'Agatha All Along' Episode 3 Deep Dive
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We need to clasp hands and clear your minds. Once our intentions are aligned, it'll glow bright cerulean. What are our intentions again? To not die. I get cerulean and chartreuse confused. Is cerulean the green one? No, it's blue. Then it's not working. It's like a blue-green, maybe like a teal. It's green, team! Greetings. Yeah.

And welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin, and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only back to the Witch's Road, but also back into the House of R. Joining me today, letting me know that if I'm waiting for charcuterie, she doesn't think it's coming.

It's Joanna Robinson, Mallory Rubin. I am brimming with joy to be here with you today to talk about Agatha episode three. We have so much to talk about. My enthusiasm is as high as it was last week in terms of being here in witchy season. This is a, you know, obviously we're going to talk beat by beat about the episode, but like, um,

The closing song was like another jam on this episode. And this is a show where I let the credits just roll so that I could enjoy the track drop at the end. And I'm just beaming, beaming in Agatha season. Thrilled for you. Thrilled for you once again. Thrilled for all of us that we get to share this with you, walk the witch's road with you for two months. What a time. What a

What a time to be us. What a time to be you. What a time to be the House of R. We're here, if you haven't been able to deduce this yet, to talk about the third episode of Agatha All Along. But before we explain why it's given middle-aged, second-chance-at-love vibes, and we're here for it, some quick programming reminders. Over on the Ringerverse, Friday.

Button Mash is back to talk about the new Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom. And then Monday, top of next week, the whole crew is back for another Ringerverse Recommends. What a great reminder. Here on the House of R. Here for me to do my Ringerverse Recommends. Here on the House of R.

We already have waiting for you on the feed, our deep dive into the fantastic seventh episode, penultimate episode of season two of Rings of Power. These pods are going up back to back days. So if you're checking out the feed and you're here for Rings of Power and you're like, Agatha, where's Rings of Power? Just thumb down a little bit. There it is waiting for you already. Check it out next week.

We will be back on Thursday for the Rings season two finale deep dive. And then Friday for the Agatha. It is devastating. I do not want the season to end. I am not prepared for the season to end. And yet it must. And then Friday, Agatha episode four. You can find full video episodes of The House of R and The Midnight Boys. Pew, pew.

on Spotify and on the new Ringerverse YouTube channel. In addition to subscribing to that YouTube channel, Jo, how can the people follow along? Thank you so much for taking the video portion because I always forget details of it. But it is really fun to open the podcast on Spotify and, oh, there's a video there. Yeah. Yeah. So listen, why don't you subscribe to the podcast? In addition to watching us, you can also listen to us on the platform of your choice. I think that's a really fun thing for you to do. And also...

Follow us on social. We're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com is a great way to reach us. If I say anything today about witchcraft that you, a witch, listening to this podcast, disagree with, tell me about it. Hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com.

I love it. I love it. Lastly, it is time, as always, for our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. We have not watched beyond the third episode of Agatha all along, so we do not know what is coming, but we will be doing some speculation based on trailer footage. And then beyond that, if it's happened previously on Agatha all along, if it happened in WandaVision, if it ever happened in the MCU, or if it happened in Marvel Comics canon, it might come up today on the table.

All right, Joanna, I would drink the blood of a virgin if it would smooth out these wrinkles, especially now that we're on video. But we don't have time for that right now. Let's save that for later. Let's circle back, though. Let's circle back. Yeah. It's time to pod. Witch stuff go. Episode three, Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials, written by Cameron Squires, directed by Rachel Goldberg. Check it in at 38 minutes. Seekest thou thy road. It is time for the opening snapshot. ♪

My goodness. Oh, my gosh. I'm ready to turn my sink into a cauldron after hearing that. Do you have a sous vide? Are you prepared for this eventuality? No. I don't think anybody who basically is only alive thanks to Postmates and DoorDash has a sous vide. Though I do have a large enough kitchen sink maybe to attempt to do something like this in it. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know if this is in my future. Um, maybe we'll discuss more as we go. Potion making has always appealed to me, you know, since my time in the dungeons with Snape. Joanna. Yeah. Yeah. Give us a taste. We'll table setter before we go beat by beat through the episode. What did you think of episode three of Agatha all along? Well, sip in the wine glass. Um, so listen, I, so if I had to pick, uh, you know, in the three episodes we've seen so far, I would say this might be my least favorite of the three. Um,

just that being said, I really enjoyed it. I just, my, I think my main note would be, uh,

Aubrey Plaza come back to us and never leave us again. I'm really, really missing and wanting to see her character. I could never get enough. So I think I'm missing that element of the show right now. But I had a really good time with it. I think we learned a lot. And I was just telling Arjuna and Steve before we started recording, this is a show that I like...

love watching and then really love talking about researching going down little like lore nooks and crannies about sort of similar to Rings of Power it's obviously not like as dense a text but there's just like a lot of

breadcrumbs to steal a line from the show that we can follow. Yeah, I had a good time with it. What about you, Mallory? Very similar. I also had a very good time with it. I am now adjusting to what the flow and rhythm of the show is going to be, and I'm very excited for this trial of the week.

structure that we're going to presumably be inhabiting the rest of the way, maybe up until the finale. I was curious if your feelings on the episode had anything to do with your particular relationship to red wine. Would you have felt differently about this if it had been like a sparkling rosé, like maybe a nice natural wine? What sort of wine do you go toward for red wine?

The thing that I say that the people who know me like to make fun of me saying at restaurants is, what is your driest rosé? So a dry rosé. Dry rosé. I love it. That's wonderful. So if you had seen a dry rosé on the table there, you're like Sharon. No questions. Oh. No questions.

Fill up my glass. Chug it down, baby. Down the gullet. I know what genre I'm in. It's time for us to drink some wine. Mallory, do you enjoy a bold red, a Rioja, or what are you interested in? I used to love red wine, and now I basically can't have it. I think I'm allergic to red wine.

It gives me a headache. Yeah. The tannins or something. Yeah, it's just an instant headache. It's a disaster. But I have really been on a very satisfying and rewarding orange wine kick out here in Southern California, which has been delightful. And I do love a rosé, and I love a sparkling rosé. I love a sparkling wine. That's, yeah, I think that's the thing that would get me right away, and the Big Little Lies house would be like a

very fruity, sour ale. That's the one I would go for right away. Yes. You love a sour. That's true. I probably wouldn't have gone for the red. I think I would have been like teen just waiting to have my palm sliced open for my unpoisoned blood as a crucial final ingredient in the potion. But you don't have a choice. If you're a witch...

you know you don't have a choice you can you can dump the bold red into a planter you still have to toss it on the upholstery they don't care if you get a headache you still have to drink it yeah exactly yeah rough should have been like an alternative there oh well okay Joe any emails that you want to hit before we dive in

Yeah, we got, you know, just a metric ton of emails about one thing in particular, which was a Wizard of Oz reference that we failed to call out last week, which is when they say the line, she's really most sincerely dead about Wanda. And this is something that the Munchkin coroner reads out in Wizard of Oz. I...

I think I missed that. I did have a couple other Oz references that I wrote down and forgot to say last week. And that was Agatha's sort of very loose

pigtails that she wears at the start of episode two are quite similar to some depictions of Dorothy. And then also she says, whose shoes are these? Right at the beginning of episode two. And I thought that might be an Oz reference. And then our listener Knox wrote in with like a ton of Oz references. He's noting like every time they say gold and bricks and all that sort of stuff like that. But he also pointed out something that I really like is, you know, they go...

Into the road via cellar door. Yep. And he said it reminded him a lot of like, you know, the storm cellar in Wizard of Oz. So we are on Oz Watch. We have a few things to call out this week, but thank you all for your emails and we'll have a few more as we go. Wizard of Oz used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid. Have I told you about my relationship to Wizard of Oz? Tell me right now. I used to watch it

All the time. Yeah. To the point where my grandma made me, like, a little Dorothy outfit. So I had, like, a little blue gingham dress and, like, a little, like, blouse that I would wear. I had a basket. I had a stuffed Toto dog. And I used to just, like, sit in front of the Wizard of Oz. I must have had ruby slippers. Of course. It would be impossible to make the whole fit and leave that out. That would be... And my mom used to just, like, braid my hair and then just, like, sit me in front of Wizard of Oz. And I could not have been happier. So...

Yeah. Ozwatch. I'm here for it. I also, I mean, I love the books as well. The books go on and on and on beyond that. So, uh, you put on the full fit every time you sat down to watch it. I'm sure it wasn't every time, but it was definitely like, there's nothing else in my childhood that I used to cosplay to watch. But, uh, the Dorothy outfit for Wizard of Oz is definitely something I did. Yeah. Did you ever consider naming an actual pet Toto?

I was never – no, I have not. I'll think about it. Or like a random teen that I pick up. Just calling him Toto. I'll think about it. There you go. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe we'll watch it together one day. Was it The Flying Monkeys? You can hold my hand during The Flying Monkeys. Combination of The Flying Monkeys and just the general role that Tornado plays. I was like terrified. Absolutely terrified of tornadoes when I was a kid. Terrified. Excellent. If only Glenn Powell had been around to –

Make the idea of the twister all the more appealing. Eat shit, Helen Hunt. Where's Glenn Powell? Should we deep dive? Yeah, let's do it. Is that like a symbol at the end? Yeah. Great stuff. Steve. What a guy. Okay, let's set out on the road. We pick up in episode three right where we left off. Toes in the dirt. Embarking on this journey. And...

Coming to terms before we embark in full on the fact that we successfully conjured the road in the first place, it's fun to very quickly track where everybody is with this. For Teen, it's exactly how I pictured it. Alice and Lilia weren't actually sure that the road was real. Jen...

fairly unreasonably is like, should we talk about the creepy, crawly hell spawns that were pursuing us with haste down the stairs into the cellar? And Sharon just wants to call the cops, but alas, has no cell service out here on the road. And this is not the last tough beat for Sharon. Sharon, like,

made this turn pretty quickly. She seemed kind of like excited to be, she was like kind of prancing down the road at the end of episode two. So, but she's like, uh, this is a kidnapping. Uh, and I'm not a fan of it. So, yeah, you know, you think you're doing laundry. You're excited to be invited to a party. You get to sing. You don't know the words. And then very quickly, you, a person who was, uh,

terribly traumatized by what Wanda did to you in your town, find yourself again swept up inside of a witchy circumstance that you did not into or even understand. I can see why Sharon was thrown by this in a hurry. I have a question for the residents of Westview. You can leave Westview. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Why haven't thou left Westview if Wanda trapped you there and traumatized you? Why would you stick around is my question. I have similar questions about the foundation of the WandaVision house. I know it's probably been cathartic to blanket it with quite rude graffiti. You could just bulldoze it and build something else there in its stead so that it's not a constant, unceasing reminder of your torment. Maybe it's their never again moment. Oh, wow.

Who do you think is leaving that graffiti of all of our suspects? I'm going to say it's teens' parents who were mentioned no fewer than 75 times per episode so far. Yeah. Can't wait to find out about their artistic inclinations. They come over from Eastview to have their way with the spray paint. Love it. Love it. Joanna.

When Lilia observes that the Salem Seven are a share problem now, Teen asks, is that because covens share blessings and burdens alike? Which, you know, lovely. Sounds like doing a pod. And in this scene, this sets up, again, like one of the numerous mentions, as was the case in the premiere of Teen's Parents. They are repeatedly on our minds and on Teen's minds in a way that feels very deliberate, right?

Oh, I'm 100% positive they're asleep unless is this like perpetual night? Like it's a vibe. It's a vibe. How are the vibes on the witch's road? The vibes are intense on the witch's road. I don't know if the vibes on the witch's road are for me. They're for me to watch and enjoy. I don't know if they would be for me to partake in. Though I do love the concept of a trial and a test. I love a riddle. Maybe I would want to go on the witch's road. It's like a riddle. I'm still thrown by the red wine. Escape rooms.

sort of experience. Yeah. Are you an escape room enthusiast? I have done some and had a really good time with them. Did you ever do? I've never done one. There was a Thrones one at South by Southwest one year, and that was really fun. Sounds great. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds delightful. All right. Maybe we should do one. Arjuna is an escape room enthusiast. Is he? Yeah. I mean, I love a puzzle. Same. Yeah. I love a puzzle as well. So this idea, Jo,

blessings and burdens shared. This seems like it's going to be very central thematically to the season. How much of what happens for our characters on the road will be about confronting their individual trauma and trials, the individual thing that they are striving for, this prize that keeps earning a mention, and how much is going to be about

either through the parallels that are unfolding and the fact that definitionally these experiences are shared, the Coven Collective, because right now the Coven for them, other than Teen, who like really is

Hyped to be there and wanted to be taken here. Yeah. It's just a matter of necessity and convenience and a hard pitch because they're on the clock to solve something. So will it become more? Will they be able to unite and truly embrace the heart of what a coven is and can be? And at what point might those strands of the individual and the collective –

Yeah, I mean, we see that in this episode when we see a character like Agatha, who we think of as purely selfish, and she is in many regards. But when she gives Jen the pep talk at the end of the episode, she needs it for herself to get out of there before they drown. But also, as we love to talk about, maybe we should come up with a term for this.

There felt like there was truth in there as well. It didn't feel like complete bullshit. It felt like, I see you. I respect you. I don't like you. I respect you. And that felt like a bond of sisterhood. We'll talk about sort of the ritualistic bonds of sisterhood that exist inside witchcraft in this episode. But I think that's all part of it where it's like, is Agatha capable of choosing the collective over the selfish personal goal? Yeah.

