'Agatha All Along' Episode 5 Deep Dive | House of R
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This season on Naughty Yatta Island. When we were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone. But then, it's like I didn't exist. Don't take Yatta Yatta from your wireless carrier. Now with Metro, get that new customer feeling again and again. Introducing Metro Flex. Free 5G phones when you join, same deals as new customers when you stay. Only at Metro by T-Mobile. Just bring your number and ID and sign up for an eligible plan. After 12 months, trade in and get our best deals on select devices.

This episode is brought to you by Coke Zero Sugar, a very popular product in the Simmons house. Being a fan takes a lot. Loving your team through the lows and the highs can be thirsty work. That's where Coke Zero Sugar comes in. And we've actually got some Coke Zero Sugar right here in my little studio. Let's give it a try. Nice, beautiful, like kind of a darkish red can. I'm just going to give it a whirl. My fingernails. Oh, there we go. Oh yeah. Okay. Let's try it. Wow.

That's really good. Coke zero sugar. Delicious. Incredible taste. And again, zero sugar. Best Coke ever. Let me take another sip. That might be the best Coke ever. God, that's delicious. Best Coke ever. I think so. Click or tap the banner to find out. Why do you hate me still? You were born evil. I ought to have killed you the moment you left my body. We have to go. No, no.

There's no flood here, there's no fire. The only danger to us in this trial is Agatha Harkness. Please take me with you. Don't. Don't. Let me. Please. Don't go! Take me with you, please! Don't leave me with her! I can be good! Oh, welcome back.

to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. It is my absolute thrill and joy and pleasure and honor to be taking over hosting duties for the rest of the Agatha run here with my beloved sister in witchcraft, my coven of two. It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. Jo, people ask me why I don't have female friends. Um...

I have asked you that before. And I think your answer was like, women, you know. Hello. Hello. Oh, my God. It's been a minute. We took a little one pod break this week. You flew across the country. You dazzled them on Broadway. But we are back here together again to talk about Agatha all along episode five. Yes. Yes.

Dark is our wake thy power. That is what we're here to talk about today. Before we get into all of that, programmer reminders. Yeah. So as you're listening to this over on the Midnight Boys Pew Pew, you should already have your Agatha all along episode five reaction, your penguin episode three reactions. You should also, if you value your life, your love, comedy, all of this,

Please check out Charles Holmes' package about clowns that's on the Ringiverse YouTube. Where else can folks find that Charles video? We've been telling the listeners, Jo, you can get full video episodes of The Midnight Boys, Pew Pew, and The House of R on the YouTube channel. But now you can also get gems like What Are We Doing Here, an original video series from Charles Holmes. So how could you not? Frankly, how could you not subscribe to the YouTube channel?

Deeply charming. Just like Charles at his absolute best. Incredible stuff. Gotta stay to the end. The payoff is really worth it. Really good. Okay. Also over on Button Mash, they're doing an Alien Isolation 10-year anniversary and Tomb Raider The Legend of Lara Croft. So, you know.

Tune in to that. The Mint Edition are doing a comics check-in next week. Midnight Boys will be back with their Agatha Long stuff. We will be back next week with some Penguin takes. We have been out of the Penguin discourse. We are...

getting our flippers into the mix here. We'll be doing that next week and also our next Agatha reaction. So I'm excited to chat Penguin. Four episodes will be out by that pod. So yeah, it's a lot to catch up on mid season. Basically, can't wait to check in on that. So that is.

Our pod, their pods. How can folks keep track of all of that, Mallory Rubin? Here you go. It's simple. Follow the pod. Why not? Follow the House of R. Follow the Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You know how we just mentioned that you can see the video episodes on YouTube? Guess what? You can also watch the entire video pod right here on Spotify. Amazing stuff. While your phone is in your hand, we'd love it if you followed the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. The Ringerverse is on Instagram, Twitter,

TikTok, Twitter. And then while you're at it, send us an email. The inbox is open, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. It doesn't matter that House of the Dragon is over, that Rings of Power is over. The inbox name remains the same. It is eternal. Send us your agon thoughts. Send us your penguin thoughts. It is not. It is not too early to send your venom thoughts. Oh, yeah.

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

But a lot of theories have been pretty well confirmed this week. A big one, especially. So we will be talking about that in the main body of the episode. So spoilers up through episode five of Agatha all along, but also comics lore is in the mix as well. We don't know what's happening for the rest of the season. In fact, frankly, I don't know.

I was shocked by the reveal that we got at the end of this episode because we don't know what the twist and turns of this road will take. So you're in the same boat as we are. That is your spoiler warning. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. Ooh.

Give us a cackle, love. What's your cackle, Emily? You know, I will admit an actual organic cackle occasionally here and now, but I don't know if I can cackle on command convincingly. Unlike Aubrey Plaza, who I have to say has a knack for it. We will be checking in on the cackle game of one Miss Aubrey Plaza as we go along in this episode. Episode five, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power. As I mentioned earlier,

Something massive happens at the end of this episode. We get a seeming confirmation of who Teen is at the end of this episode, if you have some comic knowledge, which we do. And we're here to share it with you. But I should say, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, we kind of thought that might be a finale or penultimate episode because I don't think either of us expected this reveal to come mid-season. So, Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, here we are.

Written by Laura Monti, and I got really excited when I saw that because I remembered that when we were covering WandaVision, Jack Schafer in her infinite generosity is always trying to give credit to her entire writing staff, like, very specifically. And so...

In the episode of WandaVision, where we hear the now iconic line, what is grief but love persevering? Yeah. Jack, in interviews, is what made sure to say, listen, we had what is grief but love surviving. We were workshopping in the room. It wasn't really hitting. And then my assistant, Laura Monti, came up with persevering. So Laura Monti, who is credited as the writer on this episode-

is the one who really nailed what is grief but love persevering that line into MCU history. Who knows what role that teamwork played in giving us a story about sisterhood and covens and needing to align and work together. Very, very central premise for this episode and how that can go wrong. We also have, I mean, this is just like a broader television thing. I love the story of people like...

A way to work your way up in the world of TV writing is to start as a writer's assistant in the writer's room. And it is like often a thankless job, but it is part of the whole like education process of learning how a room works and all that sort of stuff. So for, you know, for Jack Schaefer to take her writer's assistant from WandaVision and give her an episode to write in this season of television, you love to see it. Love it.

Directed by Rachel Goldberg, who did episode three, four, and five. So the last, you know, the last three episodes have been Rachel Goldberg. And then this is a quick one. This is 24 minutes approximately when you subtract the previously on and the closing credits, which I was devastated when I opened the episode and saw it was such a shorty. But yeah.

they packed a lot into this episode way more than I expected them to. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh,

in a way to see the runtime, even though I don't think it should have been because WandaVision episodes were that length. So actually heading into the season, this is like more what I expected the length of an episode to be. And I think then I recalibrated my expectations for the runtime based on the last few weeks. But listen, at the end of the day, inside of those 24 minutes, we not only got the Wicked reveal, we not only lost Alice,

Temporarily, perhaps. We'll find out. We'll theorize. We not only got some of the most, we heard it at the top of the show, gut-wrenching and harrowing insights imaginable into Agatha's family history. Folks, we got Agatha Harkness saying, it's not a verb. What could you possibly want out of your midweek television? I don't know. Ouija-ing?

We have to Ouija. We have to Ouija. It's not a verb. Where do you rank this? Should we at the end of the season, we should collect all these because there's also the witches apostrophe road comment from earlier in the season. This is a real like writer's room sort of. Fantastic stuff. Yeah. We have a long running tradition that has been on hiatus for a bit at the ringer where our copy chief, Craig Gaines, a one of one, just one of the true geniuses in media. Great guy.

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

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

Thanks for asking. Appreciate it. You're welcome. I mean, doesn't it make sense? Like, why can't you root for the team where you grew up and then, like, later as an adult you move somewhere and you want to root for that local team as well? This is Craig's response. This is his answer, right? He grew up in Michigan. He moved to LA. Yeah. I consider one realm of sports appropriate for that choice. Come on.

Because you grow up in an area, maybe, and you have your childhood team. Am I making the rules to fit my own personal needs? Maybe. You grow up a Maryland Terrapin fan, and then you go to Syracuse, and you're like, go Orange. That makes sense to me because those are two distinct experiences. And also, there are hundreds, literally hundreds of college teams. There are 30 baseball teams. There is simply no reason, especially in the modern day, to...

in any way table your allegiance. Boot up the fucking MLB app and watch the Tigers. Actually, it's easier to watch the Tigers here than it is to watch the Dodgers. And this is just a thing that I will continue to struggle to understand about...

Sports fandom and tribalism. All right. This is good. It's going to be good when we get to the end of the pod. We're like, we ran a little long and Mike's going to be like, guys, I have great news. I have easily identified seven minutes that we can cut. Okay. You already gave us some crumbs, some breadcrumbs about some things in this episode that you wanted to point out. But like, is that, is that, are there any other overall thoughts that you want to talk about in terms of this episode before we, before I give mine and then we dive into the deep dive? Yeah.

will hit most of the things that I'm eager to discuss as we go. So I can keep this very brief and just say that my relationship to this episode is that it was not my favorite of the season, but I could see having a really different response to it with the clarity of the full season because I'm not sure that we know exactly what we saw inside of this episode. Like the fact that... A lot of questions. Yeah. The fact that Agatha...

Agatha's trial is taking place this soon in the season feels odd to me. The questions of why that would be the setting for her trial feels odd to me. We have a lot of questions about how and the how and the why of Tien's sigil seeming to lift, et cetera. And so I wonder if on the one hand we will maybe just get, if it is Agatha's trial, if it is, if she is going to have more than one. Yes. If we have another trial in store, perhaps there was the Evanora trial and then there will be the Nikki trial or something like that. I mean, if,

it feels like we failed this trial, but being honest with you. For sure, yeah. And that is something I really liked about it, that it seems like if it is in fact a genuine trial and not a deception or the test of a foe or something that is like leading them off of a little offshoot on the road instead of the road proper,

perhaps. The trial of the entire season overall seems rooted in sisterhood, embracing the coven, friendship, found family. Togetherness. Adventures. Yes, they must be shared. And so the readiness and quickness and haste with which the bulk of the group turned on Agatha, and then, of course, building toward even teen, the most staunch and the most loyal defender of Agatha to this point, saying, like, you have lost me at last, and

it feels like everybody everybody failed the test in a way and so but I did like the mysteries and the questions then that the episode posed and I could see if we do have clarity in a few episodes that this was either a false trial or only stage one of a trial really liking it a lot more yeah are you subscribing to the because there's like a bunch of theories about this because like

you know, the witches left the road on brooms and then they were like forced down into something and they were once again pushed into a trial, similarly to the way they were pushed down onto the road in the first place by the Salem seven chasing them. There's also plenty of conspiracy theories about like, did they all get all of the bugs off them? And where the Salem seven bugs like controlling their minds, something like that. I confess to you. Yeah.

I prefer that not be the reveal because I don't like watching an entire episode and then being like, JK, they were all being mind controlled by bugs the whole time is not something that I would be excited about. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. But I do like the idea that the trial itself is, was failed and not done and we'll do it again. I, but I do think that like,

things like Jen's behavior in this episode or potentially some things leading up to Wiccan who is also teen who is also Billy like that reveal at the end like I

I feel like there are... What an honor to get the Hal brand, who is Anatar, who is Sauron treatment here. Wonderful. Do you think he'll start tying his hair in a little bow in the back the way that Anatar did for the last part of the season? Two of the great stars of Wig Watch TM with Joanna Robinson TM. So anything is possible. And also Charlie Vickers and Jill Locke both have incredible natural curly hair that should never be hidden under a wig, but here we are. Anyway, so...

Opening snapshot, quick overall thoughts for me. I, because this episode was short, I don't think it's going to like stand up as my favorite episode, but I think that the emotional depth, as you mentioned of the Evanora stuff really hit me personally as someone who has her own special relationship with her mother. And like, and then the teen reveal was so exciting. The teen reveal really good was so good.

for a reveal of something we have known since the very beginning of, you know, we've cast Joe Locke. Like, of course, he's playing Billy, Wanda's son, who is also Wiccan. Like, of course, that's what's happening. So for it to hit the way it did with the design of the crown that manifests on him with the Billie Eilish needle drop, which I think is

going to go down in history as one of the best MCU needle drops of all time. So good. Like our, our pal Alan Sepinwall texted me and he's been like way more middling on Agatha long than I have been. And he texted me and he was just like,

when you know the answer and the answer like is amazing anyway you know he was dazzled by that too so it's just like it was an incredible moment really in the story and probably as we as we remember agatha later without pouring over every detail we're gonna think about this moment it's just this like really incredible thing that happened i think so as well yeah a critique i have uh this episode is called uh darkest hour wake thy power and i will say that there were times dude when

When this was a hard to see episode. And I'm just saying it doesn't have to be this way. There are shows where this is not the case. And so I should not be squinting as, you know, the Salem seven are scrambling around on the road to see what's happening. So with love and respect to the incredible artists on Agatha Long or just in general in television, other shows don't have this problem. So you don't have to have this problem. I believe in you. Okay. Yeah.

Should we go down to the deep dive? Let's do it. Room stuff go. We're starting with some real witchy shit. We start with Salem 7. Several critters turn themselves into terrifying, yet I'm going to say it, somehow still hot women skittering their way down the road, Nazguling their way down the road after our various witches. Were you reminded of the Nazgul? Were you reminded of, shine!

