Robinson. It is my absolute thrill and joy and pleasure and honor to be taking over hosting duties for the rest of the Agatha run. Here with my beloved sister in witchcraft, my covenant of two. It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. Joe, people ask me why I don't have female friends. I have asked you that before. And I think your answer was like, women, you know.

So, hello. Hello. Oh, my darling. It's been a minute. We took a little, a little one pod break this week. You flew across the country. You dazzled them on Broadway, but we are back here together again to talk about Agatha all along episode five.

Yes. Dark as hour, wake thy power. That is what we're here to talk about today. Before we get into all of that, program reminders. Yeah. So as you're listening to this, Over the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew, you should already have your Agatha-Law-Long episode 5 reaction, your Penguin episode 3 reactions.

You should also, if you value your life, your love, comedy, all of this, please check out Charles Holmes package about clowns that's on the Ringervverse YouTube. Where else can folks find that Charles video? We've been telling the listeners, Joe. You can get full video episodes of the Midnight Boys, Pee-Pew and the House of R on the YouTube channel. But now you can also get gems. like, what are we doing here, an original video series from Charles Holmes? So how could you not, frankly, how could you not subscribe to the YouTube channel?

Deeply charming. Just like Charles at his absolute best, incredible stuff. Got to stay to the end. The payoff is really worth it. Really good. Okay. Also over on Button Mash, they're doing an alien isolation, 10-year anniversary, and Tomb Raider, the legend of Laura, Lara Croft.

So, you know, tune in to that. The Mint Edition are doing a comics check-in next week. Midnight Boys will be back with our Agatha Longstaff. We will be back next week with some Penguin takes. We have been out of the Penguin discourse. We are getting our flippers into the mix here. We'll be doing that next week and also our next Agatha reaction. So I'm excited to chat Penguin.

Four episodes will be out by that pod. So it's a lot to catch up on mid-season, basically. Can't wait to check in on that. So that is our pod, their pods. How can folks keep track of all of that, Mallory Rubin? Here you go. It's simple. Follow the pod.

Why not? Follow the House of R. Follow the Ringervverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You know how we just mentioned that you can see the video episodes on YouTube? Guess what? You can also watch the entire video pod right here on Spotify. Amazing stuff. Yeah.

While your phone is in your hand, we'd love it if you follow the Ringervverse on the social media platform of your choosing. The Ringervverse is on Instagram. TikTok, Twitter, and then while you're at it, send us an email. The inbox is open. Hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. It doesn't matter that House of the Dragon is over, that Rings of Power is over. The inbox name remains the same.

It is eternal. Send us your agon thoughts. Send us your penguin thoughts. It is not. It is not too early to send your Venom thoughts. Oh. Yeah. Heck yes.

Are we going to watch Venom? together? I hope so. I hope so. Great. Spoiler warning. Theory Corner has been ever bleeding sort of into the main pod and I would say more so than ever this week.

But a lot of theories have been pretty well confirmed this week, a big one especially. So we will be talking about that in the main body of the episode. So spoilers up through episode five of Agatha all along, but also comics lore is in the as well. We don't know what's happening for the rest of the season. In fact, frankly, I was shocked by the reveal that we got at the end of this episode because we don't know what the twist and turns of this road will take. So you're in the same boat as we are. That is your spoiler warning. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. Give us a cackle of. What's your, what's your cackle family? You know, I will. I will.

emit an actual organic cackle occasionally here and now, but I don't know if I can cackle on command convincingly, unlike Aubrey Plaza, who I have to say has a knack for it. We will be checking in on the cackle game of one Miss Aubrey Plaza as we go along in this episode. Episode five, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power. As I mentioned, something massive happens at the end of this episode. We get a seeming confirmation of who teen is at the end of this episode, if you have some comic knowledge, which we do. And we're here to show. it with you. But I should say, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, we kind of thought that might be a finale or penultimate episode because I don't think either of us expected this reveal to come

midseason. So Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, here we are written by Laura Monti. And I got really excited when I saw that because I remembered that when we were covering Wanda Vision, Jack Schaefer and her infinite generosity is always trying to give credit to her entire writing staff, like very specifically. And And so in the episode of Wondervision, where we hear the now iconic line, what is grief but love persevering. Jack in interviews is what, like, made sure to say, listen, we had, what is grief but love surviving? We were workshopping in the room.

It wasn't really hitting. And then my assistant, Laura Monti, came up with persevering. So Laura Monti, who is credited as the writer on this episode, is the one who really nailed what is grief but love persevering, that line into MCV. you history. Who knows what role that that teamwork played in giving us a story about sisterhood and covens and needing to align and work together?

Very, very central premise for this episode and how that can go wrong. We also love, I mean, this is just like a broader television thing. I love the story of people, like a way to work your way up in the world of TV writing is to start as a writer's assistant in the writer's room and it is like often a thankless job, but it is part of the whole like education process

of learning how a room works and all that sort of stuff. So for, you know, for Jack Schaefer to take her writer-assist from Wanda Vision and give her an episode to write in this season of television, you love to see it. Love it. Directed by Rachel Goldberg, who did episode three, four, and five. So the last, you know, the last three episodes have been Rachel Goldberg. And then this is a quick one. This is 24 minutes approximately when you subtract the previously on and the closing credits, which I was devastated when I opened the episode and saw it. It was such a shardy, but they packed a lot into this episode way more than I expected

them to. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was shocking in a way to see the runtime, even though I don't think it should have been because some WandaVision episodes were that length. So actually heading into the season, this is like more what I expected the length of an

episode to be. And I think then I recalibrated my expectations for the runtime based on the last few weeks. But listen, at the end of the day, inside of those 24 minutes, we not only got the wicked reveal, we not only lost Alice. Temporarily, perhaps, we'll find out, we'll theorize. We not only got some of the most, we heard it at the top of the show, gut-wrenching and harrowing insights imaginable into Agatha's family history. Folks, we got Agatha Harkness saying, it's not a verb What more could you possibly want

out of your midweek television? I don't know. We have to Ouijaing. We have to Ouija. We have to Ouija. It's not a verb. Where do you rank this? Should we at the end of the season,

we should collect all these? Because there's also the Witches Apostrophy Road comment from earlier in the season. This is a real, like, writer's room sort of moment for all of them. Yeah. We have a long-running tradition that has been on hiatus for a bin.

at the ringer where our copy chief, Craig Gaines, a one of one, just one of the true geniuses in media, great guy. Every now and then we'll break out something called copy corner where he breaks down the grammar and language that is unfolding in some corner of the internet. And as I've previously mentioned, I do not believe that Craig is watching Agatha. I know that he is watching the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Detroit Tigers very actively because he roots for two baseball teams, which I consider, I know I just said he was a great person, but an indictment, truly.

It might be time to get Craig to sit down and rank these language jokes. They're wonderful. What about people who root for no baseball teams? How do you feel about those people? That is obviously like my desire is to convert you. But rooting for no sports teams is way more defensible than rooting for two baseball teams, which makes no sense. Okay. Thanks for asking.

Appreciate it. You're welcome. I mean, doesn't it make sense? Like, why can't you root for the team where you grew up and then like later as an adult you move somewhere and you want to root for that local team as well? This is this is this, Craig's response. This is his answer, right? He grew up in Michigan. He moved to L.A.

Yeah. I consider one realm of sports appropriate for that choice. College. Because you grow up in an area maybe and like you have your childhood team. Yeah. Am I making the rules to fit my own personal needs? Maybe. You grow up.

a Maryland-Terepin fan, and then you go to Syracuse and you're like, go orange, right? That makes sense to me because those are two distinct experiences. And also there are hundreds, literally hundreds of college teams. There are 30 baseball teams. There is simply no reason, especially in the modern day, to in any way, table your allegiance. Boot up the fucking MLB app and watch the Tigers. Actually, it's easier to watch the Tigers here than it is to watch the Dodgers. And this is just a thing that I will continue to struggle to understand about

courts fandom and tribalism. This is good. It's going to be good when we get to the end of the pod. We're like, we ran a little long. And Mike's going to be like, guys, I have great news. I have easily identified seven minutes that we can cut. Okay, you already gave us some crumbs,

some red crumbs about some things in this episode that you wanted to point out. But like, is that, are there any other overall thoughts that you want to talk about in terms of this episode before we, before I give mine and then we dive into the deep time? I think we'll hit most of the things that I'm eager to discuss as we go. So I can keep this very brief and just say that my relationship to this episode is that it was not my favorite of the season, but I could see having a really different response to it with the clarity of the full season. Because I'm not sure that we know exactly what we saw inside of this episode. Like the fact that— With a lot of questions.

Yeah. The fact that Agatha's trial is taking place this soon in the season feels odd to me. The questions of why that would be the setting for her trial feels odd to me. We have a lot of questions about how and the how and the why of teens' sigils seeming to live. etc. And so I wonder if on the one hand, we will maybe just get, if it is Agatha's trial, if she is going to have more than one. Yes. If we have another trial in store, perhaps there was the Evonora trial and then there will be the Nikki trial or something like that. I mean, it feels like we failed this trial. But being honest with it. For sure. Yeah. And that that is something

I really liked about it. Yeah. That it seems like if it is in fact a genuine trial and not a deception or the test of a foe or something that is like leading them off of a little offshoot on the road instead of the road proper perhaps. The trial of the entire season overall seems rooted in sisterhood, embracing the coven, friendship, found family. Togetherness. Adventures. Yes, they must be shared.

And so the readiness and quickness and haste with which the bulk of the group turned on Agatha and then, of course, building toward even teen, the most. staunch and the most loyal defender of Agatha to this point saying, like, you have lost me at last. It feels like everybody, everybody failed the test in a way. And so, but I did like the mysteries and the questions then that the episode posed. And I could see if we do have clarity in a few episodes that this was either a false trial or only stage one of a trial, really liking it a lot more. Yeah. Are you subscribing to the, because there's like a bunch of theories about this because, like, you know, the witches left the road on brooms. And then they were like forced down and

to something and they were once again pushed into a trial similar to the way they were pushed down onto the road in the first place by the Salem 7 chasing them. There's also plenty of conspiracy theories about like, did they all get all of the bugs off them and were the Salem 7 bugs like controlling their minds? Something like that. I confess to you. Yeah. I prefer that not be the reveal because I don't like watching an entire episode and then being like JK, they were all being mind controlled by bugs the whole time is not something that I would be excited about. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. But I do like the idea that the trial itself is, was failed and not done and we'll do it again. I, but I do think that like things like Jen's behavior in this episode or potentially some things leading up to Wiccan who is also teen who is also Billy, like that reveal at the end. I feel like there are. What an honor to get the Al brand who is Anatar who is Sauron treatment here. Wonderful.

Do you think he'll start tying his hair in a little bow in the back the way that Anatar did for the last part of the season? Two of the great stars of Whigwatch TM with Joanna Robinson TM. So anything is possible. And also Charlie Vickers and Joe Locke, both have incredible, like, natural curly hair that should never be hidden under a wig. But here we are. Anyway. So opening snapshot, quick overall thoughts for me. I because this episode was short I don't think it's going to like stand up as my favorite episode

but I think that the emotional depth as you mentioned of the Evanora stuff really hit me personally as someone who has her own special relationship with her mother and like and then the teen reveal was so excited the teen reveal really good was so good for a reveal of something we have known since the very of, you know, we've cast Joe Locke. Like, of course, he's playing Billy Wanda's son who is also Wiccan. Like, of course, that's what's happening. Yeah. So for it to hit the way it did with the design of the crown that manifests on him with

the Billy Ilish needle drop, which I think is going to go down to Australia is one of the best MCU needle drops of all three. So good. Like our pal Alan Seppinwald texted me and he's been like way more middling on Agatha along than I have been. and he texted me and he was just like when you know the answer and the answer like is amazing anyway

he was dazzled by that too so it was just like it was an incredible moment in the story and probably as we as we remember Agatha later without pouring over every detail we're going to think about this moment as just this like really incredible thing that happened

I think so as well a critique I have this episode is called Darkest Hour Wake Thy Power and I will say that there were times when this was a hard to the episode and I'm just saying it doesn't have to be this way. There are shows where this is not the case. And so I should not be squinting as, you know, the Salem 7 are scrambling around on the road to see what's happening. So with love and respect to the incredible artists on Agatha Long or just in

general on television. Other shows don't have this problem. So you don't have to have this problem. I believe in you. Okay. Should we go down to the deep dive? Let's do it. Room stuff go. We're starting with some real witchy shit. We start with Salem 7. Several critters, like, turn themselves into terrifying, yet I'm going to say it. Somehow still hot women, skittering their way down the road, Naz-gooling their way down the road after our various witches.

Were you reminded of the Nas-goal? Were you reminded of Shire? Back-ins. When you heard. Always. In darkness. Yes. Hide her.

Hide them. A very ring-rathy hissing for sure. I will say just the initial glimpse of the animal forms and then into, you know, emerging from behind the tree back in your human form. It's very animagus to me. So that was like also, of course, on my mind. Padfoot. Mooney? Where are you?

Great stuff. You always think about the marauders. I know. Always, always. But yeah, the hissing is so And as ghouly. It's a great little touch. Love it.

It does make me think. Not that this is a surprise that the Salem 7 will have very few lines of dialogue in this season of television. Correct. Find her, find them. I thought it was really interesting because, like, what is the them?

Find her. I get the harkness. Find them. Find the coven. You'll find her, maybe. But do they want something with the larger coven? Do they want something with teen? He's the one they like chase down the stairs.

like what what are they after other than agatha here yeah it's a good question like sometimes it's a good question i like the idea that they might actually have something specific that they're seeking from another member of the coven though i do think if it is just them the coven and mass then this idea of like needing to turn the coven against agatha and again that fits very neatly with what we see inside of this episode but also just what we've been talking about the entire season. This is a very reluctant fellowship, and that's part of why it's interesting to watch

and hopefully why it will be really rewarding to see them, or at least some of them, choose each other in the end. But that's not necessarily the natural inclination of the members of the group who had to be talked into doing this in the first place. They're happy to turn on Agatha in this episode and then say out loud,

we're all just here for our own power. Well, I think what's interesting, I mean, first of all, Agatha, that's the bit Agatha made was not like sisterhood. It was like, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? You'll get what you want at the end of the road. But also, as we've been discussing, these women have these traumatic backstories that have pushed them into a state of being loan. If you were, you know, if you had your powers bound because you were lured to a medical conference where you thought you would, you know, like maybe you would not trust people and isolated.