Is it possible for an entire coven to survive the witch's road or is the walk down the witch's road? It's like whoever's left at the end gets the prize. You know, these are questions I have.

Very top of mind when we see moments like Agatha reaching out and shouting no to stop Teen from drinking the wine, etc. Excited to talk about some of these as we go today. So Sharon says, like, I wouldn't have really expected to find anything down here. Down here meaning like we're in the upside down basically beneath Westview. Shout out, Sharon. Other than a failed transit system. One more indictment here of Westview. Do you feel like we're going to get to the physical –

failed transit system, like a derelict subway underneath the Westview or something like that? Yeah, I think basically anything that is earned a mention, I consider now a lock, including, of course, Mephisto, who was mentioned by name thrilling in this episode. Great stuff. I haven't heard how Jomie reacted to that. Do we know? Do we have a read on Jomie? This is a great question. Steve? Steve?

We were enthralled. Okay. Jomie's into it. He's not upset about Mephisto being here? It was more of a, oh boy, here we go again. Okay. Well, I hope it all turns out to Jomie's liking. I'm very invested in Jomie's emotional investment in Mephisto. So, yeah.

Are you more invested in Mephisto or in Jomie's relationship to the idea of Mephisto? Jomie's relationship to the idea of Mephisto. Beautiful. There you go. Coven. That's a coven for you.

I mean, the Midnight Boys sound, and House of R and Midnight Boys both sound like covens. And I feel like we are a part of one blended coven, you know? Absolutely. Our graphics suite for our new video pods, very Agatha-y, very witchy, very coven-y. Like, we've got runes. We've got some fun House of R Easter eggs in those runes, folks. Cats and apples. Some apples.

Both witchy iconography. Indeed. Yeah. Indeed. Jen pipes in and says of Sharon, I thought this was quite rude. Uh,

Helpful interjection, random woman with no obvious magical qualities. I'm curious whether Steve, a soundboard soundbite enthusiast, will be clipping that for future use during House of Arc cross talk. Steve, we defer to your wisdom as always. Up to you. Stay tuned for episode four. I like that, um...

I thought that was like a nice economical way for us to let us know that Jen knows that this is absolute bullshit that Sharon's here. Yes. Yeah. And she has some like reasonable concerns, right? She doesn't belong here. We're trying to figure this out. We're thinking about our own quest and preservation. Like what if she's a liability? And that's,

that's a reasonable thing to worry about if you don't know exactly what awaits. And so we have on the one hand, teen saying something that's very like Star Wars, broom boy, anyone can tap into the force coded, right? Anyone could be a witch with proper training. Team Sharon, she's a part of this. Let's support her. Let's encourage her. And then you have this question of like whether somebody who doesn't really know what's happening might be

cause peril and harm to themselves, to your quest, et cetera. So what is happening here? What is the road? What is the mission? What awaits? Well, I think part of that, before we get into that, I think part of that is like,

Jen, I think Jen specifically, the potions master would be most concerned that they have the correct ingredients that they need for this. And like, if you don't have all the ingredients, the potion doesn't work. And, you know, given that we are doing custom made trials for each character and we don't have an earth, which though we assume we

We will quite soon. You know, Jen's like, how's this all, how's this going to work? Right. Yeah. Right. And what is the, this exactly? They're going to have to team their fears. So Lilia says our worst nightmares, what form Jen asks and Alice helpfully explains trials. At least that's what the song says. So we got the lyrics last week.

This is the title of this episode. As we noted last week, the episode titles are going to be pulling from song lyrics, wonderful stuff. Through many miles of tricks and trials, we'll wander high and low. Tame your fears. A door appears. The time has come to go. So as expected, as we talked about last week, the ballad is going to be a roadmap. The lyrics are going to be signposts for the trials, for the episodes of this show, which are going to be driven by these trials.

This is fun. This is like a treasure map. A puzzle. We can pour over the song lyrics and try to piece together what might await. We will look back at them with new clarity after we experience something alongside the characters. It's like a brilliant and delightful little structure for the show. I think, yeah, and we will have a section sort of in our speculation section. We had a listener go kind of ham on the song lyrics, trying to parse them out episode by episode, which is going to be really fun. But again, if you don't want to hear that, that'll be in the speculation section. But yeah,

I also like, there's two things I like. I like that Alice, we didn't note this last week, but when they're done singing the ballad, Alice wipes a tear away because as we know, her mom, Lorna, this was a signature song for her mom. And I like that it's her sort of the one for whom the lyrics would be most top of mind is Alice. So, yeah.

Absolutely. And what a showing we get from Lorna Wu in this. That might have been my favorite part, actually, of the whole episode was the Lorna vision. Oh, man. Yeah. In general, I loved the hallucination sequence, but that one was, yeah, particularly striking. So Agatha tells them that the road will test their knowledge, specifically their knowledge of the craft.

one trial for each skill. Do you think she meant the craft or do you think she meant the 1990s film The Craft, capital T, capital C? And if so, I think I can walk the witch's road. Both.

based on the pop culture references that continue to abound in this slice of the Marvel universe, I think why not both? This idea of knowledge and testing knowledge will again be part of that conversation, that beautiful moment between Agatha and Jen that you already referenced, this key climactic thrust in this episode. If each trial pairs with a skill,

They do need, need a green witch to show up. Do you have an official prediction for when Rio will be returning? I think based on trailer footage, and Arjuna and I were talking about this, I would give it mere seconds after the opening of next week's episode. Okay. So Sharon's out. Rio's in. That would be my guess. Fantastic. I hope you're right. It was painful to go without Rio this week. Painful. Painful.

How are they going to pass the trials without powers? This is, again, I think a very reasonable question and concern that Jen is voicing. Teen, this different perspective, this different relationship to magic, like this dawning, right, this seeking of an era of discovery for him. I've been studying. Now I am seeking the road. I am in pursuit of my power. All he's doing is he's like,

All he sees is possibility. Everything that's happening is exciting, but also it's all about what he might discover. For all of the other characters, it's about the trauma, the horror, the painful memory, the pulling back into something they'd rather forget. The fallout of being a witch in the first place and how it's damaged and hurt all of them. And I think it's not a coincidence that...

You know, those different perspectives are experiential, but they're also gendered, you know? And so it's like, you know, the one male in this team is just sort of like, witchcraft. It's great, right? Witch stuff go. Witch stuff go. We got an email from our listener, John, that I really liked. In response to this, like, conversation we had about, like, Pokemon-ing the witches, saying, you know, potions witch, protection witch, divination witch, etc.,

John said, on the subject of Pokemon-ing the witches, I also find this convention trope device, which I think of as X-menifying the witches, generally pretty annoying. Having said that,

I'm totally willing to accept this version of witchery in the context of the Marvel Universe. Though I think it's worth noting that the MCU does seem to have drawn subtle distinctions between witchcraft and innate powers. Wanda already had mutant, question mark, abilities that were distinct from the witchcraft. She learns to practice

after WandaVision, which is also true in the comics, correct? And Joe Locke's character, Teen, suggests that he's learned to cast spells, do incantations, et cetera, but has not yet unlocked power. And I mean, that is just the... That's a great email from John, and I think that is just like the excitement of the text that we're about to consume, which is what's the craft in witchcraft? And...

I loved the potion-making stuff in this episode. Yeah, it was. That was really fun. And it's fun now to, like, think about what else awaits on that front with this framing from team of, like, emphasis on the craft, the analog nature of interacting with this. Like, when we hear Jen say later, and it's a lament at the time, like, there was a time when I would have just been able to wave my hand and fix this, and that...

of course, would make you feel strong and powerful and bold and capable, but it almost untethers you from like the tactile nature of like the thing you're interacting with. And so that feels like a key part of the journey too is like rediscovering what their power even is, what it means, what it looks like, where it comes from and what their connection to magic and witchcraft overall, but like their specific slice of that to John's email. Um,

means to them. So like to see that almost like for teen it's discovery and for everyone else it's like rediscovery is I'm really interested in that. I think that's going to be a cool journey to watch. Jen asks teen speaking of teen because he's very chatty. He's got a lot to say. He's got a lot of thoughts. Yeah.

Like, who the fuck are you again? And we talked about this last week, how the two times that Teen tried to say his name in front of Agatha and it's garbled, we get the melty mouth effect and we can't see. It's just Agatha. So, like, we didn't know if that would be the case around other characters. But here it's confirmed that that is the case in front of other characters because they...

they're all like, what? Whoa. Yeah. No, I think... And I think what's also... We didn't underline this last week in episode two. Anytime someone asked Teen who he was when they were recruiting the witches, that's when...

Agatha would intervene and say, that's my pet. That's Toto. That's whatever. She was trying to stop him from, you know, triggering the sigil and letting the other witches know that something's going on with him. So let's hear, this is a fascinating conversation about the sigil, the spell that someone has put on teens. Steve, can we hear this?

Well, I'll be. Someone's put a sigil on that boy. A what? Don't look at me. I didn't put that clumsy glamour on him. Sigils are beneath me. A sigil is a spell? A sigil is a reduction spell that hides something. In this case, you. From witch folk. Looks like Agatha brought a sparkly little mystery with her. She was probably trying to keep them all to herself. Why would someone want to hide me? Look.

I have no idea what's under that sigil. He could be something special or he could be a pest that a cranky witch stashed under a rock. We can crack him open later. Catherine Han, Joanna, what did you make of this discussion of the sigil? I loved this. Um,

The something we talked about last week is this idea that the sort of garbled warped thing across his mouth looked like either a W or an M or why not both, which makes us think that Wanda Maximoff put that sigil on him. The sigil like in the.

in general. As in everything in witchcraft varies depending on who you're talking to, what kind of witchcraft they practice, et cetera, et cetera. But you can put a protection sigil on a door, prosperity sigils on candles, et cetera, et cetera. Like they're about an intention. And I like this idea and they're also- Jen's edible candles as well? Yes, but you have to burn it first. It's an FDA thing.

But I like this idea that it's like connected, could be connected to chaos magic. If Wanda Maximoff put this sigil on this kid, did she do it intentionally or did it happen as basically the hex happened in the first place as an unintentional manifestation of her emotions? Yeah.

This is just something I want, and I didn't intentionally cast a spell, a clumsy glamour. Like, if it's like a crude sort of spell, it wasn't intricately woven by the Scarlet Witch. It was something that was just sort of flung out there in the universe because an emotion Wanda was having, you know? Yes. Yeah, the use of clumsy there felt...

Very deliberate in that respect. Like, not necessarily that it's somebody who is ill-equipped to do advanced magic, but that it was, like, reflex, unintentional, haphazard, the byproduct of another circumstance. And then, obviously, like, we'll talk about this more later when we get to the conversation on the couch between Alice and Teen, but we have that, like...

Yeah, a lot of meaningful things happened to me when I was 13, too. Moment from teen. It's like, what happened when teen was 13? Well, the hacks happened in Westview. WandaVision happened. Like, teen is 16. The events of WandaVision were three years ago. This all feels connected. I did like the, you know, when we talked last week with teen in particular, the...

shows active embrace of this. Like we're not being coy. No, not insulting you. So like the spark, I just outright saying sparkly little mystery I thought was delightful. Really fun. And I, I don't understand people who are like salty about it. Cause I'm like, they're not, they're not really trying to hide it. It's the, it's the text of the show. I, I, I quite like it. Yeah. I get the trust to get everyone to focus.

The real value lies at the end of the road. Wow. Amazing. You think Agatha has Boyz II Men on her Spotify playlist? Yes, I do. I think so too. I do. I love it.

So she runs down what everyone wants, right? Yes. Unbinding for Jen, reversing fortunes for Lillia, mommy mysteries for Alice. And we're going to talk about another thing that made me think of in a second. But like Ozwatch 2024, we have to think about a heart, a brain, a home, the nerve. Like, you know, what are, you know, folks trapped in Oz are wanting. And...

is there a one-to-one correlation? There doesn't need to be, but I think it is interesting, you know, and then when we unbinding for Jen, if we, if we take that thing you want and we relate it to the trial, um,

Jen, I don't think was technically unbound, but she was able to access a power that she kind of felt she thought she didn't have anymore. Right. So there is an unbinding of sorts that happens for Jen here on the road. And does that mean that like Lillian, her trial will reverse her fortune or Alice will figure out what happened to her mom before we even get to the end of the road? There's going to be like, you know, it's at the end of Wizard of Oz. Yeah.

The wizard who's not a wizard says, like, you had this all along. You actually had this all along. Yeah. So, you know, no need. A beautiful lesson. Yeah. To watch the members of this coven discover. I'm excited. Sharon, not really part of this conversation.

Let me remind you of why you're here. She wants to... Like Dorothy, she just wants to go home. Like, that's true. Hex against her. She's just not there. Very funny moment. Yeah. Like, you look away for two seconds. And Sharon's having a bad time. It's like...

choose your reference, right? Is this never-ending story? Is this old man Willow getting sucked into the roots of the tree? She's shaking off vines, talking to the elements of the forest, just wants to like sit down, take a beat, puts her bag down. It gets sucked into like the mossy bog and she is being sucked in as well. Yeah.

Here's my question about this. Do you think, this is sort of bringing Speculation Corner up in advance, but if we think- It's hard to separate Theory Corner today. We should say that. It's just like, the whole show is going to be Theory Corner. If we think that Rio is going to pop up in next week's episode to take the place of the Earth Witch- Yeah. Yeah.