Back in. When you heard. Always. Back in the darkness. Yes. Find her. A very ring-wraithy hissing for sure. I will say just the.

glimpse of the animal forms and then into, you know, emerging from behind the tree back in your human form. It's very Animagus to me. So that was like also, of course, on my mind. But the hissing. Moony, where are you? Great stuff. You're always thinking about the Marauders. I know. Always, always. But yeah, the hissing is so Nazguli. It's a great little touch. Love it. It does make me think, not that this is a surprise, that the Salem Seven will have very few lines of dialogue in this season of television. Cool.

Correct. Find her, find them. I thought it was really interesting because like, what is the them? Find her, Agatha Harkness. Find them, find the coven, you'll find her maybe. But do they want something with the larger coven? Do they want something with teen? He's the one they like chase down the stairs. Like what, what are they after other than Agatha here? Yeah. It's a good question. Sometimes, you know,

It's a good question. I like the idea that they might actually have something specific that they're seeking from another member of the Coven, though I do think if it is just them, the Coven, and Mass, then this idea of needing to...

turn the coven against Agatha. And then again, that fits very neatly with what we see inside of this episode, but also just what we've been talking about the entire season. This is a very reluctant fellowship, and that's part of why it's interesting to watch and hopefully why it will be really rewarding to see them, or at least some of them, choose each other in the end. But that's not necessarily the natural inclination of the members of the group who had to be talked into doing this in the first place or happy to turn on Agatha in this episode and then say out loud, we're all just here for our own power.

Well, I think what's interesting, I mean, first of all, that's the bit Agatha made was not like sisterhood. It was like, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? You'll get what you want at the end of the road. But also, as we've been discussing, these women have these traumatic backstories of

that have pushed them into a state of being alone. If you were, you know, if you had your powers bound because you were lured to a medical conference where you thought you would, you know, like maybe you would fucking not trust people in isolation. If you were chased by a family curse, if, if, if you were chased out of maybe all of Europe because of a plague, like, you know, these are things that would cause these women to sort of shelter in place and build walls around themselves. And the whole idea of this journey and of the show seems to be,

tear down that wall and form a coven true you know a true sisterhood so coven true um not coven to read the lyrics okay lilia sounds the alarm the witches are like sleeping rough out on the on the road um jen has fashioned herself a sleeping mask out of leaves how do you feel about this all right great

Inspiring. Yeah. Aspirational. The kind of thing you want to believe you do, but know in your heart you wouldn't. You know, I would just sit there and complain the entire time. I feel like I would do it, but then they would just all like fall off of me. Jen, of course, has, I don't know, magic to help her. But if I attempted it, I would definitely pick some sort of like poisoned person.

leaf and end up like not being able to see out of my eyes for the rest of the journey i don't know why i had to say see out of my eyes as though there's like another i don't know maybe through magic like i can see out of your eyes currently i need glass i'm working on it telling your mom right now through the podcast i'm working on getting mallory to the optometrist oh man i got her a tattoo appointment let's step one in the right direction okay exactly

Lily is on the alarm, as I said. Rio already seems to know what's happening, as is often the case. Rio is just sort of like,

I know as this creepy lurker tourist sort of role, she is much more all seeing, all knowing than anyone else. Right. And she says like, go on, tell, go on, Lilia, tell them like she already knows. Do you, we get, we get the show's exposition on who the Salem seven are, which is slightly different from the comics canon. Do you feel like, do you want to like sort of point out some similarities and differences, Mallory Rubin?

Sure. I'd be happy to. Great. Why the fuck not? Yeah. You know, we're here. We're doing a podcast. Hand me with that lore, Mallory. So we mentioned this. Mallory. You know what I mean? Wow. I feel like that's something Elrond would say. So thank you. Not that he likes particularly fond of a name pun or anything, but he does like to mention lore. According to lore. Yeah.

Miss that guy. I really miss that guy. So we talked about, because the Salem Seven were, of course, mentioned in the two-part premiere at the beginning of the season. Mm-hmm.

start pursuing Agatha. This is, of course, you mentioned like the fleeing, the hurried desire to escape. These are the figures that they're escaping from when they're summoning the road, conjuring the road in the first place. We talked about this in the double premiere pod, but in the comics canon, these characters stay back to the 70s as many of the characters do as we observed at the time. And Agatha

have crossed storylines and pages with, obviously, Scarlet Witch, with Agatha, with good old Nicholas Scratch. Have you heard of him, lad? But also characters like the Fantastic Four, et cetera. And they have this ability, as we get to see very clearly in this episode, because we had the little moments where, oh, we're seeing a rat scurrying about and we're seeing a crow perched, and Agatha knows what this means at the beginning of the season. Here we get this very direct moment

This owl has turned into a member of the Sail of Seven. The snake is, et cetera. So we can see their magical power and the creature link on display here. I thought the turning into a plume of bugs was genuinely upsetting. And it's a no for me. It did remind me once again of Lord of the Rings, though, because it was very like the acolytes turning into bugs.

The moths. That's funny. I was reminded of the 1999 classic, The Mummy, where things become scarabs quite easily. There's just a lot of scarab work in that movie. That's definitely a better and more lasting association and not one born out of the recency bias of having just podcasted about rings of power for a while.

A month and a half. So we put a little spoiler tag ahead of this next comics nugget on the first pod. We're going to do it again here. Literally just hit fast forward once if you don't want to hear this. Okay.

In the comics, the Salem Seven are Nicholas Scratch's kids and Agatha's grandkids. And so there's this direct tether to good old Nikki, who obviously plays a big role in this episode. Earlier in the season when we were talking about how the Salem Seven might manifest in the story, we felt pretty sure it was going to be radically different. Now, I'm

wondering if it's obviously it's different because we learn here we get the history of when Agatha murdered her sister witches she spared their young children so these are the shows Salem 7 are the children of the coven that Agatha destroyed the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn and by that I mean strayed into husks

Exactly. The classic, no, those harpies are dust. The parents of the Salem Seven is the dust harpies. Tough one. And obviously, in this episode, we get to hear that great response from Agatha. The moral of the story, kids, is always finish what you started. Also, mercy is overrated. We love to talk about mad, embarrassed, and the madness of mercy, all of that. It's so fascinating to think about

Agatha is a character to whom that logic in any way like touches or applies. And then of course to speculate about is what happened, did what happened to her own child, to Nikki, lead to this mercy, to her desire, even as she eliminated this coven, drained them of their power to make sure that the children were spared and were okay. So that's really interesting to think about. I completely agree. And I love, I like this.

This version of the Salem seven, which is different from comics can. And I think this is a really smart way to make the vengeance personal and less complicated. And, and I also really love this moment when, you know, Jen, they're telling the lore, the story of the Salem seven, the story of Agatha. And here's Jen who knows a version of it.

And then here's Rio with added context that they don't have, which we get a little bit more info later when Rio quite defensively says because her own mother tried to have her executed. Right. And so this is the earliest indication in this episode that we are going to be, as we have been grappling with these contrasting situations.

accounts of who Agatha Harkness is or as Lillia is constantly harping on who witches are in general what assumptions do you make about a witch based on a story you heard someone else tell and this is the story that they heard about Agatha Harkness and Rio's like

You didn't know Evanora. You're about to meet her. She's not great. Memorable and deeply deplorable figure. Makes a quick impression and a lasting one. I love that emerging theme because obviously, and again, we'll talk about this more later, of course, but the propensity to fall into the same trap that they accuse others of and resent in others, right? That you would be the one to turn on a witch who you think might do something foul. Yeah.

is so deliciously rich. And so this as well, like you're saying, even thinking back now to what Lillia says when Agatha, like when they first cut through the bullshit of the like, oh, his father and the golf course, which was so good. And I still love that scene.

Like, I know you by reputation, right? And like, they wouldn't want to be known by their reputations. So they can't find the grace to learn a little bit more about Agatha. They just assume everything they've heard is completely true. The hypocrisy of that is so narratively rich. And we're both hoping that this is the journey that they're all on to like understanding, to recognizing that they fell into the same trap that other people have fallen in. Exactly. That Rio moment that you just called out that because her own mother tried to have her executed.

There were a lot of things I really liked. I know I said this episode wasn't my favorite, but I still really liked it. And there were a lot of things I really enjoyed about it. The multiple moments where Rio...

Me too. Just adjacent by mere seconds to perhaps threatening, as Jen will point out, to slit her throat and like wielding her dagger against her, jumps to Agatha's defense in a way that shows you the deeply rooted and abiding bond and affection that they have for each other. Like also just the understanding. Yeah, the history. I know you. And I can recognize. And I know your mom. Like I know your mom firsthand. I know your mom.

I know what happened to you. I know what you've been through. I know the things that shaped you. And also, I know that other people don't know that about you and haven't either been able to find out or bothered to find out. And so that was a really wonderful part of this episode. I have this marked for later in the notes, but I'll just say it now. Like, I was reading a bunch of Jack Schaefer interviews recently.

about the show. She was talking about sort of the way they reverse engineered certain characters. So like, well, Rio as a love interest for Agatha. And so then they had to like build up from there. What's the kind of person that would have had a relationship with Agatha? And we'll talk about that a little bit more specifically later. But with Jen, they're like, we want someone specifically on the road with her who has known Agatha for

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

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

Again, this is just a plume of bugs theory corner. Yes. Don't think Nikki is going to be a malevolent figure in the show. Okay. That's my feeling. I think anyone who wants to punish Agatha is not her deceased son, Nicholas Scratch.

is my guess, but it's going to be tough if we go through a very, I think they can pull it off. Frankly, I think the show is well made enough to lead us to a lot of places, but to go on this like incredibly intense journey of assessing trauma and hopefully working toward a place of healing and then being like, your kid's the bad guy. It's going to be a lot for Agatha to work through. So I'm open to it, but it feels like that doesn't feel right to me. Um,

Last question quickly on this just emergence of the Salem 7. It seemed like one of them picked up. It's obsidian. Yeah. This obsidian chunk. Yeah. Yeah.

Is your read – I might be skipping ahead slightly here, but like that somebody left that intentionally? I don't know about intentionally. I think it was part of the ritual and they just didn't close the door on the ritual. So it's just that that's like we're in the – we forgot – and we hear this. We forgot to close the door. Sloppy work. Everyone's distracted. Everyone's in a hurry. There's a lot going on, a lot on our minds. But not somebody left that on purpose to keep the door open for them. I don't think –

Anyone in the coven would, if anyone would, it might be Rio who, who like is maybe associated with calling them to Westview in the first place.

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

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

inconsistent and more compelling to me. You know, sometimes you can see a contradiction inside a character and you're like, what are we doing? And sometimes you're like, I can't wait to figure out all the conflicting motivations inside of this person who is an, an ex of Agatha's who is profoundly bitter to have been separated from her angry and

But also tender. Yeah. And it feels like she has been blamed as we got to glimpse last episode for something that she didn't have the ability to opt out of. Breakups are hard. I don't know if you've heard this. Mike, who's working on our pod today, is a big Taylor Swift fan. Taylor Swift has a few songs about him. You might want to check them out. Okay.

Teen suggests something called a Hexenbessen. And I just love the show for saying that instead of Broomstuff Go. We love a craft. We love an art. We love a craft. Hexenbessen. Hexen is the plural of witches. Bessen is from brooms. Sort of like old high German stuff. You love to see it. Yeah.

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

As with all the trials, we can't sing this song alone. We can't brew this potion alone and we can't like fly a broom alone. You can't as a witch fly a broom alone. You need to fly it with you.

you're members of your coven. I love this. We fly together or not at all. And also just for Agatha to be the one to voice it's about selflessness teen and then, of course, the rebuke to that from inside the house, right? Jen's like, oh, is it? Tell us more, Agatha. You're going to tell us about being selfless? But that's what made it so interesting, like the moments where Agatha has to recognize the thing that maybe she has

And we start to see more potentially why in this episode willfully, intentionally, deliberately or not, or subconsciously like isolated herself over time. I love too though the like dual elements of that community. Like there's a really practical part of it, I think, right? They're being hunted. And so there's this element of it like,

Selflessness is about protecting others as well, right? And so if you are flying together, you are presumably less likely to find yourself in peril or in harm. But then, of course, the richer thematic note that you're outlining, like the manifestation of that theme, Stronger Together, was just lovely. Watching them then...

delight in the flight which is you know as you know i haven't done this in centuries like something that they haven't been able to do because they've been covenless witches so the pure joy of riding a broom across a blood moon looking at your ex-girlfriend who looks really hot on her broom you know that like agatha experiences they all experience is something they haven't been able to is a part of witchiness that has been removed from them for a very long time so watching that

joyful moment is incredible. I do, Molly Rubin, have to share some broom lore that I did find with you. Actually, I already kind of knew this, but I was just happy to go down this particular rabbit hole. Why do witches ride brooms in pop culture? Go down this rabbit hole is an interesting setup for what you're about to say. Continue. Molly has had a preview of what I'm about to say. Okay.

As with most witch lore, as we've mentioned, as Lillia will be happy to tell you, there are conflicting reports on how we get pointed hats and cauldrons and brooms and all of that sort of stuff. Lillia has yet to heed your note, Jo, of finding anything else to talk about. Literally one other topic. Tell me about...

you know, Sicily and the flora and fauna there and your family's recipes and all kinds of stuff. And like, how do you feel about mob stereotypes and how they connect to Sicily? What did you think of White Lotus season two set in Sicily? Let us know. We're waiting, Lilia. Yeah. We'll be, we'll be, we'll have our ears perked.

up for that okay so I did love that Jen was like because they do the inside of the larger coven the dual circling and handoff of the rooms and like Jen was like this is amazing like you picked a great one and Lillias like you frankly could have tried harder so disappointed that was great

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

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

Writing in the 16th century, the Spanish court physician Andre de Laguna claimed that to have taken, quote, a pot full of a certain green ointment composed of herbs such as hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake from the home of people accused of witchcraft. So let's say these hot women back in the day were making drug paste and enjoying it. How fun. How do they ingest said substance? Well, this is where the brooms come in. Because who achieved their hallucinations...