If you were chased by a family curse, if, if you were chased out of maybe all of Europe because of a plague, like, you know, these are things that would cause these women to sort of shelter in place. and build walls around themselves. And the whole idea of this journey and of this show seems to be tear down that wall and form a Covent True, you know, a true sisterhood. Coven true. Not Covent to. Agatha. Read the lyrics. Agatha.

Okay. Lillia sounds the alarm. The witches are like sleeping rough out on the road. Jen has fashioned herself a sleeping mask out of leaves. How do you feel about this? Valerie. Great. inspiring.

Yeah. Aspirational, the kind of thing you want to believe you'd do, but know in your heart you wouldn't. You know, I would just sit there and complain the entire time. I feel like I would do it, but then they would just all like fall off of me. Jen, of course, has, I don't know, magic to help her. If I attempted it, I would definitely pick some sort of, like, poisoned leaf and end up, like, not being able to see out of my eyes for the rest of the journey. I don't know why I had to say see out of my eyes as though there's, like, another, I don't know, maybe through magic. I think you can see out of your eyes currently.

I need glasses. I'm working on it. Selling your mom right now through the podcast. I'm working on getting Mallory to the optometrist. Oh, man. I got her a tattoo appointment. That's step one in the right direction. Exactly.

Lillia Sonsi Larmes, as I said, Rio already seems to know what's happening, as is often the case. Rio is just sort of like, I know. As this creepy lurker tourist sort of role, she is. Creeple-Ler killed me. All-seeing all-knowing than anyone else, right? And she says, like, go on, go on, Lillian, tell them. Like, she already knows. Do you, we get the show's exposition on Who the Salem's seminar, which is slightly different

from the comics canon. Do you feel like, do you want to, like, sort of point out some similarities and differences, Mallory Rubin? Sure. I'd be happy to. Great. Why the fuck not? Yeah.

We're here. We're doing a podcast. Hand me with that lore, Mallory. So we mentioned this. Malory. You know what I mean? Wow. I feel like that's something Elron would say, so thank you.

Not that he likes particularly fond of a name pun or anything, but he does like to mention lore. According to the lore, miss that guy. I really miss that guy. So we talked about, because the Salem 7 were, of course, mentioned in the two-part premiere, beginning of the season, start pursuing Agatha. This is, of course, you mentioned, like, the fleeing, the hurried desire to his season. escape, these are the figures that they're escaping from when they're summoning the road, conjuring the road in the first place. We talked about this in the double premiere pod, but in the comics canon, these characters stay back to the 70s, as many of the characters do, as we

observed at the time, and have crossed storylines and pages with obviously Scarlet Witch, with Agatha, with good old Nicholas Scratch of you out of them, lad, but also characters like the Fantastic Four, et cetera. And they have this ability, as we get to see very clearly in this episode because we had the little moments where, oh, we're seeing a rat scrying about and we're seeing a crow perched and Agatha knows what this means at the beginning of the season. Here we get this very direct. This owl has turned into a member of the sale of seven, the snake is about, etc. So we can see their magical power and the creature link on display here.

I thought the turning into a plume of bugs was genuinely upsetting and it's a no for me. It did remind me once again of Lord of the Rings, though, because it was very like the acolytes turning into the moths. That's funny. I was reminded of the 1999 classic The Mummy, where things become scarabs quite easily. There's just a lot of scarab work in that movie. That's definitely a better and more lasting association

and not one born out of the recency bias of having just podcasted about Rings of Power for. A month and a half. So we put a little spoiler tag ahead of this next comics nugget on the first pod. We're going to do it again here. Literally just hit fast forward once if you don't want to hear this. Okay. In the comics, the Salem 7 are Nicholas Scratch's kids and Agatha's grandkids. And so there's this direct tether to good old Nikki, who obviously plays a big role in this episode. Earlier in the season when we were talking about how the Salem 7 might manifest in the story, we felt pretty sure it was going to be like radically different. Now, I'm wondering if it's, obviously, it's different because we learn here we get the history of when Agatha murdered her sister witches, she spared their young children. So these are the shows Salem 7 are the children of the coven that Agatha destroyed. The daughters and witches, you couldn't burn. And by that I mean, strayed into husks. Exactly. The classic, no, those harpies are dust. The parents of the Salem 7 is the dust harpies.

Tough one. And obviously, like, in this episode, we get to hear that great response from Agatha. The moral of the story, kids, is always finish what you started. Also, mercy is overrated. We love to talk about, like, maddened and the madness of mercy, all of that. It's so fascinating to think about Agatha as a character to whom that logic in any way, like, touches or applies. And then, of course, to speculate about is what happened, did what happened to her own child to Nikki lead to this mercy? to her desire even as she eliminated this coven, drained them of their power to make sure that the children were spared and were okay. So that's really interesting to think about. I completely agree. And I like this, this version of the Salem 7, which is different from comics canon. I think this is a really smart way to make the vengeance personal and less complicated. And I also really love this moment when, you know, Jen is, they're telling the lore, the story. story of the Salem 7, the story of Agatha. And here's Jen, who knows a version of it. And then here's Rio with added context that they don't have, which we get a little bit more info later when Rio quite defensively says, because her own mother tried to have her executed. Yes. Right. And so this is the earliest indication in this episode that we are going to be, as we have been, grappling with these contrasting accounts of who Agatha Harkness is or as Lillia is constantly harping on. who witches are in general?

What assumptions do you make about a witch based on a story you heard someone else tell? And this is the story that they heard about Agatha Harkness and Rio's like, you didn't know Evanora. You're about to meet her. She's not great, you know. Memorable and deeply deplorable figure makes a quick impression and a lasting one.

I love that emerging theme because obviously, like, and again, we'll talk about this more later, of course, but the propensity to fall into the same trap that they accuse others of and resent in others, right? That you would be the one to turn on a witch who you think might do something foul is so deliciously rich. And so this as well, like you're saying, even thinking back now to what Lillia says when Agatha, like when they first cut through the bullshit of the like, oh, who is father in the golf course, which was so good. And I still love that scene. Like, I know you by reputation.

Yeah. Right. And like, they wouldn't want to be known by their reputations. So they can't find the grace to, to learn a little bit more about Agatha. They just assume everything they've heard is completely true. The hypocrisy of that is so narratively rich. And we're both hoping that this is the journey that they're all on to like understanding, to recognizing that they fell into the same trap that other people have fallen in about that. That Rio moment that you just called out that because your own mother tried to have for executed, there were a lot of things I really liked. I know I said this episode wasn't my favorite, but I still really liked it. And like, there were a lot of things. things I really enjoyed about it. The multiple moments were Rio. Me too. Just adjacent by mere seconds to perhaps threatening, as Jen will point out, to slit her throat and, like, wielding her dagger against her, jumps to Agatha's defense in a way that shows you the deeply rooted and abiding bond and affection that they have for each other. Like, also just the understanding. Yeah, the history.

Yeah. I know you. And I can recognize. And I know your mom. Like, I know your mom first hand. I know what happened to you. I know what you've been through. I know the things that shaped you. And also, I know that other people don't know that about you and haven't either been able to find out or bothered to find out. And so that was a really wonderful part of this episode. I have this marked for later. And then I was about it now.

Like, I was reading a bunch of Jack Schaefer interviews about the show. She was talking about sort of the way they reverse engineered certain characters. So, like, well, Rio as a love interest for Agatha. And so then they had to like build out from there who what's the kind of person that would have had a relationship with Agatha? And we'll talk about that a little bit more specifically later. But with Jen, they're like, we want someone specifically on the road with her who has known Agatha previously. Right. And has like these precon-consumption of.

Yeah. Exactly. On the Salem 7 front, can I hit you with a question that's a good example of how Theory Corner doesn't exist as a separate segment anymore? Yeah. Do you? It's just a plume of bugs like all throughout. Some of them get through the door. Sorry. Do you think that there is a chance?

We'll talk more about what we think is going on with Nikki and whether Nikki might return to the story in some way. And if so, how? But do you think there's a chance that even though they're not, they're kids of a different bloodline, do you think that Nikki might still be controlling the Salem 7 and sending them in pursuit of Agatha? Do you think that's off the table? I personally, again, this is just a plume of bugs. Theory Corner. Yes.

Don't think Nikki is going to be a malevolent figure in this show. Okay. That's my feeling. I think anyone who wants to punish Agatha is not her deceased son, Nicholas Scratch, is my guess. It's going to be tough if we go through a very... I think they can pull it off. Frankly, I think the show is well made enough to lead us to a lot of places,

but to go on this, like, incredibly intense journey of a set of. testing trauma and hopefully working toward a place of healing and then being like, your kid's the bad guy. It's going to be a lot for Agatha to work through. So I'm open to it, but it feels like... That doesn't feel right to me. Last question quickly on this, just emergence of the Salem 7. It seemed like one of them picked up...

It's obsidian. This obsidian chunk? Yeah. Is your read... It might be skipping ahead slightly here, but like that somebody left. that intentionally. I don't know about intentionally. I think it was part of the ritual and they just didn't close the door.

So it's just that that's like we're in the, we forgot, like, and we hear this, we forgot to close the door, sloppy work. Everyone's distracted. Everyone's in a hurry. There's a lot going on, a lot in our minds. But not somebody left that on purpose to keep the door open for them. I don't think anyone in the Covenwood, if anyone would, it might be Rio who, who, like, is maybe associated with calling them to Wesseu in the first place, which is something she said,

right? Like, I'll let people know where you are. the worst of them, the Salem 7, right? Like, oh, I thought she just was saying, like, they're on their way too already. Like, I'm not the only one who's after you. I thought she said, like, I can't hurt you, but I can, like, let other people hurt you. Definitely, yes. But I took that more as, like, oh, isn't it convenient that they're also in pursuit of you?

And they could be the ones to, like, wound you in a way that I can't. Not necessarily that she had summoned them. Not summoned, but, like, pointed them in the right direction. But again, Rio is a bundle of contradictions, which I like. And I, from one moment to the next, slit your throat with a box gutter or defend you against your mother. I also can't wait to get to Fit Watch. Talk about Rio again.

Well, that feels less inconsistent and more compelling to me. You know, sometimes you can see a contradiction inside of character and you're like, what are we doing? And sometimes you're like, I can't wait to figure out all the conflicting motivations inside of this person who is. Absolutely. An ex of Agatha's who is profoundly bitter to have been separated from her, angry, but also tender. Yeah. And it feels like she has been blamed as we got to glimpse last episode for something that she didn't have the ability to opt out of. Breakups are hard. I don't know if you heard this. Mike, who's working on our pod today is a big Taylor Swift fan. Taylor Swift has a few songs about it. You might want to check them out. Okay.

Teen suggests something called a hexen-besen. And I just love the show for saying that instead of broom stuff go. We love a craft. We love an art. We love a craft. Hexen-Besson. Hexen is the plural of witches. Besson is from brooms.

This is sort of like old high German stuff. You love to see it. We then see this ritual. I did go deep diving as you know I would down like broom lore as much as I could find. And we'll get to some of that in a second. But I could not find any evidence that there were rituals where you make your broom and another witch makes their broom and then you swap. This seems to me to be a show invention, Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com, if you are practicing witch and you have other thoughts about this. If this is a show invention, it's a brilliant one and a beautiful one.

It's absolutely perfect, this idea of like, as with all the trials, we can't sing this song alone. We can't brew this potion alone and we can't fly a broom. alone. You can't, as a witch, fly a broom alone. You need to fly it with your members of your coven. I love this. We fly it together or not at all. And also just for Agatha to be the one to voice, it's about selflessness teen. And then, of course, the rebuke to that from inside the house. Right. Jen's like, oh, is it? Tell us more. Agatha, you're going to tell us about being selfless. But that's what made it so interesting. Like, the moments where Agatha has to recognize the thing that maybe she has, and we start to see more.

potentially why in this episode willfully, intentionally, deliberately or not, or subconsciously, like isolated herself over time. I love to, though, the like dual elements of that community. Like, there's a really practical part of it, I think, right? They're being hunted. And so there's this element of it like protection, selflessness in, is about protecting others as well, right? And so like if you are flying together, you are presumably less likely to find yourself in peril or in harm. But then, of course, the richer thematic note that you're outlining, like that the manifestation of that theme, stronger together, was just lovely. Watching them then delight in the flight, which is, you know, as, you know, I haven't done this

in centuries, like something that they haven't been able to do because they've been covenless witches. So the true joy of riding a broom across a blood moon looking at your ex-go-friend who looks really hot on her broom, you know, that like Agatha experiences they all experience is something they haven't been able to, is a part of witchiness that has been removed from them for a very long time. So watching that joyful moment is incredible. I do Malie Rubin have to share some broom lore that I did find with you. Actually, I already kind of knew this, but I was just happy to go down this particular rabbit hole. Why do which is ride brooms in pop culture.

Go down this rabbit. is an interesting setup for what you're about to say. Continue. My lady has had a preview what I'm about to say. Okay. As with most witch lore, as we've mentioned, as Lilia will be happy to tell you, there are conflicting reports on how we get pointed hats and cauldrons and brooms and all of that sort of stuff. But with the bruce...

Lillia has yet to heed your note, Joe, finding anything else to talk about. Literally one other topic. tell me about, you know, Sicily and the floor and fauna there and your family's recipes and all kinds of stuff. And like, how do you feel about mob stereotypes and how they connect to Sicily? What did you think of White Lotus season two? Yeah. Said in Sicily. Let us know. We're waiting, Lillia.

Yeah. We'll be, we'll have our ears perked up for that. Okay. I did love that Jen was like, because they do the inside of the larger coven, the dual circling and handoff of the rooms. And like, Jen was like, this is amazing. Like, you picked a great one. and Lily is like you frankly could have tried harder. So disappointed.

That's great. I loved that. Okay. So, okay. Why do witches ride brooms in pop culture? This is an old one. It goes back to like the 15, 16th century, this idea that like covens would ride brooms. Where the heck did it come from?