Do we think she, like, and since it's, like, the Earth sucking, you know, Sharon down in, do we think that was actually, like, Rio actively trying to... Swap places? Yeah, like, get her out of commission so she could pop up and be like, I heard you need an Earth witch. Here I am, you know? Yeah. Or is it the Earth itself, like, this elemental aspect of magic rejecting Sharon's presence there? Right. Because she is, despite, again, the, I think, very...

heartening and admirable reminder from teen that anyone can be a witch. Not currently a witch as far as we know. And so there are like, she's out of sync with the group, the entire episode, right? She drinks the wine first, that starts the clock. And the end of the episode, she is dead or at least they think she's dead. And so like, is the road trying to eliminate her or is Rio? I think either of those are interesting points.

It also sets a rule for us that we love a rule, a clear-cut rule. Yes. Don't step off the road. This is great stuff. Yeah. And Agatha's like, I didn't really think I needed to say this to you dipshits. Yeah. Stay on the fucking road. I just love Agatha. Yeah. She's wonderful. She's the best. Yeah. Teen, parsing every word like a true podcaster. It's like,

That was a song lyric, right? I stray not from the path. I hold death's hand in mind. Joanna, again, our pal Sharon, she did in fact stray from the path as just discussed. And at the end of the episode, we'll get to whether we think she is actually dead, but appears to be dead at the end of the episode, straight off the path. So that lyric appears to be a guidepost for what could happen and then what does. Yes.

I want to talk a bit about another text, a witchy text that the show might be pulling from, especially since it's not just a witch show. It's somewhat of a witch musical show, which is Stephen Sondheim's

into the woods. We, we got an email from a listener about this, but it was on my mind also because we're watching these, uh, characters go into the woods, which in any given fairy tale, the reason that show exists and the premise of that show is a bunch of storybook characters all go into the woods for their own individual, uh, you know, mission to, you know, to break a curse, to, you know, to do this and the other thing. And their, their, um, journeys into,

intertwine. And so there's a lot of that text here. And our listener Nathan wrote, one of the themes that he was really latching on that seemed to be consistent across the two was, and this is what he wrote, the subtle twist on be careful what you wish for. Trope seems very similar between these two titles. It's not the wish itself,

that you need to be wary of, but it's the journey to get your wish. What do these characters have to lose to get their wish and reach their quote happily ever after? And into the woods, the characters leave a literal trail of bodies on their way to the end. There is no character in that show that escapes unscathed. So it was incredibly ironic that the last lyric they sing would be happy ever after. But it's not the final lyric of the show because immediately after that, Cinderella says, I wish before the music cuts out. This is both. She goes, I wish.

This is both a musical motif brought back for the fun of the show, but also a cautionary message from Sondheim about how there really is no happy ever after. In the end, we will always wish for something else, and we'll have another reason to venture back into the woods. So here's some lyrical beats from Into the Woods that I was thinking of when I was watching this episode. Will you be singing them? Will you be doing this in song and dance? No dance. Definitely no dance. Okay.

The path is straight. I know it well is, you know, the woods are just trees. The trees are just woods. Yeah.

quote, into the woods to lift the spell, into the woods to visit. This is when they're saying like what they want, into the woods to visit mother, into the woods to fetch the things, to make the potion, to go to the festival. Like the, like to visit mother is very Alice coded for me to make the potion, like et cetera, et cetera. Um, this is one of my favorite lyrics from the main into the woods song, into the woods to get the thing that makes it worth the journeying. Like what are we getting? And in the end of, um,

the journeys of these characters, similar to like in the Wizard of Oz, the thing that they wished for is not actually the thing that they wanted or the thing that they really find at the end of the day. Little Red Riding Hood sings a song in, in Into the Woods, a couple songs, but she sings a song and, and the, the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood is the main do not stray from the path of,

story that exists in folklore. And so Little Red Song, which I did sing at like a talent show when I was a small child in probably a red cloak. Sensational. One of many...

terrible decisions I made at talent shows as a child because I was like, the world wants musicals, right? They don't. They don't actually. But you think it was a terrible decision if we can deduce from that that you did not place at the talent show.

I can't remember if there were prizes, but I surely never won one. Well, I would have awarded you a prize. I think this is a great choice. So what Little Red sings in Into the Woods after the trauma of the wolf and her grandmother and everything like that, she says, Mother said straight ahead not to delay or be misled. I should have heeded her advice, but he seemed so nice. And when she's talking about they were off my path, so I never had dared like these things.

This thing that Little Red discovers off the path. You're not supposed to stray from the path. This trauma happens to her with the wolf because she does. But in the end, it's an important part of her, like, maturation and evolution as a character. Right. Um...

The potion making in Into the Woods, the brilliance of Into the Woods is that the potion that they're trying to make, and they have three midnights to do it, and so there's this ticking clock, which I thought of as soon as the ticking clock appeared here. They have to gather- So you still did not think of the Kevin Costner classic draft day when the clock started to tick. And I never shall. And I never shall. Okay. The ingredients that they're gathering for the potion are items from a famous fairy tale. So it's-

Cow is white as milk, jack in the beanstalk, cape as red as blood, little red riding hood, hair as yellow as corn, Rapunzel, slippers pure as gold, Cinderella. So they basically have to plunder other stories to get the items they need for this potion. And last but not least, I want to – the witch figure in this story, who is a villain of sorts in the story, but fundamentally at the end of her journey in this particular piece –

She's not presented as a villain, but as someone who is just coldly rational. And it reminds me a lot of what Lillia is talking about when she talked in a previous episode about accurately predicting the future and being driven out of towns for accurately predicting the future. This idea of the witch in culture being rejected, not because she is evil and scheming, but because she is right.

or she is wise and nobody wants to hear it. So the lyric from The Witch's Last Song and Into the Woods, she says to the other characters, you're so nice. You're not good. You're not bad. You're just nice. I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right.

I'm the witch. You're the world. I'm the hitch. I'm what no one believes. I'm the witch. And so I think that idea, especially as we consider when we're going to talk about the visions that these characters have. Yeah.

how witchcraft has been rejected or, you know, or these women have been plagued by a world that doesn't want them. I'm really curious to see how that all manifests as we get, particularly in Lillia's story, I think, is the one I have my eye on. Yeah. Yeah. And then again, that makes me think again of that Agatha Jen moment because Agatha is,

encouraging her to tap into her knowledge, right? That's the thing they can't take away from you. But also that is...

To your point, the thing that they fear actually is like what the witches are able, not just through power, but through, yeah, through awareness and through knowledge and through information, able to do or see or glean or share. And like in Jen's hallucination, it was so unmooring and unsettling to see this specter move toward her and

And say that she was inconvenient. An inconvenient woman. I love that. I love that. I can't wait to talk about the Hulu stations. So creepy. But yeah, so anyway, bottom line, I really recommend people listen to or watch Into the Woods. Not the film version. There is a perfect film stage version from the 80s that I really recommend you check out. With love and respect to Meryl Streep, the film version is very bad. The stage version is where it's at.

I recommend. Merrill catching strays. It's not Merrill's fault, but it's bad. Joanna? Yes, Mallory. The first trial is here. Yeah. Sharon's wondering, how can we walk if there's no other walk? And then boom, suddenly, just a frankly lovely beach manse appears under an orange sky. The road will reveal a new path to you.

When you are ready and when it is ready to do so, we will hear later in the episode, the road changes for the coven. And I love that because not just the tailor-made trials-

But then it means that Agatha, who has walked the road before, doesn't know exactly what to expect. This is a specific rendering and specific to this circumstance and this context and this time and presumably also all the other people who were there with her. To your point about the alchemy of making a potion, it's like you can only get this exact experience, this exact brew with this group of people. And we are missing Rhea.

I was waiting for you to say brew. Brew. The brew. Won't be the last time. The brew. So as they walk from the wooded trail into the sandy shores and Sharon wonders, you know, is this the end? Teen says, that would be such a bummer.

And everybody looks at him. We have these, we're in this like line of profile shots. So our attention is really drawn to the facial expressions, the eye contact. And we are reminded once again that he is the one of the group who is

thrilled to be there, who wants to soak up every second, who can't wait. It's not trepidation for him to see what the trial is. It is jubilation. And I think that's part of the lesson he's going to have to learn on the road here. But I think also everyone gives him a look. Agatha's feels more lingering than anyone else's. And so I'll be interested to go back and reparse that moment when I know more about this sparkly little mystery that is Dean.

There's also, I want to do Oz Watch 2024 here and say, when we watch their feet step from the woods onto the sand, it's very much when Dorothy and her companions step off the yellow brick road into the field of poppies. Yeah. And then I was thinking, this doesn't happen at that moment, but after they wake up from the poppy sleep, the angelic voices on the backing track of the movie sing, you know, you're out of the woods, you're out of the woods.

the dark you're out of the night step into the sunset into the light so this idea that they're like leaving the woods to the sunny beach but surely through the oven and then back into the woods but like right you know uh but wait till you see the kitchen in between it's gonna be great bury me in this kitchen yes and they do get to the kitchen okay yeah they do sharon careful what you say out loud my goodness

Before they can see the kitchen or the living room. Or the built-in bar. Or the spa at home gym or anything else. Oh, my God. The spa. The steam room. Oh, yeah. I love when Teen was like, is that eucalyptus? Eucalyptus steam in a cedar steam room? Heaven. Por favor, please. Heaven. The front door. Carvings. Yes. The phases of the moon. And Teen notices it's full. The water phase. Now, in short order...

They will be under mortal threat of drowning as the water works its way through the cracks and fractures in the glass. Great job, Agatha. So what other – I mean, listen, we all lash out, but that one was really costly. Sure.

What might the other phases of the moon indicate then about what awaits in future trials? I think what's really fun to think about here is if you rewatch the ballad scene. So we know the Earth Witch position. We know that Rio is in the Earth Witch position or that Sharon was the fake Earth Witch here. But nowhere else.

Mm-hmm.

Agatha very helpfully gestures to people as she does it so that we know which element goes with which. And I really like rewatching it. It's so funny because she just like, she fudges Earth. She points to the other three and then when Earth comes, she just sort of like flourishes and doesn't actually point to Sharon. I found a chart about elemental phases, like the moon and how they relate to elements. It does not line up, however, with time.

teen's declaration that the full moon is the water phase and that does not surprise me because again inside of witchcraft you're going to find a million different sort of designations but here's what we have um

Lilia is the air sign. That's what she was designated. And according to this chart that I found, that's the waxing moon, but we'll see. But time to network and to create projects and tasks. Love that. Sounds like someone is ready to open another location of Lilia's leggings. Exactly. Alice, element fire. Time to present, teach, gather, and celebrate. That's supposed to be the full moon, but again, that's related to water here.

Earth element waning moon. Time to work hard and turn the earlier conceived ideas into real action. And last but not least, Jen, the water. Again, in this chart, I found it's the new moon. But evaluate your work. Where can you improve? That's Jen. Where can you improve?

you improve, Jen? Which direction do you want to travel in? What are your core values and what do you want to do with your life? This is the setting that sets the wheel back in motion for the next 28 days. So they're obviously doing a different alignment between element and moon phase, but I just like that this is definitely out there. Also, I mean,

given where, like I was trying to connect where they were standing in the, in the ballad to where the element, like, because when you gather to call the corners or whatever it is you want to do, there are guardians that are associated with the elements and there's a specific place you're supposed to stand based on geography. And I couldn't get where they were standing to align with any version of the chart that I've seen. But it is important to know that, uh,

You know, the elements are designated among those four witches, but Agatha at the head in the classic pentagram formation, that's the spirit or the ether and not the infinity stone, the ether. Time to rewatch Dark World. It's not time to rewatch Dark World. Don't worry. If she were that, her magic would be red, not purple. But yeah, so I think that's really fun to think about like,

To think about them elementally, we can understand, like, what a fire trial might try to do to them. We can understand what an earth trial. We already saw Sharon get, like, half swallowed by the earth. So, like, we can understand what that might be. Air is interesting, and I'll come back to that. But that's just something to think about, you know? Well, and, like, when we entered...

First of all, let me say, real action for Rio. Thrilling. Can't wait. Sign us up. Please.

When we entered the road at the end of episode two, the vines, like the veins of the road of the Upside Down were like a glowing blue. And then when they come out of the chute at the end of this episode, they're like red, orangey red. So does that point toward fire as our next trial? Are the colors clues? Yeah. Great one. For where we're heading there? Great one. All right. It's time for a huge time, you guys.

Huge tiny lies absolutely killed me. Wonderful. It just absolutely killed me. Oh, man. They enter this house. They are transformed into characters from a...

former HBO Sunday night prestige experience. And this is the outfits change. And Joanna, I don't know if you want to do it here or if I could just say on behalf of all of our listeners that we await your commentary and wig watch. I actually don't have a ton. I mean, I just thought all their wigs, they're all great. Fine. And like perfectly aligned. Great outfits. I did disagree with Alice that teen's hair looks cute like that. I'm like, bring back the curls for teen. I don't,

Bring back the Elrond hair, the Timmy Chalamet hair for Tina. I didn't, like, love the part on the side. But, yeah, I don't have a ton to say about wig watch. But I do like when Jen goes to look at herself in the mirror and she's like, I look like one of my clients. It's just another way that the genre of the trial is matched to the character, right? Like, this... Her products are everywhere in this home for a reason. Candles everywhere. Like, you could, you know, you could just...

outfit this entire home with stuff from Jen's shop. And so I love that. Should we do a rewatch just looking for jade eggs? We don't need to. We know where to find it. You know where to find it. Oh, boy. Every now and then I'm just like, poor Steve and Arjuna. I don't have to sit here on these recordings with us. No, they're lucky. They're blessed. You're welcome. Oh, man. So when they enter and they've got new fits –

Alice is the first to have a moment of panic about her amulet. They all grasp and reach for theirs to confirm that they are still present. And they are. Despite the general FitWatch update, the amulets remain intact and everyone is hugely relieved. Like, Agatha breathes in a sigh as she puts her hands on her triple goddess brooch. So that is her amulet. And now we're like, okay, every witch has an amulet. What does each of them say?