These early drug users needed a distribution method that was a little more complicated than simple ingestion. When consumed, the old school hallucinogens could cause nausea, vomiting, skin irritation, all these problems. So what people realized is that absorbing them through the skin could lead to hallucinations that arrive without the bad side effects and the most receptive areas for that absorption. We got to absorb the paste without eating the paste. Have to. Yes. Were the sweat glands damaged?

of the armpits and the mucus membranes of the genitals. Okay. Yeah. So, in other words, slide right on. These ladies, or whomsoever were enjoying this paste, were slathering, according to lore, broom handles and riding them to...

get the best effect from these drugs yeah and when you say like it's the best effect yeah it's i we multitasking here how are we writing i don't know uh i read this in multiple reputable sources so this is just like this is the thing that feels true and i support it i say great yeah enjoy yourself ladies or anyone else who cares to join you are people still doing this like is this still a thing i have not heard of it hobbitsanddragonsandgmail.com okay

Send your testimonials. I'm slathering a handle and enjoying yourself. Let us know. Okay. PPS to end this section. Mallory Rubin. We got a lot of emails from people about this and I had seen it elsewhere on Reddit, et cetera. Possibly, possibly hypocritical because IMDb often lies. Uh-huh. But according to IMDb. Yes. There is an intimacy coordinator credited for next week, episode six, uh,

and episode eight. So broomstick writing, go Mallory Brubin. What are your thoughts on a potential intimacy coordinator for Agatha all along? Thrilled to know this genuinely thrilled to know this, all of it. Thank you for that history lesson. And thank you for this, this intimacy coordinator insight here for your note in the doc that said crotch stuff. Go.

on the merch, but keep it in your heart, you know? Here to contribute however I can. You know, I do, boy, I will say I have some questions about like splinters and things like that. I mean, hopefully you're polishing. I mean, in this kind of emergency situation, we're really just like,

We're going right on that true route. Okay, but in this situation, we have undergarments. We're not trying to ingest things through our nethers. You know what I mean? Okay, so there's some sanding and some polishing happening in ideal circumstances. We're getting a smooth, glossy surface. If you're constantly slathering it in various ointments, I think that thing probably gleams. You know? Yeah.

This is history. This is history. Oh, boy. Okay. Just bring you some history. Thank you. Slathering in various ointments indeed. On to the intimacy coordinator. Yeah. So it strikes me as more likely that this is ultimately about Agatha and Rio than it is about watching them ride these broomsticks in a different sort of way. But who knows?

Who knows what Disney Plus has in store for us? Do you think? This is getting ahead to how the episode ends. But teen cast out. Oh. Agatha, Jen, Lillia. You had previously noted.

There's a shot in the trailer of Jen emerging from the ground of Westview. Perhaps if they're cast out of the road, they need to make their way back. But we also have trailer shots of Teen and Agatha in medical gowns, hands on the head. That seems like a very likely candidate for...

uh, Agatha, Wanda equivalent. Lots of, lots of trailer spoilers here. They're actually revisiting the, because I rewatched the trailers after this episode and I'm like, again, they're not even like hiding this stuff. This is just like, they don't want us to think the trial on the road is over. Like they're going back to the road. It's just a question of when and how. Yeah. Um,

But that shot of Agatha and Tien in particular, it pings very like Agatha and Wanda going back through the memories. And we had talked before about how it felt like the most likely thing was getting that version for Agatha with more of Agatha's flashbacks in history, which I still think is coming. But maybe we're also getting something similar for Tien or maybe that's happening in tandem. I definitely think so because, again, like spoilers but not, skip ahead if you feel very touchy about it. All there in the Marvel trailers that this company put out.

For us to see. They have cast Billy's parents. Right. So like we are going to get a story. I would imagine backstory. I would not be surprised if episode six is.

is a Billy backstory episode. Oh, so I was going to say maybe that would be great and actually makes much more sense based on where we are sequentially with how this episode ended. But the intimacy coordinator thing specifically sent me into a maybe that could that be an Agatha Rio flashback intimacy sequence. And then episode eight is like present day. Oh, renewed intimacy. I love that for you. And I hope that that's what we're aiming towards. I was wondering if

uh if we get bill this is probably my brain is cooked from having just watched all of heartstopper season three but like if we get billy and his boyfriend yeah um you know like you know they're

Red blooded teenagers. Like, you know, who knows, you know, what their backstory relationship is. And then, yeah. And then Agatha and Rio and episode eight was sort of my thought. And then also this might be absolute bullshit because IMDb has lied so many times in the past. People can just randomly edit stuff into there. So I'm just saying, yeah,

Do not be crushed if there is no on Disney Plus multiple hot and heavy gay sex scenes. So, you know, I'm just saying don't get your hopes too high. Okay. But I would like I would not be opposed. Okay.

Also, maybe just like nudity, because I actually don't know if one was credited for the earlier scene where Agatha was wandering around bare ass naked. So like, you know, maybe just like not in a sex way, but it is sort of like there's going to be nudity on the set. Let's make sure people feel comfortable with it sort of thing. Okay. Yeah.

We get the broom riding, as it were. I sure do. Lilia, on her fucking bullshit, as we mentioned, brooms have been co-opted by the Holiday Industrial Complex as an absurd emblem of our culture. Worse yet, they're an obvious symbol of female domesticity and the basic. And here's where I'm going to indulge myself. And I will say this. In an interview, Jack Schaefer said it was her fondest wish

Do you have a musical number in every single episode of the season? Yes. I think we're getting at least one more, but she was just sort of like budget this, that, and the other thing we couldn't do a musical. We, she kind of wanted to do a version of,

the Witch's Road ballad in a different sort of genre style every single episode was sort of an idea she had. So we could have gotten like an 80s pop version in this episode or something like that. Would have been fucking dynamite. Would have been great. But that's not what we're getting. That's okay. What I'm taking is my permission to just keep Musical Corner open for business at all times. And I will say this. When Patti LuPone

shout it out to teen who is wicked and also Billy, uh, try praying to the divine mother kiddo. It pings something in my brain and I regret to inform you. I brought you a musical clip. Uh, this is from the, uh, musical company in which I saw Patty LuPone live in London with Johnny Bailey. It was great. Um, Mike, will you play this clip? You're not a kid anymore, Bobby. I don't think you'll ever be a kid again, kiddo. Musical corner. It's always open. Sometimes you're always welcome here. Uh,

So that is where. So pray to the Divine Mother, which is just general basic, you know, witchcraft stuff that you could say. Do you feel like this is here because this is such like a mother and children episode? This is such like an early Wanda sort of nod or just think it's just like blanket?

random witch stuff go. No, the former. It felt like very purposeful to just ping the word mother, even though it is like Divine Mother capitalized, just to ping the word mother toward teen on the brink, not only of what we see with Agatha and her horrid mother, but the reveal, you know, the anticipated reveal that teen is Wanda's kid, is Billy. Like just having that on our minds, like,

mere moments because this is such a short episode before the actual reveal even though this is the beginning of the episode and that's the end they are separated by only i believe 20 minutes maybe even like 18 or something so 18 something like that yeah it is my pleasure to bring you now the first of two iconic cackles from obby plaza michael you play this please oh my god

Genuinely incredible. I actually like, I had a real journey in this sequence because the emotionally like potent exchanging of the brooms, beautiful. Then teen's euphoria, getting to participate. I was like, this is so, but no one teaches him. I'm like, this is so Harry on his broomstick for the first time and like just a natural. And like, that was also great. And then the looks that are passing between them, like the way, there are a lot of weird

deeply inscrutable looks the past from Agatha towards someone else in this episode. And there was really like a charged one, the way Agatha was looking at Rio and the journey, the emotional journey we went on with that one look. And then I will say when the descent begins, the road is pulling them back. I was like,

this looks this does not look very good like i found it to be quite distracting actually but then the cackle pulled me right back in it did on the one hand i agree and i don't want to make excuses for the show uh on the other hand the fact that the show is so low budge and so like full of practical effects and they use these cgi sequences sparingly um i was just sort of like that's okay i

I know I'm in the tank for the show. You were like, that's okay because I can't see it because it's so dark. I couldn't, to be honest with you. And then Aubrey cackled and I was like, everything's great. What I loved when I was clipping that cackle out, it's so funny because you can hear them cut. You hear Alice scream and then Jen scream and then you just get this cackle and it's so funny. So yeah, the road won't let them leave. It forces them down. Yeah.

Bug stuff, plumes of bugs, et cetera, et cetera. This idea of the road not letting them leave, as you already mentioned, I like this idea coming back into play because if Agatha and Lily and Jen are not, as we suspect they are not, dead from drowning in mud by the end of this episode, will the road draw them back the way that it did in this sequence here? They're not done with the road, so they're not allowed to leave the road, even though Teen got them off the road, you know? Right.

They did get to ride past the moon like E.T., though. That was dope. It was really cute. And that has been in the promo, the shadow of them in front of the blood moon. So, yeah. Again, the CGI, a little shoddy. I'm not mad about it.

The trial. Or is it? Here we go. Our listener Kat, many people, but our listener Kat was the first to email me about it, points out that we don't get an aspect ratio shift when we enter this particular, I'm going to call it an escape room. We mentioned this in previous episodes of them when they walk into sort of the beach house

uh, in episode three. And when they walk into, uh, Lorna's, uh, really absolutely beautiful seventies home in episode four, the aspect ratio shifts means that like, um, if you're not as familiar, like black bars would come up on the screen to put the ratio of the, uh,

picture we're watching in different dimensions. And this is something they used on WandaVision to go in and out of the TV land sort of fantasies. And so we've been having them on two escape rooms and we don't have them on this one, which just feels like it underlines this idea of like, we're not really in a trial. And I mentioned earlier, I was like, I don't think they're going to make us pay attention to this to let us know whether or not something is really happening or not as they did on Westworld season two. But I think,

we should pay attention to the fact that there's no aspect ratio shift here. Yeah, that's a, it's a, it's a great, and it feels like an important observation. Like that does feel obviously very intentional. So then the question of like, does that mean it's not a proper trial? Does that mean it's just like stage one of an ongoing trial? What level of, of deception or, or mistaken trial reading from the coven is at play here, but also like,

they're in such a hurry, like you noted earlier, because they're fleeing a pursuer. We don't get like some of the same, it was only two prior trials. So it's hard to say that's a pattern, but still it felt like a pattern. Like we don't stop at the door. We don't look at the moon phase etching. Like, you know, we don't have the same rhythm of entry that we do. And then part of the question is like, well, does that mean, is it not there in the same way? Does that mean that they're like, we're missing an indicator that this isn't legit? Or if it had been there,

If we had been able to pause and look at it, what would it have told us about whose child it really might have been? I mean, there is a stained glass face of the moon thing inside. So, you know, that indication is there. It's not on the door, as you said, as with the other ones.

The purple – I was doing the same thing where I was like, maybe this is teen's trial. Maybe this is something else. Maybe this is, like, a larger coven trial. It's just, like, the road was purple. Like, there's so many things that I'm, like, having trouble. It does really feel like it's just Agatha part one. Yeah. And it's, like – I like the idea, too, of Agatha's trials working in both directions. Part of it is, like, can she earn the trust of others? And then part of it is, can she learn to trust –

herself and other people that would be i think very my very nice excuse me sublime all right i don't know if you think it's important but i think it's important that teen has lost his spell book on the broom ride here uh this is something we've noted from the beginning check off uh spell book he has had it with him from the start what is in that spell book

What can it tell us about his real identity? Does not having it on his person, because we'll get into costumes a little bit, but I was watching a bunch of videos and reading interviews about all the costuming choices on the show. And Joe Locke was talking about how irritating the spell book was because it was on a leather harness strapped to his thigh. And it was like,

It was just like, oh, he was like, it would change. It would change. And so he was like, so, A, I don't think we've seen the last spell book, but like B, he always had it physically on his person, except for that second where Agatha looked like she was going to toss out the car window. Was it some sort of like she says, Agatha says, forget it. You can you can take the training wheels off. Right. But like, yeah, does losing his public have anything to do with him locating his powers later on? I,

I don't think so, but maybe. Or was the spellbook helping keep the sigil in place? Yeah. More on the sigil and the potential breaking of it later. But, like, you know, the absence of the spellbook is something you're supposed to be noting, obviously. I do feel that there...