Okay. First and foremost, there's a lot of evidence that back in the day, witches or no, people were using herbs to trip balls. It's human nature. Why wouldn't you? So eat a weird leaf, see how it makes you feel. Yeah. I was reading this article in the Atlantic that cites this article in Forbes where it notes Bella Donna, Deadly Night Chain, Henbane, Mandrake, Jimson, Weed, all these classic witchy potion ingredients

had hallucinogenic properties. Writing in the 16th century, the Spanish court physician André de Laguna claimed that to have taken, quote, a potful of a certain green ointment, composed of herbs such as hemlocked nightshade, hen bane, and mandrake from the home of people accused of witchcraft. So let's say these hot women back of the day were making drug paste and enjoying it. How fun. How do they ingest said substance? Well, this is where the brooms come in.

Because to achieve their hallucinations, these early drug users needed a distribution method that was a little more complicated than simple ingestion when consumed the old-school hallucinogens could cause. nausea, vomiting, skin irritation, all these problems. So what people realize is that absorbing them through the skin could lead to hallucinations that arrived without the bad side effects and the most receptive areas for that absorption. We got to absorb the paste without eating the paste. Have to. Yes. Were the sweat glands of the armpits and the mucous memories of the genitals. Okay.

Yeah. So, in other words, slide right on. These ladies or homesomever were enjoying this paste were slathering, according to lore, broom handles and riding them to get the best effect from these drugs. Yeah. And when you say it's the best effect. Are we multitasking here? How are we writing? I don't know.

I read this in multiple reputable sources. So this is just like this is the thing that feels true. and I support it. I say great. Enjoy yourself, ladies or anyone else who cares to join you. Are people still doing this? Like, is this still a thing? I have not heard of it. Hobbes and drags

and Gmail.com. Okay? You have first hand to experience. Send your testimonials. I'm slathering a handle and enjoying yourself. Let us know. Okay. PPS to end this section. Mallory Rubin. We got a lot of emails for people about this

and I had seen it elsewhere on Reddit, etc. possibly hypocroful because IMDB often lies. Uh-huh. But according to IMDB, yes. There is an intimacy coordinator credited for next week, episode six, and episode eight. Fantastic. Brumstick writing go. Mallard Brubin, what are your thoughts on a potential intimacy coordinator for Agatha all along?

Thrill to know this? Yeah. genuinely thrilled to know this, all of it. Thank you for that history lesson and thank you for this intimacy coordinator inside here. Thank you for your note in the doc that said crotch stuff go. Don't put it on the merch, but keep it in your heart, you know? Here to contribute however I can. You know, I do, boy, I will say I have some questions about like splinters and things like that.

I mean, hopefully you're polishing. I mean, in this kind of emergency situation, we're really just like, we're going right on that true route. Okay. But in this situation, we have like undergarments. We're not trying to ingest things through our netheres. You know what I mean? So there's some sanding and some polishing happening in ideal circumstances. We're getting a smooth, glossy surface. If you're constantly slathering it in various ointments, I think that thing probably gleams, you know? This is history. This is history. Oh, boy. Okay.

Just bring some history. Thank you. Slathering in various appointments, indeed. On to the intimacy coordinator. Yeah. So it strikes me as more likely that this is ultimately about Agatha and Rio than it is about watching them ride these broomsticks in a different sort of way. But who knows? Who knows what Disney Plus has in store for us?

Do you think this is getting ahead to how the episode ends? But teen casts out. Oh. Agatha, Jen, Lillia. You had previously noted that there's a shot in the trailer of Jen, like, emerging from the ground of Westview. Yeah. Like, perhaps if they're cast out of the road, they need to make their way back. But we also have trailer shots of teen and Agatha in, like, medical gowns, hands on the head.

That seems like a very likely candidate for. Agatha, Wanda equivalent. Lots of trailer spoilers here. They're actually revisiting the, because I rewatched the trailers after this episode, and I'm like, again, they're not even like hiding this stuff. This is just like, they don't want us to think the trial on the road is over.

Like, they're going back to the road. It's just a question of when and how. But that's, that shot of Agatha and teen in particular, it pings very like Agatha and Wanda going back through the memories. And we had talked before about how it felt like the most likely thing was getting that version for, Agatha with more of Agatha's flashbacks in history, which I still think is coming. But maybe we're also getting something similar for teen or maybe that's happening in tandem.

I definitely think so because, again, like, spoilers, but not skip ahead if you feel very touchy about it. I'll air on the Marvel trailers that this company put out for us to see. They have cast Billy's parents. Right. So, like, we are going to get a story, I would imagine backstory. I would not be surprised if episode six is a Billy backstory episode. Oh, so I was going to say.

Maybe that would be great and actually makes much more sense based on where we are sequentially with how this episode ended. But the intimacy coordinator thing specifically sent me into a maybe that could that be an Agatha Rio flashback intimacy sequence? And then episode eight is like present day. Oh. Renewed intimacy. I love that for you. And I hope that that's what we're what we're aiming towards. I was wondering if if we get built, this is probably my brain is cooked from having just watched all of Heartstopper season three.

but like if we get Billy and his boyfriend. Yeah. You know, like, you know, they're red blood of teenagers. Like, you know, who knows, you know, what their backstory relationship is. And then. Yeah. And then Agatha and Rio and episode date was sort of my thought. And then also this might be absolute bullshit because IMDV has lied so many times in the past.

People can just randomly edit stuff into there. So I'm just saying, do not be crushed if there is no on Disney. plus multiple hot and heavy gay sex scenes. So, you know, I'm just saying, don't get your hopes too high. Okay. But I would like, I would not be opposed. Okay. Also, maybe just like nudity.

Because I actually don't know if one was credited for the earlier, you know, scene where Aarika was wandering around a bare ass naked. So like, you know, maybe just like not in a sex way, but it is sort of like there's going to be nudity on the set. Let's make sure people feel comfortable with it sort of thing. Okay. We get the broom riding, as it were. I sure do. Lillia, on her fucking bullshit, as we mentioned, Bruins has been co-opted by the holiday industrial complex is an absurd emblem of our culture. Worse yet, they're an obvious symbol

of female domesticity and the basic. And here's where I'm going to indulge myself. And I will say this. In an interview, Jack Schaefer said it was her fondest wish. to have a musical number in every single episode of this season. Yes. I think we're getting at least one more. But she was just sort of like budget, this, that, and the other thing we couldn't do a musical.

She kind of wanted to do a version of the Witches Road ballad in a different sort of genre style every single episode was sort of an idea she had. So we could have gotten like an 80s pop version in this episode would have been fucking dynamite. It would have been great. But that's not what we're getting.

That's okay. But I'm taking it as my permission to just keep musical corner open for business at all times. And I will say this. when Patty LuPon shouted out to teen, who is wicked and also Billy, try praying to the divine mother, kiddo. It pings something in my brain, and I regret to inform you, I brought you a musical clip.

This is from the musical company in which I saw Patty Lupone live in London with Johnny Bailey. It was great. Mike, will you play this clip? You're not a kid anymore, Bobby. I don't think you'll ever be a kid again, kiddo. Musical Corner. It's always open. Sonheim, you're always welcome here.

Um, so that is where, so pray to the divine mother, which is just general, basic, uh, you know, wishcraft stuff that you could say. Um, do you feel like this is here because this is such like a mother, a mother and children episode? This is such like an early Wanda sort of nod or I just think it's just like blanket, random witchcraft, which stuff go. No, the former. It felt like very purposeful to just ping the word mother, even though it is like divine mother, capital, Elijah to ping the word mother toward teen on the brink, not only of what we see with Agatha and her horrid mother, but the reveal, you know, the anticipated reveal that teen is Wanda's kid, is Billy, like just having that on our minds mere moments because this is such a short episode before the actual reveal, even though this is the beginning of the episode and that's the end. They are separated by only, I believe, 20 minutes, maybe even like 18 or something. I was 18, something like that, yeah. It is my pleasure to bring you now the first of two iconic cackles from Omby Plaza.

Michael, you play this, please. Genuinely incredible. I actually, like, I had a real journey in the sequence because the emotionally, like, a potent exchanging of the brooms, beautiful. Then teens, euphoria, getting to participate. I was like, this is so, but no one teaches him. I'm like, this is so hairy on his broomstick for the first time and, like, just a natural And like, that was all so great.

And then the looks that are passing between them, like the way, there are a lot of deeply inscrutable looks the past from Agatha towards someone else in this episode. And there was really like a charged one the way Agatha was looking at Rio. And the emotional journey we went on with that one look. And then I will say, when the descent begins, the road is pulling the back, I was like, this looks, this does not look very good. Like, I found it to be quite distracting. actually, but then the cackle pulled me right back in. It did. On the one hand, I agree and I don't want to make excuses for the show. On the other hand, the fact that the show is so low budge and so like full of practical effects and they use these CGI sequences sparingly. I was just sort of like, that's okay. I know I'm in the tank for the show. I really understand that. You were like, that's okay because I can't see it because it's so dark. I couldn't. To be honest with you. And then Aubrey cackled and I was like, everything's great. What I loved when I was clip that cackle out. It's so funny because you

can hear them cut, you hear Alice scream and then Jen scream and then you just get this cackle and it's so, it's so funny. So yeah, the road won't let them leave. It forces them down. Bug stuff, plumes of bugs, etc., etc. This idea of the road not letting them leave

as you already mentioned, I like this idea coming back into play because if Agatha and Lily and Jen are not, as we suspect they are not, dead from drowning in mud by the end of this episode will the road draw them back

the way that it did in this sequence here they're not done with the road so they're not allowed to leave the road even though teen got them off the road you know right they did get to to ride past the moon like ET though

that was dope that's really cute and they that has been in the promo the like shadow of them in front of the blood moon so yeah again the CGI a little shoddy I'm not bad about it. The trial. Or is it? Here we go. Our listener cat, many people, but our listener

cat was the first to email me about it, points out that we don't get an aspect ratio shift when we enter this particular, I'm going to call it an escape room. We mentioned this in previous episodes of them when they walk into sort of the beach house in episode three and when they walk into Lorna's really absolutely beautiful 70s home in episode four the aspect ratio shifts means that if you're not as familiar

like black bars would come up on the screen to put the ratio of the picture or watching in different dimensions and this is something they used on Wanda vision to go in and out of the TV land sort of fantasies and so we've been having them on two escape rooms and we don't have them on this one which just

feels like it underlines this idea of like we're not really in a trial. And I mentioned earlier, I was like, I don't think they're going to make us pay attention to this to let us know whether or not something is really happening or not, as they did on Westworld season two. But I think we should pay attention to the fact that there's no aspect ratio shift here. Yeah, that's a, it's a great and it feels like an important observation. Like that does feel obviously very intentional. So then the question of like, does that mean it's not a proper trial? Does that mean it's just like stage one of an ongoing trial? What level of deception or mistaken trial reading from the Coven is at play here? But also like they're in such a hurry like you noted earlier

because they're fleeing a pursuer. We don't get like some of the same. It was only two prior trial, so it's hard to say that's a pattern, but still it felt like a pattern. Like we don't stop at the door. We don't look at the moon phase etching. You know, we don't have the same rhythm of entry that we do. And then part of the question is like, well, does that mean, is it not there in the same way? Does that mean that we're missing an indicator that this isn't legit? Or if it had been there, if we had been able to pause and look at it, what would it have told us about whose child it really might have been? I mean, there is a stained glass space the moon thing inside.

So, you know, that indication is there. It's not on the door, as you said, as with the other ones. the purple. I was doing the same thing where I was like, maybe this is teens trial. Maybe this is something else. Maybe this is like a larger coven trial. It's just like the road was purple. Like there's so many things that I'm like having trouble. It does really feel like it's just Agatha part one. Yeah. And it's like I like the idea too of Agatha's trials working in both directions. Part of it is like can she earn the trust of others? And then part of it is can she learn to trust herself and other people? That would be I think very nice. Very nice.

Exhibit. Sublime. All right. I don't know if you think it's important, but I think it's important that teen has lost his spellbook on the broom ride here. This is something we've noted from the beginning. Chekhov's spellbook. He has had it with him from the start. What is in that spell book?

What can it tell us about his real identity? Does not having it on his person? Because, you know, we'll get into costumes a little bit. but I was watching a bunch of videos and reading interviews about all the costume he choices on the show and Joe Locke was talking about how irritating the spellbook was

because it was on a leather harness strapped to his thigh and it was like always it was just like always he was like it would chafe it would chafe on him and so he was like so A I don't think we've seen

the last spellbook but like B he always had it physically on his person except for that second where Agatha looked like she was going to toss out the car window was it some sort of

like she says, Agatha says, forget it. You can take the training wheels off, right? But like, does losing his spellbook have anything to do with him locating his powers later on? I don't think so, but maybe. Or was his spellbook helping keep the sigil in place? Yeah. More on the sigil and the potential breaking of it later. But like, you know, the absence of the spellbook is something that you're supposed to be noting, obviously.

I do feel that there, it felt to me like there was a link between the lifting of the sigil and the spellbook vanishing, for that reason, specifically what Agatha says, like the language choice, forget it, you can take the training wheels off because the way that she explained the sigil last episode, sigils are destroyed, not lifted, and before you ask how, you know, this little loiter of yours, the answer is when they're no longer needed. When they're no longer needed, and you can take the training wheels off, that's the same thing. So I do, I agree. I think the spellbook feels very likely to return and prove vital in some way still, but it falling. And then this being the episode where the sigil is gone, so Agatha is able to recognize who he is.

He isn't able to use and be in touch with his own powers. Like, it does feel like the spellbook and the sigil are connected. But again, we just have a lot of questions because there's a lot of options here. Definitely. Again, to our continuing question of whose trial is this, we are told this is Agasson's trial because of the blood moon and the purple color on the road and all this sort of stuff like that. But like it's not like it is decided for them by the coven, but it's by Rio, right? They say a blood moon when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. We mentioned before that on the pentagram when calling the road, four of the witches of various elements, water, air, earth and fire. I don't know why I did that in the wrong order.

But Agatha at the head of the pentagram is the spirit. That's the fifth component of the pentagram calling out, you know, this portal. And so she is the spirit trial. And that is what we're talking about here. But it's Rio who first says it's Agatha's trial. And Rio is on a character who I think lies or gets things wrong. Right. So that's why I do think it is, to your point, in some way, Agatha's trial.

trial, you know? Yeah. And she's also a character who, in a way that we're loving, participates very selectively. Right. And so just like, it wouldn't only be an uncommon and unusual lie. It would be like a very active and deliberate one, inserting herself in a way that she is not doing in order to mislead. Then that just doesn't feel like what we're seeing from her. So I'm with you on that. I think she provokes, but she doesn't mislead. Yes. Yeah. That's a good. Yes. Great distinction. Did you, did you, um, Marvel you cowards when when Alice said kiss Mary Kill instead of fuck Mary Kill. I was like, let's just go for it. Come on. I think I'm too used to that. Oh, I think I've been watching too many British videos where they play. They play Snog Mary a void, which I'm just like that's. Snog Mary Avoid is very polite. Very polite. Okay. So we're doing FitWatch later. We're not going to talk about the office now. We're doing FitWatch later. We're doing it in one hot second. Let me just say one other thing. I can't wait.