What is the significance? This connection between a witch and amulet, it makes us think again about what we saw, not just the triple goddess and the timing and the sync to that period of time in Salem for Agatha, but what is inside of it, this lock of hair, what it means to put that in your amulet, et cetera. So what do you want to point out here, Jo, about the other amulets and what we might be able to learn about them? Mallory, I'm delighted to inform you. Yeah. Merch alert. Merch alert.

Take me to merch corner. My favorite corner as you know. Your very favorite corner. So, Marvel not missing a beat. Unlike Star Wars that doesn't have their merch up when... I mean, are you ever going to get...

the helmet from Acolyte given that it's been canceled? I don't know. It pains me to contemplate. Hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com if you have a line on that. But the amulets are for sale on a website called rocklove.com which just has the commission to make these amulets for Marvel including a little knife pendant for Rio. So the pendants, the amulets that we see on all of these women and then Rio's, the Rio necklace is a little knife. So here's a...

Here's what it says on the little knife necklace for Rio. It says, channels the mystical energy of the natural world, capturing the essence of the character's iconic curved blade. So that's Rio's. But I was just wondering if we could parse the copy on the rest of the amulet to see if it tells us anything. So Jen's is a vial with, like, moon and stars and flowers on it. In the amulet that they're selling on rocklove.com, it's...

Agatha's brooch opens and this vial opens. So, you know, a question is, is there currently a potion in there that will come in handy down the road some point? Is Jen carrying...

Some life-saving elixir in there or something like that. A little like Dorne-esque antidote to Bronn nearly dying from his throbbing erection. Maybe. It would be nice. Wonderful. Thank you for working that in here. Okay, so this is what the copy says of Jen's vial. Quote, the intricately sculpted, three-dimensional, teared-up-shaped vial is double-sided, adorned with celestial symbols, a moon and star, paired with floral lid that adds a touch of natural elegance.

And then it says reminiscent of a funerary urn. Real vibe shift there. Ominous. We took a turn. Took a turn. A tonal change at the end. Oh, my God. Yeah. Do we want to wear urns around our necks? Not me. Maybe as an earring, but not as a necklace. I'm just going to say in general, I'm not going for an urn vibe in my life.

Brave take. Thanks. Someone had to take it. Okay, Alice's is a 70s-inspired piece that, quote, brings the groovy essence of its on-screen inspiration into a wearable, retro-chic piece. And crucially, her mother is wearing it during their later encounter. So this was Lorna Wu's necklace that Alice is now wearing. And that's why, I mean...

We can parse the symbolism on the other ones. This one has, like, an emotional connection, and that's why it's, like, sort of 70s flair makes sense for the aesthetic of Lorna passed down to Alice. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to inherit a curse, you might as well inherit some jewelry. While you're at it, I mean, please. Yeah.

And the last one at least, Lilia's is two hands around an eye. It says, this pennant features a captivating rectangle of genuine mother of pearl intricately inlaid with abalone hands that gracefully embrace a warm 14 carat yellow plated sun and eye masterpiece, evoking a sense of mysticism and spiritual insight. Now,

I did not enhance, enhance, enhance, enhance. But I believe the girl in Lilia's vision that she sees who's wearing medieval garb is wearing the same amulet as well. And based on wig stuff, I actually think that's supposed to be a young Lilia is who she's seeing down the hallway. So, yeah, that's been merch-y.

Merch alert with Joanna Robinson. Mallory, if you had to pick one of these amulets to purchase, you're not really a necklace person, but if you were. I'm not. In fact, my husband recently said to me, I was thinking back to the beginning of our relationship when I would buy you a lot of jewelry and then I realized you just wanted sneakers and Legos. And t-shirts. Yeah.

Yeah, and t-shirts. I think I might have formally run out of space for new t-shirts. I might have to like cull the collection. Or expand to a new closet. Another closet, yeah. Maybe. Which of these would I want? It's not the funeral urn. I can say that. I think this is actually easy. I would take the – I would get Rio's knife because, as you know, I love a magical blade. Yes. I –

was moved to a number of feelings. Feelings? Watching? Sensations? Rhea wheeled that blade. And yeah, I think that would be a reminder that I'd like to carry with me. How about you? I like Alice's piece. I think that one's really pretty. So yeah. Great one. Great one. Steve, what about you? Which necklace would you pick? It's a tough choice. You have to pick. Oh boy. Okay.

I think I would like the one with the sprawled hands. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. The hands and the eye. I love it. That's a great one. Yeah. Okay. Steve is our divination witch. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Steve is our Professor Trelawney. Wonderful. Oh, man. Merch corner. What a treat. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Joe, they realize, fuck, we have new outfits, but the doors and the windows are all sealed shut. We're trapped. Not great. It's not what you like to see.

Love a new outfit. Don't love confronting that it might be the one we die in. But Sharon asks, after remarking upon the beautiful kitchen, and it is lovely, have you seen...

Huge tiny lies. So we get just a lot of like little charm, humor in these side exchanges. This is when Teen makes his comments about the middle-aged second chance at love vibes. What would you like to say about the chosen television touchstone reference for this episode of Agatha? It seemed ADR to me, huge tiny lies. And then also it's huge tiny lies everywhere, which is little fires everywhere, like another sort of...

entry into that genre in the Witherspoon-iverse. But I also, when Sharon remarked on the kitchen, if you remark on a kitchen, I have to think about the Nancy Meyer genre and famous for her cinematic kitchens and the beach house. When teen says it's giving middle-aged second-chance-at-love vibes, that's the plot of Something's Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. So that's, I think, in amongst...

the definite Big Little Lies comp that we're making here. I think there's just a little sprinkling of Nancy Byers in there, too. I love it. I mean, maybe this is how we finally get Dobbins to watch a Marvel show. Yes. Have you seen The Kitchens? Amanda, I'm with us. Let's try it. We'll text her after the recording. Okay. Teen finds a card on the mantle. Sharon is thrilled about the

thick card stock. Very expensive. I love it. And on this card. With the ragged edge. I love the ragged edge. Yeah, this is like a wedding invitation. Beautiful. Agatha's like, please tell me it's not for a baby shower. Great stuff. It's their welcome letter. It is the beginning of their first trial. It is a riddle. My age has value. I'm no fun alone. That's what I say to myself every night before bed. My age has value. I'm no fun alone.

I mess with your mind. My tricks are well known. Priming them for the wine that they are about to consume, which Sharon turns and sees. Joanna, other than discussing the headaches that red wine can incite, what would you like to observe about the particular bottle?

that is waiting. Um, well, I think it's worth always paying attention to wine bottles and a Jack Schaefer joint because there was like a fun little hint on a wine bottle in WandaVision as well in Mrs. Hart's storyline, actually. Uh, there was like a House of M reference, but, um,

This wine is called Reina, which is queen in Spanish. It's a Rioja, which is a region in Spain, but also contains the word Rio in it. So I just thought that might be worth thinking about. Sure does.

Also made it, you know, it says that it's it's OK, blah, blah. And then it's made in Spain. And just want to point out again that Aubrey Plaza spoke a little bit of Spanish in the first episode. So that's just something this all feels very intentionally tied to Rio. Yeah.

The I did check in case I didn't think this was going to be real wine, because later when when Agatha goes, it's so cheap. I was like, they're not going to do that to anyone. There is a Reyna winery. It's in Chile, though. So this is not this is like definitely a fake invented wine bottle label full of something for us to think about. So I wonder if this will soon be for sale as well.

Through Marvel. Yeah. I would not drink it because it's so cheap. Like, why would I? So cheap. Also, it's associated with poison. I don't think that's one thing they want to sell. Not a feeling? No. You don't think there's a market for that? Cheap wine that definitely leads to hallucinations and imminent death? Okay. Fine. Plan your own escape room. Sharon's ready to get sloshed. Mm-hmm.

Alice says, oh, we don't know what's going to happen. And Agatha's like, we do actually. Something terrible. But if we don't follow these obvious breadcrumbs, we can't move forward and we won't get to the big prize.

Fred Crumb's Hansel and Gretel Watch 2024. Stay tuned for Hansel and Gretel Watch in oven. Yeah. Oven corner later. But I think it's really interesting because Agatha's like, we have to do the thing. And then she doesn't do the thing. And that's fascinating to me. If she's like, the rules are unless we do the thing, we don't move forward. And then she doesn't do the thing. Do you want to talk about that now or when we get to them confronting her on why she didn't drink it? Like, what is holding her back? Sure.

Sure. Other than how cheap the wine is. All right, we'll talk about it then. It is wine o'clock. Might not be time for Agatha to drink yet, but everyone else is ready to head into this trial. And Teen is like, great news, built-in bar, let me grab a corkscrew. Jen follows him for a private word in which she issues a warning that will stand the test of time.

And definitely bear fruit and be remembered fondly by all for the rest of human history as one of the most meaningful moments that's ever happened in television. Steve, can we hear this, please? A bit of advice. Yeah. Watch your back with Agatha. I know how people feel about her. Did you know she traded her own child for the Book of the Damned? That can't be true. No. Yeah. You're probably right. But that is what people say. They say no one really knows what happened to him.

Folks, this is not a trill! I have- I have- They said-

It happened. I have so little spoil. Like, I have nothing spoiled for me about this show. And sort of, other than what we've seen in the trailers, I have no added information. Except this one thing did come across my timeline. Because a journalist at the junket, at a junket, was like,

In episode three, a word is uttered. And like just the way she was like trying to be like coy in a fun way. But the way she said it, everyone's like, oh, they're going to say Mephisto in episode three. And that was like the one. So I was like waiting for it in episode three. I don't know anything else. So just to be clear. But that was the one thing where I was like, I wonder what I wonder if I would have like dropped my glass of dry rosé in shock. That's what happened to me. I didn't know this was coming. I gasped aloud. I screamed. Hold on.

Holy shit, they said Mephisto and then repeated that line on this very podcast. It's happened. They've said Mephisto. We have obviously a lot to talk about from what we hear here, what Jen says about Agatha's son, about the Darkhold. But let's just start with Mephisto. Joe, you noted that some folks reached out via the inbox, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com.

What's all this Mephisto talk about? Care to offer a very, well, I mean. No, I think you should. I think you should do it. Give us. Quick. We're going to, this is quick. Like, just a literally like, who is Mephisto? What is Mephisto? The reason people. Why is Mephisto? Oh,

When is Mephisto? I think the main reason people are freaking out, just to make it clear for folks who weren't like caught up in WandaVision mania, is this was like a huge point of speculation in WandaVision is like, is Mephisto in the show? Is he going to show up? So who is Mephisto? Marvel's version of the devil.

Right? Basically. Yes. Debuted in 1968 in a Silver Surfer number three comic based on the Faust demon Mephistopheles. Mephisto for short. You can call me Mephisto. Collects souls in his underworld domain hell. I mean. Tempting, tricking into bargains. They were among us. Yeah.

There's a lot of comics history with Wanda and Agatha, which is why people were expecting him to maybe show up in WandaVision. Yes. Including a storyline involving Mephisto's soul fragments, Master Pandemonium, and Wanda turning two of those soul shards, shards of Mephisto's soul, some shards of his soul, into her children, Billy and Tommy. Hallups.

So I think that's part of it, too, is like when Billy and Tommy showed up in WandaVision, people were like, I know you. You're shards of Mephisto's soul. Where's Mephisto? And there was a lot of back and forth on that because I remember people being like, they're not going to put the actual devil in a Marvel property. Right. But, yeah, we just...

We felt like there were clues everywhere and it turns out there weren't. What else? Okay. What else do you think is worth noting about Mephisto, Mallory? So, you know, we talked about this last week in Thin.

Theory Corner, I believe, if memory serves. But Mephisto, I think Theory Corner, we will still have it, but it is just going to be incorporated throughout the pod moving forward, basically, because that's obviously appropriate and warranted and frankly necessary. But in case you didn't listen to Theory Corner last week, Mephisto creates a son in the comics named Blackheart and

What did Rio say in episode one? Rio said that she had a black heart and it beats for Agatha. And also when Lilia made her little list on the eviction notice, the last name was just a black heart. So that was part of what was fueling the Mephisto mania just right away again. Here's what Jack Schaefer said to Nick Romano at EW. And this gets to a little bit of what we were talking about

last pod, Joe, about just maybe the show's relationship to theory culture, full stop, but specifically to what fans of WandaVision are now bringing into the Agatha experience after Is Mephisto Coming, Ralph Boner, et cetera. As I said, rewatching WandaVision, I was like, Ralph Boner, honestly, I have no notes. Here's the quote from Jack.

With these shows, so often there's something that is at once a joke and a wink and a nod and actually has something legitimate underneath it. As we all know, Mephisto is a character who's very wrapped into Agatha's storyline. I mean, people have to watch, but we're always playing with the audience in that way.