It felt to me like there was a link between the lifting of the sigil and the spell book vanishing. For that reason specifically, what Agatha says, like the language choice, forget it. You can take the training wheels off because the way that she explained the sigil last episode, sigils are destroyed, not lifted, and before you ask how in a curious little voice of yours,

The answer is when they're no longer needed. When they're no longer needed and you can take the training wheels off, that's the same thing. So I agree. I think the spellbook feels very likely to return and prove vital in some way still, but it falling and then this being the episode where the sigil's gone so Agatha is able to recognize who he is. He isn't able to use and be in touch with his own powers. It does feel like

The spell book and the sigil are connected. Yeah. But again, we just have a lot of questions because there's a lot of options here. Definitely. Again, to our continuing question of whose trial is this, we are told this is Agatha's trial because of the blood moon and the purple color on the road and all this sort of stuff like that. But like,

it's not like it is decided for that by the coven, but, but it's by Rio, right? They say a blood moon when the veil between the living, the dead is at its thinnest. We mentioned before that on the pentagram, uh, when calling the road for the witches of the various elements, water, air, uh,

earth and fire i don't know why i did that in the wrong order but agatha at the head of the pentagram is the spirit that's that's the fifth uh component of the pentagram calling uh out you know this portal and so she is the spirit trial and that is what we're talking about here but it's rio who first says it's agatha's trial and rio is on a character who i think lies and

Or gets things wrong. Right. So that's why I do think it is, to your point, in some way, Agatha's trial, you know? Yeah. And she's also a character who, in a way that we're loving, participates very selectively. Right. And so just like, it wouldn't only be an uncommon and unusual lie. It would be like a very active and deliberate one.

inserting herself in a way that she is not doing in order to mislead then that just doesn't feel like what we're seeing from her um so i'm with you on that i think she provokes but she doesn't mislead yes yeah that's a yes great distinction did you did you um shout marvel you cowards when when alice said kiss mary kill instead of fuck mary kill i was like let's just go for it come on

I think I'm too used to that. Oh, I think I've been watching too many British videos where they play Snog Mary Avoid, which I'm just like, that's... Snog Mary Avoid is very polite. Very polite. Okay. So we're doing Fit Watch later. We're not going to talk about the outfits now. We're doing Fit Watch later. We're doing it in one hot second. Let me just say one other thing. I can't wait. The 80s setting is another question we have, right? Because as you mentioned, we're just like, okay...

Jen setting was this beach house because it was connected to her sort of like goopy, you know, white wine women, you know, storefront persona. The 70s made so much sense for Alice is connected to her mother. This 80s setting.

For a woman who was alive during the Salem witch trials is like a very bizarre setting. On the one hand, so like, again, in an interview, Jack said that they like were always going to do a 70s witchy episode. So maybe they reversed engineer Lauren and we would make sure that they could do a 70s. So maybe she just wanted to do an 80s horror sleepover horror episode. Mm hmm.

The threads are pretty tenuous. Like the, the connection I can make is that Agatha and we get her in like vulnerable team. Don't embarrass me in front of my friend's mom, like mode. So this idea of putting them all in sort of like teen mode,

along with our titular teen, like as we're dealing with mothers and daughters and all that sort of stuff like that. And we'll talk about the very strong connective tissue between The Exorcist, which is acknowledged here, except that's a 70s film, not an 80s film. So I just have like some, you know, and then the Ouija was like more popular earlier. So I have some questions about it. I'm not mad about it, but it doesn't feel like, oh, clearly this is Agatha's trial because we definitely associate Agatha with 80s,

camp horror you know what I mean what do you think

I was like, it was the, of all the things we've talked about, the single thing that made me most inclined to, like, mistrust what we were seeing. Yeah. Because it just didn't feel like a logical setting for Agatha. But if we are getting a second Agatha trial, my assumption is that that would actually be rooted in her real past. Yeah. Like, Nikki's, the time when Nikki was actually alive and then whatever happened, happened. Yeah.

And so it feels a little odd to like assess what happens here on an assumption of one might await. But if I do that, then I can talk myself into it because then this setting is more about, like you said, Agatha receding into this like

adolescent state and us seeing the, um, that eighties horror vibe that we, we, and by we, I mean people who watch these horror movies. So I'm not really a part of that. We, but even I was able to look at Agatha's face and be like, yeah, I knew you did the exorcist. Yeah. Even I was able to spot that one, but like, you know, the, the,

kid at a sleepover too? Like this is such a like sleepaway camp or sleepover with your your pals in high school kind of a setting obviously right? And so like then that gets to like do you have friends who love you and will support you which also in addition to everything with her mom kind of feels right. Or that like tenuous that like way in which um

And maybe I speak from personal experience, but the way in which like those girlhood groups can like turn on each other really quickly, the way in which like teen friendship, this is something, you know, it gets a visual drop in the closing credits. It's something that the craft covers very well. And I was thinking about the craft because in the craft, even though that's a 90s film, hardcore 90s film. Yeah.

They have a sleepover sequence where they're like experimenting with their powers and like changing their hair colors with their powers. So they're playing light as a feather stiff as a board. Like these sort of sleepover games is something that, you know, I was expecting them to do light as a feather stiff as a board in this because where they raise each other with using just their fingertips, like all that sort of stuff. So like. Love to that one. The Ouija board like is great for a number of reasons that we're about to talk about, but like.

It's more of a stretch than some of the others have been. And maybe that was just because they wanted to do an 80s thing or maybe it's for other reasons. We'll find out later. So, yeah. Fit watch. Here you go, Mallory. What do you want to like? I'm going to hand it over to you. What do you want to start with? I just stand in awe of the show. Honestly, like it is yet to disappoint. The outpouring

outfits are so good. The Agatha purple, you know, like again, the, I would just, let me get my purple back. So obviously purple is an associate and it's something, a color we associate with Agatha and her particular brand of magic. So the, the purple football Jersey tee that she's like wearing as a nightgown kind of dress. Wonderful. I, of course I'm looking for Raven's colors everywhere. So I'm like, is Agatha wearing an Odell Beckham jerseys for me was like delightful. Um,

I thought that Jen having a retainer that she then had to dramatically remove was one of the great genius touches in recent television history. And then snap the case closed with a flourish. Because, like, I can remember doing that. I can remember what it felt like to snap that shut if you were, like, mad at a friend or mad at a parent. And also to, like, pull it out is the whole thing. What a time in everybody's life. But that was remarkable.

And Rio, once again, takes the prize for me. This, what I am going to refer to as like a Terry Cloth proto pickleball outfit. Like, I feel like Rio is decades early, like ahead of the trend here. It was giving like, yeah, Terry Cloth tennis to me, but pickleball, I'm with you. Unbelievable. Like, sexy pickleball. This was just great. And then I would be remiss if I did not note, we'll talk about teen's outfit again later, I think, but...

This is just an outfit that I actually have and wear. Honestly, I have that shirt. I wear shirts like that all the time. I have shorts like that. Joanna, you have been with me many times where I'm wearing a fanny pack like that. I was basically like, this is just how I dress.

Would you perm your hair into a mullet and wear a headband though? No. No, I don't think that would. For the bit? No, I don't think I would. I don't know. I don't think I would. I mean, maybe. I don't think I could pull that off, frankly. Okay.

What do you want to say about what teens outfit invokes from a comic reader? I guess I'll, yeah, I can go ahead and say like, this was also kind of my East, my favorite. We usually do Easter eggs in a separate category, but it's my favorite Easter egg of the episode because we've been getting a lot of like visual signals of, of the Wiccan reveal to come. And obviously like the headband and the color or the color coding and all of this, this is setting up the Wiccan reveal, but in it, I love that this works both ways because not only is it setting up the Wiccan reveal to come and the, the, um,

visual evocation of the comic outfit, it calls back to Little Billy's Halloween outfit from the WandaVision episode, which, like, looks very similar to this. And that's just, I thought, was a perfect little way to set us up for what was coming. So in the Halloween episode of WandaVision, if you don't remember, Little Billy is wearing a blue headband and, like, a homemade, like, red cape. And in that...

it should be noted that Wanda is wearing like a Halloweeny cost store costume version of the Scarlet Witch costume. Yeah. Um, and then on our episode, just a great Ralph Bonner. Um, what I love about this, cause it, the blue headband is, yeah. Evoking the hat, like the headpiece that Wiccan wears in the comics, which is a bit different from what we get at the end of the show, but I love what they did with his crown at the end of the episode. Um,

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

So love that. Agatha, the number three on her shirt, you know, her Baltimore Ravens jersey, if you prefer, invoking, you know, made mother crone, all that sort of stuff like that. A lot of people have been, and this is my first association. There's an,

Infamous scene in Nightmare on Elm Street where Johnny Depp is wearing a football jersey and some incredible headphones that a lot of people were associating with the look here. Nightmare on Elm Street, of course, very top of mind for people. But our listener Reagan in a very sweet email where he talked about his sexual awakening as a young man watching horror films.

mentioned that Jo Beth Williams in the film Poltergeist, which is also referenced elsewhere in this, is also wearing a football jersey with like it's football jersey. It's like the football jersey, cotton panties, like drying her hair with a hairdryer on her bed, sort of like sexual awakening for a lot of young men, apparently, or young ladies, whoever were enjoying it. And I like to think that

versus Johnny Depp is what was on the mind of the people. But who's to say? I do want to do like a brief because Daniel Sellen, who is the costume designer on the show. First of all, I would recommend following him on Instagram because he is doing sort of like immediate post show posts on Instagram. He did one about Billy's crown, which we'll talk about a little later on. He like dropped it right when the episode was over. So he's like not worried about that.

Spoilers. He's like, if you follow me. Yeah. You know, and he dropped one about Rio and Agatha's costume last week and stuff like that, which is astonishing. We'll talk about it in a second. But he also gave an in-depth interview to Marvel.com. Devin Cogan, who used to write for Entertainment Weekly, is now working for Marvel.com. Did a great interview with him where he like sort of went through some of the things. I'm not going to do the whole interview.

But I will mention a few highlights. First of all, the Agatha, this is for you, Malia Rubin, the highlight of the whole thing here. On his Instagram last week, talking about Agatha and Rio sort of matching plunging necklines, which we noticed that they were sort of matching. Boy, did we. He said, quote,

I wanted Agatha and Rio to be on a level playing field for the first time in the show. They share some deceptive and intimate moments and I wanted them to have nothing standing between each other's hearts. Same. So we went for these daring plunging necklines. Yeah. I had been

I had been thinking more like, you know, nothing standing between their nipples, but hearts works love like beautifully as well. There's a moment later when like in that in that episode where Agatha sort of like pulls her neckline close a little bit like that, you know, and so it's like if the idea is like bearing their hearts to each other and then just sort of like wrap up closing them off from each other. So good. Iconic stuff. Okay. Speaking of Rio.

And our ongoing question of who Rio is that we pretty much think we know. I would say basically get outright confirmation in this episode.

We continue to think that she's probably death. And this is what the costumer said about her Green Witch Road costume. He says, you see it growing and coming up around her torso. And then you see actual living things growing and rotting on her costume. So there is literal death and decay on her costume. Something to think about. What could it mean? Lilia's collar. And this is a really cool thing that I had to zoom in to understand Lilia's

He said, we created a deck of tarot cards based on her life and some backstory that we made up to try to get in deep with the character. Then we distilled those images into embroidery and we embedded them in the collar of the costume. So her story was always with her. So if you zoom in on Lillia's sort of like patchwork jacket, there are these tarot like images on the collar that are meant to be Lillia's backstory. That's amazing. Really good stuff. Agatha's coat.

which I hope, you know, cosplayers around the world are currently working on. This is what he said. So there's aspects of this coat that we don't get to see the inside of the coat mainly. And he says, there's a whole journey in the interior of the coat. Each panel tells a story and as a talisman of her journey, post Wanda vision, everything she does in the show exists on the inside of her coat.

And then he said he worked with Catherine Han to sort of like pick this look and shape it. And he says they talked about Agatha's status as a covenants witch and related to what? A raven who has lost her flock. So they incorporated bird imagery into Agatha's signature coat, including a lapel and collar that layer like feathers and pleated skirts that flare out like a tail. I knew Agatha was a Ravens fan and now we've had it confirmed. I would also like to say that this like...

hidden stories inside of a coat is so NFL and NBA draft to me. Is it? How so? Yeah, because...

Routinely, especially this has become a real thing in recent years, like draft picks will get up on stage after being selected and they open their coat and there's like, there are Easter eggs inside basically. Sometimes it's about their families, sometimes it's about their teammates, sometimes it's about like the city where they thought they might get drafted. It's like become a real draft trend. So I love that

love the idea of a connection to the draft circuit here. If they have projected themselves in the wrong city, do they just stand up there and keep their jacket closed? I mean, best not to. Unless you're like a really high, high, high pick and you know for sure, like, I'm going to this place. It's hard to commit to where you think you might be going, that it's probably more about like, let me honor my hometown or my college or something. But love this. Love it. On the coat front, on the witchy, birdy coat front,

I was reading an interview. I can't remember where it was, where earlier in the season, when we're still in Westview, Agatha in episode two, I would say Agatha walks out, looks, I think maybe sees the Fox. I can't remember. And then sort of like with a flourish of her coat, sort of like walks back in. Yes. Kevin Feige, apparently like when they were going through the edit, he was like, that's just there so we can admire the coat. Right. And they were like, yep. And he's like, okay. And we did. Great. And we did Kevin. Green teen, tease jeans. Um,

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

made that sweater himself um so there's all these like signals and stuff like that but um joe says i always say teen's costume holds all the secrets of teen and the show if you look close enough so you look close enough on his jeans which is what he wears like when he's out on the road there's a panel running all down the side that are filled with like little designs mostly stars which line up with what

Billy's costume from the comics where if you look up Wiccan in the comics not every iteration but like more recent iterations of the comics there's this like sort of panel of galaxy down the side of his costume that is echoed in the jeans here which is just fun so love it there you go love it that has been costume corner we'll come back to crown corner at the end okay

What do you make of teen as the constant catalyst as we, as we do all this? He was the first down the road. He found the car at the beach house. He played the record in the studio and he finds the Ouija board here and reads the rule. Like how do you think that's more or less significant than anything else? Or just like him being the most eager and curious among them? Or what do you think? It's a really good question. I think to this point, I have been processing that as like a manifestation of his enthusiasm and,

And again, his desire to seek this out actively where everybody else is a really reluctant, even resistant participant. So it just feels right and has felt right that he would be the one who's most eager to dive in and everybody else would be in different ways, a little bit anxious or a little bit wary. But now, given that the Wiccan reveal moved up from where we thought we were getting it and the sigil lifted maybe sooner than we thought, now I am kind of

thinking about just a different set of possibilities and like if not to jump ahead but like if you know to throw out a theory that at least people are considering like if billy put the sigil on himself right which we talked about a lot last week which we did yeah and like i think had grown to like that theory yeah and now i'm like very inclined to believe that that's what happened here

Then it really plays differently because this idea that maybe a lot of this is Billy's design or intention, but also he didn't have the ability to access his own desire or reasons is so interesting to me. So that's like – I'm really eager to learn more about that and like –

And then inside of this episode, we get moments where the fact that he is so ready and willing to be on the front line actually proves kind of like problematic and worrying. You know, the fact that he goes over and touches the board alone, for example, when he wasn't supposed to. Like there could be drawbacks to being so eager. There really could be. Yeah, I love this idea. Again, we'll get to this a little bit more a little later, but like.

