'Agatha All Along' Episode 7 Deep Dive | House of R
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What are you missing? Why are you on this journey? I didn't want to come. Then why did you? To get my power back. Is it gone? Where did it go? This is not the true reason. I'm a forgotten woman. Then remember yourself. What's worth remembering? That you died? That I saw it coming? Our entire coven wiped out by a fever? I saw it? I told you? But it didn't change anything. That comes for us all.

What's up, bad babies, and welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, and joining me today in the studio in Los Angeles, back together again, it's Mallory Rubin. Did you not see imminent impalement in your future? Hello. We're back. We're back. In person. Oh, what a joy. I missed you. What a delight. Here to talk about a tremendous episode of television as well. We're here to talk about episode seven of Agatha All Along.

And that cry face that you may or may not be seeing on Mallory Rubin's face, because this is a video pod, is the devastation that we only have one more week left with Agatha. How? Why? Who? Where? All right, so...

That's what we're here to talk about today. Yes. Before we get into that, program reminders. Mm-hmm. It's a twofer over on the Midnight Boys. Pew, pew! Pew, pew! Because they're covering Penguin, they're covering Agatha. I heard they liked Agatha. Great stuff. Venom. Mm-hmm.

There is a Venom The Last Dance Instant Reaction pod coming for the Midnight Boys. Boy, is there. And having had the pleasure of sitting with the Midnight Boys and a number of our other ringer pals to watch Venom The Last Dance, I can tell you right now that is going to be a fantastic podcast. Appointment listening. Tune in. We'll be back next week with a two-part Agatha finale, Devastating, as well as possibly another trick and or treat. So that is what's happening next.

Here and elsewhere on the Rigorverse. I can't believe it's finale time already. I know. Sheesh. Can't believe it's Halloween already. Mallory. Yeah. How can folks keep track of, make sure they don't miss whatever we do. Yeah. Whatever Button Mash does, whatever Mint Edition does. What do you think?

Follow the pod. Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah. Follow the House of R. Yeah. Follow the Ringiverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're at it, hit subscribe on the new-ish Ringiverse YouTube channel because you can watch full episodes of House of R, this year podcast, and the Midnight Boys pew-pew on Spotify.

and on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. While you're at it, follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. The Ringerverse is on Instagram.

TikTok. Correct. Twitter. Yes. Which I heard Chris Ryan actually out in the wild refer to as X the other day. I know. I'll have words with him. Please do. Yeah. See that you do. Okay, I will. And then send us your emails. The inbox is open. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. Have to imagine that we will be getting plenty of Agatha finale emails next week on episodes eight and nine. Keep those coming. And then...

Start sending us your emails on Dune Prophecy. Yeah, there she is. Gladiator 2. Oh my gosh, yes. If you haven't emailed us yet about Kraven, why not? End of year stuff. End of year stuff. Silo. Skeleton Crew. Lots of good stuff still to come this year, so keep the emails coming as well. Jo, back to you, literally, in the studio. All right. Hello. Spoiler warning.

As I mentioned, we're going to talk about Episode 7 of Agatha all along. So everything that has ever happened in Marvel Disney Plus history up through Agatha Episode 7. Comic book history is on the table. We've got a little morsel of comic book intel for you in this episode. But no future spoilers. We don't know what's happening in 8 or 9. We've got some guesses, some theories, some thoughts, some concerns, some questions. No clue. No concerns, actually. Just optimism. Yeah.

And we'll be talking about that. But that is your friendly neighborhood. Spoiler warning. And now that that's done, let's go to the opening snapshot. So this is episode seven, Death's Hand in Mine. And something that Agatha has been doing...

all along, let's say, is dropping these reveals a bit earlier than we expected. So we kind of thought that Death's Hand and Mine might be the name of the finale. But we got the Billy reveal earlier than we thought, and we got the Death reveal earlier than we thought, and we got this title a bit earlier than we thought.