The 80s setting is another question we have, right? Because as you mentioned, we're just like, okay, Jen's setting was this beach house because it was connected to her sort of like goopy, you know, white wine women, you know, storefront persona. The 70s made so much sense for Alice as connected to her mother. This 80s setting for a woman who was alive during the Salem witch trials, is like a very bizarre setting. On the one hand, so like, again, in an interview, Jack said that they, like, were always going to do a 70s witchy episode. So maybe they were first engineer, Lauren and we would to make sure that they could do

a 70s. So maybe she just wanted to do an 80s horror, sleepover horror episode. The threads are pretty tenuous. Like, the connection I can make is that Agha and we get her in, like, vulnerable team, don't embarrass me in front of my friend's mom, like, mode. So this idea of putting them all in sort of like teen mode along with our titular teen, like as we're dealing with mothers and daughters and all that sort of stuff like that. And we'll talk about the very strong connective tissue between the Exorcist,

which is acknowledged here except that's a 70s film, not an 80s film. So I just have like some, you know, and then the Ouija was like more popular earlier. So I have some questions about it. I'm not mad about it, but it doesn't feel like, oh, clearly this is Agatha's trial because we definitely associate Agatha with 80s camp horror. You know what I mean? What do you think? I was like, it was the, of all the things we talked about, the single thing that made

me most inclined to, like, mistrust what we were seeing. Yeah. Because it just didn't feel like a logical setting for Agatha. But if we are getting a second Agatha trial, my assumption is that that would actually be rooted in her real past. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Nikki's, the time when Nikki was actually alive.

and then whatever happened happened. And so it feels a little odd to, like, assess what happens here on an assumption of one might await. But if I do that, then I can talk myself into it because then this setting is more about, like you said, Agatha, receding into this, like, adolescent state and us seeing the, that 80s horror vibe that we, we and we and we, by way, I mean people who watch these horror movies. So I'm not really a part of that we, but even I was able to look at Agatha's face and be like, Actors, Exorcist. Yeah. I knew you did the exorcist. Yeah, even I was able to spot that one. But like, you know, the kid at a sleepover, too. Like, this is such a, like, sleepaway camp or sleepover with your your palace in high school, kind of a setting, obviously, right? And so, like, then that gets to, like, do you have friends who

love you and will support you, which also in addition to everything with her mom kind of feels right. Or that like ten-year, that like way in which, um, and maybe I speak from personal experience, but the way in which like those girlhood groups can like turn on each other really quickly, the way in which like teen friendship, this is something, you know, it gets a visual drop in the closing credits. This is something that the craft covers very well. And I was thinking about the craft because in the craft, even though that's a 90s film, hardcore 90s film. Yeah. They have a sleepover sequence. where they're like experimenting with their powers and like changing their hair colors with their powers.

So they're playing light as a feather stiff as a board. Like these sort of sleepover games is something that, you know, I was expecting them to do light as feathers as a board in this because where they raise each other with using just their fingertips. Like all that sort of stuff. So like. Love to that one. The Ouija board like is great for a number of reasons that we're about to talk about. But like it's more of a stretch than some of the others have been. And maybe that was just because they wanted to do an 80s.

thing or maybe it's for other reasons we'll find out later. So yeah, Fitwatch. Here you go, Mallory. What do you want to, like, I'm going to hand it over to you. What do you want to start with? I just stand in awe of the show. Honestly. Like, it has yet to disappoint. The outfits are so good. The Agatha, purple, you know, like, again, the, I would just let me get my purple back. So obviously, purple is an associate, is something a color we associate with Agatha and her particular brand of magic. So the purple football jersey tea that she's like wearing. as a nightgown kind of dress, wonderful. I, of course, I'm looking for Ravens colors everywhere,

so I'm like, is Agatha wearing an Odell Becker's jersey? This is for me was, like, delightful. I thought that Jen having a retainer that she then had to dramatically remove was one of the great genius touches in recent television. And then snap the case clothes with a flourish. Because, like, I can remember doing that. I can remember what it felt like to snap that shud

if you were, like, mad at a friend or mad at a parent or something. Pull it out is the whole thing. What a time in everybody's life. But that was remarkable. Rio once again takes the prize for me. This, what I am going to refer to as like a Terrycloth proto pickleball outfit. Like I feel like Rio is decades early, like ahead of the trend here. It was giving like, yeah, Terrycloth tennis to me, but pickleball, I'm with you.

Unbelievable. Like sexy pickleball. This was just great. And then I would be remiss if I did not know. We'll talk about teens' outfit again later, I think. But this is just an outfit that I actually have and wear. Honestly, I have that shirt. I wear shirts like that all the time.

I have shorts like that. Joanna, you have been with me many times where I'm wearing a fanny pack like that. I was basically like, this is just how I dress. I loved it. Correct. Would you perm your hair into a mullet? And wear a headband, though. No.

No, I don't think that would. For the bit? No, I don't think I would. I don't think I would. I mean, maybe. I don't think I could pull that off, frankly. What do you want to say about what teen's outfit invokes from a calm up a grader? I guess, yeah, I can go ahead and say, like, this was also kind of my favorite, my favorite, we usually do Easter eggs in a separate category.

But this is my favorite Easter egg of the episode because we've been getting a lot of, like, visual signals of the Wiccan reveal to come. and obviously like the headband and the color or the color coding and all of this, this is setting up the Wiccan reveal. But in it, I love that this works both ways because not only is it setting up the Wicen reveal to come and the visual evocation of the comic outfit, it calls back to Little Billy's Halloween outfit from the Wanda Vision episode, which like looks very similar to this. And that's just, I thought was a perfect little way to set us off for what was coming. So in the Halloween episode of Wanda Vision, if you don't remember, Little Billy is where. wearing a blue headband and like a homemade like red cape. And in that episode, it should be noted that Wanda is wearing like a Halloween store costume version of the Scarlet Witch costume.

Great Ralph Bonner episode. Just a great Ralph Bonner episode. Really good. What I love about this, because the blue headband is, yeah, evoking the headpiece that Wiccan wears in the comics, which is a bit different from when we get at the end of the episode. But I love what they did with his crown. end of the episode. But the,

the fact that they did a ringer tea is so smart because they could have just put him in a red shirt, but they put him in a ringer tee, which just looks like more like a cape. Like the red is like a cape on him, not like, because it's just on the arms. I was just like,

I thought that was so brilliant. Wonderful. So love that. Agatha, the number three on her shirt, you know, her Baltimore Ravens jersey, if you prefer. Invoking, you know, made mother crone,

all that sort of stuff like that. a lot of people have been pointed And this is my first association. There's an infamous scene in Nightmare in Ellen Street where Johnny Depp is wearing a football jersey and some incredible headphones that a lot of people were associating with the look here. Nightmare and Elm of course is very top of mind for people. But our listener Reagan in a very sweet email where he talked about his sexual awakening as a young man watching horror films mentioned that Joe Beth Williams. in the film, Poultergeist, which is also referenced elsewhere in this, is also wearing a football jersey with, like, it's football jersey with a football jersey cotton panties, like drying her hair with a hair dryer on her bed, sort of like sexual awakening for a lot of young men, apparently, or young ladies, whoever were enjoying it. And I like to think that Poultergeist versus Johnny Depp is what was on the mind of the people. But who's to say, I do want to do like a brief, because Daniel Sellen, who is the costume designer on the show. first of all, I would recommend following him on Instagram because he is doing sort of like immediate post show posts on Instagram. He did one about Billy's Crown, which we'll talk about a little later on. He like dropped it right when the episode was over. So he's like not worried about spoilers. He's like if you follow me. Yeah. You know, and he dropped one about Rio and Agatha's costume last week and stuff like that, which is astonishing. We'll talk about it a second. But he also gave an in-depth interview to Marvel.com, Devon Kogan, who used to write for entertainment weekly, is now working for Marvel.com. Did a great interview. And we'll talk about it. So he also gave an in-depth interview.

with him where he like sort of went through some of the things. I'm not going to do the whole interview. But, uh, I will mention a few highlights. First of all, the Agatha, this is, this is, this is for you, Malia Rubin, the highlight of the whole thing here on his Instagram last week, talking about Agatha and Rio's sort of matching plunging necklines, which we noticed that they were sort of matching. Boy, did we. He said, quote, I wanted Agatha and Rio to be on a level playing field of the first time in the show. They share some deceptive and intimate moments and I wanted them to have nothing standing between each other's hearts.

So we went for these daring plunging necklines. Yeah. I had been thinking more like, you know, nothing standing between their nipples, but hearts works love like beautifully as well. There's a moment later when like in that, in that episode where Agatha sort of like pulls her neckline clothes a little bit like that, you know? And so it's like if the idea is like bearing their hearts to each other and then just sort of like.

Wrap up. closing them off from each other. So good. Iconic stuff. Okay, speaking of Rio and our ongoing question of who Rio is that we pretty much think we know. I would say basically get outright confirmation in this episode. We continue to think that she's probably death. And this is what the costumer said about her green witch road costume.

He says, you see it growing and coming up around her torso. And then you see actual living things growing and rotting on her costume. So there is literal death and decay on her costume. Something I think about. What could it mean? Lillia's collar, and this is a really cool thing that I had to zoom in to like understand. He said we created a deck of tarot cards based on her life and some backstory that we made up to try to get in deep with the character. Then we distilled those images into embroidery and we embedded them in the collar of the costume.

So her story was always with her. So if you zoom in on Lillia's sort of like patchwork jacket. there are these tarot like images on the collar that are meant to be lilia's backstory that's amazing really good stuff um agatha's coat which i hope uh you know cosplayers around the world are currently working on this is what he said so there's aspects of this code that we don't get to see the inside of the coat mainly and he says there's a whole journey in the interior of the coat each panel tells a story and has a talisman of her journey post wanda vision everything she does in the show exists on the inside of her coat.

And then he said he worked with Catherine Hawn to sort of like pick this look and shape it. And he says they talked about Agatha's status as a covenless witch and related to what? A raven who has lost her flock. So they incorporated bird imagery into Agatha's signature coat, including a lapel and collar that layer like feathers and pleaded scurts that flare out like a tail. I knew Agatha was a Ravens fan and now we've had it confirmed. I would also like to say that this like hidden stories inside of a coat is so NFL and NBA draft to me. Oh, is it? How so?

Yeah, because the routinely, especially this has become a real thing in recent years, like draft picks will get up on stage after being selected and they open their coat. And there's like their Easter eggs inside, basically. Sometimes it's about their families. Sometimes it's about their teammates. Sometimes it's about like the city where they thought they might get drafted. it's like become a real draft trend. So I love I love the idea of a connection to the draft circuit here. If they have bedecked themselves in the wrong city, do they just stand up there and keep their jacket closed?

I mean, best not to. It's unless you're like a really like a high, high pick and you know for sure, like I'm going to this place. It's hard to commit to where you think you might be going that it's probably more about like, let me honor my hometown or my college or something. But love this. Love it. On the coat front, on the. on the like on the witchy birdie coat front um i was reading interview i can't remember where it was

where earlier uh in the season when we're still in westview agtha in episode two i would say agatha walks out looks i think maybe sees the fox i can't remember and then sort of like with a flourish of her coat sort of like walks back in yes Kevin figgy apparently like when they were going through the edit he was like that's just there so we can admire the coat right and they were like yep and he's like okay and we did right and we did kevin It's great teen, teen, tease jeans. You love that line. It's so funny.

It's great, teen. It's great. The costume designer in this interview with Marvel.com, I mean, like, this was given this week. So we had very little time to pour over this, right? But he said, we should pay attention to the doodles on teens jeans. And Joe Locke was saying that there's, you know, we've noticed the various, like, talismans on his sweater. Joe Locke, both the Joe Locke and the costume designer

said they think that Billy made that sweater himself. So there's all these like signals and stuff like that. But Joe says, I always say teen's costume holds all the secrets of teen and the show if you look close enough. So he looked close enough on his jeans, which is what he wears like when he's out on the road. There's a panel running all down the side that are filled with like little designs, but mostly stars, which line up with what? Billy's costume from the comics where if you look up Wicked in the comics, not every iteration, but like more recent iterations of the comics, there's this like

sort of panel of galaxy down the side of his costume that is echoed in the jeans here, which is just fun. Love it. There you go. Love it. That has been Costume Corner. We'll come back to Crown Corner at the end. Okay.

What do you make of Teen as the constant catalyst as we as we do all this? He was the first down the road. He found the card that. each house. He played the record in the studio and he finds the Ouija board here and reads the rule. Do you think that's more or less significant than anything else or just like him being the most eager and curious among them? Or what do you think? It's a really good question. I think to this point, I have been processing that as like a manifestation of his enthusiasm. And again, his like desire to seek this out actively where everybody else.

is a really reluctant, even, like, resistant participant. So, like, it just feels right and has felt right that he would be the one who's, like, most eager to dive in and everybody else would be, like, in different ways, a little bit anxious or a little bit wary. But now, like, given that the Wiccan reveal moved up from, like, where we thought we were getting in and the sigil lifted maybe sooner than we thought, now I am kind of thinking about just a different set of possibilities and, like, if, not to jump ahead, but, like, if, you know, to throw out a theory that at least people are considering, like, if Billy put the

sigil on himself, right? Which we talked about a lot last week. Which we did. Yeah. And like, I think had grown to like that theory. Yeah. And now I'm like very inclined to believe that that's what happened here. Then it really plays differently because this idea that maybe a lot of this is Billy's design or intention, but also he didn't have the ability to access his own desire or reasons is so interesting to me. So that's like I'm really eager to learn more about that. And then inside of this episode, we get moments where the fact that he is so ready and willing to be on the front line actually proves kind of problematic and worrying, you know,

the fact that he goes over and touches the board alone, for example, when he wasn't supposed to. Like, there could be drawbacks to being so eager. really could be. Yeah, I love this idea. Again, we'll get to this a little bit more, a little later, but like the idea that the teen we've been watching this whole time is just a persona, uh, that teen himself sort of crafted for himself, this golly G. Willikers. I'm, I'm thrilled to be here, uh, kind of teen. It's great teen, uh, sort of stuff. And that like, the real billy is someone who is like, did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also

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You know, something that Joe Locke had said in interviews while trying very hard not to give away the game on who he was playing. was he was like my character gets cooler as the story goes on. So like if he gets to play a different mode of Billy going forward, that's very exciting. Okay. So Lillia gives us some clarification on her powers, which, you know, I feel like we were building towards this. We got the payoff of what we thought we put together last week, which is like Alice don't save Agatha was something we put together last week and we get the payoff of it. I didn't think we get it so soon, but here we are.