The idea that the teen we've been watching this whole time is just a persona that teen himself sort of crafted for himself. This golly gee willikers. I'm thrilled to be here. Kind of teen. It's great teen sort of stuff. And then like the real Billy is someone who is like. This season on Naughty Island.

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of Billy going forward. Um, that's very exciting. Um, okay. So Lilia gives us some clarification on her powers, which, you know, I feel like we, we were building towards this. We got the payoff of what we thought we put together last week, which is like Alice don't save Agatha was something we put together last week and we get the payoff of it. I didn't think we get it so soon, but here we are. So, um, yeah. Uh,

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

I love, I don't know if it was Aubrey's choice or written the script, but the decision to take the like hairbrush as a microphone and go like, and who better to communicate with the dead than someone who put so many in the grave, like astonishing stuff. Absolutely wonderful. I loved it. Great. Bit rich coming from, we think death, but the hairbrush was a great touch. A close personal relationship with death. Very, very slumber party. This is, this is the quote from Jack Schaefer on, on building the character of Rio. She said we had conversations, but it was more like,

What would Agatha be attracted to? And the answer was power. And who should she come in contact with? Who wouldn't be afraid of her? Wouldn't hate her? Who would be attracted to Agatha? And that was the really delicious conversation. So to take that idea that they, they knew they want, whether or not she's death, but let's say she is.

This is a thing that Jack Schafer has talked about. I've talked to many Marvel showrunners about this. When they are working on a project, they are given a bucket of characters that they are allowed to play with. And so in the case of WandaVision, they knew they wanted a science-y person and they're like, uh, Darcy. And they knew they wanted a, you know...

a federal agent, you know? And so they, they pull from Ant-Man, like they, they are pulling from a bucket of characters that they have to fill certain roles that they want. So let's say she has cards on the table in front of her of all kinds of characters that she can play with. Well,

One of them, let's say, is Lady Death. And as they're like, who could be a love interest for Agatha? They're like, well, Agatha cares about power. Let's give her one of the most elementally powerful beings that exists. Yeah. Lady Death. And Death would perhaps not be repulsed by Agatha, who puts...

quote, so many bodies in the, so many in the grave. This is someone who just like deals out death and death is into it. Like, is that, is that something we should be thinking about? So yeah, absolutely. I love that. Should we Ouija? Ouija, Ouija, Ouija. It's not a verb. It's not a verb. Have you ever Ouija'd in your life? I was trying to think back. Yes. I was trying to think back to like kind of exactly when, but I think just in perhaps unsurprising fashion, like

in like middle school sleepovers, you know, kind of like basically this scenario. It's not something I've done a ton, but certainly had a few friends growing up in yield, right? Strastown, Maryland, who likes the Ouija board. I had a friend who would like ask us to sit in a circle as she lit candles and we would attempt to summon spirits. Not something I did a ton of, but it was certainly a part of the sleepover circuit in middle school and early high school. Yeah. How about you?

Yeah, as a kid. And that whole, like... Okay, so the Ouija board, we'll get into this idea of, like, again, something you cannot and should not do alone, right? Rule number one! But here are some fun facts about the Ouija board, right? Um...

There have been many versions of it throughout history, but the one that is named Ouija is originated in Baltimore, Maryland. Let's go. And this branded version of the board comes about during the rise of spiritualism in the U.S., which is mid-19th century, like, you know,

middle of the 1800s when the civil war and just general life expectancy and all this sort of things contribute to this idea that people really want to make contact with the dead, which is something that if Agatha, who we met in the mayor of East town parody, uh,

grieving over her son that is something that agatha herself might long for a lost dead person not her mom is not who she would want to talk to but she is the kind of person who might be vulnerable to something like this of like i you know i can speak to the dead um as lilia has complained about in every single damn episode of this television show

The Ouija board is connected with this sort of gamification, cutification, commodification of spiritualism, right? You can do it at home with the Ouija board. It was so mainstream that there is a Norman Rockwell painting of a couple Ouija-ing their little hearts out in their parlor. That is how American is apple pie. This is great stuff, just looking at this, because you've helpfully put a little...

a little image into the Google Doc and the woman is looking up toward the spirit realm and the dude is just like looking at her tits. Correct. Good stuff from Norman here. She's like, she's really into it. And he seems like this is an opportunity for me to ogle you. That does seem, that's my read also, this painting. Popularity of the Ouija board ebbs and flows. It's seemingly in lockstep with the sort of like

broader mental health of the American psyche. And it, it reaches maybe the height of his popularity in 1967 when it, when the Parker brothers have like bought the rights to the Ouija board, it outsells Monopoly as the most popular like board game in all the country in 67, when we were like,

in the midst of crises around Vietnam and assassinations and all this sort of stuff like that, it makes sense that this is like a moment for this kind of connection in the American psyche. But it's a staple, of course, the slumber party, you know, antics. I really do think I've, I've Ouija'd at a slumber party. And yeah, it's a game that you can't or shouldn't be able to play alone. This is from the Smithsonian magazine and,

With Ouija boards, you've got the whole social context. It's usually a group of people with everyone and everyone has a slight influence. So not only does the individual give up some conscious control to participate, so it can't be me moving the thing, people think, but also in a group, no one person can take credit for the planchette's movements, making it seem like the answers must be coming from an otherworldly source. So as we continue to explore this idea of sisterhood, covenant, community. Burdens and blessings shared. There it is. Yeah.

love love that was said with like a giant piece of glass in his torso when he said that it's just a lot of blessings you know um all is going swimmingly for the ouija board and the parker brothers who feel like they made a really good investment until 1973 yes when a little movie called the exorcist comes out and sales absolutely plummet why

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

Also, my freshman year of college, we did like a haunted, like we, we did like a haunted house, like dorm thing. And they had me do a Reagan from the exorcist. Once again, I had not seen it at that point. And they were like, you just have to sit on the bed. Yeah.

We poured like literal pea soup on me and then people were shaking the bed. So I have never regretted a decision more in my life than covered in cold pea soup. So the second part, the shaking the bed by strangers is terrible, but like just a built-in snack the whole time? Cold pea soup? I love pea soup. Pea soup is delicious. Was there any ham in it? I don't think so. I think it was like an Amy's brand. Two...

The two people who had it worse. I love Amy's soup. The two people who had it worse in that haunted house, I think me. Because I was just, I was, well, I had a, I was just yelling and swearing at people all night. That was pretty fun. Another girl was playing Carrie and they dumped Karo syrup, like red dyed Karo syrup on her actual hair.

that's when you need a wig if you're playing Carrie and they're dumping blood on you. So she took her weeks to get the Karo syrup out of her hair. What? Yeah, that's a good match for fake blood is you dye Karo syrup red, but don't put it in your hair. No, I won't. Let's talk about the extra steps. I won't. Especially not as I'm preparing for my perm mullet. I think your perm mullet is going to look so good, but don't you dare touch it with syrup. Okay, so...

The Exorcist, you and I both clocking the Exorcist. She does the backbend spider walk later, which is a cut scene from the Exorcist, but a very iconic Exorcist moment. I'm also happy to give some nod to Evil Dead because we're sort of like in a cabin setting and there is possession happening in the Evil Dead. Happy to bring that into the mix. Happy to give a nod to Cabin in the Woods. Like there's all sorts of stuff that is play here, but we're doing a lot of Exorcist stuff.

Chiefly because the exorcist did cause the sails in the Ouija to plummet because the movie, which is about a mother and a daughter, 12-year-old girl named Regan, who gets possessed by a demon. How does she get possessed by a demon? She's playing with a Ouija board alone.

Her mom's like, oh, you got to have two. Wait a minute, you need two. And she's like, no, I play it alone all the time with like a friendly spirit name. I think it's like Captain Howdy. That's how the demon gets her is he pretends to be a happy little spirit playing with her on the Ouija board and then it enters her body. So no, people saw that and were like, guess what? Done with the Ouija board. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. But the exorcist, I think, is a really...

movie to play with here because as I mentioned this is a story about a mother and a daughter and I'm not going to go into this whole thing but I really I read this incredible article on the Yale Review My Mother and the Exorcist How Horror Reconciled Me to Lost by Marlena Williams and

But basically this idea that Ellen Burstyn, who plays the mother in this film is like a single mom, you know, independently, you know, financially independent has a staff is raising her daughter. And this may be like sort of retrograde idea that you see in Carrie as well of like these women alone in the world have to be punished somehow. So that's like sort of punish Agatha, punish these women. But also it's a story about like,

Reagan is 12. She's like a girl on the like verge of womanhood. They are, they have like a very beautiful mother daughter relationship at the beginning of the movie. But this idea that like, as young women grow into teens, their relationships with their mothers often, though not always like fracture for a time for always, et cetera. That, that, that idea of,

the mother-daughter bond specifically as viewed through the lens of horror, I think is a perfect thing to put inside this episode. And like this idea that Reagan, who becomes possessed, becomes this demonic creature and then her mother never gives up on her. And like at the end, you know, spoilers to The Exorcist, the demon is exorcised. And we don't live happily ever after, I assume, because there are other Exorcist films. But the priest died, but the mother and daughter live.

And so a potentiality for reconciliation, but yeah, just this theme of like mothers and daughters and, and fractured relationships and a mother viewing her daughter for the first time is like evil is, uh, and also like there's horrific sexual content involved as well. And all this sort of stuff like that. Like, um, I just think that that is brilliant. Um,

of them, even if we don't fully understand how the 80s have anything to do with Agatha Harkness. And also The Exorcist came out in the 70s, but that's okay. Here we are. And I just think in general, I am not a huge horror fan. I'm not as quite as squeamish as you, but I'm not like a huge horror fan. I have seen The Exorcist once through like sort of half-closed eyes. But like more recent films like Hereditary or The Babadook or Carrie, like these are using the horror genre to explore

and the parent-child bond and what that means. So I think that that's very interesting. But anyway, Religious War is waged against the Ouija board that lasts into the aughts. As recently as 2001 in New Mexico, they were burning Harry Potter,

Disney's still white. I don't know, I guess because of the witch. I have no idea. And Ouija boards. So, yeah. Anything you want to say about The Exorcist or the history of Ouija or anything like that? I think you crushed it.

You nailed it. Again, I have not seen this film. RobinsonDragons.gmail.com if you have thoughts on what brand of pea soup that you would use if you were to join a haunted house or any thoughts on themes of The Exorcist we might have missed or Ouija in general. Let's rewind a bit. Let's just hear the rules of the Ouija board. Okay. Number one, do not use the Ouija board alone. Number two, do not speak over each other. It's not written there. Show me that. Three.

Mallory, any thoughts on the four ages three and up moment here?

Just a nice little timeline Easter egg there. Now that we know, in fact, this is Billy because he's 16. Three years have passed since WandaVision. So when he was created by Wanda's magic, he's 16, but he's really three. So he's a lot to play. Barely. Just barely makes the cutoff here.

How do you feel about the fact that every single one of these rules is broken by the end of the episode? Yeah, just like, again, it's a very compact episode. And so to be able to like succinctly prime us for everything that is going to go wrong so quickly is just very deft. And I also just in general, the like larger structure of the season, I'm really enjoying. You have the trials within the episodes and then the rules within the trials. And like, I think there's a way where that could start to feel kind of like

a lot to track but it's it's it's building each episode is building on on the one before very nicely so I liked this a lot I think it was a bit of a challenge for Joe Locke's American accent that's okay we support him in all of his endeavors so Agatha invokes mother made in crone yeah after saying it could literally be anyone yeah in terms of like someone with a source of trauma great stuff

Again, we have the 300 jersey, the cameo, which is among her like friendship bracelets in this episode, which was her mom's cameo. Like how do you have any thoughts about how the mother made and crone idea is going to manifest by the end of the episode?