Written by Cameron Squires and Gia King. And Cameron, we should note, also wrote the Acolyte episode Night, which we really loved. Talked about at this very table. Great work from Cameron Squires this year. Gia King, welcome to the pod. Cameron was also part of the WandaVision gang. And then directed by the absolute legend, Jack Schafer. Wonderful. Wonderful stuff. Wonderful stuff. 37 minutes, give or take, previously on credits. How did you feel about that? Yeah, it's like 20...

eight minutes of actual episode, right? But I continue to actually quite enjoy the shorter length of many of these episodes, which is not usually, as you know, my stance. I'm usually a glutton, and I'm like, why are these episodes so short? Make the episodes longer. Make the seasons longer. Then we can make our podcasts longer. That's an everyone. Impossible. Impossible. But I just think that the ability to use every minute well, right?

efficiently and to pack a lot of story into a tight little podcast. Yeah. Tight little podcast. I think also with a conceit like this one, a very timey-wimey, time-skipping sort of idea. They packed in a lot of emotional wallop, a lot without confusing people. I think I talked to a lot of people

who were not confused by this, but if you were confused, that's what we're here for. We're here to help you. Just a reminder, by the way, that this is the cheapest Marvel Disney Plus series. Cheaper than Echo, which was the previous sort of record holder for that. And just the bang for the buck. Like, the production design on the tower and the flipped tower alone is...

How is this the cheapest? It doesn't look it, is my point. Yeah. And it's a huge hit for them because the cost is so low. They're just sort of like, we're just raking in the eyeballs on this one. So happy Halloween. Okay. Valerie. Joanna.

Give me your overall thoughts on episode seven. We haven't talked. No, no. It's core week here at The Ringer and every minute has been jam packed. So we have not debriefed yet, but I am excited, obviously, to podcast with you about this episode of television. I quite enjoyed the seventh episode of Agatha as I have quite enjoyed the entire season of Agatha. I remain, as I was last week, very confident that the season will finish well. Yeah.

I am fascinated to see if it feels like the final two episodes needed to air together and made sense to air together, or if it really is just so it ends on Halloween week. I'll be really curious to see about that. But...

Yeah, I have. I loved the episode. I think there's like an incredible ability to give in a way that is actually very rare. And I think the streaming era of the shorter seasons and the connected universe storytelling, all of the nominal side characters, like meaningfully impactful arcs. Yeah. I think my one...

at this point in the season is I do feel that we are a little light on the titular Agatha in the last two episodes, even though I loved them. And that is exclusively...

about the fact that the show ends next week. If there were more remaining time, I would not feel that at all. I'm missing Agatha a little bit. And I have a couple other thoughts and feelings on things that happened inside of the episode. But broadly, I thought it was, you know, we're in an era where we talk a lot

We being just the viewing public about whether shows pay off the setup. And, you know, we're both lost lovers and we both actually love the lost finale. And I think a lot about how in the post lost era. Yeah.

a bad lesson that TV has learned is that you have to try to check every box or people are going to be mad. And I think that this is like a, this is an example of a story that people can turn to where if something paid off

There was a reason. If a bow was tied, it was because it mattered. It needed to be tied. Character-wise. Yeah, right? Like, we're not just checking boxes and moving through our to-do list for, like, the fuck of it and the sake of it. It's when we're going through Lillia's arc and these moments and lines that we've heard before return, there's a satisfaction there.

as a viewer that, like, the time that you have invested was really warranted. But I don't feel like we're doing it just to say we did, just to exit the show and say, like, any question you had was eventually answered. There really has been, like, a reason. So the way that the structure of this episode works

had, like, honored the structure of the season was obviously just very satisfying. The themes in this episode, the theme of community, the theme of sisterhood, the way that the coven came into it was beautiful. I thought there were a couple lines in this episode. We heard one, which we'll talk about more later in the opening clip today, that are kind of instant pantheon, like, you know, that we're just going to be quoting and thinking about for a long time as Marvel fans. And it was not only a beautiful Lillia episode. I thought this was a great episode.

Gen episode. Oh, fantastic. Like the best. A great. Gen episode. Gen episode. Yeah. So yeah, I really enjoyed it. What about you? I think that's, and that speaks to the,

uh idea of the coven that it's like it doesn't have to be one person's episode i agree with you yeah very agatha light yeah um in a way that i didn't i loved this episode and i wouldn't change a thing but i have to imagine that the last two episodes are going to be yes agatha jam-packed and uh and then we won't feel that absence that lack um i

You are my sister in the craft. Yeah. My sister in pod. I was thinking of you, of course, because you mentioned Lost. Of course, there's a very famous Lost episode called The Constant, the most famous Lost episode, I would say, about a character who's sort of come unstuck in time and is hopping back and forth between two timelines. Yes.

But this is like a trope in general in TV storytelling that I almost always enjoy. Yeah. Same. It's a puzzle of an episode and you have to pay it. You have to. So I was watching. So I watched it first by myself last night.