So, yeah. And we'll get some more of that. But so it has to do with reading people in time, not community with the dead. Okay. She says, community with the dead is just a con. And like that ties to the Ouija board idea. But also, she like should we be looking for a con inside of this episode. Again, we're just asking questions.

Just here to ask questions. We're just here to ask questions. I love, I don't know if it's Aubrey's choice or written. the script, but the decision to take the, like, hairbrush as a microphone and go, like, and who better to commute with the dead than someone who put so many in the grave, like, interview or stuff. Absolutely wonderful. I loved it.

Great. A bit rich coming from, we think, death, but loved it. The hairbrush was a great touch. A close personal relationship with death, very, very slumber party. This is the quote from Jack Schaefer on building the character of Rio. She said, we had conversations, but it was more like, what would Agatha be attracted to? And the answer was power. And who should she come in contact with?

Who wouldn't be afraid of her? Wouldn't hate her. Who would be attracted to Agatha? And that was the really delicious conversation. So to take that idea that they knew they want whether or not she's death, but let's say she is. This is the thing that Jack Schaefer has talked about. I've talked to many like sort of Marvel showrunners about this. When they are working on a project, they are given a bucket of characters that they are allowed to play with.

And so in the case of Wanda Vision, right, they knew they wanted like a sciencey person. and they're like, uh, Darcy. And they knew they wanted like, uh, you know, a federal agent, you know, and so they, they pull from Antman. Like they are pulling from a bucket of characters that they have to fill certain roles that they want. So let's say she has cards on the table in front of her of all kinds of characters that she can play with.

One of them, let's say, is Lady Death. And as they're like, who could be a love interest for Agatha? Right. They're like, well, Agatha cares about power. Let's give her one of the most elementally powerful. beings that exist. Yeah. Lady death.

And death would perhaps not be repulsed by Agatha who puts, quote, so many bodies in the, so many in the grave. This is someone who just, like, deals out death and death is into it? Like, is that, is that something we should be thinking about? So, yeah, absolutely. I love that. Should we Ouija? Widja.

It's not a verb. It's not a verb. Have you ever, have you ever? We did in your life? I was trying to think back, yes. I was trying to think back to like kind of exactly when, but I think just in perhaps unsurprising fashion, like in like middle school sleepovers, you know, kind of like basically this scenario.

It's not something I've done a ton, but certainly had a few friends growing up in, and ye old Reichertown, Maryland who liked the Ouija board, had a friend who would like ask us to sit in a circle as she lit candles, and we would attempt to summon someone spirits. Not something I did a ton of, but certainly a part of the sleepover circuit in middle school and early high school. Yeah, how about you? Yeah, as a kid. And that whole like, okay, so the Ouija board will get into this idea of like,

again, something you cannot and should not do alone, right? Rule number one. But here's some fun facts about the Ouija board, right? There are been many versions of it throughout history, but the one that is named Ouija is. is originated in Baltimore, Maryland. Mallory, Reuben. Let's go.

And this branded version of the board comes about during the rise of spiritualism in the U.S., which is mid-19th century, like, you know, middle of the 1800s, when the Civil War and just general life expectancy and all this sort of things contribute to this idea that people really want to make contact with the dead, which is something that if Agatha, who we met in the mayor of Easttown parody grieving over her son, that is something that Agatha herself might long for, a lost dead person, not her mom. It's not who she would want to talk to. But she is the kind of person who might be vulnerable to something like this of like, you know, I can speak to the dead. As Lillia has complained about in every single day of this television show, the Ouichibor is

connected with this sort of like gamification, cutification, commodification of, of, of spiritualism, right? You can do it at home with the Ouija board. It was so mainstream that there is a Norman Rockwell painting of a couple playing, Ouijaing their little hearts out in their parlor. Like that is how American is apple pie. This is great stuff just looking at this because you've hopefully put a little, a little image into the Google Doc.

And the woman is looking up toward the spirit realm and the dude is just like looking at her tits. Correct. Good stuff from Norman here. She's like, she's really into it. And he seems like, this is an opportunity for me to ogle you. That does seem, that's my read also, this painting. The Ouija board ebbs and flows. It's seemingly in lockstep with the sort of like, broader mental health of the American psyche. And it, it reaches maybe the height of his popularity in 1967 when it, when the Parker brothers have like bought the rights to the Ouija board, it outsells monopoly as the most popular

board game in all the country in 67 when we're like in the midst of crises around Vietnam and assassinations and all this sort of stuff like that it makes sense that this is like a moment for this kind of connection in the American psyche but it's a staple of course of slumber party

antics I really do think I've I've Ouijaed at a slumber party and yeah it's a game that you can't or shouldn't be able to play alone this is from the Smithsonian and magazine. With Ouija boards, you've got the whole social context. It's usually a group of people with everyone and everyone has a slight influence. So not only do this, the individual give up some conscious control to participate, so it can't be me moving the thing people think,

but also in a group, no one person can take credit for the Planchet's movements, making it seem like the answers must be coming from an otherworldly source. So as we continue to explore this idea of Sisterhood, Coven Community. Burdens and blessings shared. There it is. Love that was said with like a giant piece of glass in his torso when he said that. It's just a lot of blessing, you know? All is going swimmingly for the Ouija board and the Parker brothers who feel like they made a really good investment until 1973. Yes. When a little movie called The Exorcist comes out and sales absolutely plummet.

Why? So, Mal, you've never seen The Exorcist. No. I am at the point now in my life where I feel like. It's time for me to give it a go and I'd probably be fine. But it just seemed prohibitively scary to me for so long. I've only seen it once. So I worked in a movie theater briefly in college when they re-released the exorcist and people were getting violently ill in the theater. And so I have a really bad association with that because I used to clean those theaters. So that was like a terrible time

of my life. But also, yeah. It's great, Dean. Also, my freshman year of college, we did like a haunted We did like we did like a haunted house like dorm thing. And they had me do Reagan from the exorcist. Once again, I had not seen it at that point. And they were like, you just have to sit on the bed. We poured like literal pea soup on me. And then people were shaking the bed. So I have never regretted a decision more in my life than covered in cold pea soup.

So the second part, the shaking of the bed is terrible. But like just a built in snack the whole time. That sounds great. I love pea soup. Peas soup is delicious. Was there any ham in it? I don't think so. I think it was like an amy's brand.

The two people who had it worse. I love Amy's soup. The two people had it worse in that haunted house, I think me. Because I was just, well, I had a, I was just yelling and swearing at people all night. That was pretty fun. Another girl was playing Carrie and they dumped caro syrup on like red dyed caro syrup on her actual hair. That's when you need a wig if you're playing carry and they're dumping a, blood on you. So she took her

weeks to get the caro syrup out of her hair. What? What? Yeah, that's like a good, it's a good match for fake blood as you dye caro syrup red, but don't put it in your hair. Okay. No. I won't. Let's talk about the exodus. I won't.

Especially not. I'm preparing for my perm mullet. I think your perm mullet is going to look so good, but don't you dare touch it with syrup. Okay. So, the exorcist, you and I both clocking the exorcist. She does the backbend spider walk later, which is a cutscene from the exorcist, but a very iconic exorcist moment. I'm also happy to give some nod to evil dead because we're sort of like in a cabin setting and there is possession happening in the evil dead.

Happy to bring that into the mix. Happy to give a nod to cabin in the woods. Like there's all sorts of stuff that is play here. But we're doing a lot of exodus stuff. chiefly because the exorcist did cause the sales in the Ouija to plummet because the the movie, which is about a mother and a daughter, 12-year-old girl named Reagan, who gets possessed by a demon. How does she get possessed by a demon? She's playing with a Ouija board alone. Her mom's like, oh, you got to have two. Wait a minute. You need two. And she's like,

no, I play it alone all the time with like a friendly spirit name. I think it's like Captain Howdy. That's how the demon gets her. Is he pretends to be a happy, little spirit playing with her on the Ouija board and then it enters her body. So, um, no. People saw that and we're like, guess what? Done with the Ouichboard. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. But the Exorcist, I think, is a really fascinating movie to play with here because as I mentioned, this is a story about a mother and a daughter. And I'm not going to go into this whole thing, but I really, I read this incredible article on the Yale Review. My Mother and the Exorcist, How Horror Reconciled Me to Lost by Marlina Williams.

But basically, this idea that Ellen Burson, who plays the mother in this film is like a single mom, you know, independently, you know, financially independent, has a staff, is raising her daughter. And this maybe like sort of retrograde idea that you see in Carrie as well of like these women alone in the world have to be punished somehow. So that's like sort of punish Agatha, punish these women. But also it's a story about like, Reagan is 12. She's like a girl on the like verge of womanhood. They have like a very beautiful mother-daughter relationship at the beginning of the movie. But this idea that like as young women grow into teens,

their relationships with their mothers often, though not always, like fracture for a time for always, etc. That idea of the mother-daughter bond specifically as viewed through the lens of horror, I think is a perfect thing to put inside this. episode and like this idea that Reagan who becomes possessed becomes this demonic creature and then her mother never gives up on her and like at the end you know, spoiler to the exorcist. The demon is exorcised and we don't live happily ever after I assume because there are other exorcist films but the priest die with the mother and daughter live.

And so a potentiality for reconciliation. But yeah, just this theme of like mothers and daughters and and and friards. fractured relationships and a mother viewing her daughter for the first time is like evil is. And also like there's horrific sexual content involved as well and all this sort of stuff like that. I just think that that is brilliant of them, even if we don't fully understand how the 80s have anything to do with Agatha Artemis. And also the exodus came out in the 70s. But that's okay. Here we are. And I just think in general, I am not a huge horror fan. I'm not as quite as screamish as you, but I'm not like a huge. huge horror fan. I have seen The Actressus once through like sort of half-closed eyes. But like more recent films like Hereditary or the Babaduke like, uh, or Carrie, like these are using the horror genre to explore parenthood and the parent-child bond and and what that means. So I think that that's like very interesting. But anyway, yeah, religious war is, is waged against the wichie board that lasts into the odds as, as recently as, as.

2001 in New Mexico, they were burning Harry Potter. Disney's still white. I don't know, I guess, because of the witch, I have no idea, and Ouija boards. So, yeah, anything you want to say about the exorcists or the history of Ouija or anything like that? I think you crushed it. You nailed it. Again, I have not seen this film. So Hops and Dragons at Gmail.com, if you have thoughts on what brand of peace soup that you would use, if you were to join a haunted house or any thoughts on themes of the exorcist we might have missed or Ouija in general.

Let's rewind a bit. Let's just hear the rules of the Ouija board. Okay. Number one, do not use the Ouija board alone. Number two, do not speak over each other. It's not written there. Show me that. Three, do not taunt the spirits. What?

I repeat, do not taunt the spirits. four, do not ask about death. Five, always end your session with goodbye. Six, do not under any circumstances, remove your hand from the planchette. If you do so, a spirit will be released. What does that say in the back there? Four Ages Three and Up.

Mallory, any thoughts on the Four Ages Three and Up moment here? Just a nice little timeline Easter egg there. Now that we know, in fact, this is Billy, because he's 16. Three years of pass is Wanda Vision. So when he was created by Wanda's magic, he's 16, but he's really three. So he's a lot to play. Barely.

Just barely makes the cut off here. How do you feel about the fact that every single one of these rules is broken by the end of the episode? Yeah, just like, again, it's a very compact episode. And so to be able to, like, succinctly prime us for everything that is going to go wrong so quickly, it's just very, deft. And I also just in general, the larger structure of the season, I'm really enjoying if you have the trials within the episodes and then the rules within the trials. And like, I think there's a way where that could start to feel kind of like a lot to track. But it's, it's building, each episode is building on the one before very nicely. So I liked this a lot.

Um, I think it was a bit of a challenge for Joe Locke's American accent. That's okay. We support him in all over his endeavors. Um, So Agatha invokes mother made in Crohn. Yeah. After saying it could literally be anyone. Yeah. In terms of like someone with a source of trauma. Great stuff.

Again, we have the 300 jersey. The cameo, which is among her like friendship bracelets in this episode, which was her mom's cameo. Like how, do you have any thoughts about how the mother made and crone idea is going to manifest by the end of the episode? I don't know. Sorry, by the end of this season, I mean. The season. Yeah. I don't know.

Like revisiting the, because, you know, we get, we get the. the snippet in the previously on at the beginning of this episode of the Salem stretch from the Wanda vision flashbacks and like revisiting that scene and yeah the attention being drawn to the generational handoff of that brooch and obviously like thinking of how central that that was in the beginning of this series with like the pawn shop sequence and everything like the hair inside of it I think the idea of just this being something that is like containing the generational ties in this family unit. Like if it came from her mother and then it has Nikki's hair inside of it, it's this link

between them, but inside of this fractured family. But whether the actual triple goddess has like a role to play, mapping on to characters in the story, I think, seems completely possible to me. I don't know yet how that will be metaphos. The only way I could think about it is if it's like if Agatha's the crone and one is the mother and then that would make Billy the maiden, you know, what I mean, like something like that, but, or if death is the crone and, you know, something like that. I don't know. I don't know that it needs to be a one-to-one as specifically as that, but it's just something I'm thinking about, like, are we going to see some sort of like Trinity of a kind manifest at the end? Speaking about manifesting, we get, yeah, we get M-R-S-H-A-R-T and I would just like to think the millions of bad babies who emailed us and all the people who tweeted at us that they at home thought. they were spelling out Mr. Shart instead of Mrs. Hart.