What do you make of this? Quite fun. Yeah. And again, I think, yeah, I think it's just Jack walking into the show a bit more aware of what people will be doing and calibrating the hints and the clues so that they can always tantalize but never sort of like overtly disappoint. Or perhaps, we'll see. The question on everyone's mind, including mine, is...

Iron Heart, a property surely Marvel will release one day. Sacha Baron Cohen is playing a character called Mystery Man, but there is like strong rumor mongering that he is playing Mephisto in that. It's even, it's not just like, it's mentioned on Deadline and Deadline doesn't usually, Deadline is a trade, you know, publication doesn't usually like truck in like theories. Right.

They were just like, probably he's playing Mephisto. So I'm like, probably he's playing Mephisto. So that's interesting to me. Like, if he's playing Mephisto in Ironheart, does that mean Mephisto is definitely not showing up in Agatha all along? Or does that mean Mephisto could show up as played by Sacha Baron Cohen? So I don't know. Okay. Let me say this. Yeah. Let me get this on the public record here with you today. Okay. If...

Of all the people in the world you could have cast as Mephisto when you finally brought Mephisto into the MCU, you cast Sacha Baron Cohen.

And then you don't put him in a show with Katherine Hahn where these two comedic titans can be in scenes together. It is a missed opportunity that will haunt everyone involved until their final day. No pressure. No pressure, guys. It's fine. This is fine. Give it to us. I mean, that's a casting that is kind of –

to kind of contemplate in general. But if there's a place where it makes sense, I feel like it's here. I agree. Right? I agree. I don't know what he's doing in Ironheart, but we'll find out. Yeah. How interesting. Okay. Let's talk about... Welcome to Naughty Yacht. This season on Naughty Yacht Island. When we were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone. But then, it's like I didn't exist.

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Some models, trims, and features may not be available or may be subject to change. Check with your local retailer for current information. Lincoln and Aviator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. That's some of the other things that we heard from Jen and Tine in this stretch, this last little bit. But hey, that's what happens when you have Agatha Harkness as your mom, right? I doubt she'd even recognize her own son if she showed up at her doorstep. So...

We talked in Theory Corner at length last pod about who we think teen is. The show wants us to at least consider and possibly think that teen is Nikki Scratch. That teen is Agatha's son. Now, that is not currently the corner we are on. We don't think that, but that's what the show definitely is. And I think that's a smart thing to do. Drop these hints.

take us down a false breadcrumb trail. And then the reveal is going to be something else. But because I was talking to a friend of mine who's watching the show and she's like, is he Agatha's son?

Or is that too obvious? She's like, it's so obvious that he's her son. Or is it too obvious? And I was like, okay, that's interesting to me. Because when we were in Theory Corner, you were saying, and you're not wrong because what you were talking about is sort of like the level of people who both podcast about and listen to podcasts about Marvel shows. You're like, it's so obvious who he is to us. It couldn't be more obvious. But considering the surely millions of people watching Marvel,

Agatha who aren't comics people, they're like, oh, I figured it out by episode three. This is Nikki Scratch, you know? So I think that's interesting. I like to think too of the show as like a show either through clues or through outright overt statements presenting information or possibilities that will be disproven and swapped out for other circumstances and times. So like on the show,

What happened to Nikki front, like, let's actually talk about Nikki for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What Jen says here to Teen, did you know she traded her own child for the Book of the Damned? Matches?

With what we see in Agatha's hallucination when she moves toward the crying sounds in this little bassinet and pulls back the covers to find not her baby, but the Book of the Damned. We'll circle back to this, unless we end up just talking about it all right now, but we'll circle back to this probably in Theory Corner. To me, the fact that

what we see in Agatha's hallucination does actually, like, feel like it sinks in lockstep with what we hear from Jen here and makes it more likely that that's not, in fact, what transpired. And that something else occurred. But she feels guilt about it. Absolutely. That in a way, she feels like she did that, but perhaps by accident. And, like, you know, the idea, this brings us back to Mephisto, this idea of, like... Doesn't it always? Yeah.

a deal with the devil. Like oftentimes you make a deal with the devil and there are unintended consequences going back to our listeners email, careful what you wish for from into the woods. So like did, you know, did the devil, and this is a fairy tale classic to the devil say, if the devil was involved, indeed, if the devil is waiting at the end of the witch's road, did the devil say, or did, or did a black heart say, uh, who's waiting at the end of the road. And, uh, this is why there's so much anger between those characters, uh,

Did Agatha say, I will give up my most, like, the thing I value the most or whatever in exchange for this and thought she meant all her money or whatever, but in fact it was her son? She's like, I thought I meant this triple badass brooch. The tricksy wording of a bargain that you make inside a fairy tale. Absolutely. And often with a witch that you make inside of a fairy tale. And so, like...

And then that becomes the reputation to go back to. We're going to talk about sort of Lilia is the character who seems most focused on like what is the external reputation of a witch. Right. And so this idea that Jen is repeating this story about Agatha. She traded her son for the Darkhold. Right. Right.

That's something that – that's like the kind of rumor you would start. I saw Goody whatever dancing with the devil under the moonlight. I heard that she traded her child for the Darkhold. And said it to her face basically, right? Like when they walked into her shop in episode two, who's this, another child sacrifice? Like Agatha has to – it's not like she's not aware that this is what Jen thinks or might be spreading and saying about her. So yeah, yeah.

Lots to speculate over there.

Agatha fills five wine glasses. Everyone stands still waiting. And Catherine Han says, if you're waiting for charcuterie, I don't think it's coming. And I loved it. This is great. This is a genuine joy to watch. Sharon doesn't take drugs, but she does. She loves a rich, hearty red. Downs her glass right away. And this starts the clock. Before anyone else is prepared, the clock is ticking. 30 minutes. Beep, beep. Agatha's toast to Harbinger's of Doom. Cool.

I loved it. Lilia, to the prize. And then everyone other than Teen, who is underage, and Agatha, who was up to something, and pours her drink into the planter. Everyone else drinks. Joe, red wine in particular has been on your mind recently as we've watched Drinks of Power. Yeah. And I drink.

And I drink. Beautiful face. What would you like to say about this? Beautiful face. Sour on. Yeah, wine and witchcraft, again, depends on the strain that you're talking. Just always presume that when I say blank in witchcraft, I'm saying in some strains of witchcraft. But, like, there's a couple ways you can use wine in a ritual. You can use it as an offering on an altar for God. Yeah.

Um, or there's this, there's this like stage. If you go through the stages of a ritual, there's like, you know, gathering, there's like getting an information, there's, uh, calling down the corner, calling down the gods, all this sort of stuff like that. Um, and then there's a stage that is, uh,

Sounds great to me. Cakes and ale and wine? Cakes, wine, chanting, dancing, games? I'm in. This stage, I was talking to my best friend Diana, who wrote, again, The Witching Year, about this idea of red wine as part of the ritual. And she was saying it's a moment of bonding. It's a moment to bring yourself back to your body again.

eat, I mean, and it all sounds like it then turns into Catholic sort of like take communion. But like you drink the wine, you eat the cake to feel like your carnal self again and to bond with the witches around you. And so I like this idea, you know, as we watch this coven try to coalesce of this sort of like, you know, take of the wine and make a bond, you know. And as it manifests inside of this

uh,

shall we take the girl talk to the couch? You know what I mean? Exactly. They go right to like, let's have a chat. Which I love thematically in terms of what you're saying, though I will be honest in the flow of the episode with the clock ticking, I'm like, we're being, I think, just a might cavalier. Honestly, I was irate throughout at how cavalier they were being with the countdown. Yeah. That it takes like 15 minutes for them to be like, hey, Jen, you make potions. Start the potion. Yeah. What? I mean, this is like...

Andy Reid-esque clock management here. That's another football reference for you. Thank you. Once they start, like, with the visions and the physical symptoms and stuff like that, I can kind of excuse it. But before that, what are we doing here? Yeah. When you're, like, so overcome you can't handle the dropper, okay. But here, it's like, do we have time? I'm sorry. We don't have time for this. Did Caleb Ripper have time for a speech? And do we have time for chats on the couch? But Mallory, the elves have to remember that it's not strength.

Wonderful stuff. Wonderful stuff. Joanna. Yeah. Whether we have time for it or not, we do go to the couch to chat and we get a little exchange between teen and Alice. Here's a quick solve for this. Yeah. The clock starts after like the symptoms present or something like that. You know what I mean? Like. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the clock is longer than 30 minutes unless we don't have to question the sound mind. I'll just tell you something about me. As soon as the ticking clock starts, it doesn't matter how long. We're just going to get it done early is what we're going to do.

I'm like, point me towards the Vaseline. You need some petroleum jelly? I got you. Oh, man. I can't believe she said petroleum. Fancy phrase for honey. I can't believe she said petroleum products and the first thing they did was look for gasoline. I was like, if you say petroleum products, I'm bringing you Vaseline. That's what we're doing here. We got there. We had to just establish maybe that there was a garage. You know, you're always wondering with a property like this how much of the square footage is going to like, you know, I don't know. I liked to know that there was a garage. It was empty. Yeah.

Teen wants to talk about Alice's tattoo. She's not very interested in chatting and then quickly is. And we learned some interesting stuff here. That symbol, teen says, words off curses, right?

meaning Lorna, Alice's mother, um, made me get it. Cause she said all the women in our family were cursed. She wasn't well. How old were you? 13, maybe a lot happened to me at 13 too. Okay. So this curse, this is at the center of, uh,

the hallucination that we see with Alice's mom, Lorna, this preoccupation, this obsession about the family being doomed and that it goes as we glean in the hallucination, seemingly woman to woman, generation to generation in their family. We already noted this, like what happened to Tina 13, what the events of WandaVision happened at 13. Where did she get this tattoo though? She says Colorado, Red Rocks. And in the comics, New Salem,

which is connected to Agatha, and then Nicholas Scratch is in Colorado. So that's an interesting thing for us to hold on to as we consider maybe what connections there are between these characters, between the magical beings, which is sorcerers in the story. Is it possible that Alice is one of the Salem Seven who has sort of insinuated herself into this quest? Interesting. Yeah.

That would be a tough beat if your protection witch ended up being the one pursuing you. Brutal. Tough. Brutal. I don't know. Interesting. Just a question I'm asking. Just asking questions here. I'm still sort of like on edge about her whole like, I'm a cop that's going to be an answer to a lot of questions. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. What'd you think of the tattoo talk? Love tattoo talk. Love it. Same. Yeah. Same. Sharon, meanwhile.

asks is uh which just another name for bad girl and lilia has some thoughts joe

Yeah, and I think this is really interesting with Lillia to pay attention to, again, these repeated mentions of the stereotypes of witches, right? Yeah. So inside this episode, she says, do you see any pointy hats in here? Any green skin? Any brooms? No, sir, right? Also, just generally, I want to say that I thought Patti LuPone gave incredible lewdness

deliveries throughout this whole episode. It's great! Teen is actually maybe one of my favorites. I thought it was really funny. So she says that. Do you see any pointy hats here? Any green skin? Um...

In episode two, when talking to Agatha, she says, which is like you were the reason people think we poison apples, steal children, and eat babies. And then also she says, when I was chased out of every village I passed through for accurately predicting tragedy. So this paired with her vision later makes me think that Lillia was a victim of, if not a witch trial, like, you know, yeah, being drummed out of town due to negative witchy stereotypes. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And they all are interacting with some form of trauma, but I think hers is specifically this flavor of trauma. Yeah, and if that's her younger self, like, you want to come see? Come see. Come see the sick people, the dead people. We'll talk more about what might be happening there based on when and where we are in time, seemingly. And then to be persecuted for...

trying to help, trying to save. To warn, yeah. If this bro in the lab coat is saying to Jen, you're an inconvenient woman. Yeah. Well, what's he doing? Is it medicine? Is it science? Is she trying to heal and help people through her potions and that's a threat to him? Like, the idea that each of them might have been trying to do something for good to help others and been cast aside or...

that someone would have tried to take them, either take their power or take them completely off the board. And that begs the question, what happened in the Wu family to bring that curse down on those women in the first place? Was it a similar thing, you know, that they were cursed for trying to help in some way? We need some help now because the symptoms are arriving. Yeah.

Sharon's like, I don't know if this whole witch thing is for me. I would drink the blood of a virgin to smooth out these wrinkles. And then they all gasp because Sharon's face has hugely swollen. There is this iconic Agatha moment to this where she's like, I think she looks fantastic. Absolutely killed me.

I love this. In addition to the injectables illusion that we're obviously making here, the too much talks, et cetera, situation. We're going to talk about Alewives in a second. But given that the poison is called Alewife's Revenge, there's this – the most famous poem about Alewives is –

frankly, deeply shitty poem called The Tunning of Eleanor Rumming by John Skelton, which spends 15 stanzas just talking about how ugly and old this woman is. Just like really nasty, imperfect meter shit from John Skelton. But inside of that poem, the alewife character, the titular Eleanor, who is ugly and old, and I will tell you again how...

She's an alewife, a woman who crafts beer, and she claims that her beer has certain properties. And in one... You know, she says...

When I began to brew and I found it to be true, drink now while it is new, and ye may, it brook, it shall make you look younger than ye be, two years or three, for you may prove it by me. So this idea that, like, in the most famous Alewife poem, the promise is you'll look younger. I think this is, like – Is it, like, three years, like, per pint? What are we talking here? I don't know. Tell me more. Tell me more, Eleanor.