And then I went over to a pal's house and I watched it with her because she works in television and I just wanted to pick her like TV brain about it. And she's a very like ADHD fidgety person and she often has like her phone up or is like, you know, fussing around or whatever. And like a few minutes in, she just put the phone down and never picked it back up. Well, and I think because it required active viewing, right? But also because it was…

and fun to watch. If something requires active viewing but it feels like homework, then that's not a pleasure. So the constant is a great comp. Plenty of people love it. I love the constant. We love that. I think the episode that I was thinking a lot about when I watched this

The TV series Castle Rock, in the first season, episode seven, there's an episode called The Queen, which is Sissy Spacek doing something very similar to this, where it's not just, in the constant, Desmond Hume is just hopping between two timelines, and it's still fun and engaging and very emotionally rewarding, obviously, but it's not. Is that you, Penn? Penn, yes. Penn, it's Penn.

But it's not, I mean, it's not that hard to track when we are in the episode because of wig-based reasons. But like in the Queen, the Castle Rock episode, you can watch that over and over and over again and still be puzzling out. Not in a way where you're not tracking the emotionality of it, though.

That episode, The Queen, Castle Rock, is one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Cece Spacek, a legend. Great. The Bent Neck Lady, a Haunting of Hill House episode. I would not recommend that to you, but it is Mike Flanagan's spooky season, so if you guys haven't rewatched Haunting of Hill House, I recommend it. The Door of Game of Thrones. Of course, yeah. I'm thinking about Hodor. Always. Always. Always.

Kiksuya, Westworld episode that I really, really love. Yeah. Or most of Westworld season one. That's not a season one episode, but most of Westworld season one, which is, spoiler for Westworld season one, a time hoppy kind of thing. And then an episode of Doctor Who, The Big Bang. Yeah. You know? So this idea, this kind of episode has been done in various permutations before. So you have to...

Crush it if you're going to do it. It's a high level kind of storytelling to make sure we're tracking emotionality, making sure we're not confused about the plot. Our listener John on Twitter was like asking for a tropes course about these kinds of stories. They call them a Billy Pilgrim story, which is Slaughterhouse Five. That was most on my mind. Has come unstuck in time.

That's like, I think this idea of unstuck in time really, I think, originated with Slaughterhouse-Five. And then our listener Asa, Asa maybe? Yeah.

Just dropped said Dark Tower. I don't want to say why, just in case people don't want Dark Tower spoilers. But that's all in the mix there. So just being able to enjoy that pop culture cocktail is one thing. But then to be able, as a genuine lifelong Patti LuPone fan, watch her just cook. Oh, yeah. Incredible performance. I was just so thrilled. To your point...

To give Jen the space that I actually think she's kind of been missing in the show made me really, really happy. And yeah, it just fed my puzzle brain and my bleeding heart and like all these things. And I just had the best time with it. Should we do the deep dive? Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it.

So we open with Patty, Lillia herself, falling. Yeah. We come back to this imagery at the end of the episode. This is a black background. Yes. And Lillia looks distressed. Yes. And when we get to the end of the episode, we see it again with the tower setting behind her and this sort of at-peace, beatific look on her face. I loved this as a bookend visual for the episode because you have the connection between

You have the link, but then you have those distinctions, the expression, the environment around her, and that sense then of...

how her journey ended and what it means for her to have reached the end of the road and to have completed her journey and to have embraced her power and her life instead of shutting it down and repressing it and running from it and fearing it. This idea not just of the black around her in the opening shot as like literally not understanding, not knowing, not having the connective tissue to totally recognize and piece together where she is, when she is, what's happening and why.

But it also just gives you that emotional sense of like you're unmoored, right? The void. You have no tether. And so to see like the specificity around her at the end and the fact that she is in that place in that moment, even though she is falling to what she has accepted is her death. There's an embrace. It was just like beautiful. Loved it. Exquisite. Yeah.

We cut then to what I'm calling the Coven of Two right now, which is Billy and Agatha on the road. This is a pickup immediately sort of from where we left them last week. She reminds him that she was, and the people who didn't watch WandaVision, that she was once his babysitter when he was young. She said, and his mom's ex-

Pregnant pause. Best friend. So all the Agatha Wanda shippers were fed a little bit in that moment. And I just think that Katherine Hahn looked great despite being caked in mud in this episode. Pulled it off. Yeah. Pulled it off. Yeah. Looked like she had come from a relaxing day at the spa. Yeah. A little, like, mud massage. Oh, yeah. You ever done one of those? A mud massage? No, but I've been in a mud bath. Or, like, a clay massage. Oh. Yeah. How was it? I'm going to tell you what a mud bath is like. Okay. Yeah.