I have no notes. Mr. Shart, do you think he is any relative to Ralph Boner? Do you think Ralph Boner's, like, uncle is Mr. Shart? Like, are you thinking about that family tree? Yeah, drunk uncle. This is a great call. Mr. Shart is definitely the drunk uncle who embarrasses Ralph Boner at Thanksgiving. Okay, but it's Mrs.

It's hard. It's not Mr. Shart with regret. I must inform you. And we get Catherine Hans just the right side of bad impersonation of Debra Joe Rupp because when it started, when it right started, I was like, Catherine Hons better than this. I was like, she could do a better Debra Joe Rupp than she's doing. And then like when I was like, oh, it's a fake Debra Joe Rup impression. That's funny. What did you think of this? Did you enjoy this? Very amusing. I thought it was very amusing. I liked her to like to like to fit. of the bit. You know, I thought that was pretty good.

She's, like, offended that they... She just... She's able to, like, so quickly suss out the horseshit. One thing that was interesting to me is, like, how we're tracking across the episodes, Agatha's willingness to participate. Because in the first trial, as we discussed at the time, she was like, I will not drink the wine. Yeah.

I will do... I'm going to try to get out of this door, like, as reluctant as she could... possibly have been to opt into the trial. Then, as we talked about last week, the second trial, she was really leading the charge. And then here there's a backslide, but one that to me really tracks because if this is her trial, her first trial, the personal, the deeply personal nature of this would terrify her. Of course, she would be reluctant to participate. Who knows what horror from her own past and what aspect of herself that she's not ready to confront,

she and everybody else are about to see. So that felt not like, again, to your point about how inconsistencies can actually be compelling, right? This felt to me, like, exactly right for Agatha. I love that. And particularly, like, I really loved, because she uses the same trigger phrase, right? Mother, maiden, crone, spirits be known. And then maiden mother crone, spirits be known. And so there's, like, the order of the triple goddess, but also just like,

It struck me that we were watching an indication that magic can sense your intention. Like that in the first, she sits down the first time. She didn't mean it. It was horseshit. And the powers that be in the trial knew that. And then she has to decide that she is going to buy in. And when she says it the second time, it works. Immediately the lights begin to flicker.

The air in the room changes. And like, I like thinking of magic as this conscious force. that can like read her. For sure. I love that. And I also think like to go back to the triple goddess idea, there's like the external manifestation, but there's the internal manifestation of like this is this is a woman's progress through life.

She is a maiden, then she's a mother, then she's a crone. And so this idea that like Agatha tied up at a stake in front of her digitally de-aged, Catherine Hawn tied up in front of a stake in front of her mom and her coven, that's like maiden. She was a mother. She had Nikki. And now she's like, she's the evil witch. the crone, you know what I mean?

She's no comment on what Catherine Hahn looks like. She looks amazing. But like, you know, in terms of like the big bad witch, that's the role that she's in here. Once we move past the joke with like, I think a beautifully cutting she's just scared from Rio. So good. Then we're back on the board. And this time it's D, E, A, T, H, death who is with us. Mike, will you play this clip?

Who is here with us tonight? D. E. A. T. H. Death. We're not supposed to ask about death. It's a gentler cackle, but a cackle of like an overhead, throwback her head shot of her right after they say death is here. This is just confirmation, right? We're taking it out of theory, Corey, and we're putting it into this is happening. Got death. We've got death. We've got way. And we've got we got it all. Let's go.

Punish Agatha is what happens here. And Agatha violates rule six. But we've already like taunted the dead. We've already asked about death. Like we've already broken some rules. But she takes her hands off the planchette and the coven takes a very nasty turn. And like, we already mentioned the Jen's retainer work. Astonishing stuff. Yeah. But like Jen's saying punishing Ava, that's how they pass the chart. I disagree. Same.

I think it's a strong misread. And as much as I like Jen a lot and like the high priestess card that we talked about earlier that that Lillia associated with Jen, it was like intuition. This idea like go with your gut. You go with your, you let your sort of like your gut, your emotions lead you at the maybe expense of your reason perhaps. And so like this idea that like Lily that Jen is letting her emotional response to like Agatha's the villain.

We have to punish her. That's the trial. Absolutely not. I would say sisterhood and unity is probably the, as have all the trials been. And also supporting someone through their confrontation with their demons, right? Because like, so Agatha's vulnerable on the floor. And everyone's like sort of crowding around her. Fascinating shot.

I'm always looking for the real reaction shots. Fashioning, like reaction shot where she's like like tapping her fingers together in like a sort of Mr. Smither's glee gesture. the background, fascinating. But, like, it's a very, like, yeah, witch trials, the witches putting on a witch trial, which is horrifying to watch. And, like, tie her up, humiliator, slitter throat, like, all the sort of stuff, like that darkest hour, indeed, for all of them, I would say.

But this is such a crushing reversal of what we've seen Agatha do for first Jen and then Alice. Jen gives her that pep talk during her trial where she's like, you've got this. You've got this power. I don't really like you. Yeah. They can't take away your knowledge. I do know you have this, right?

And then talking Alice through the like, you know, sing like a witch. Like, we got to do this. We got to do this number. You have to, you know, and so then like when it comes time to support Agatha through her demons, they're not here. And so like as much as we are, we should be ready to critique Agatha for her inability to join the bonds of sisterhood willingly and all this. stuff like that. I think Jen is the biggest failure of this test inside of this episode.

For sure. Yeah. And I agree with all of that completely. I think we're on the same page of what the true test is and whether they are passing or failing it. And I think like, so what you were saying earlier about like the theorizing and speculating online this week of like, oh, did a bug get through? Are they being controlled in some way? I think people are maybe more likely to be inclined to wonder about control inside of an episode where we watch Wiccan work his powers to control people at the end. But like, I'm with you. I don't think that's what's happening here inside of the trial. And I hope it's not.

But I will say, it doesn't surprise me that that speculation is occurring specifically because when Jen was like, we got to punish Agatha, I wasn't shocked. But everybody else really quickly agreeing. Not teen, of course. But like the haste with which Lillia. and Alice are kind of swept up in that craze and panic as well. The hysteria, yeah. The hysteria. Like, I'm not shocked that people are like, oh, I wonder if some other, if they're under

some sort of sway here. I think ultimately, I'm with you, though, like, they're making the same mistake that other people have made about them. And then I, so I was wondering what you thought about. We get a mini trance dispatch from Lillia. We get her, she says, I hated this the first time. Yeah. And Tien says, Lillia is being weird again.

Again, like a line from another character drawing our attention to what Lillie is, Leah has just said, it made me wonder, like, I don't know if I'm prepared to say I think this is actually going to happen, but it did make me wonder. If we're going to go back through again? Does this imply that they have to redo all the trials? I don't think so. Avoid the mistakes that they made. And this one, like, turning on each other is the failure, the true passing. We'll have four more episodes left. That's like, like, enough time. I don't think we're going to do that. I think it was when she has her little freak out of and then they just redid everything in one episode.

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I think her freak out in the kitchen when Agatha first calls her kooky, I think that's the first time she did it. I think we've seen a lot of the payoffs for Lillias. We weren't just like get it off me. Don't save Agatha. Am I kooky or wispy? We haven't seen yet.

I think that's to come. But, you know, on the like, am I kooky or wispy? Am I a good witch or a bad witch sort of stuff? I do think it's notable that Jen, you know, like, we haven't heard this from our costume and guru about Jen being in sort of baby pink this whole time. But I do think it's interesting because like the purple I understand for Agatha, the flame details or the fact that Alice, I was going to talk about this later, but Alice is literally supposed to be dressed as a knight. She's got metallic pants and sort of like armor details. Like all of that makes sense. Jen is pink goes again with that sort of like new agey, goppy sort of.

influencer thing. But also it's like the color we associate with Glinda the Good Witch, this idea that like Jen has cast herself as she's the good witch and Agatha's the wicked witch, I think is something that, you know, she's just, is something we're supposed to be questioning. Yeah. We're sisters in the craft. Remember? Like warping and weaponizing the thing they're supposed to be embracing was so sinister. Yeah. And this is the quote from Jack about Jen as a character. She says. And so that was one of the developments of the Jen characters that this is a person who knows Agatha in one way. Yeah. Right. She has a fixed idea of who Agatha is. And as we heard at the top of this episode, we're about to get to this idea of like, I can be good, you know, can you? If everyone has already decided that you're the wicked wish, that you're evil, that you're

evil at birth. Team, team does make a bid for unity, though. Like, he's not, he's not turning on Agatha here. And he does make a really interesting face, I thought, when he's told him. milliers don't get a vote. Yeah. So I don't know at what point the sigil is breaking or slipping or whatever, but that seemed to be like a moment that felt like a little less like, awjy shucks Billy and something else.

But who knows? And then here comes Evonora. Our babe. Toughang. Toughang. Really tough. Really tough. Mallor, what do you want to say about what we know about Evanora, Harkness of the Salemites?

Well, you know, again, we have. seen this crucial shared experience between mother and child. When we watched Agatha turn those harpies to dust, as she then iconically describes it, it's Agatha's at the stake, surrounded by the coven, and she is under attack. Like some of the things that we heard, this was in episode eight of Wanda Vision, some of the things that we heard, you have betrayed your coven. Now I an idea that is very familiar to us. You stole knowledge above your age and station. You practiced the darkest of magic. And then as you noted, Agatha, we built toward in that scene, Agatha is saying, please, I can be good. And Evanora, as a blue crown appears on her head saying, no, you cannot.

Fascinating scene to revisit after what we watch in many respects across this episode. So the fact that this is like her, not just like the mother, again, mother made a colonel. the motherly figure of the coven, but her actual mother, and that we watched her actual mother lead the charge. We don't know what that means. Like, you stole knowledge above your age and station, you practice the darkest of magic. It seems to me now with what we know about Agatha that this would be about taking the dark hold, like that that has happened already at that point, right? It seems, I don't know, maybe not. Has everything already happened with Nikki? like we've got a lot of questions about that.

The cut in that Agatha sequence in the Wanda Vision, excuse me, sequence goes right from her taking the brooch from her dried out dead mother to her holding the Signor Scratch, the bunny. So I feel like there's like, you know, the Nicholas Scratch connection there between that. I think this like overall like introduction of her mother, when we saw that flashback from Agatha in Wanda Vision and we're like, holy shit, Agatha killed her coven. She killed her own mother. What a horror. And now we see that her mother was like, you were evil from when you were born. From birth. Like, I should have killed you the moment you left

my body. This is one of the most. Yeah. Like, this is one of the most appalling things that we have witnessed in a Marvel show. I mean, this is hideous. And then the emotional response from Agatha, like, this was just an incredible sequence because we have the comedy, you know, you mentioned earlier, like the stop embarrassing me in front of my friends' mom, very like, Tony, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards. But just that question of like, her mom says here, when she introduces herself, Evanor Harkness of the Salamites, she says, my coven risked everything to kill her and you fools have willingly joined her. So why did they need to, quote, unquote, risk everything to kill her?

Like, it seems clear that we are, you know, we've been led or misled into thinking she was the villain from the jump rather than somebody who was shaped by her family and society around her. If they're the villains, like what happened there to lead to this rift? We know that Agatha takes power. We see in this episode some harrowing moments where she is saying, we'll discuss, I think maybe like what I read on that is, she can't control that power. Did she leach her own mother's power when she was growing in her womb? Is that part of why her mother resented her?

Like there are a number of different questions that we can ask now based on what we witness here. So this was a very effective and disturbing introduction, not introduction, but reintroduction to Evanora Harkness. And I hope somewhere Odin is just like laying back on a beach with a tropical drink being like, guess who's not the worst parent of the MCU today? You know, that guy loves any excuse to dip off into the Odin's sleep. So yeah. Hope he's relaxing because Evanora is like, I got this. But you already mentioned Loki in a different context, but I was thinking so much.

much of our guy Loki and a lot of these conversations we had around him as a character as an archetype of someone who is told who he is again and again in this question at this heart of the TV series Loki that we love so much is like can you change can you be someone else if everyone tells you're Loki that's what Loki's do like you know like that's who you are Thor is like Loki that's who you are it's who you've always been you're always going to be this guy and something we watched him do emotionally at the end of of Loki's, spoilers, that long walk. That was why it was like this long arduous to talk about rings of power, making that

choice again and again to be good. And so to hear Agatha plead, I can be good. Heartbreaking. When her mother's like, you were born evil, you had no choice. How much is being told you were born evil shape you as a person? And how much do you feel like you need to protect yourself? in as much power as you can grab for yourself if you're under attack inside of your very home.

And again, that, you know, that goes to, like, thinking about Carrie and other horror movies like that, this idea of just sort of like the, you know, the mother figure that is just like, you're evil, you are sin incarnate, you're all these other things, and you should be punished for who you are from the moment you were born.

Exactly. And, like, there's also, you know, a little bit of a, I think the low-key comparison is beautiful. Like there's a little bit of an opening of Ironman 3. You know, Tony, we create our own demons idea from the Evonora perspective here. If the thing that you ultimately felt you had to thwart is of your own making because of your hate and your judgment,

like a baby, that is just so foul and hideous. That's not a monster. That's a baby. Rio once again coming to Agatha's defense, then in this context, yeah, well, her mother can't have her. The way she shouted, no, no way. She hates Evonora, like from firsthand experience it would feel like. It tells us everything.

And I did love that actually, again, like Jen says a minute ago you were willing to slit her throat. And it's like, yeah, she can't have it. But I know the true evil, right? I know who this person is and what she did. If she's death, she's like, death's not the end. Like, death's not the worst thing that can happen to someone. But, like, leaving her with that bitch, no, absolutely not. And it goes back to this idea of, like, I don't think that contrast to me makes me feel like,

if Rio is death, death doesn't see, like, mortal death is the end of something. Like, I don't think she wants to punish Agatha by killing her. I don't think she wants to, like, because, you know, she hates ghosts. But, like, presumably once you're sort of reaped. death, you go somewhere and like you're there and death can still hang out with you. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that the end of Agatha's sort of corporeal life would be the end as Rio would see it of their connection with each other.

But I could be wrong. Little spin onto the well organized mind. Death is put the next great adventure into the world or organized mine. Death is just the next chance to fuck Rio. Exactly. I love it. But now non-corporially, horizontally in a grave. Why not?

She did say that's how she likes her best. Agatha's, Catherine Hahn's performance here, her like completely stricken face, the tears in her eyes, Rio's anguish on her behalf. I just thought it was all incredible. So good.