I don't know. Sorry, by the end of this season, I mean? The season? Yeah. I don't know. Like, revisiting the... Because, you know, we get the snippet in the previously on at the beginning of this episode of the Salem stretch from the WandaVision flashbacks. And, like, revisiting that scene and, yeah, the attention being drawn to the generational handoff of that brooch and obviously, like, thinking of how central that was in the beginning of this series with, like, the pawn shop sequence and everything, like...

the hair inside of it. Um,

I think the idea of just this being something that is, like, containing the generational ties in this family unit, like, if it came from her mother and then it has Nikki's hair inside of it, it's this link between them, but inside of this fractured family. But whether the actual triple goddess has, like, a role to play in mapping on to characters in the story, I think seems completely possible to me. I don't know yet how that will be manifest. I mean, the only way I could think about it is if it's, like,

if agatha is the crone and one is the mother and then that would make billy the maiden you know what i mean like something like that but or if death is the crone and you know something like that i don't know i yeah i don't know that it needs to be a one-to-one uh as specifically as that but it's just something i'm thinking about like are we going to see some sort of like trinity of a kind uh manifest at the end um speaking about manifesting um we get yeah

We get M-R-S-H-A-R-T, and I would just like to thank the millions of bad babies who emailed us and all the people who tweeted at us that they at home thought they were spelling out Mr. Shart instead of Mrs. Hart. I have no notes. Mr. Shart...

Do you think he is any relative of Ralph Boner? Do you think Ralph Boner's uncle is Mr. Shart? Are you thinking about that family tree? Yeah, drunk uncle. This is a great call. Mr. Shart is definitely the drunk uncle who embarrasses Ralph Boner at Thanksgiving. Uncle Shart.

Okay, but it's Mrs. Hart. It's not Mr. Shart with regret. I must inform you. And we get Catherine Han's just the right side of bad impersonation of Deborah Jo Rupp because when it started, when it right started, I was like, Catherine Han's better than this. I was like, she could do a better Deborah Jo Rupp than she's doing. And then when I was like, oh, it's a fake Deborah Jo Rupp impression. That's funny. What did you think of this? Did you enjoy this?

Very amusing. I thought it was very amusing. I liked her defense of the bit. I thought that was pretty good. She's offended that they are able to so quickly suss out the horse shit. One thing that was interesting to me is how we're tracking across the episodes Agatha's willingness to participate. Because in the first trial, as we discussed at the time, she was like,

I will not drink the wine. I will do – I'm going to try to get out of this door, like as reluctant as she could possibly have been to opt into the trial. Then as we talked about last week, the second trial, she was really leading the charge. And then here there's a backslide, but one that to me like really tracks because if this is her trial, her first trial, the personal, the deeply personal nature of this –

would terrify her. Of course, she would be reluctant to participate. Who knows what horror from her own past and what aspect of herself that she's not ready to confront. She and everybody else are about to see. So that felt not like, again, to your point about how inconsistencies can actually be compelling, right? This felt to me like exactly right for Agatha. I love that. And particularly, like, I really loved because she uses the same

trigger phrase, right? Mother, maiden, crone, spirits be known. And then maiden, mother, crone, spirits be known. And so there's like the order of the triple goddess, but also just like, it struck me that we were watching an indication that magic can sense your intention, right?

Like that in the first, she sits down the first time. She didn't mean it. It was horseshit. And the powers that be in the trial knew that. And then she has to decide that she is going to buy in. And when she says it the second time, it works. Immediately the lights begin to flicker. The air in the room changes. And like, I like thinking of magic as this conscious force that can like read her. For sure. I love that. And I also think like to go back to the triple goddess idea of

There's the external manifestation, but there's the internal manifestation of this is a woman's progress through life. She is a maiden, then she's a mother, then she's a crone. And so this idea that Agatha...

tied up at a stake in front of her digitally de-aged Catherine Han tied up in front of a stake in front of her mom and her coven that's like maiden she was a mother she had Nikki and now she's like she's the the evil witch the crone you know what I mean she's no comment on what Catherine Han looks like she looks amazing but like you know in terms of like the the big bad witch that's the role that that she's in here um

once we move past the joke with like, I think a beautifully cutting, she's just scared from Rio. So, uh, then we were back on the board and this time it's D E A T H death. Who is with us? Mike, will you play this? Uh, who's here with us tonight? D E A T H death. We're not supposed to ask about that.

It's a gentler cackle, but a cackle of like an overhead throwback her head shot of her right after they say death is here. This is just confirmation, right? We're taking it out of the recording. We're putting it into this. Got death. We've got Wiccan. We've got we got it all. Let's go punish Agatha.

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

The high priestess card that we talked about earlier that, that Lillia associated with Jen, it was like intuition. This idea, like go with your gut, you go with your, you let your sort of like your gut, your emotions lead you at the maybe expense of your reason perhaps. And so like this idea that like Lillia, that Jen is letting her emotional response to like Agatha is a villain. We have to punish her. That's the trial. Absolutely not. I would say sisterhood and unity is probably the, as of,

all the trials been and also supporting someone through their confrontation with their demons right because like so Agatha's vulnerable on the floor and everyone's like sort of crowding around her

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

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

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

I think Jen is the biggest failure of this test inside of this episode. For sure. Yeah, and I agree with all of that completely. I think we're on the same page of what the true test is and whether they are passing or failing it. And I think, like... So what you were saying earlier about, like, the...

theorizing and speculating online this week of like, oh, did a bug get through? Are they being controlled in some way? I think people are maybe more likely to be inclined to wonder about control inside of an episode where we watch Wiccan work his powers to control people at the end. But like, I'm with you. I don't think that's what's happening here inside of the trial. And I hope it's not. But I will say, it doesn't surprise me that that speculation is occurring specifically because when Jen...

was like, we got to punish Agatha. I wasn't shocked, but everybody else really quickly agreeing. Not teen, of course, but like the haste with which Lillia and Alice are kind of swept up in that craze and panic as well. The mass hysteria, yeah. The hysteria. Like, I'm not shocked that people are like, oh, I wonder if they're under some sort of sway here. I think ultimately I'm with you, though, like,

they're making the same mistake that other people have made about them. And then I, so I was wondering what you thought about, we get a mini trans dispatch from Lillia. We get her, she says, I hated this the first time. Yeah. And teen says, Lillia is being weird again. Again, like a line from another character drawing our attention to what Lillia has just said. It made me wonder, like,

I don't know if I'm prepared to say I think this is actually going to happen, but it did make me wonder... If we're going to go back through again. Does this imply that they have to redo all the trials? I don't think so. Yeah, like avoid the mistakes that they made in this one, like turning on each other is the failure, the true passing. We only have four more episodes left. That doesn't feel like enough time. I don't think we're going to do that. I think it was when she has her little freak out in the... But we thought that about Loki, and then they just redid everything in one episode. Okay, fair enough. Yeah.

Fair enough. I think her freak out in the kitchen when Agatha first calls her kooky. I think that's the first time she did it. I think we've seen a lot of the payoffs for Lillia's. We weren't like, get it off me. Don't save Agatha. Am I kooky or wispy? We haven't seen yet. I think that's to come. But, you know, on the like, am I kooky or wispy? Am I a good witch or a bad witch sort of stuff? I do think it's notable that Jen, you know, like,

We haven't heard this from our costuming guru about Jen being in sort of baby pink this whole time. But I do think it's interesting because like the purple, I understand for Agatha, the flame details or the fact that Alice... I was going to talk about this later, but Alice is literally supposed to be dressed as a knight. She's got metallic pants and sort of like armor details. Like all of that makes sense.

So Jenna's pink goes again with that sort of like new agey goopy sort of influencer thing. But also it's like the color we associate with Glinda the Good Witch. This idea that like Jenna's cast herself as she's the good witch and Agatha is the wicked witch, I think is something that, you know, she's just is something we're supposed to be questioning. Yeah.

Yeah. We're sisters in the craft. Remember? Like warping and weaponizing the thing they're supposed to be embracing was so sinister. Yeah. And this is the quote from Jack about Jen as a character. She says, and so that was one of the developments of the Jen characters that this is a person who knows Agatha in one way. Yeah. Right? Yeah. She has a fixed idea of who Agatha is. And as we heard at the top of this episode, we're about to get to this idea of like, I can be good.

you know, can you, if everyone has already decided that you're the wicked witch, that you're evil, that you're evil at birth team team does make a bid for unity though. Like he's not, he's not turning on Agatha here. Um, and, uh, he does make a really interesting face. I thought when he's told familiars don't get a vote. Yeah. So I, I don't know at what point the sigil is breaking or slipping or whatever, but that seemed to be like a moment that felt like a little less like. Aw gee, shucks, Billy and something else, but who knows? Um,

And then here comes Evanora. Our babe Evanora. Tough hang. Really tough. Really tough. Mallory, what do you want to say about what we know about Evanora Harkness of the Salemites? Well, you know, again, we have seen...

this crucial shared experience between mother and child. When we watched Agatha turn those harpies to dust, as she then iconically describes it, it's Agatha's at the stake, surrounded by the coven, and she is under attack. Some of the things that we heard, this was in episode eight of WandaVision, some of the things that we heard, you have betrayed your coven.

Now an idea that is very familiar to us. You stole knowledge above your age and station. You practiced the darkest of magic. And then as you noted, Agatha, we built toward in that scene, Agatha saying, please, I can be good. And Evanora as a blue crown appears on her head saying, no, you can not.

fascinating scene to revisit after what we watch in many respects across this episode. So the fact that this is like her, not just like the mother, again, mother made her like the motherly figure of the coven, but her actual mother, and that we watched her actual mother lead the charge, we don't know what that means. Like you stole knowledge above your age and station. You practiced the darkest of magic. It seems to me now with what we know about Agatha that this would be about

taking the dark hold like that that has happened already at that point right it seems i don't know maybe not um has everything already happened with nikki like we've got a lot of questions about that um the cut in that agatha sequence in the wandavision excuse me sequence goes right from her taking the brooch from her dried out dead mother to her holding the

senor scratch the bunny so i feel like there's like you know the nicholas scratch like connection there between that um i i think this like overall like introduction of her mother when when we saw that flashback from agatha and wandavision and we're like holy shit agatha killed her coven she killed her own mother what a heart what a horror and now we see that her mother was like you you were evil from birth like i should have killed you the moment you left my body this is one of the most

Yeah, like this is one of the most appalling things that we have witnessed in a Marvel show. I mean, this is hideous. And then the emotional response from Agatha, like this was just an incredible sequence because we have the comedy, you know, you mentioned earlier, like the stop embarrassing me in front of my friend's mom. Very like, Tony, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards. But just that question of like her mom says here when she introduces herself, Evan or Harkness of the Salamites.

She says, my coven risked everything to kill her and you fools have willingly joined her. So why did they need to, quote unquote, risk everything to kill her? Like, it seems clear that we are, you know, we've been led or misled into thinking she was the villain from the jump rather than somebody who was shaped by her family and society around her.

if they're the villains, like what happened there to lead to this rift? We know that Agatha takes power. We see in this episode some harrowing moments where she is saying, we'll discuss I think maybe like what I read on that is, she can't control that power. Did she leech her own mother's power when she was growing in her womb? Is that part of why her mother resented her? Like there are a number of different questions that we can ask now based on what we witnessed here. So this was a very effective and disturbing question.

introduction not introduction but reintroduction to evanora harkness and i hope somewhere odin is just like laying back on a beach with a tropical drink being like guess who's not the worst parent of the mcu today you know that guy loves any excuse to to dip off into the odin sleep so yeah hope he's relaxing because evanora is like i got this um

But you already mentioned Loki in a different context, but I was thinking so much of our guy Loki and a lot of the conversations we had around him as a character, as an archetype of someone who is told...

who he is again and again. And this question at the heart of the TV series, Loki, that we love so much is like, can you change? Can you be someone else? If everyone tells you you're Loki, that's what Loki's do. Like, you know, like that's who you are. Thor is like, Loki, that's who you are. It's who you've always been. You're always going to be this guy. And something we watched him do emotionally at the end of Loki's spoilers, that long walk. That was why it was like this long, arduous,

To talk about rings of power, making that choice again and again to be good. And so to hear Agatha plead, I can be good. Heartbreaking. When her mother's like, you were born evil. You had no choice. How much does being told you were born evil shape you as a person? And how much do you feel like you need to protect yourself?

in as much power as you can grab for yourself if you're under attack inside of your very home. And again, that, you know, that goes to like thinking about Carrie and other horror movies like that, this idea of just sort of like the, you know, the mother figure that is just like, you're evil, you are sin incarnate, you're all these other things and you should be punished for who you are from the moment you were born. Exactly. And like, there's also, you know, a little bit of a, a,

I think the Loki comparison is beautiful. Like, there's a little bit of an opening of Iron Man 3. You know, Tony, we create our own demons idea from the Evanora perspective here. If the thing that you ultimately felt you had to thwart is of your own making because of your hate and your judgment, like a baby? That is just so foul and hideous. That's not a monster. That's a baby.

Rio, once again, coming to Agatha's defense in this context...

yeah well her mother can't have her like was she the way she shouted no yeah no way she hates Evanora like from firsthand experience it would feel it tells us everything and I did love that actually again like Jen says a minute ago you were willing to slit her throat and it's like yeah she can't have that but I know the true evil yeah right I know she's like if she's dead what she did she's death she's like death's not the end like death's not the worst thing that can happen to someone but like

Right. Leaving her with that bitch? No, absolutely not. And it goes back to this idea of like, I don't think that contrast to me makes me feel like if Rio is death,

Death doesn't see like mortal death as the end of something. Like, I don't think she wants to punish Agatha by killing her. I don't think she wants to like, because, you know, she hates ghosts, but like, presumably once you're sort of reaped death, you go somewhere and like, you're there and death can still hang out with you. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that,

The end of Agatha's sort of corporeal life would be the end, as Rio would see it, of their connection with each other. But I could be wrong. A little spin onto the well-organized mind. Death has put the next great adventure into the well-organized mind. Death is just the next chance to fuck Rio. Exactly. I love it. But now non-corporeally, horizontally in a grave. Why not? She did say that's how she likes her best. Agatha's...