Here's what I learned the first time I did a mud bath. Okay. Oh, the first time. So there have been many times. Psychologically, what they tell people if it's their first time in the mud bath is that you should leave like a hand or a foot out.

Because the mud's very heavy. So you're going to feel like you're being sucked into quicksand otherwise? People psychologically freak out if they can't move their hands or their feet. But if you have just one hand out in the air, you're just like, I can do this. Amazing. So I did one hand out. And you felt fine. You felt great. And you've been back. I've been back, yeah. Always the same hand? No, I've done all limbs in. It was just the first time. Anyway, that's Mud Bath Corner. Okay, so...

Billy cannot read Agatha's mind. It's something we learned in WandaVision. We talked about it last week. Quiet. Anything, yeah. Anything you want to say about that specifically? I thought it was interesting to be reminded that he can't access what's inside of her because she remains a mystery not only to him but to us. And obviously there's a later conversation in the episode about this question of truthfulness, right? And how...

much Billy is willing or able at this point in their shared journey to believe and put stock in anything that Agatha says. And, like, this feels like both a thematically rich but also very practical place for them to be. Because if he could read her mind, there wouldn't be any mystery, right? Exactly. And so the fact that he can't is useful for the story, but it's also compelling for us when we think about Agatha's character because, like we talked about last week...

why? Does this speak to a distance between them? Does this speak to something she is actively stifling and repressing, some sort of magic? Any number of other things that we discussed last week or that might be on our minds now. And so, like, it works for the mechanic of the plot right now, but it also works for the characters. Right, because whatever we're going to get from her that's locked away in her silent brain is presumably going to come in episode eight or nine. And the question is,

There's two ways those could be delivered. There could be this idea of she tells her story, whatever it is, and Billy has to choose whether or not he believes her. Or will she be able to let him inside of her mind and come with her on this journey? Questions, comments, no concerns. Okay, so the idea that later he pulls the Seven of Swords for her and he says, oh, it's reverse. That means the opposite. You're being truthful. Right.

To me means we should believe everything that she's saying in this exchange. One of our listeners wrote in to say the actual reverse Seven of Swords actually means self-deception. So I can't tell if that's just the show fudging this a little bit for their use. Billy, as we established, does not know how to read Tarot very well. Wasn't his best subject. Wasn't his best subject. Yeah. Yeah.

So I choose to believe Agatha and everything here. It's not just this, but it's also the shot we get at the end when they're about to approach the castle. Billy has turned his back and walked away. And we've been talking about these unmasked moments with Agatha. She just looks so teary-eyed and sort of gutted. And so I just choose to believe everything she's saying here is true. She won't answer where Rio is. Doesn't mean she's going to answer every question, but if she answers it, it will be true.

And then she asks about the mom. And then how did you take Billie's response to that? She's not my mom. I have a mom. Yes. So before we get to this, I wanted to max out the really dead part. We were talking last week about the genuine, I think, despair we felt watching the Kaplans not be able to fully mourn. Mourn their son because they don't know that William died.

and that Billy's soul shard made its way into this hollow vessel and that he broke the rules. We got it. Shard watch. We got it in. We got it in, just like the shard got into the husk. Corpse. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought that there were, like, both sides of this are worth thinking about, right? Because she's not my mom. First of all, there was something almost, like, it was reflexive, right? There wasn't a beat and a moment of, like, pensive. No, he just said it right away. And there was, eh.

anger and resentment and we've talked a lot about the role of reputation in the story and like what people say about you and then what other people who know you or don't know you have some tie to you or don't have some tie to you think of you as a result of that and so the idea that Wanda Maximoff held this town hostage and that Billy knows that right is something on his mind here also the events when

One must presume, like, multiverse of madness. Multiverse of madness. Yeah. And, but, like, that feels like something that I have to imagine. We will see a softening. We will see a thawing. It has to be. It would be, in any part of the MCU, I think really bizarre if that was just the end point for it, but particularly in a Jack Schafer story, I just don't think that's possible, right? And what's particularly, I think, juicy or delectable about that idea is that

That insight, the providing of empathy around Wanda will probably come from Agatha. Right. Agatha explaining to him why he should have empathy for his mom. Yes. So Agatha is Wanda Defender. Yes.