And then as we heard the clip in the beginning, Jen, once again, who's the source of trouble here, I fear, calls Agatha the danger of this trial and we just really disagree. And then Alice hops

into protection mode. This is why I don't think, because, like, yeah, Jen is leading the charge. Alice and Lillia are not, like, fully convinced that this is what they're supposed to do. They're just sort of like, maybe. Does that happen right? Humillioner, like, make fun of her a little bit? Like, what should we do?

So Alice jumps in protection which mode and plays the hero. And Lillia reads her tarot as she does it. She says, Night of Wands. Tarot Corner TM with Joanna Robinson, TM. As we mentioned, Alice has been dressed as a knight. in her own fashion this entire time, according to the costume designer. Also, there was no Night of Wan's card in the images that Marvel released. And I don't know why that is. We'll get to the Tower Card a little bit later. Blue Crown that was just sitting in plain sight on the

tower card. But like, we mentioned there's a death card that's probably Rio's and, you know, there are cards that go with the High Priestess for Jen. There's no Night of One cards. There's no Alice card. I don't know why. But, um, According to the unimpeachable site that is tarot com, I'm so sure. The knight is an instigator, a fire starter, a feisty and easily provoked character who is liable to attack first and ask questions later. So this impulsivity to attack, to defend, to protect the fire based are no. I think could be sort of what's going on here. There are times when this energy is perfectly appropriate, like when there's assertively protected nature is defending threatened treasures or interfering with dark forces.

is the trick is to keep a sense of proportion when this night unleashes fire because they enjoy intense experiences and it always always ready to take to the next level. So one of our listeners sent in something about nine of wands because she misheard. She thought night of ones was nine of ones. And at first I was like, ooh, because this one is like, I'll just read the nine of ones. Halfway through a tough time, a battle drained, fatigued, weary, but with resilience and perseverance you can accomplish your goal. You need time to gather your strength and push through.

That just goes maybe into our is Alice actually dead? the theory corner question, which we're going to ask in a second. But that's sort of what we're dealing with a knight of wants here is just sort of protective, defensive, but maybe impulsive in a way that, like, Alice wasn't thinking about throwing her power at Agatha as someone she knows absorbs power. And then this is the moment, this and then like one other moment of the road is when I just think we have to like pay such, such close attention to Catherine Haw's performance in Agatha's face. as she starts to drain the power here because there is real hunger and desire there. No doubt about it. But then also real shock and dismay when she snaps out of it, which is such a fascinating combination.

Again, a contradiction inside of a person because I do believe there is an addictive, hungry, like, consumptive, I want the power aspect to Agatha. But the implication here is that once she starts that, she can't stop it. And I just think that like, I think that this is possibly the tragedy of Agatha Harkness. This is what Jack Schaefer said about what we should pay attention to when we watch Catherine Hahn. She said, quote, one of the gifts of the show is the private moments with Agatha that we see the concern all over her face when teen wakes up and looks at her and then she drops the concern. The mask goes back up and that's the talent of Catherine Hahn. So the true

Agatha is the one we see when her back is turned to other people and we're just looking at her face. And so later in this episode when they're on, you know, mere moments from now when they're on the road. Yeah. And her back is teetian. She says she can't control. Like, you know, she looks genuinely anguished. Then she turns around. She slides that sneer onto her face. The mask goes back up. Very ghoulish, very scary. But like, this is a performance. Agatha has. been performing the role of the wicked witch in a way. And as we saw her perform throughout Wanda Vision, which is not to say she doesn't want or need her have an addictive relationship to this power because I don't think she's like completely innocent in all this, but there is this cost that she has been burdened with her whole life. And I think that's where again that like I can be good please idea comes in because we heard her say that same thing in the Wanda vision flashback. But it was part there. Of course. course of the ploy, right? It was part of the ruse. And it felt, it did feel to me here

when she's begging them not to leave her completely and totally sincere and almost desperate. Like she's trying to not only convince them, but herself. And so I loved not only watching her face across these sequences, but like you're noting when Alice starts to wield her magic, Agatha is pulling, literally like grasping at those strings to turn orange into purple to soak up and absorb that power. And then when you hit, when you switch that horror, it's like,

I think what you're saying about the, again, that contradiction inside the human heart, would you say it's the only thing worth writing about? Like, if, if you're born, and this is your power,

and you genuinely cannot control it. And then the closest people to you in your life, the people who should be helping you and guiding you and nurturing you and protecting you, make you feel evil. And vulnerable. And vulnerable and wrong for that. Then a couple different things could happen.

You could do, you could suppress and stifle your own power. You could cut yourself off from it. Very frozen. Or you could lean into it. Because if everybody's already blaming you for it and everybody already thinks that you're that villain, then why not become one? And so like in Wanda Vision, when the Agatha long reveal plays out and she's like, Like, she is seeking Wanda's power unambinuously.

That is a real thing that she is after. And I don't think to your point, which I agree with, like, I do not think the mission of of this show is to pretend that's not what happened. I think it's to show that just as Agatha was sucked into that cycle, she can work to pull herself back out of it if she has people around her who are able to believe that she is capable of that. And that's part of why I think the Coven and all of that is delicious. the Rio history is delicious.

Yes. But if teen put the sigil on himself, if he was seeking revenge in some way against Agatha, and they bonded anyway. And he comes out of this and has to confront the fact that when he didn't know who he was and what he was after, his desire was to help and protect her. Maybe that's the thing that gives her faith. If you don't have this preconceived notion of who I am and what I did, you could like me.

You're willing to consider that I have some, a heart inside of me that is worth trying to, like, deserving, which is this thing that comes up. Tend. Yeah. All this heart tending a heart. It's so beautiful. I think that like the case of the theory here comes in sharp relief to me when we hear this next part. When Billy tries to stop the, stop the steel by going back to the Ouija bore and with second asparagus the name Nicholas Scratch and we hear devastating a little kid's voice saying, mama, stop.

And in that moment. I was like, oh my fucking God, did Agatha Harkness drain and kill her own child? And this is sort of the case of the theory here, which is like in this, once I started, I couldn't stop, I couldn't control it sort of thing. If he hits her with his magic accidentally or something like that and she drains him and kills him, kills her own child. Did Agatha ask for unlimited power in her devil's bargain on the road and get this instead? Did she kill her son?

I was thinking a lot about the Greek myth of King Midas, a character who asks for the Midas touch, the ability to turn anything he touches into gold. And the tragedy of that story, the lesson of that story is that his beloved, cherished little daughter comes running up to him. And he's like, can't stop her. And as soon as she touches him, she turns to gold and she's a statue. Like, she dies because of his quest for unlimited riches, unlimited power. So, yeah, this tragedy of someone who cannot be around power without sucking it up also makes me think of one of my favorite mutants, X-Men, Rogue. Very much so.

And that person would obviously isolate themselves or obviously turn themselves into the villain. You know what I mean? Like all this sort of stuff. And it's like the force proximity of the Coven True, these activities that they have to do in a group, potions, singing, we jibore, blah, blah, blah. like having to push through that isolation, can they find common cause? Can they push through prejudice? Can they figure out how to work together in order to save all of them?

I just think that's so devastating. So if this idea, I don't quite have the order directly in mind, like did she fuck around with the dark holds? And then her coven drained her, or she drained the coven and then she accidentally drains her son. And then she goes on the witch's road. to try to bring Nikki back to life. You know,

if Billy's here to try to bring Wanda back to life on the road and Agha walked the road to try to bring Nikki back to life, or did she walk the road to try to get power and the power gave her the dark hold and that made her a siphon her in the first place. And that's, you know, there's like a couple different permutations that are sort of roiling through my brain. But yeah, same. No matter what I think she drained her kid and killed her kid and Rio had to take

Nikki from her. And I'm sure we will get a horrifying scene of Catherine Hahn. begging her love Rio to not take her child who she is accidentally killed from her on Disney Plus coming to you soon. It's going to be an intense finish to the season. Is that your read-all of all this? What do you think? It is.

Yeah. I still think there was a part of me like when we heard that child's voice say Mama stop that made me think again, like, is this a trick? Is this a taunt of Agatha rather? Or is this a pure memory? I mean, I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, though. It could be a memory of everything that happened that someone is now using to or something is now using to destroy her, seek to destroy her. I also, I'm with you.

I think that siphoning her kids' power, what order the bargain and the dark hold happened? And I'm not sure. But the Rio Nikki Agatha tie there and Rio's job requirement, as she put it, and then at the nature, inherent nature of Agatha's power and the way that she would associate power and loss, that all feels really right to me. The question that it raises for me is like, if Nikki is truly dead, then is Nicholas Scratch not going to be a character in the MCU? Possibly.

I don't know we need him, you know? Interesting. Because then I start to think of like the moments like Alice talking about the tattoo coming from Colorado and thinking of like the Nicholas. Scratch Colorado New Salem associations from the comics is like just winks for comic fans and not necessarily setting up his return. I think there is also the question of like if your soul is reaped. Right. Can you come back in some other forum? But I think what you said a couple pods ago about how that story-wise, plot-wise, feels totally in bounds inside of a comic story. But then like thematically

inside of this show that we're watching feels like it might be in conflict with some of the lessons. And that was really on my mind. Even though we have both said, If you die on the road, we're not necessarily sure you're dead. Like, it seems probable that these characters might be there in some way. It still felt very important that when Alice is dead and teen is begging everybody to do anything they can to bring her back, the lesson he needs to learn is that they can't. Yeah. And all of that is building to this. So losing Alice and the loss of like an older woman who is a witch who he was like feeling connected to.

the Nicholas Scratch moment. Him being able to say Nicholas Scratch has to confirm once and for all for Agatha that he's not Nicholas Scratch. Right? Because if the sigil is still up and he was Nikki, he would not be able to say it.

Even though Rio told her that, like this is just like a sort of final, final confirmation. My interpretation, we're about to get to like the road of the reveal, but like I guess my thought is probably Agatha was walking around with a couple competing theories in her head. Like, is this Billy? Is this one of Wanda's kids? Is this my kid?

Brought to life back somehow and that she was like, the cynical side of her brain was like, it's probably not my kid. It's probably not my kid. But then like our heart kept going like, what if it's my kid? What if it's my kid? You know? And so like this final confirmation of like, it's not Nikki Scratch. Billy hits the goodbye on the board, but still like we've just used the board alone. We've broken all the rules. I don't, I'm feeling bad. I'm feeling bad. about everything that happens here, happen here today. Everything is tough.

I'm not sure everyone tidily closed the spirit door behind them. I don't know what's happening. But he, you know, he says to Agatha, you don't deserve protection. And in Wanda Vision finale, Agatha said to Wanda,

I take power from the undeserving. It's kind of my thing. I think a big question of this series, especially as they've done so much work to not fundamentally change who Agatha is, but put her in parallel with Wanda again and again and again. Yeah.

Wanda is someone who was like told that she was this, that the other thing. Wanda who cloked herself in power to not feel vulnerable again the way that she felt when, you know, her house was bombed when she was a child, like all this sort of stuff like that. Did all this work to put her in parallel with Wanda. How do we decide who is deserving? She decides Wanda is not deserving. Bill decides Agatha's not deserving. How, who deserves what? I'm just asking questions.

And here's a really important question. How did you feel Mallory Rubin when Lillia said, death comes for us all. Worried. Worried. But also, like, maybe that's part of the lesson that they have to heed that, because what is team's response to that line in particular, right? It's right.

Lillia says that right after Jen says, like, that's what this is all about for any of us, power. And so when Lillia then says death comes for us all, it's like, and the way you fend it off is by pursuing power time and time again. And so the lesson, much like fellowship, embrace the coven, sisterhood, stronger together, is you don't have to fear that. You know, that like, it's, again, the third pectoral brother, like, and took his hand and, like, went with him gladly. Like, I think it's not accidental that Evonora, this hideous specter appears as a ghost, a person who is unable to let go, who is holding on, latching onto this plane. And that our characters need to understand that there are things.

you have to be ready to move beyond. I'd be really sad if, like, we get a ghost wand up by the end of the show, someone who hasn't moved on because she's holding on to, like, her son or whatever. But, like, two things about that. One, I think it's really appropriate that Lillia, someone who we saw in, in episode three, as someone who might have literally seen death in that specter that the, in the black veil. But also, more importantly, were you thinking of Rio and Agatha when you heard death comes for us all?

Certainly. Let's get horizontal. Come on. Great. Let's crease up those brooms. Let's go. Speaking of Rio, she is absent from this final chapter. Presumably she's busy reaping Alice.

But there is a theory going around that I don't love, I don't hate, but that Alice's tattoo somehow saved her from being drained. I will say the camera like, it's very visible. The tattoo. It is. Yeah. The Agatha doesn't get to keep the juice. There's no reason she shouldn't get to keep the juice. Like, did the juice go back and, you know, so like, did Rio stay behind or reap the body?

But oops, Alice is not actually dead because she's got this tattoo and she got to take her juice back from Agatha. There's no reason that Agatha shouldn't like have the power. Yeah. I read that less is like she doesn't have the power and more as like she's ashamed of how she got it. so she turns it off. Oh, to me it looked like... You thought it was just gone. It was like...

She got that like sort of fiendy, galadryl with Nenya sort of look on her face when she was just sort of like, it was, like, an addiction thing and then like a disappointment of like, ugh. That it was gone. It's not much, you know?

Yeah, I'll be curious to see if that's the case. I thought to me the thing with the tattoo was less it protected Alice and more of the tragedy that her life was defined by her mother's fear of this one sure doom and then something else got her anyway. I don't like, I don't love a fake out death. And yeah, the tragedy of Alice is being that she lifted the curse and then I feel lighter.

I feel great. And then she died anyway. That's very sad. Very honestly buffy vampire slayer. But like I think that like, I think I don't love a fake out death. I don't love the idea of undoing every death we see. So like there's a part of me that wants Alice to like stay dead. Then we have to think about the lyrics.

I'll see you at the end, you know, all of that sort of stuff. and just like leaving. Like I know we left so we're not like actively watching Rio reap the body, but it also is just sort of like we just left her, you know? And it just, it makes me suspicious. I was interested too in how Rio like looked at Agatha when she was kind of like skulking out of the exit ahead of everybody else. And the way that like that was just fascinating. I do think that on that front, if Agatha had turned off the juice,

Don't you think she would have used it once she gets bodily grabbed by Lilia and Jen, who are possessed by the teen magic? I feel like she would have fought against them and with teen if she had any of that juice left, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The road is colored yellow, which makes me think that it's Lilia's trial next, but how are we getting to that trial? I don't know because we go into the road goop. And I have some questions about that.