Oh, my God. Oh, man. Okay, so on the subject of Alewife's revenge, Jen realizes they've been poisoned. She's quizzing Sharon. Very funny moment where Sharon, whose tongue is swollen hugely, doesn't know what a mulberry tastes like. Same.

When she's like, does it taste like, I would also be like, what, what? I was running through all the berries that I've had either in their berry form, a jam form, or crucially mixed into an ice cream, like a Bramble Berry Crisp, a Jenny's flavor that I love. But yeah, Mulberry, it's, it's. I've had Mulberry. I've had Mulberry Wine.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. I think I've had it in a pie, but you wouldn't do that, of course. You don't believe in hot fruit and pie. As a religion. No. Tragically. Tragically. Lillia declares her love for the coven. Now, there is another moment later where we get a very clear mini dispatch from Lillia. And this one, it was like, you know, we've seen this from Lillia now in episode two multiple times. And Agatha's like, so you're a kook. Yeah.

It's very clear later when she says the thing she says while she and Agatha are on the petroleum hunt. What did you think of this one? Was this the voice speaking through her moment? Or was this Lillia moved to voice this thanks to the wine? What did you think was happening here? It felt like... It didn't seem quite the same as sort of the, like, I'm in the trance. But it felt...

in some way you know yeah yeah and just like the kind of clipped nature of the way that she was saying it yeah but maybe it's just her working around the prosthetics on her face who's to say patty she's like i honestly i love this uh the speed with which sharon's face returns to normal allows jen to deduce this is ale wife's revenge for me this is what i refer to as my of my hangovers joanna you have a little more information to share with the group

A friend of me, friend of the pod, Kristen Russo, who co-hosts the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast, was like – she was texting me. She's like, oh, I can't believe they said Alewife. And I was like, oh, yeah, me too. Tell me more. And then she sent me this article from Autostraddle that's titled Alewives, colon, The Women Who Crafted Beer and Split Hell Wide Open by Heather Hogan. Wow. And it's a great read. And then –

I was further trying to discover more history, and I've learned that this is perhaps an apocryphal notion, the connection between the women who brewed beer and our idea of modern witchcraft. But I'm going to talk about it anyway because it's quite fun. So just bear in mind that if you – you can stop emailing me if you're like, that's not true. I think it's probably not true. Yeah.

I just want to read some quotes from this article, which I thought was amazing. Quote,

Alewives pushing wheelbarrows full of innocent men into Satan's flames with one hand and pounding a pipe with the other. Alewives tenderly cradling the horned heads of hoofed hell beasts to their bosoms while their fellow humans burn alive in chains. The only thing more popular than alewives in religious art depicting hell is the devil himself.

Itinerary for our next vacation, honestly. Well, I don't like heat, so I don't think I would need some place cool. We need a Tolkien version of evil, which is cold, apparently. So, I mean, here's what happened. Basically...

Alewives were persecuted by the church and demonized basically because they were women who could make their own money. And at a certain time in history, that was not enjoyed by the patriarchy and not enjoyed by the church. And so these horrible stereotypes of what alewives, their evil deeds, makes a way into religious art, into poetry, into theater. An alewife is a demon. But it is interesting that...

what is true is that the, the craft of making beer has always like since the dawn of time associated with women and every single mythology, global mythology, the gift of beer to humans, which is like a common thing that crops up in mythology always comes from a female deity, which I think is fascinating. It's like Hathor in the Viking societies, all,

only women brood in Norse society. And there's this hymn to the goddess Ninkasa is the first poem

written ale recipe, which I think is really cool. There's this other idea that the alewives during the plagues, the various plagues, and we'll talk about the plagues in a second, but the alewives kept some people in their community alive because in order to make beer, you have to boil water. In order to boil the water, oops, you might boil the plague out of it. And so beer was the only safe liquid to drink during some parts of the plague. But here's when the idea that alewife

translates into our modern idea of which. Inside of this article from Heather, quote, she did her brewing in a giant cauldron, boiling water, adding grain, overseeing the fermentation process to keep the mice away from her stores of grain. She kept plenty of cats around. When she had extra beer to sell, she put a broom out in front of her house to signal the surplus. Or when she went to market, where she took the fashion of the day, the hen in a tall white steeple-shaped hat and made it...

to stand out in the crowd. So that's the idea. But again, I poked into some corners of more historical data that says, I don't think actually this is quite the connection. But what is true thematically is this is an industry that women dominated that men drove them out of and then took over, similar to medicine, like that women were the healers, the herbalists,

And once that became this position of power in the community, women were driven out of it and men took over. So men were doctors and men were brewing the beer, et cetera. And so I like that we could apply that to Jen's encounter that she has and her vision. Yeah. Yeah. Ill wives. Who knew? I didn't until...

Literally yesterday. And neither did Teen, right? Because scribble, scribble, scribble. Right into the notebook. Check out this little notebook. Keeps coming up. Yeah. You know? Boy. What's in there? We love a notebook and a Marvel show. Still waiting. TVA. TVA. Ill Life Corner. Who knew we were going there today? My goodness. What a treat. Well, you did because I texted you that I would like to talk about Ill Wives for a minute. But other than that.

I'm going to enjoy a nice pint tonight and treat myself. To a sour? You've inspired me. Okay. Yeah, I think so. I don't know what I have here. A lot of wine. Maybe I'll drink some wine. Okay. Well, who knows? I'll probably, honestly, probably just have another coffee and then fall asleep. That sounds right to me. Speaking of, the other symptoms of gem lists are...

dizziness, delirium, loss of motor function, racing heart, hallucination, and death. And honestly, I'm like, sounds like Thursday.

For real. What you need to know is that when Mallory gets on a call, a Zoom call, she'll be like, I'm exhausted. I'm just splitting it. I have complained to you and Van multiple times about erasing heart that I probably should go to a doctor to have looked at. Now my mom's going to email you about that too if she hears this. Would that I could get you to the doctor, I would. One day. One day. One thing at a time. Eye doctor first.

She says. She squints at her Google Docs. I'm a doctor, dentist, then GP? Just build up to it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think that sounds right. Yeah, sure. Why not? Why the fuck not? So this is what Agatha just is like, fuck this. I'm going to try to break free. And I think it uses what appeared to be like a giant –

Candle stick holder? A decorative candle stick holder. Yeah. At first I was like, is this a very robust pepper grinder? But she gets it from the living room, not the kitchen. They bang in at the window, some cracks, spider webbing their way through the glass. This will prove problematic later when they wind up underwater. And Teen realizes right around here that Agatha did not drink the wine. You can't cheat death, Agatha, he says. Why? Why?

Who says, Lilia chimes in, the road? So this is, again, this idea of, like, the road holding them in judgment, right? Agatha, that's ridiculous. We don't all have to suffer. Teen didn't drink, and then Jen said, he's not in the coven and he's underage. The just, like, effortless, consistent stitching of comedy through these scenes has been just really one of the pleasures, obviously, of the show so far. So here it is, Jo. What...

What is Agatha fear so deeply here? Other than the cheapness of the wine, other than the particular vintage on offer that she is delaying and delaying and delaying, knowing that.

That they're on the clock and that she has no choice. Does she actually think like, hey, I didn't bring a real green wood chair. Maybe I can skirt the rules. I think she didn't want to be on the road in the first place. Like that she if we if we interpret the ritual correctly, it was a ruse to get the women mad enough to throw power at her that she could absorb and then get her power back. Because I don't I don't I don't know. I don't have someone who walked the road.

Yeah. And who's like, don't stray off the path. That's rule number one. Isn't more of a stickler for whatever the rules are, unless she doesn't really want to be there and really want to, you know, she's trying, she's like, well, we're all in this house. She tries to leave first. They're all in the house and she's groping around for a doorknob. Yeah. So she's trying to get out of there. So I wonder if she's like, I ditched them at the beach house.

Now I can make my way back up, like, above ground and just, you know, get the hell out of here. It's interesting to think, too, like, you know, what you were saying earlier about this time the road would present her with something distinct, but maybe there are constants, right, among that, like, variance. And so...

Who was she on the road with last time? Like, who did she travel with then? Does someone have to die every trial? Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand. Yeah, does someone have to die with every trial? Oh, man. Yeah. Maybe she's just like, not me, right? No, not me. Spoiler from the trailers. Yeah. Rio has a line where she says the bodies are really stacking up.

So I feel like Sharon's not going to be our last dead body. So yeah, does someone die in every trial, I think is a question worth asking. Yeah. So yeah. Agatha shatters her glass. She's this hellbent on avoiding the wine. Great Sharon moment on the upholstery.

Alice grabs another glass. It refills. And then this is where Agatha's still refusing until Teen steps forward and says, fine, I'll drink it instead. And she shouts no and reaches out and grabs his arm to stop him from doing it. Jen marks this. Jen, who is on She Traded Her Baby for the Darkhold Watch,

marks this. So fascinating moment. What did this ping for you? Do you think there's the possibility that something nefarious is afoot here? And Agatha thinks like, I got to make sure he stays around long enough for me to find out who he is and what's happening. Or I might have some other nefarious like ends and means that I need him to be present for this. Or did it strike you as it struck me? And I guess these things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Honestly, there could be like the logical part of Agatha's mind that's playing out the string. And then the more like

instinctual reflexive, I lost my son and I have these like life altering regrets about it that felt like they were moving her here. Right. I don't want something bad to happen to you the way something bad happened to Nikki. Does this mean that she did in fact sacrifice her son? Does this mean that she didn't, but whatever did unfold her role in it, the guilt has like reshaped her.

What did this ping for you? To me, I read it as she thinks he might be Nikki. And just the idea that he might be Nikki. Because to go back to that moment when she says, who are you? To him in episode two, after looking at the lock of hair in the cameo. Who are you? You know? And so...

She's like, maybe this is somehow Nikki. And just the off chance that it is, is enough for her to be like, don't drink poison. I prefer you not drink poison if you are potentially my son. Yeah. The only thing that's like, the only thing that doesn't click into place for me with that is the look on her face, the emotional state that she was instantly transported to when she looked into that bedroom.

during the premiere, the way that she responds to seeing the bassinet during her hallucination, it's like any Nikki adjacent stimuli has sent her into a completely different state. And so if she's like consciously, logically, rationally thinking, I wonder if you're my son, it just feels like it would be wrecking her. No, I disagree. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I disagree. I feel like

Like she wouldn't let herself fully believe that, right? It's one of those things where she's just sort of like possibly you're my kid, but like you can't – there's no way you can be. And so why would I dare to hope that you might be? And sort of keeping that from herself, if that makes sense. That would be how I would interpret it. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well –

Agatha's hallucination with the bassinet is going to have to wait, but Sharon is up first here, ahead of everyone else on the clock. And she starts to speak about Wanda. Wanda, Wanda, I'm begging you, let him breathe, please. So crucially, we don't see this. We just hear it. We see everybody else's hallucination. Is that because, do you think, we saw this moment, this wave?

we presume is Mr. Davis slash Mr. Hart choking at the dinner table in WandaVision. And what would Sharon Davis have actually been thinking and experiencing in her mind under this spell while that was unfolding? Is it just like, we've already seen this, so we're not going to show it to you again because you know? Or does the fact that we only hear and don't see this point along with our other questions about Sharon to like something fishy going on here? I genuinely don't think anything goes

that kind of fishy is going on with Sharon. I think particularly as it pertains to her very real reaction to her purse getting sucked into the earth. We got a...

ton of emails of people saying, do you think Sharon is Mephisto? And I was like, you know what? Maybe. And then I watched this episode and I was like, no. I think her genuine reaction to the purse going into the earth is like, this is just a woman. Whether or not she's dead is a question mark for me. But like, I think we didn't see it because...

They didn't want to get the actors in to do it. You know, they didn't want to get like Lizzie Olsen and Paul Bettany and the actor who played her husband in. I think we've already seen it. We know what it's alluding to. I think it's just they could just evoke it without showing it to us. So, yeah. Sharon is Mephisto is a 10 out of 10 no notes fan theory. This is the best. We are back. We're back. We have never been so back. Oh, my God. Love it.

Agatha tells Jen, time to brew the antidote. The clock is, as you noted earlier, down to 15 minutes and 30 seconds at this point as they set up shop in the kitchen. And Jen goes through the initial list of ingredients. It's going to build over time. It's an embarrassing. Shoddy, shocking stuff from our coven. We need to see more. We need to see more in trial two.

Here's the initial list of ingredients. Frankincense. This will be the eucalyptus. The gut of a eusocial insect. This will be honey. A corpse that's been decaying for at least 30 million years. Agatha's like, where the fuck am I supposed to find that? Zooplankton from petroleum. And then a really big cauldron. This will be the sink. So we kind of pair off. Agatha and Lilia...

Go to find the gas. There's none. They go, petroleum jelly. But it's kale care products everywhere the eye can see. And Agatha is absolutely, despite the clock ticking in their lives, being on the line relishing the fact that she gets to call Jen's bluff on the ingredients in her organic product. I love it. And on the other hand...

It really bothered me that they just dumped the containers in there without opening them up and pouring the contents in. That really bothered me. Especially because it's like this many drops. Yeah, three drops of this. And you have to put the stuff in in this order. But a whole armful of like random. You have to use your dominant hand and counterclockwise. And I've got to teach you what counterclockwise means because this level of precision is so important. And yes, I had the same thought. It's like we got to take like the balms and salves and moisturizers and serums out of the containers. My goodness. Yeah.