What a journey we've been on. I can't wait to watch it if that's where we're heading. I love it. And then the I have a mom part is beautiful. It is. And hopefully the journey that we're watching Billy go on is that he can hold those things in his mind at the same time. He can learn to embrace Wanda and open himself up to that part of his history and that part of his family, that part of his self, right? Yeah.

And realize that that doesn't have to mean letting go of the Kaplans, of those parents who are family to him and can remain family to him even if Wanda and Vision and Tommy enter his life. He doesn't have to choose. It's like a lesson Theon got very late and hopefully one that Billy gets earlier. I love that. You don't have to choose. Right.

Agatha Hedges in a very, I thought, extremely hilarious fashion about whether or not Wanda Maximoff was still alive. To me, this read is very meta. This is a MCU preoccupation. My understanding, and I'm happy to be, like, maybe she'll show up at the finale. Happy to be proved wrong. My understanding is that Marvel wants Elizabeth Olsen in The Scarlet Witch.

The Nexus being that she is back to help with their multiverse saga. And my understanding is that Elizabeth Olsen would prefer not to. Right. So maybe, depending on how the contract negotiations go. I mean, they've been doing this since episode one, right? Like the very first scene of the series with Agnes and Herb and she is dead, though. Isn't she, Herb? Oh, she really is most sincerely dead. You never know. Wink. Yeah. So I...

I like this. I mean, of course, the possibility is always open in the MCU. But in this slice of the universe in particular, it makes sense that this would be something that they're playing with. I love it. Hey, you want straight answers? Ask a straight lady. Great stuff. Instantly iconic. Love it.

Then we see the home of the next trial, and it's a very scary, spooky castle on a hill with a lot of towers. Yeah. We will be visiting those towers momentarily. This could be any sort of Disney spooky castle. Mm-hmm.

I think it's worthwhile to tie it to the Black Cauldron because Billy had a Black Cauldron poster on his wall in his room. But also it could be Maleficent's castle. It could be a number of sort of Disney-esque castles that could come straight from if Billy is manifesting this road come from the mind of a teen who was raised on that kind of storytelling. Yeah. I love it. I love it too. Okay.

Then Billy, speaking on behalf of all the Redditors, the Agatha all along subreddit, says, I'm not even sure you walked the road at all. Right.

I thought you would have insight, but I'm not even sure you've been here before. Yes. And she looks rather taken aback at that. And I think this has been a pretty popular theory that Agatha's bullshitting that she's never walked the road before. I think she definitely did walk the road, whatever that means. Whether or not that means literally walking a road or whatever. Because if you go back and rewatch, as I did last week,

Every time someone mentions the Witch's Road in the second episode when they're rounding everyone up, they're like, that's a death sentence. That's a hoax. It's never like that's a corporeal road. It's a concept more than it is a place, which is what she sort of says later when Teen's like, are we driving there? What are we doing? So has Agatha walked a physical road before? I'm not sure. But has she done the trial that is known as the Witch's Road? No.

without question to me. Yeah. Yeah, and I took her... This was another great moment for just watching the facial expression, right? And trying to figure out what we're seeing play on Agatha's face there because I think there's like the... Okay. I agree with what you said earlier broadly that the... just discussion about her being truthful is, again, like everything else in the series so far, there for a reason and that feels like... It feels like the reason is to give us the indication that we should be putting stock into what we're hearing from Agatha, right? And...

Is it possible that this is part of some sort of just like, you know, you print the legend? Maybe. I don't think so. I also think she's been there. So I took this more as like the thing playing out on her face is...

how painful it would be to hear that doubt expressed when whatever happened to her on the road might have been tied to like losing Nikki, right, to the deepest pain and trauma of her life. And then have people doubt you and question you and wonder if it's just one more way that you try to like prop up your status. And especially again in an episode where she's like, yeah, she's based on me. And he's like, prove it. That all feels very much like a part of the same text. I also thought it felt, again, deliberate that

That question, now I wonder if you've ever been on the road at all, it comes right after we're alive success. And I think it is literally in the flow of that conversation just a continuation of Billie saying in your experience, I honestly believed your experience would be the key to our success here. And she kind of cuts in, right? We're alive success. Now I wonder.