Catherine Han's performance here, her completely stricken face, the tears in her eyes, Rio's anguish on her behalf. I just thought it was all incredible. So good. And then as we heard in the clip in the beginning, Jen, once again, who's the source of trouble here, I fear, calls Agatha the danger of this trial. And we just really disagree. And then Alice hops into protection mode. This is why I don't think, because like, yeah, Jen is leading the charge. Alice and Lilia are not like...

fully convinced that this is what they're supposed to do they're just sort of like maybe tire up does that sound right humiliate her like make fun of her a little bit like what should we do so alice jumps in protection witch mode and plays the hero and lilia reads her tarot as she does it she says night of wands tarot corner tm with joanna robinson tm as we mentioned alice has been dressed

as a knight in her own fashion this entire time according to the costume designer also there was no knight of wands card in the images that Marvel released and I don't know why that is we'll get to the tower card a little bit later blue crown that was just sitting in plain sight on the tower card but like

We mentioned there's a death card that's probably Ryo's and, you know, there are cards that go with the high priestess for Jen. There's no night of one cards. There's no Alice card. I don't know why, but according to the unimpeachable site, that is tarot.com. I'm so sure the night is an instigator, a fire starter, a feisty and easily provoked character who was liable to attack first and ask questions later. So this impulsivity thing,

to attack to defend to protect the fire based or no um i think could be sort of what's going on here uh there are times when when this energy is perfectly appropriate like when they're assertively protective nature is defending threatened threatened treasures or interfering with dark forces the trick is to keep a sense of proportion when this knight unleashes fire because they enjoy intense experiences and it always always ready to take to the next level so

One of our listeners sent in something about Nine of Wands because she misheard. She thought Nine of Wands was Nine of Wands. And at first I was like, ooh, because this one is like, I'll just read the Nine of Wands.

halfway through a tough time a battle drained fatigued weary but with resilience and perseverance you can accomplish your goal you need time to gather your strength and push through that just goes maybe into our is alice actually dead uh theory corner question which we're gonna ask in a second but that's sort of what we're dealing with a night of wants here is just sort of protective defensive but maybe impulsive uh in a way that like alice wasn't thinking about

throwing her power at agatha someone she knows absorbs power and then this this is the moment this is the moment this and then like one other moment on the road is when i just think we have to like pay such such close attention to katherine hawes performance and agatha's face as she starts to drain the power here because there is real yeah hunger and desire there

No doubt about it. But then also real shock and dismay when she snaps out of it, which is such a fascinating combination. Again, a contradiction inside of a person, because I do believe there is an addictive, hungry, like consumptive. I want the power aspect to Agatha. But the implication here is that once she starts that she can't stop it. And I just think that like,

think that this is possibly the tragedy of Agatha Harkness. This is what Jack Schafer said about what we should pay attention to when we watch Catherine Han. She said, quote, one of the gifts of the show is the private moments with Agatha that we see the concern all over her face when teen wakes up and looks at her and then she drops the concern. The mask goes back up and that's the talent of Catherine Han. So the true Agatha is the one

we see when her back is turned to other people and we're just looking at her face. And so later in this episode, when they're on mere moments from now, when they're on the road and her back is, she says she can't control it. Like, you know, she looks genuinely anguished, but then she turns around, she slides that sneer onto her face. The mask.

goes back up. Very ghoulish, very scary, but like, this is a performance. Agatha has been performing the role of the Wicked Witch in a way. And as we saw her perform throughout WandaVision, which is not to say she doesn't want or need or have an addictive relationship to this power, because I don't think she's like completely innocent in all this, but there is this cost that she has

has been burdened with her whole life. And I think that's where, again, that like, I can be good, please idea comes in because we heard her say that same thing in the WandaVision flashback. But it was part there, of course, of the ploy, right? It was part of the ruse. And it felt, it did feel to me here,

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

Again, that contradiction inside the human heart, would you say it's the only thing worth writing about? If you're born and this is your power and you genuinely cannot control it, and then the closest people to you in your life, the people who should be helping you and guiding you and nurturing you and protecting you, make you feel...

evil and vulnerable and vulnerable and wrong for that, then

a couple different things could happen. You could suppress and stifle your own power. You could cut yourself off from it. Very frozen. Or you could lean into it. Because if everybody's already blaming you for it, and everybody already thinks that you're that villain, then why not become one? And so in WandaVision, when the Agatha Long reveal plays out and she's like,

She is seeking Wanda's power unambiguously. That is a real thing that she is after. And I don't think, to your point, which I agree with, I do not think the mission of this show is to pretend that's not what happened. I think it's to show that just as Agatha was sucked into that cycle, she can work through

to pull herself back out of it if she has people around her who are able to believe that she is capable of that. And that's part of why I think the coven and all that is delicious. The Rio history is delicious. Yes. But if Teen put the sigil on himself, if he was seeking revenge in some way against Agatha...

And they bonded anyway. And he comes out of this and has to confront the fact that when he didn't know who he was or what he was after, his desire was to help and protect her. Maybe that's the thing that gives her faith. If you don't have this preconceived notion of who I am and what I did, you're willing to consider that I have a heart inside of me that is worth trying to like... Deserving, which is this thing that comes up. Tend, yeah. All this heart, tending a heart. It's so beautiful. I think that like,

The case of the theory here comes in sharp relief to me when we hear this next part, when Billy tries to stop the stop the steal by going back to the Ouija board. And with second asparagus, the name Nicholas Scratch, and we hear devastating a little kid's voice saying, Mama, stop. And in that moment.

I was like, oh, my fucking God, did Agatha Harkness drain and kill her own child? And this is sort of the case of the theory here, which is like in this. I couldn't. Once I started, I couldn't stop. I couldn't control it sort of thing. If he hits her with his magic accidentally or something like that and she drains him and kills him, kills her own child.

Did Agatha ask for unlimited power in her devil's bargain on the road and get this instead? Did she kill her son? I was thinking a lot about the Greek myth of King Midas. A character who asks for the Midas touch, the ability to turn anything he touches into gold. And the tragedy of that story, the lesson of that story is that his...

beloved, cherished little daughter comes running up to him and he's like, can't stop her. And as soon as she touches him, she turns to gold and she's a statue. Like she dies because of his quest for unlimited riches, unlimited power. So yeah, this tragedy of someone who cannot be around power without sucking it up also makes me think of one of my favorite mutants, X-Men, Rogue. Very much so. And that person is,

Would obviously isolate themselves or obviously turn themselves into the villain. You know what I mean? Like all this sort of stuff. And it's like the forced proximity of the coven true, these activities that they have to do in a group potions, singing, uh, Ouija board, blah, blah, blah. Like having to push through that isolation. Can they find common cause? Can they push through prejudice? Can they figure out how to work together in order to save all of them? I just think,

yeah that's so devastating so if this idea i don't quite have the order directly in mind like did she fuck around with the dark holds and then um her coven drained her or she drained the coven and then she accidentally drains her son then she goes on the witch's road to try to bring nikki back to life um you know if billy's here to try to bring wanda back to life on the road and right act to walk the road to try to bring nikki back to life

Or did she walk the road to try to get power and the power gave her the dark hold and that made her a siphoner in the first place? And that's, you know, there's like a couple of different permutations that are sort of roiling through my brain. But yeah, same. No matter what.

I think she drained her kid and killed her kid and Rio had to take Nikki from her. And I'm sure we will get a horrifying scene of Catherine Hahn begging her love Rio to not take her child who she has accidentally killed from her on Disney Plus coming to you soon. It's going to be an intense finish to the season. Is that your read on all this? What do you think? It is. Yeah. I still think there was a part of me like when we heard that child's voice say, Mama, stop.

that made me think again, like, is this a trick? Is this a taunt of Agatha? Rather, or is this a pure memory? I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, though. It could be a memory of a thing that happened that someone is now using to, or something is now using to destroy her, seek to destroy her. I...

Also, I'm with you. I think that siphoning her kid's power, what order the bargain and the dark hold happened in, I'm not sure. But the Rio-Nikki-Agatha tie there and Rio's...

job requirement, as she put it, and then at the nature, inherent nature of Agatha's power and the way that she would associate power and loss, that all feels really right to me. The question that it raises for me is, like, if Nikki is truly dead, then is Nicholas Scratch not going to be a character in the MCU? Possibly. I don't know we need him, you know? Interesting. Because then I start to think of, like, the moments, like...

Alice talking about the tattoo coming from Colorado and thinking of like the Nicholas Scratch Colorado New Salem associations from the comics is like just winks for comic fans and not necessarily setting up his return. I think there is also the question of like, if your soul is reaped, can you come back in some other form? But I think what you said a couple pods ago about how that

story-wise, plot-wise, feels totally inbounds inside of a comic story, but then thematically inside of this show that we're watching feels like it might be in conflict with some of the lessons. And that was really on my mind. Even though we have both said, if you die on the road, we're not necessarily sure you're dead. It seems probable that these characters might be there in some way. It still felt

very important that when Alice is dead and teen is begging everybody to do anything they can to bring her back, the lesson he needs to learn is that they can't. Yeah. And all of that is building to this. Like, so losing Alice and the loss of, of like a, a, a older woman who was a witch who he was like feeling connected to the, the Nicholas scratch moment, him being able to say Nicholas scratch is,

Has to confirm once and for all for Agatha that he's not Nicholas Scratch. Right. Because if the sigil is still up and he was Nikki, he would not be able to say it. Even though Rio told her that like, this is just like a sort of final, final confirmation. My interpretation. We're about to get to like the road of the reveal, but like,

I guess my thought is probably Agatha was walking around with a couple of competing theories in her head. Like, is this Billy? Is this, is this one of Wanda's kids? Is this my kid brought to life back somehow? And that she was like, the cynical side of her brain was like, it's, it's probably not my kid. It's probably not my kid. But then like our heart kept going, like, what if it's my kid? What if it's my kid? You know? And so like this final confirmation of like, it's not Nikki scratch. Billy hits the goodbye. Um,

on the board, but still like, we've just used the board alone. We've broken all the rules. I don't, I'm feeling, I'm feeling bad about everything that happens here, happened here today. Everything is tough. I'm not sure everyone tidily closed the spirit door behind them. I don't know what's happening. But he, you know, he says to Agatha, you don't deserve protection. And in WandaVision finale, Agatha said to Wanda, I take power from the undeserving. It's kind of my thing.

I think a big question of this series, especially as they've done so much work to not fundamentally change who Agatha is, but put her in parallel with Wanda again and again and again. Yeah. Wanda is someone who was like told that she was this, that, the other thing. Wanda who cloaked herself in power to not feel vulnerable again, the way that she felt when, you know, her house was bombed when she was a child, like all this sort of stuff like that. And all this work to put her in parallel with Wanda again.

How do we decide who is deserving? She decides Wanda is not deserving. Billy decides Agatha is not deserving. Who deserves what? I'm just asking questions. And here's a really important question. How did you feel, Mallory Rubin, when Lillia said, death comes for us all? Worried. Worried.

Worried, but also, like, maybe that's part of the lesson that they have to heed that, because what is Tien's response to that line in particular, right? It's right, Lillia says that right after Jen says, like, that's what this is all about for any of us, power. And so when Lillia then says death comes for us all, it's like, and the way you fend it off is by pursuing power time and time again. And so the lesson, much like fellowship, embrace the coven, sisterhood, stronger together, is you don't have to fear that.

You know, that, like, it's, again, the third Peverell brother, like, took his hand and, like, went with him gladly. Like, I think it's not accidental that Evanora, this hideous specter, appears as a ghost, a person who is unable to let go, who is holding on, latching onto this plane, and that our characters need to understand that there are things you have to be ready to move beyond. It would be really sad if, like,

We get a ghost Wanda by the end of the show, someone who hasn't moved on because she's holding on to like her son or whatever. But like,

Two things about that. One, I think it's really appropriate that Lillia, someone who we saw in episode three, as someone who might have literally seen death in that specter in the Black Veil. But also, more importantly, were you thinking of Rio and Agatha when you heard death comes for us all? Certainly. Let's get horizontal. Come on. Great. Let's...

Let's crease up those brooms. Let's go. Speaking of Rio, she is absent from this final chapter. Presumably she's busy reaping Alice. But there is a theory going around that I...

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

That it sizzles out in her hand. Yeah. I read that less as, like, she doesn't have the power and more as, like, she's ashamed of how she got it, so she turns it off. Oh, to me, it looked like... You thought it was just gone. It was, like... Like, a difficult with her. She got that, like, sort of fiendy, Galadriel with Nenya sort of look on her face when she was just sort of, like... It was... To me, it was, like, an addiction thing and then, like, a disappointment of, like, ugh. That it was gone. Interesting. Not much, you know? Yeah, I'll be curious to see if that's the case. I thought...

to me the thing with the tattoo was less it protected Alice and more the tragedy that her life was defined by her mother's fear of this one yeah sure doom and then something else got her anyway I don't like I don't love a fake out death and yeah the tragedy of Alice being that she lifted the curse and then I feel lighter I feel great and then she died anyway that's that's very sad very honestly Buffy Vampire Slayer but like I think that like

I think I don't love a fake out death. I don't love the idea of undoing every death we see. So like there's a part of me that wants Alice to like stay dead. Then we have to think about the lyrics. I'll see you at the end. You know, all of that sort of stuff. And just like leaving. Like I know we left. So we're not like actively watching Rio reap the body. But it also just sort of like we just left her.