I was, yeah, really bumped on that too. So this is when Lillia goes into mini trance dispatch mode. She says, as they are collecting items, try to save Agatha. So Agatha, I thought had a kind of muted, again, they're on the clock, but like,

Kind of mild and calm and inappropriate response to this. Yeah, and I will say in storytelling it bothers me because, like, Agatha is someone who we're really supposed to, like, respect her intelligence and her perception. Yeah. And so for her to be so behind us, the audience, I think is tough. Yeah, I wanted her to be like, wait a minute. Yeah.

Who is speaking through you and why are they invested in the outcome? We don't have time for this right now, but I know that this is something weird. Agatha is literally a character who would say, put a pin in that. We need to come back to that later. It seems important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you want to do this now? Do you want to talk about it in Theory Corner? Like, who is speaking through Lilia and why are they invested in Agatha making it out alive? I have no idea.

clue on this do you have a theory no i was hoping you did no i don't like maybe lilia maybe lilia from the future is it sharon who is also mephisto

Like maybe Lilia from the future is the only best guess I have. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that would be fun too if her hallucination is a younger version of herself and divination and the idea of like prophecy and yeah, communicating with yourself across time and how like some sense of destiny or fate informs the decisions that you make. And if you yourself are actually a part of that across time, that would be interesting. Okay. So it's Lilia. Let's go with that. Future Lilia. Great. We solved it.

And Sharon is Mephisto. Done. Why watch the show? Close-up theory corner, honestly. Alice and Teen go into the gym and

And spa. Searching for their ingredients. And then this is where the hallucinations begin. Agatha's comes a little later, but we get, we're cutting between Alice and Jen and Lilia. We'll talk about them just one at a time rather than kind of going back and forth. Let's talk about Alice first. Jo, you said this was maybe your favorite part of the episode. Tell us what we see here and tell us why you loved it. I thought the set deck was incredible. I thought the costume and I thought the performance was great. And this is just like a really good, haunting, upsetting. This idea, so like, uh,

Lorna Wu rumored to be lost on the road. This idea of a family curse. You know, I heard your grandmother is dead. It's me next. I can't protect you from this. All of that sort of stuff. The way that she screamed, I can't protect you. And then...

That idea that Lorna would be traumatized by this, not just by the idea of a curse that is... This is the plot of the horror film, You're Next. Not just the idea of a curse that's going to find her no matter what, but a memory of being raised by a mother who didn't seem like she was all there. Which is how she put it to teen. She wasn't well. So Lorna Wu, who...

seemed to other people like she was losing her mind, uh, was in fact haunted by a very real curse that is blooding this family. And I, I, I like that because as we go through like a curse as like a, a, a thing in witchcraft and, you know, versus a trial, uh, an exile versus, uh, these other things. I loved that. I, I was going to post this in theory corner, but again, I think theory corner is just a part of the main, main run of show today. Um,

You know, Agatha recruits Alice with the idea of like in talks and talking to Tina about, you know, Lorna was lost on the witch's road. Don't you want to find out what happened to mommy? So did the curse get Lorna? And now that would mean Alice is up, right? She's on the clock if this is real and actually a thing. Or like, did, did Lorna go to the road?

To try to figure out how to thwart the curse. Is that what led her to the road? To try to break the curse. Yeah. And or find a way for her to live forever so that the curse doesn't translate to her sister. Like if she's, if they find her in the next trial somehow, if she's trapped on the road somehow, and that has protected Alice from the curse because her mom is still alive on the road somewhere is interesting to me. Maybe that's the body.

The next body, Lorna. Lorna. They find her alive, then she dies, and then Alice is up. I hate it. And the clock is ticking, but everyone is very leisurely about it. Everyone's like, well, you know, what if we just like, there's like a, we're in the fire trial. Fire pit? Should we make some s'mores? Should we talk? Keep getting to know each other? Oh my God, I would love it. I do love a s'more. I love a fire pit. I honestly love a fire pit. I love a fire pit. We had a fire pit at our wedding. I fucking love a fire pit. Love. Okay, let's talk about Jen and what Jen sees. This one was...

This one shook me. It's very upsetting. To my core. Very upsetting. Goes to grab, remembered another ingredient, I have newt, it's mustard seed. Comes back from the pantry and finds this very spooky guy in a lab coat standing in the blue light, like the watery light now. And he says, as we mentioned, you are an inconvenient woman. And then Jen is like underwater. He's trying to drown her. And now you're nothing. So this is the binding. This is when Jen...

lost her power. What did this remind you of?

This guy is dressed identically to Clive Owen in the television program, The Nick, down to the mustache. Like, they are definitely going for The Nick here. And The Nick is a TV show. It's a medical drama. It takes place in the 1900s. So, like, what we learned about Jen is that she's been bound for about a century. So as if there was any question about whether or not this is the guy who bound her somehow, like...

maybe just by simply drowning her. Because I kind of like the idea of him not being a magic user. Yeah, someone who's threatened by magic. But he blocked her anyway somehow, just maybe by temporarily drowning her and she comes back to life and she doesn't have her powers or something. I don't know, whoever. He could be not magical, but also I'm like, if Nikki Scratch is coming in the show at some point, are the male sorcerers going to be the villains? Ooh.

And except for our darling teen. Exactly. But yeah, in episode two, Agatha says, I'm offering you the chance to finally lift the binding spell that has kept you magic-less for the last, what, century? So that would take us, you know, in and around the events of The Nick, a tremendous show that people should watch. Love that show. The two most lasting visuals from that show, syphilis nose. Yes.

An all-timer, obviously. And, of course, the climactic self-surgery. Memorable program. Also, still to this day, think about... We'll do a pod about the Nick. Let's do a Hall of Fame Nick pod. Let's do it. That would be great. I fucking love that show. Lipman loves that show. Love that show. Lilia.

Yeah. So she sees a young girl dressed in... I was looking at... I don't know, guys. I'm not a...

Styles of the Renaissance, Italian Renaissance expert. But like this is kicking Renaissance for me. And I was like looking at like fashions of the 1600s, fashions of the 1700s, fashions of the 1500s in Italy. And I think this is 1600s by my best guess. So then I was like, what was going on in the 1600s in Italy that might relate to this thing that she sees here, right? So...

She's this girl. The reason I think it's younger her is the amulet. And then also in this episode, Patti LuPone is wearing a wig that is flat with bangs. But Lillia's natural hairstyle are these curls that sort of come forward, like up, and then the curls come down forward in her face. And that's exactly in that typical...

This person's only had one hairstyle of their own life. That's how we note who the younger version of them is, a thing that film and television does. So I feel like it's her younger self.

And she walks into this room and there's a different woman there who's dead. And then this specter of death behind her because it's this veiled, you know, a veiled person with a, it's just a skull underneath the veil. So this is the specter of death. And everything is like creaky and decrepit and like moldy and cracked and all this sort of stuff like this. And later, yeah.

She says to Agatha, she's dead. They're all dead. So the Italian plague of 1629 to 1631 is also referred to as the Great Plague of Milan. Killed so many people. Like out of a pop in Venice.

46,000 people out of 140,000 people in this city. Or in Milan, 60,000 people versus 130,000 people. And then there were witch hunts that coincided with this era in Italy. And one could imagine, again, even if there's not a literal witch hunt involved, if Lilia comes to town and says everyone's going to die and then everyone does die except for her,

Yeah. They're going to be so suspicious of her for not dying. And so like this idea of, of sort of drumming her out of town. I thought it was interesting in the comics canon, Lillia as a character who is, as most women are in the comics, hot and young, but she will adopt, like adopt this aged crone appear. I mean, with love and respect to Patty LePont, I would never call her an aged crone, but like this aged crone appearance is,

'cause she is called the quote unquote gypsy queen.

WandaVision got in some trouble. I think in general, Jack Schafer will probably want to stay away from the word gypsy or Romani or anything like that that has plagued the depiction of the Wanda character. So they're like, well, she's just Italian. Let's just make her Italian. But this idea of being pushed out of your home and wandering and how that connects to the eviction notice that they find on her door, this idea of she's been...

just forever wandering because, you know, of her power. I love that. I was also thinking about in terms of Italian and witches, I was thinking about Strega Nona. The comp does not quite work in any way at all. But again, in terms of like the only witch here who was like older, this idea of in terms of the

The crone role, again, Pai Lupo, and I don't think you're listening, but I'm not calling you a crone. Strega Nona is this, like, you know, grandmotherly Italian witch, a figure from a very famous children's book, and also based on a character in folklore who has a cauldron of plenty that just sort of never stops providing and eventually, like, drowns the town, essentially. So, I don't know, just something to think about.

When you're thinking about Italian witches, think about Streganona. Why not? And when aren't we? Yeah. And when are we? Do you want to pair whatever beverage you have tonight with pasta? The never-ending pasta in Streganona's cauldron? I'm always thinking about pairing a beverage and a hearty plate of pasta. Genuinely always. So yeah, you know, Agatha talked about how old, specifically had a conversation about how old she thought

Lillia was in episode two, right? And she's like, I'm only a day over 450. So we're in the right-ish period of time there. Yeah, I like it. So every one of these hallucinations, including what we will eventually see from Agatha,

A singularly traumatic nature. It doesn't mean it's the only traumatic thing that's ever happened to these people. Surely not. But the thing, presumably, that has led them to the path that has then led them to the road are these, like, pure memories of

Or are these altered symbolic manifestations of a key idea? Because again, if we think, which we both seem to, that we don't have the full story yet of what happened with Agatha and Nikki, and we shouldn't trust this line about her swapping Agatha.

Nikki for the Darkhold, then what we're seeing there, the Darkhold in the cradle, would not actually be a one-to-one match to what happened. I think based on the skull underneath the veil, that's just supposed to, like, meant to represent death rather than, like, be a literal thing that she saw. But maybe it was. And maybe that's just, like, what her vision showed her. I don't know. I do want to shout out, because I can't get through an episode of Agatha without talking about Buffy Vampire Slayer. Actually, I already did, but here we go again. Um...

There's an episode in season four, I think it is, called Fear Itself, where the gang gets trapped inside a, I think a frat house, a house. It's Halloween. It's a Halloween episode. They get separated, and each one of them has to, like, the manifestation is a manifestation of their own fear. So, like, a character who is worried that people don't pay enough attention to them becomes, like, literally invisible to everyone else or whatever. They have their, like, tailor-made horror experience inside of this sort of haunted house. And per our listener, Lauren...

who is also a journalist, wrote in to say that she interviewed Jack, Jack Schaefer, about and asked her about Buffy specifically. And in the email, Lauren says, Jack did say she was a big Buffy fan and that Mary Lovanos, who is the Marvel sort of attending producer on this project and was on WandaVision as well, referenced it constantly on set. So they were talking about Buffy a lot as they made this. So thank you, universe. One email I got from someone

I can't believe the universe rewarded you for all your work on the Marvel book by giving you a witch musical theory show that references Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Wild. My goodness. It's like the opposite of a traumatic hallucination. The dream. Euphoria. It's time to make an antidote. Past time, frankly, to make an antidote. But now we must.

They make their way back to the common area. The glass is beginning to fracture. They realize they're underwater. The house is going to flood when the clock strikes zero. Now, we did hear this exchange about all the ways to die back in episode one between Agatha and Rio. I'm not the only one who wants to see you dead, wants to see you burn or hang or drown. And Agatha said there are no new options.

Yeah. Threat of drowning. I love it. Here we go. It makes me think of like how like once you burn, fire, hang, air, lack of air, right? Or drown, water, you know, or buried, I suppose, in earth. But like, yeah, that these are the elemental possibilities of what's coming next. Yeah.

Just very tough stuff for Sharon, who nearly got sucked under the earth and then was in fact killed by poison, but I guess didn't drown. So this is another thing where I'm like, again, I know that they were like under debilitating influences of the potion or of the poison, but like the lack of hustle is one thing. The dumping the petroleum jelly products in wholesale was another. And then when they think that they forgot about the dying woman on the table and didn't put her

hair in the potion and thus fed her a potion that wasn't going to help her no matter what the clock said. Yeah. Incompetent witchery. Craft fail to me. Thankfully, though, we did get the moment where they had to clear the table for Sharon and Agatha to get the pears out of the ledge.

That's great stuff. They're all in anguish. The symptoms are completely overpowering them as Jen is guiding them through the instructions. And she realizes, shit, one problem with not actually having a cauldron over an open flame is I'm not going to be able to boil this. And then Teen suggests sous vide.

He once again mentions a parent. He's like, my dad loves to sous vide. Agatha has no idea what this is. She says, is that something people know about? Which was so funny. I would like to formally invite Agatha Harkness to watch the next season of Top Chef with us where somebody always sous vides at a challenge. Always. I love it.

Great stuff. I knew about the concept. I will say I knew about the concept of sous vide. I could not have told you what the instrument looks like. So when it was just sort of this thing that they could perch on the edge of the sink. I'm used to seeing on Top Chef like a plastic basin. Yeah. And I can picture the meat in the plastic bags that they seal and put into the water. But I also don't know if I would have recognized the actual thing powering, the engine that is powering the boiling. But Tine found it and that's all that counts. Right.