But it did make me think, especially in the context of an episode where so much of that idea of, like, you know, go with him gladly, right, for death is there. It...

Maybe the mistake is thinking that winning is living, right? That you have to die or you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself, which obviously fits with what we've been talking about the whole time. Possibly, but also I agree and I would say so like that dying isn't losing is the flip side of that, right? Lillia probably does some version of dying in this episode. Yeah.

But we would also say she won, right? Absolutely. Exactly. But also this idea of being like just literally alive versus living. Yes.

We would recommend that Agatha or anyone listening or watching this podcast fire up the HBO Max and watch Station Eleven and learn the lesson that survival is insufficient. Insufficient. It's not enough to just survive, especially if you're surviving and you're just alone, as Agatha seems to have been since cutting Rio, since losing Nikki, since all this other stuff like that. Like, is that really living? Right. Yeah.

I was reminded of a Stephen Sondheim lyric. Hit me. The musical is Company. The song is Being Alive. If you're an Adam Driver fan, you maybe remember him singing it at the end of Marriage Story. You can listen or watch Patti LuPone sing it on YouTube. She's done it many, many times over the years. It's like a banger song. But it's all about a character who has isolated, who is like, all of his friends are married and he has not gotten married and is just sort of like alone and is...

afraid of, and this is why I was thinking about it, afraid of connection, letting someone in too close. And so he has this transformation over the course of the song of like,

Actually, I want that. Like somebody like hold me too close. Like somebody hold me accountable. Somebody make me come through. Someone do all this stuff. Alone is alone, not alive. Like and so it's just sort of like this idea of surviving is not living and isolating is not being here on this community we call planet Earth. So we go across phases of the moon drawbridge. Yes, we do. Yeah. Into the air trial.

take us through the reveal of the costumes. I mean, we've seen them in the trailers, but like, what did you think? So, Agatha is much to Lillia's... We haven't seen Lillia in the same space as her yet, but the second we see it, we know Lillia is going to be mortified and dismayed. Culturally offended. Culturally offended. We have time for that later. Thank you, Jen, for keeping everyone on task. Agatha's there. She's green. She's the Wicked Witch. Yeah.

Billy is Maleficent. Yeah. Delightful. Right. Should we save the others or hit them here? We can if you want to. Go for it. Yeah. They're not here yet, but let's hit the costumes. Yeah. Lilia is Linda, the good witch. Delightful. And Jen is the crone version of the evil queen from Snow White. She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to talk about it. And I don't want to talk about it, but that's fine. Yeah.

If the cheap phones fit for Billy. Amazing stuff. Wonderful line. Fantastic. But I also have to like, so Maleficent is connected, similar to like thinking about Billy's Torah reading, which is connected to Aaron and his sons and all this sort of stuff like that. Like Maleficent and the idea of like stolen children and all of that is in my mind. But also this idea that both the Wicked Witch of the West and

Maleficent have had major splashy big budget musicals or Disney productions about hey what if she isn't wicked right what if she isn't as bad as we think she might be right shout out the evil queen also got that treatment on once upon a time but that's that's not a property I'm that familiar with but I do know that the evil queen from Snow White is I think I believe kind of a hero in that show eventually okay intriguing um

Then we get the first of three readings. This is Agatha's reading from Billy. And this is an email we got from our listener, McKenna, who said, the chariot symbolizes overcoming conflict and moving forward in a positive direction. And the seven of swords reverse also points to making positive changes and a fresh start. Given the reveal of Rio death, it seems like Agatha is going to have to decide between her old life and a new life.

I'm guessing that after she killed her coven, Rio taught Agatha to embrace her power and not feel bad about what she's done because death is inevitable. So Agatha did what she did. Now she has a different choice and could be a mentor instead who teaches witches to embrace their power, but for good. We'll see what choice or sacrifices she makes. I liked this email. I'm not sure I am like on board with every single prediction or thought here, but Chariot makes me think of

Carriages, which makes me think of, because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me, Emily Dickinson, coroner. If only Agatha were here after you said carriage to say chariot. It's literally written on the card. It's literally written on the card. It's literally written on the card. Any extrapolations you want to make from the chariot or the Seven of Swords? We already talked sort of about the Seven of Swords and the idea of truth telling.