But let's talk about the sigil, which we think is broken, even though we did not get a very satisfying, like, explosion effect on the mouth or anything like that that I was sort of hoping we were. You already did a beautiful mini read of this, but let's hear the whole exchange between Tina and Agha about the sigil last week. Did you put the sigil on me? No. Actually, I wouldn't know. A sigil works on the witch you cast it as well.

That's why we don't use them as much. They're super irritating. Can it be lifted? SIGils are destroyed, not lifted. But before you ask how, in that curious little voice of yours, the answer is when they're no longer needed, you don't have to know a person's name to know who they are. Beautiful.

We've been talking throughout about like a various theories about how the sigil could have been dropped here. Is it because the spellbook was dropped? Is it because Agatha figured out who he was. So he doesn't need the sigil anymore because she, if the sigil was there to protect his identity from Agatha, and she figured out who he is, then, like, it's no longer needed. This idea that feels just so true, like, that teen put the sigil on himself and has been hiding himself from himself this whole time.

I think so. Has been unaware he is. And I think part of that, you mentioned the various times that he would talk about his parents, you know, it seems to, it seems like an unconscious performance of the part of Billy Kaplan, ah, G. Shucks, uh, teen from Eastview. My parents go to sleep early. Yeah. Um, all that sort of stuff.

Yeah. My dad loves a suvee. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is who I, this is the role I'm playing Billy Kaplan. Yeah. Um, and I like this as an idea of like he's been playing this role of, of teen, uh, whether consciously or not, I would say not, is in parallel to Agatha's performance that gets dropped, uh, you know, a little later in the season in Wanda Vision.

Um. And then Billy gets around the Agatha sucking up his power thing by using his power to control Lily and Jen. Brilliant. This was intense. Very scary. We have seen Wanda do exactly this in Wanda when she has like the soldiers turn their guns on each other. A very Anatar thing for her to do. But their eyes glow red. Lily and Jen's eyes are glowing blue. They dump Agatha in the mud and then he tosses them in and spreads a blue crown that's very much like his. mothers and we get the Billy Elish Needle Drop that we mentioned. And it's an amazing moment.

And really good. Really good. Just like really, really good. The tower tarot card that Marble put out, to go along with all their other tarot card promos, has a tower with a lightning and fire and a blue fucking crowd at the top of it. And then two women being thrown. So is this Lilia and Jen sort of being thrown into the mud? or is this something we have yet to see?

Is this something we're going to see again later? Who's to say? Yeah. What do you want to say? I mean, we talked about this here and there and everywhere in other pods, but like, who is Billy Kaplan versus Billy Maximoff? And what's your best case theory of what has happened? How did Billy get here?

Yeah. My Rubin. So Billy is the comics character. Wicken. Just a huge, again, it seemed very much unlocked that this was coming, but just still a huge moment for the Young Avengers hive. Great week for Jomey. Great week for us. And basically, as we've discussed before in the comics, Wanda's Magic similarly like creates Billy and Tommy, but then Billy Kaplan, the Kaplan identity, because Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard are reincarnated and into different homes and different families.

And the very quick version of an incredible but complex comics plot is that Mephisto, shout out Mephisto and Master Pandemonium are involved. And this is ultimately like shards of soul. I don't, despite like loving genuinely getting to be on Mephisto Corner on the pods, I don't think that's what's going to happen here. And so especially like the little like, you know, the note about like the three years and the exact progression of the age from when we were in the Wanda Vision storyline

into where Billy is now. Now obviously, like, we say goodbye to Billy and Tommy in Wanda Vision. So then, like, the question of did Wanda say goodbye, but Billy then was sort of like ported to a different family? Or did we go back further in time?

and he is born into that family and grows up there. Well, yeah, does it have anything to do with multiverse of madness and the Billy and Tommy that exist in that storyline? Like, all of that sort of stuff. Jesus, yeah. I don't want to deal with it. Okay. So something that's been a popular theory that I think is worth bringing up here is this, this mention that we've gotten, it's both in news clips in the closing credits and was in the first episode, this idea that there was a car crash in East, you know. Yep.

and that two people survived but one didn't. So this idea that perhaps Billy and his parents were in a car crash, his parents survived. Billy Kaplan, who existed, died and Billy Maximoff takes over his body. There's a thing about this I like because, again,

if it's Billy Maximoff having to pretend to be whoever Billy Kaplan is in order to like get along. The boyfriend rejection call thing. is also sort of playing that into that for me, which is just sort of like, yeah, what if he had this boyfriend and then like Billy Maximoff finds himself in Billy Kaplan's body and he's just sort of like, I don't know you, like, I don't know you, because I don't know that that guy is Hulkling and Hulkling is canonically Billy's boyfriend in the comics. So I feel like this is another boy and a boy that maybe Billy Kaplan was dating that Billy Maximoff's like, I don't know you, unfortunately.

I don't know. That's a way extrapolation. But like the, if we get a Billy Flashback, episode next week or in the future, his parents, his boyfriend are all going to be part of whatever this life was for this kid before Billy Maximoff took over his body. The car crash thing is a great shout out because it was so glaring in that sequence, the bloodstain in the back. Like two airbags were deployed, the bloodstain in the back. And then Agatha literally says, my gut tells me they're related. But I can't shake this feeling. I'm seeing it wrong. So that coming. back to bear fruit in some way has felt inevitable since that line. And connecting it to

Billy feels, yeah, I, I'm, I could see that. But as much as I think the Ashuk's teen and the Billy with the crown and like maybe even more dramatic eyeliner that we see at the end of this episode are different personalities, I don't think Billy Maximoff is someone who would just kill Agatha and Jen and Lilia. Agreed. So what is happening here? There's two options as I see it. Agatha is taunting him.

Are you sure? Just like your mother. Are you sure? Billy is the one who wanted to go on the road. So you could interpret it in a way that Billy is the reason Sharon's dead and Billy is the reason Alice is dead. And if he is like a scared in any way of becoming like his mother. Mm-hmm.

Perhaps he would remove the other women from the road. I'm already on the road. I can just walk it by myself. I'll get them out of here. I drop them in the goop. I don't think that's going to kill them. Whether or not he watched the trailers and watched Jen crawl up into Westview or not, I don't know. But, like, I'll get them off the road.

I'll protect them. I'll save them, actually. I'm saving them by removing them. Yeah. Is one interpretation. If that's too kind of an interpretation, another interpretation could be he lost control. which is something we saw his mother do many times. Either way, I love that, honestly,

because it's not only a connection and a parallel to Wanda, it's a connection to Agatha, losing control, or I have to get these people away from it because I'm worried I'm going to hurt them. Or they're going to get hurt because they're near me. Just that proximity to you could be dangerous and how horrible it would be to live your life with that fear. But I agree.

I do not think Billy... I do not think we're watching a Billy Kaplan as a villain. They didn't play. They didn't play. I'm the astonishing. There's just, that's not a guy. They played. You should see me in a crown.

So, um, yeah. This, uh, we've been dancing around this, but I thought this encapsulation from our listener, Mikhail and that we got in an email was really good. Um, they wrote, if, if Billy's purpose is to save slash resurrect Wanda, then turning to Agatha makes perfect sense, but also offers the perfect opportunity, dare I say it, to punish Agatha for her role in the traumas of his childhood. It also makes sense for him to sigil himself not just as a disguise, but his protection against her.

I love the idea of Billy having this degree of agency in the story. I also love that this agency would come at a significant cost. By sigiling himself, Billy has inadvertently become a victim of his own plan, and now, in his awareness, we'll have to grapple with his original goals, his newfound anger at Agatha, and the surprisingly squishy side of the Wicked Witch of Westview that he probably would not have bet existed at all. So you know what I mean? Yep.

And I love that. I also like, I've mentioned this previously, but I do, I keep thinking about like when Agatha had Billy and Tommy in her like layer. Yeah. The fact that Billy was like his mind, that was when his mind was quiet. Yeah. Like that actually there has been a draw in a bond between these two for a while. And so like working back to to that point would I think be to like almost a natural state when a lot of this is about people judging you for your natural state would be like really rewarding to watch. Crown Corner. One last thing.

This is what Daniel, I think it's selling, I hope so, says about the crown. The quote, the crown was a result of beautiful and exciting collaboration between prop master, Russell Bobbitt, and my team. We pulled inspiration from the concentric lines in Damascus steel and also ripples in the surface of water. With a beautiful blue chrome, Ombray paint treatment, we finally arrived at this powerful crown. You'll just have to wait to see what else is revealed as his full identity and merges in the coming episodes. Exciting. Quick trailer spoiler watch.

A couple things. Again, skip out if you don't want. Hearing Billy and the trailer say Agatha Harkness will always be a covenless witch makes so much more sense in this version of Billy versus like the teen that we've been seeing. And then also ongoing trailer spoilers. Something that people have been tracking is that his hoodie, which starts blue, progressively in the trailer gets like umbrella red.

So, like, his is, like, his mom is, like, seeping into him in a way, which is, which is really fun. All right. That's, I mean, that's it. That's about, I mean, we have a few quick things to get through the end, but that's about two and a half hours on a 25-minute episode of television. So good job, us. Still not a record. The record will always be two and a half hours on a one minute and 30 seconds Spider-Man trailer. All right.

Darkest Hour, Weight, Weight, Power, which is the name of this episode. Let's go to Theory Corner. Never ready for the psycho steps. All right, this plume of bugs has just skittered its way all across our entire discussion here. So we don't have a ton to say. But like, our listener, Jazz was asking, where is Tommy? If Billy is here, where is Tommy? You already sort of alluded to this.

But like, in the comics, Billy emerges before Tommy. So, you know, just that. And I just think Tommy doesn't fit in this. show. A speedster? Yeah. Tommy's hanging out with Ralph Bohner somewhere. I do think, like, obviously, whatever Billy's quest is for not only the power that he's seeking, but the sense of, like, wholeness and his family. I won't be surprised if Tommy was my brother. Where's my end? But we're not going to, I do not think we're going to see Tommy, like, joining them on the road in a magical journey. It seems very unlikely. Again, the theory corner is running wild. What if

Billy asks for his, like, asked something about family is looking for his mom, but gets his brother instead, which is like, that would be lovely. A consolation prize. Okay. Um, is Rio here? I think we discussed this earlier, but I can't remember. Is Rio here to reap them all because they've all lived longer than they were supposed to. Yeah. Like, they all passed their due date before death. And Rio's like time to collect, you know. I mean, that lilia line certainly seems like pointing in that direction. Last one at least. Yeah. This is something that Jack Schaefer said in an interview when asked about Mephisto. She said, Mephisto is larger than me or the show.

Whatever you take that to mean? Sasha Barry Cohn is currently starring on disclaimer on Apple TV Plus. Just thing to know. Larger than me and larger than the show, sure. But does that mean we can't get like a... A little something here? Oh, I don't think it means no. Yeah.

I think it just means I am beholden to a larger plan for Mephisto, which is the constant rallying cry of these showrunners, which is like, I don't have full control over the larger web of the MCU, what corner am I allowed to play in sort of thing. Okay. I'm really, I'm much about worse at gathering Easter eggs than you are. You usually have a long section here and I have like a few poultry things, but let's do it anyway. Easter egg unlock thy hidden gate. Peppy. Other than Ralph Boner's drunk uncle, Mr. Shart, you want to call out in the Easter Egg section. We actually already talked about all of my favorites.

I really liked the Billy costume ties. And you mentioned that the moon phase, like stained glass in the cabin is visible from the inside, which I enjoyed seeing. And then the West View and East View penance, like above the door. Yeah. It's just like, again, that recurring note of like this place. This is about this place. that following them in to the road. The specific town.

Yeah, I enjoyed. I had to note that on the cabin wall, there is a poster for point raise, point raise California, which is mere 20 minutes from where I currently live, beautiful, idyllic place. I was wondering what the hell it was doing there, though. And there are surely other point raises in the world. We aren't the only one. But part of the fog, 1980 horror film by John Carpenter. of the fog was shot in point raise.

So the birds was shot in the Bedega Bay. So we got a lot of horror representation here in the Bay Area, but I don't know if we were acknowledging the fog in some way by putting a point raise poster in the wall. But I just got excited because hometown represent. Also, there's static on the TV is a very iconic poltergeist horror moment in the cabin. Whigwatch, TM with me, TM. Do you wear weeks? We've already talked about the perm mullet, which you soon will be engaging in yourself.

I loved it. I love Joe Locke's permullet. I thought it was wonderful. Very degrees of, I don't. Lillia's look, I couldn't even like peg down in any way, shape, or form. I was looking around for something that, like, looks like Lillia and I couldn't figure it out whatsoever. I do have questions about the side pony. The side pony, actually, I will say this.

The side pony is really good because Agatha has this, this permy, bangy side pony thing. And it's good because it's a nice decoy because once her hair comes down, she looks very Reagan from the poltergeist, like with the way that her bangs are laying and stuff like that. But she doesn't immediately look like that. And so that's like a sort of a fun thing. But the side pony, may it never return. They never darkened our doorways again.

Okay. Oh, my God. Good stuff. And that means we really did do it for real this time. Again, two and a half hours on a 25-ish minute episode. Had a blast. That's what we do the best. You had a blast.

You learned things about Ouija boards and broomsticks and The Exorcist and where to find them. And we learned things about Mallory's takes on how many baseball teams you're allowed to before. We'll be back next week with the penguin midseason. Check in. Yes. And Agatha, episode six, sad, back half already. Devastating. That's a end.

I know. Thank you to Mike Morgan, who is. was on the soundboard today and filling in for Steve, we really, really appreciate you, Mike. You're the best. Thank you to Arjuna Rangipal for his production work on everything, always incredible guy. Arjuna, if you didn't know, Jomey and Dineron for his work on the social. Jomi, I'm going to be back in L.A. soon. I miss you, Joe. And then on the video side, thank you to Sepschen-Sanchez for the work on this episode, which is coming out a little later because of us, not because of the video team. So we thank them for their work.

and to John Richter and to T. Cruz for additional video production work. Thank you for all the witches who've been listening and all the people who aren't witches who've been listening and we'll see you next week. Bye.