Jen orders them to each pull out a hair. And this is when Agatha's hallucination hits. Anything else that you want to say about this? Because we've already talked about this a bit as we've gone on. Yeah, so the question is, like, if, let's say this did happen, did it happen when Nikki was a baby? Because we have a bassinet here. Yes. But his room in the Mare episode was definitely not a baby's room. There's, like, a bed, not a crib. And there's, like, a plaque that he got for an achievement that presumably a newborn could not.

managed. There's also, in terms of when did this happen, in the first episode, we had a couple listeners point this out to us, but Ruthann sent screen grabs. Thank you, Ruthann. In the mayor section of episode one, when she's in her office talking to, I believe, the chief,

There is a filing cabinet behind her and there's like a plant and a bunny statue. And then the plant in one shot turns into a photo of a young boy and then turns back into something else. So it's only there for like a flash. And the photo is a sort of like, I don't know, when would you date this? Like a 1910s, 20s, 30s, something like in that area, maybe right around when Jen got bound. Yeah.

Of like a black and white profile photo of a young dark haired boy who's not a baby. So like if Nikki lived, if Nikki indeed lived, he lived to be at least let me squint at this. How old are children? I don't know. Ten, nine. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. The bunny statue right in front of the picture again. Senor Scratch. Is the bunny going to end up being Nikki? Yeah.

I mean, transforming into Nikki. I don't know why he wouldn't be, but then like, why wouldn't she take him with her? I don't know.

Teen leaving Mr. Scratch just feels so important. Her extreme reaction, as you pointed out, these extreme reactions he's having, the extreme reaction to walking up to a bassinet, pulling back the blanket, and there's something horrible there, in this case, a book. In the probably most famous version of that, in Rosemary's Baby,

Spoiler alert for Rosemary's baby. Her baby is the Antichrist. It's the devil's baby. And Mia Farrow gives an all-time... Mephisto. Mia Farrow gives an all-time backing up. And so I really feel like Katherine Hahn's like, I'm going to give you the full Mia Farrow in this moment. I thought it was great.

Love it. Yeah, this was great. This was a great scene. This whole stretch was really good because then we get the very amusing discussion of various hues. What exactly is Cerulean that we opened up? It's green, teen! The pod with today. Oh, teen, you tried to convince... No, they know they have to wait for blue. And they did.

Jen realizes something's wrong. There's one minute left and she begins to panic because they're not getting the right color here. She's like, I make retinol syrups now. Like I am no longer equipped to make potions in a time sensitive manner that can save people's lives. Not imposter syndrome when the clock is ticking. Great news.

Agatha Harkness is ready to put on that East Dillon Lions cap. You went with the Lions and not the Panthers. They're looking for blue. We're in desperate circumstances here. They are looking for blue. All right, fine. We'll go Dillon Panthers because you're right. We're not looking for red. Maybe I'll save East. We'll go back to East Dillon for the fire episode. We'll find a way. Game time, crunch time. We've got a clear eyes, full hearts pep talk from Agatha Harkness. Steve, can we hear this?

There was a time where I would be able to just solve this with a wave of my hand, but now I'm bound. He stole my magic. We're all gonna die here. I do not want to die here. This is not where I die. I have always hated you. If this is a bad time. But I left you alone because what you were doing was important. Not this kale care crap. The real work can be that witch again. They can take your power, Jen. They can't take your knowledge.

I loved this. What the elves have to remember is that it is not straight. This thing happened. It had to. Because Jen needed to hear this. And I just, I love this. Like, as you noted earlier, Agatha is motivated. Like, they need to beat the clock so that they can live and not be killed by the potion and move forward to the next child. But like, there is a truth in her words. There is something that we can glimpse that is true about Agatha herself and how she feels about Agatha.

the core of what they do and what they're capable of doing. And then something true about sisterhood, right? Like she's got a lot of like snark and hand-waving about the idea of a coven, but you can feel there that at one point in her life that meant something to her and maybe it could again. And that like the work that you do with your sisterhood

with your hands and with what you know and with what you've worked to learn to like build and make something that that has heft and consequence. And you can't, nobody else can take that away from you. And like, it was awesome. I think that the show's ability so far to put Agatha in this spot where she is able to deliver a message like that while still being the asshole who's like, I think she looks fantastic when Sharon's clearly about to die.

And then in mere seconds, it's like, let's leave Sharon as she is dying. Can come through with these words. So, oh, this was great. Bethlehem, wonderful. Can do anything. Truly. They're just missing blood now. Agatha's like, how much is from you?

What do you need? And, you know, I do feel compelled to note that, like, yeah, 30 seconds on the clock, we're really in crunch time here, but she has no compunction at all about taking a giant kitchen knife and slicing open Dean's hand without asking him if it's okay. None. The color settles. They all drink. One second to pass the little goblet to Sharon. Again. Pour a sip down her throat. An inefficient way to move something across the room. It simply cannot be faster to go past.

past Goblet hand by hand and just have one person walk it to Sharon. But as you noted, it wouldn't have mattered because her hair's not there. Her hair's not in the potion. The oven opens. We're back to Hansel and Gretel corner here. Great stuff when Lily is like, I am not climbing into an oven. This happened to a friend of mine.

She had a lovely house, too, and then she had to, okay, the water bursts in. They have no choice. They have to go through this up and shoot. Once again, this is the second portal they've had to go through out of dire necessity. No time to think. Just go. Yes. Team has to compel Agatha to take Sharon with them. He's like, we don't know what, and he just appeals to her self-preservation. He's like, we don't know what'll happen if we leave her. They shoot out back to the road, red vines, and it's like, whew, boy, I have

I rewound this so many times and I think it's a real miss that they didn't show us Sharon's dead body just rocketing down the slide. They cut away from it. I was like, what's the order? Okay, let me watch the order that they come down. They cut away from it and then her body is like buried by them. And I'm like, they just, Disney was just like, we can't show.

Just a dead body. Deborah Jo Ruff's dead body just rocketing down a slide, but I would have loved to have seen it. So, you know. We did get to linger on her open, cold, staring, dead eyes. So that's a wrap, at least for now, on Sharon Davis. What do you think? Dead for real? No. My idea is... Take us right into Theory Corner with this, maybe. Let's go to Theory Corner. I forget. Psycho music. Scary. Yeah, psycho music aside. I feel like if you die on the road...

You're going to wake up in the real world, especially someone like Sharon. Yeah. Maybe the witches might die. Back in her flower garden. But, you know, yeah. I feel like you die on the road, you wake up in the real life. I prefer a story where if you die in the alternate universe, you die in real life, but we'll see. Yeah. That would be a tough beat for Sharon who just wanted to go to a party. To do laundry? Question mark? Boy. Move out of Westview. Your husband's dead. Move to Florida. Enjoy yourself. My goodness.

Theory Corner. Yeah. We've hit a ton of this already. What do you want to either follow up on or hit a new here? Yeah, okay. So Billy – sorry, this one was called Teen in Theory Corner. Teen who we believe is Billy Kaplan, a.k.a. the reincarnation – Who's constantly talking about his parents, the Kaplans. Definitely. Of Billy Wanda's kid.

So this idea that, like, she put out this protective energy around Billy when she died, maybe, or something like that. I think to go back to that conversation he has with Jennifer, when he's like, I know what people say about her. Yeah. I really like that because I know what people feel about her is what he says. And it's like...

And Jen also says, hey, that's what happens when you have Agatha Harkness as your mom, right? So there's a couple possibilities here. There's a possibility that he thinks he's Agatha's son. He might think he's Nikki Scratch and that Agatha is his mom and that's why he's come to find her. Or he knows Wanda is his mom.

And this would apply to Wanda, too. Apply to Wanda, too. Yeah. I know what people think about this wicked witch. I know what people think about my mom, Wanda. I've read the graffiti. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, so it would sadden him either way if he thinks he's Nikki or if he knows he's Billy, you know. So, yeah. We talked about the curse. We talked about Jen and the binding. We talked about Lillia's ghost. We talked about who's speaking through Lillia. We talked about is Sharon really dead? Yeah.

We alluded to this, but this idea that like,

Was Rio involved in whatever the deal was that landed Nikki in the clutches of whomever? So is that your leading theory right now, that people think it was Agatha, but really it was Rio? Or that whatever decision Agatha did actually make was because of Rio? I feel like the deal she made is with two possibilities. One, she walked the road with Rio, and Rio was one of the witches who was walking with her. Or Rio's who you find at the end of the road, and...

is the one making the deals. Talk about a prize. Because they have a deal. They have some kind of deal where they can't kill each other. You can't kill me. You can't kill me. It's not allowed. So by law of efficiency, I like that it would all be wrapped up in one deal where it's just sort of like I get the dark hold. And in getting the dark hold, she hides herself from Rio, right? You can't kill me, but you get Nikki, you know? Right.

And when Rio asked last episode or two episodes ago, can I ask you something? Yeah. Do you remember why you hate me? That was while the trance was still had Agnes at the time, you know, in its, in its hold, but this like for us as viewers and this larger question of what transpired between them and what would be driving the depth of this despondence. I love it. A lost or dead kid. Yeah.

I saw you over the weekend and we were doing a thing where I felt like I needed to distract you. So I was just trying to pepper you with Agatha theories. Yep. Which may or may not have worked. The entire time. Yeah. Did it distract you? That was my goal. Yeah.

I'm now thinking back of how you really provided that generous service for me, and I just talked about the Orioles box score that I was tracking when our roles were reversed, which I now in hindsight doubt had the same calming effect on you, so I'd like to apologize. Yeah.

Oh my god. Oh boy. I posited a couple things to you. I was like, what if Rio is Mephisto? But the idea that Sacha Baron Cohen is playing Mephisto in Ironheart really pokes a hole in that theory for me. So I guess we're back to Blackheart Corner. But I liked the idea that like – But Aubrey Plaza being Sacha Baron Cohen's kid is like incredible to me. It's very good casting, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

But I still like the idea of wondering, are they really on the road or are they in hell? Given the way the portal opened for them when it shouldn't have. And that's, you know...

Mephisto's realm is hell. Are they actually, have they actually been drawn into hell rather than on the actual witch's road? Or is the witch's road a road in hell? Who knows? But like, I kind of like this idea of like, we all just assume they're on the witch's road, but like they did the ritual wrong. So where are we actually? Yeah.

Okay. Mephisto! Last but not least, we're running long, so I'll try to scurry through this, but our listener Ryan sent in an epic episode title theory breakdown email where he went through the lyrics of the ballad and tried to assign it to each episode. This involves no spoilers, but careful, clear parsing of trailer footage. So if you don't fancy that,

you can skip ahead. But you and I like to parse a trailer. So here we go. Love to parse a trailer. Trailer footage parsing plus interviews with cast members, all of which I feel like is kosher.

So Ryan says he thinks episode four is going to be titled, If One Be Gone, We Carry On, because duh, Sharon is dead. So if one be gone, we carry on. And then he said from released pictures, this is the 70s disco episode. And based on the placement of Alice and the images and trailers, this appears to be Alice's trial in the fire trial. We appear to see a waning crescent moon on the door behind her in the official trailer. So.

Episode five, Spirit as our guide. Jolok confirms in interviews that this is the 80s episode. We see them using a Ouija board in the trailer, which is why I picked this lyric. Based on the aesthetic, I have been penciling this one as Rio's trial and the Earth trial. Based on that, I also considered marching ever forward neath the wooden shrine. Okay.

If a Ouija board and, like, spirit is our guide, that feels more like a Lilia trial to me. I don't have an answer to that one way or another. But, okay. Yeah. Episode six, tame your fears, adore. I also just think Ryo and Agatha trials have to be later. I agree.

Episode six, tame your fears. A door appears. The other obvious theme trial we see in trailers is the wizard of Oz episode and the musical wicked alphabet survives the angry mob by faking your death and using a trap door, which is why I picked this lyric though. It's probably too cute because it's like the lilies trial in the air trial. I also considered primal night. Give us sight.

So, but I agree with you. I really feel like it should be Alice, then Lilia, and then whatever happens next. So what happens next, episode seven, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, is

There's a lot of Agatha and Billy footage in the trailer, just the two of them. And so, you know, Ryan theorizes that this is when we unlock Billy's power in episode seven. Yeah. I love that. And then episode eight, I hold death's hand in mine. I have very few theories for the final two episodes, but this could be a flashback episode for both Agatha and Billy. Both the stories seem to be related to death and the people close to them, thus the chosen lyric. And then episode nine, follow me, my friends, to glory at the end, seems like a classic finale title. So...

I loved that parsing from Ryan, and I'm excited for the themed trials that await us. Me too. Me too. Yeah, 8 once again, like 8 being a flashback when 8 was the big WandaVision flashback. That feels very right. I like this a lot. Good stuff. Wow. Great email. How exciting. I love a theory show. Okay. Easter eggs.

What was your favorite? Was it when they said Mephisto? I'm actually going to give it to Merch Corner. Oh, yeah. Nice. The amulets I'm intrigued by. And the fact that they're already selling them is wonderful. So, yeah. I love it. There were some really good Easter eggs in this episode. Like, shout out again to Colorado Mentions. Huge Tiny Lies Iconic all-time. It's great stuff. Really good. It's fantastic. All right. Joe, this was, in fact, a vibe. Thank you to our coven.

Steve Allman and Arjuna Ramgopal, as always, for production and podcast supervision. Thank you to Jomia Deneron, as always, for social. And thank you to Stefano Sanchez for video editing and John Richter and T. Cruz for video support. We will see you next week.

On Thursday, for our Rings of Power season two finale, deep dive. Tragic. Sad. Only two years until season three. It's fine. And on Friday, our Agatha episode four deep dive. Until then, to Harbingers of Doom!