You know? And it just, it makes me suspicious. I was interested, too, in how Rio, like, looked at Agatha when she was kind of, like, skulking out of the exit ahead of everybody else in the way that, like, that was just fascinating. Yeah. I do think that, um...

On that front, if Agatha had turned off the juice, don't you think she would have used it once she gets bodily grabbed by Lillia and Jen who are possessed by the teen magic? I feel like she would have fought against them and with teen if she had any of that juice left, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The road is colored yellow, which makes me think that it's Lillia's trial next. But how are we going to do that trial? I don't know because we go into...

the road goop. And I have some questions about that, but let's talk about the sigil, which we think is broken, even though we did not get a very satisfying, like explosion effect on the mouth or anything like that, that I was sort of hoping we were, um, you already did a beautiful, uh, mini read of this, but let's hear the whole exchange between teen and Agatha about the sigil last week. Did you put the sigil on me? No, actually I wouldn't know. Hmm.

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

Oh, beautiful. We've been talking throughout about like a various theories about how the sigil could have been dropped here. Is it because the spell book was dropped? Is it because Agatha figured out who he was? So he doesn't need the sigil anymore because she, if the sigil was there to protect his identity from Agatha and she figured out who he is, then like it's no longer needed. Um,

This idea that feels just so true, like that teen put the sigil on himself and has been hiding himself from himself this whole time. I think so. Has been unaware who he is. And I think part of that, you mentioned the various times that he would talk about his parents. You know, it seems like an unconscious thing.

performance of the part of billy caplan ah g shucks uh teen from eastview my parents go to sleep early yeah um all that loves concerts yeah my dad loves a sous vide like you know what i mean like this is who i this is the role i'm playing billy caplan yeah um and i like this as an idea of like he's been playing this role of of teen uh whether it's

consciously or not i would say not is in parallel to agatha's performance that gets dropped uh you know a little later in the season in wandavision um and then uh billy gets around the agatha sucking up his power thing by using his power to control lily and jen brilliant this was intense

scary. We have seen Wanda do exactly this in WandaVision when she has like the soldiers turn their guns on each other. A very Annatar thing for her to do. But their eyes glow red. Lily and Jen's eyes are glowing blue. They dump Agatha in the mud and then he tosses them in and spreads a blue crown that's very much like his mother's and we get the Billie Eilish needle drop that we mentioned. Iconic. And it's an amazing moment. Really good. Really good.

good just like really really good the tower tarot card that marvel put out to go along with all their other other tarot card promos

has a tower with a lightning and fire and a blue fucking crown at the top of it and then two women being thrown so is this lilia and jen sort of being thrown into the mud or is this something we have yet to see is something we're going to see again later who's to say yeah what do you want to say i mean we talked about this stuff here and there and everywhere uh in other pods but like

who is Billy Kaplan versus Billy Maximoff? And what's your best case theory of what has happened? How did Billy get here? Yeah. So Billy is the comics character Wiccan, just a huge, again, it seemed very like much on lock that this was coming, but just still a huge moment for the young Avengers hive. Great week for Jomie. Great week for us. And, um,

Basically, as we've discussed before in the comics...

Wanda's magic similarly like creates Billy and Tommy, but then Billy Kaplan, the Kaplan identity, because Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard are reincarnated and born into different homes and different families. And the very quick version of a incredible but complex comics plot is that Mephisto, shout out Mephisto and Master Pandemonium are involved. And this is ultimately like shards of soul. Yeah.

I don't, despite like loving genuinely getting to be on Mephisto corner on the pods, I don't think that's what's going to happen here. And so, especially like the little, like, you know, you, you, the, the, the note about like the three years and the exact like progression of the age from when we were in the WandaVision storyline into where Billy is now. Now, obviously like we say goodbye to Billy and Tommy in the,

WandaVision. So then the question of did Wanda say goodbye, but Billy then was sort of ported to a different

or did we go back further in time and he is born into that family and grows up there? Well, yeah. Does it have anything to do with Multiverse of Madness and the Billy and Tommy that exist in that storyline? Like all of that sort of stuff. I don't want to deal with it. Okay, so something that's been a popular theory that I think is worth bringing up here is this mention that we've gotten recently

It's both in news clips in the closing credits and was in the in the first episode, this idea that there was a car crash in Eastview. Yep. And that two people survived, but one didn't. So this idea that like perhaps Billy and his parents were in a car crash, his parents survived. Billy Kaplan, who existed, died and Billy Maximoff takes over his body.

There's a thing about this I like because, again, if it's Billy Maximoff having to pretend to be whoever Billy Kaplan is in order to, like, get along.

The boyfriend rejection call thing is also sort of playing that into that for me, which is just sort of like, yeah, what if he had this boyfriend and then like Billy Maximoff finds himself in Billy Kaplan's body and he's just sort of like, I don't know you like I don't know you because I I don't know that that guy is Hulkling and Hulkling is canonically Billy's boyfriend in the comics. So I feel like there's another.

boy and a boy that maybe Billy Kaplan was dating that Billy Maximoff's like, I don't know you, unfortunately. I don't know. That's, that's a way extrapolation. But like the, if we get a Billy flashback episode next week or in the future, his parents, his boyfriend are all going to be part of like whatever this life was for this kid before Billy Maximoff took over his body. The car crash thing is a great shout out because it was so funny.

Yeah. In that sequence, the bloodstain in the back, like two airbags deployed, the bloodstain in the back. And then Agatha literally says, my gut tells me they're related, but I can't shake this feeling I'm seeing it wrong. So that coming back to bear fruit in some way has felt inevitable since that line and connecting it to Billy feels. Yeah, I I'm I could see that.

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

agatha is taunting him are you sure you're just like your mother are you sure billy is the one who wanted to go on the road so you could interpret it in a way that billy is the reason sharon's dead and billy is the reason alice is dead and if he is like a scared in any way of becoming like his mother perhaps he would remove the other women from the road

I'm already on the road. I can just walk it by myself. I'll get them out of here. I dropped them in the goop. I don't think that's going to kill them. Whether or not he watched the trailers and watched Jen crawl up into Westview or not. I don't know, but like I'll get them off the road. I'll protect them. I'll save them. Actually. I'm saving them by removing them. Yeah. Is one interpretation. If that's too kind of an interpretation and other interpretation could be,

He lost control, which is something we saw his mother do many times. Either way, I love that, honestly, because it's not only a connection and a parallel to Wanda. It's a connection to Agatha losing control. Or I have to get these people away from me because I'm worried I'm going to hurt them. Or they're going to get hurt because they're near me. Just that proximity to you could be dangerous and how horrible it would be to live your life with that fear. But I agree. I do not think Billy...

I do not think we're watching a Billy Kaplan is a villain. They didn't play emergence in the MCU. That would be astonishing. There's just a bad guy, but I wish they played. You should see me in a crown. So, um, yeah, this, uh, we, we've been dancing around this, but I thought this encapsulation from our listener, Michal, and that we got in an email was really good. Um,

They wrote, if Billy's purpose is to save slash resurrect Wanda, then turning to Agatha makes perfect sense. But it also offers the perfect opportunity, dare I say it, to punish Agatha for her role in the traumas of his childhood. It also makes sense for him to sigil himself not just as a disguise, but as protection against her. I love the idea of Billy having this degree of agency in the story. I also love that this agency would come at a significant cost.

By sigilling himself, Billy has inadvertently become a victim of his own plan. And now in his awareness, we'll have to grapple with his original goals, his newfound anger at Agatha, and the surprisingly squishy side of the Wicked Witch of Westview that he probably would not have bet existed at all. So, you know what I mean? Yep. Jellybean? Yeah.

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

Crown Corner. One last thing. This is what Daniel, I think it's Selen, I hope so, says about The Crown. The quote, The Crown was a result of beautiful and exciting collaboration between prop master Russell Bobbitt and my team. We pulled inspiration from the concentric lines in Damascus steel and also ripples in the surface of water.

With a beautiful blue chrome ombre paint treatment, we finally arrived at this powerful crown. You'll just have to wait to see what else is revealed as his full identity emerges in the coming episodes. Exciting. Quick trailer spoiler watch. Mm-hmm.

Couple things, again, skip out if you don't want to. Hearing Billy in the trailer say Agatha Harkness will always be a covenless witch makes so much more sense in this version of Billy versus the teen that we've been seeing. And then also, ongoing trailer spoilers, something that people have been tracking is that his hoodie...

which starts blue progressively in the trailer gets like ombre red. So like his is like his mom is like seeping into him in a way, which is really fun. All right. That's I mean, that's it. That's about I mean, we have a few quick things to get through the end, but that's about two and a half hours on a 25 minute episode of television. So good job us.

Still not a record. The record will always be two and a half hours on a one minute and 30 second Spider-Man trailer. All right. Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power, which is the name of this episode. Let's go to Theory Corner. Never ready for the psycho steps. All right. This plume of bugs has just skittered its way all across our entire discussion here. So we don't have a ton to say, but like our listener Jazz was asking...

Where is Tommy? If Billy is here, where is Tommy? You already sort of alluded to this, but like in the comics, Billy emerges before Tommy. So, you know, right. And I just think Tommy doesn't fit in this show. A speedster? Yeah. Okay. Tommy's hanging out with Ralph Boner somewhere. Yeah.

I do think, like, obviously, whatever Billy's quest is for not only the power that he's seeking, but the sense of, like, wholeness in his family. I won't be surprised if Tommy emerges at the very end. But I do not think we're going to see Tommy, like, joining them on the road in a magical journey. It seems very unlikely. Again, the theory corner just running wild. What if Billy asks for his, like, asks something about family and is looking for his mom, but gets his brother instead, which is, like...

That would be lovely. A consolation prize. Okay. Is Rio here? I think we discussed this earlier, but I can't remember. Is Rio here to reap them all because they've all lived longer than they were supposed to? Yeah. Like, are they all past their due date for death? And Rio's like, time to collect, you know? I mean, that Lilia line certainly seems like pointing in that direction. Last but not least.

Yeah. This is something that Jack Schaefer said in an interview when asked about Mephisto. She said, Mephisto is larger than me or the show. Whatever you take that to mean. Sasha Baron Cohen is currently starring on Disclaimer on Apple TV+. Just a thing to know. Larger than me and larger than the show, sure. But does that mean we can't get like a...

A little something here? Oh, I don't think it means no. Yeah. I think it just means I am beholden to a larger plan for Mephisto, which is the constant rallying cry of these showrunners, which is like, I don't have full control over the larger web of the MCU. What corner am I allowed to play in sort of thing? Okay. I'm really, I'm much worse at gathering Easter eggs than you are. You usually have a long section here and I have like a few paltry things, but let's do it anyway. Easter egg, unlock thy hidden gate.

Happy. Other than Ralph Boner's drunk uncle, Mr. Shirt. I mean,

you want to call out in the Easter egg section? We actually already talked about all of my favorites. I really liked the Billy costume ties. And you mentioned that the moon phase, like stained glass in the cabin is visible from the inside, which I enjoyed seeing. And then the Westview and Eastview penance, like above the door, I like. It's just like, again, that recurring note of like this place. It was about this place. Yeah.

that's following them in to the road town yeah i enjoyed um there i i had to note that on the cabin wall there is a poster for point raise point raise california which is mere 20 minutes from where i currently live beautiful idyllic place i was wondering what the hell it was doing there though um and then there are other surely other point raises in the world we aren't the only one but um

Part of the fog 1980 horror film by John Carpenter. The fog was shot in point race. So the birds was shot in Bodega Bay. So we got a lot of horror representation here in the Bay area, but I don't know if we were acknowledging the fog in some way by putting a point race poster on the wall, but I just got excited because hometown represent. Also there's static on the TV is very, a very iconic post poltergeist horror moment in the, in the cabin.

wig watch tm with me tm do you wear wigs we've already talked about the perm mullet which you soon will be uh engaging in yourself i loved it i love joe lock's perm mullet i thought it was a wonderful um very degrees of i don't lilia's look i couldn't even like peg down in any way shape or form i was looking around for something that like looks like lilia and i couldn't figure it out whatsoever um

I do have questions about the side pony. The side pony. Actually, I will say this. The side pony is really good because Agatha has this, this permy, bangy side pony thing. And it's good because it's a nice decoy because once her hair comes down, she looks very Reagan from the poltergeist. Like with the way that her bangs are laying and stuff like that. But she doesn't immediately look like that. And so that's like a sort of a fun thing. But the side pony, may it never return. Yeah.

They never darken our doorways again. Okay. Oh my God. And that means we really did do it for real this time. Again, two and a half hours on a 25-ish minute episode. Had a blast. That's what we do the best. Had a blast. You learn things about Ouija boards and broomsticks and the exorcist and where to find them. And we learned things about Mallory's takes on how many baseball teams you're allowed to work for. We'll be back next week.

with the penguin mid season check in yes and agatha episode six sad back half already devastating to end i know um thank you to mike worgen who was on the soundboard today and and filling in for steve we really really appreciate you mike you're the best um

Thank you to Arjuna Rangapal for his production work on everything. Always incredible guy. Arjuna, if you didn't know, show me a dinner on for his work on the social show me. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be back in LA soon. I, I miss you, Joe.

And then on the video side, thank you to Stephanie Sanchez for the work on this episode, which is coming out a little later because of us, not because of the video team. So we thank them for their work and to John Richter and to T Cruz for additional video production work. Thank you for all the witches who've been listening and all the people who aren't witches who've been listening and we'll see you next week. Goodbye.