Yeah, I think that we should assume that this will have a payoff given that every other card that came up throughout the entire season bore fruit in this episode, right? So that's exciting to think about. And we get the Agatha reading, we get the Billy reading before Lillian moves to realizing that she is, in fact, the Traveler. And so there are clues for, you know, the biggest mystery is, I mean, obviously Rio, but the biggest mysteries are still about Agatha and Billy. So we have new clues for them here. I think in

terms of like the it's an interesting email i don't think the lesson will be murdering is okay i think there will be a difference between embracing embracing death versus murdering is okay yeah and i think this idea of death and it's worth noting that the death card in the tarot deck does not really literally mean death but like that this idea of death as we learned as we heard in the opening clip a lot of what this episode is concerned with this idea of death is like

A comfort. Yeah. A thing we all share. Next great adventure. Let the carriage roll up. If the carriage rolls up, Mallory Rubin. And hot Aubrey Plaza is in the carriage. And she's like, come with me. Yeah. Are you getting in the carriage? Five stars. Great. Yeah.

I don't, I mean, like, so there's a way in which if Agatha does, like, quote unquote, die at the end of all of this, there's a way in which that's still a happy ending for her. Yes, absolutely. It feels again like we're heading toward that, the maybe sacrifice for Billy, you know, to do something for Billy that she was not able to do for her own son, to make a choice for someone else instead of herself, to reject her power, to protect someone else.

Very much feels like that's what we're moving toward. And I think we will mourn the loss of if that is where we go, Agatha and Katherine Hahn in the MCU. But the lesson that that was the right thing, that you don't have to hold on forever, that you shouldn't hold on forever for Agatha. That surviving is not necessarily winning. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years in.

Go hang out with Hot Rio. We have an email about that, and I do have some notes on that. We'll get to that a little bit later. How do you feel about the Sword of Damocles ceiling? What did it make you think of? Were you thinking Star Wars Trash Compactor, Indiana Jones? No, yeah. I wrote Temple of Doom in my notes immediately. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm always thinking of the Star Wars Trash Compactor. Yeah.

That's a great one, too. Yeah. Specifically, I would say Indy's, like, fedora with the, like, spike coming down and, like, depressing the brim. I was thinking a lot about, eventually thinking a lot about Goonies because I'm always thinking about Goonies. But also there is a, and there was a Goonies knockoff poster on Billy's room. That's right. But one of the puzzle trials that they have to go through in the Goonies involves one of their pack members.

remembering how to play the piano. And if she gets a wrong note, um, the rocks fall on them. And so it's very much like a calm down, remember your training. You know how to do this. You can read this music. You can complete this trial. Um,

Agatha does a hasty card pull for Billy, and then we get this gem. We keep at it until we get the right cards in the right spots or the ceiling runs out of swords. And Billy says, I'm not sure how much math you did back in Salem, but that will take forever. I really loved this. It was just in general, I'm always craving more Agatha, but it was part of why I was craving just a little bit more Agatha in an episode that, again, broadly I loved. I

I think, like, the way that Agatha is describing tarot, right? It's a con like any other. There's no magic to it. There's no skill. Billy's defense. It tells us a lot about both of them. And, you know, of course, we see that skill. We see everything he says here. He's talking about intuition, interpretation, divining meaning, all of that. We see how true and real and tangible and meaningful that is. But...

So I love the, like, Billy's admiration for the craft part of it. And it also feels like, especially in the episode where his key question is, am I William or am I Billy? Like, that's William, right? We talked about last week the difference between magic and magic. And, you know, who had a divination tent at his bar mitzvah? Who had tea leaf reading at his bar mitzvah? It was William. So, like, Billy's embrace of something that William loved felt really lovely there for him. And then I think, like, the...

The fact that Agatha...

who we have heard say to Jen, for example, they can't take your knowledge, right? Who has been able to tap into and then express and share with others her deep and true connection to the craft is just basically here in like logic puzzle mode, math equation mode, thinking about it as like, let's, we can probably guess the password, right? We can guess, we can pick the lock. She's not thinking about

the craft here. She's not doing the thing that she has given to others to help them push through their trial. And so the way that she is oscillating in and out of that attachment and that ability to, like, recognize the germ of the meaning of the thing has been fascinating for me to track, and I've really liked that. I think, like, Billie...

I will say, I actually was curious to ask you about this. Because all of the, like, back and forth motion for Agatha, as we've talked about a couple times, feels so human and in character for her. And those contradictions are a huge part of her. Are you bumping at all, or no, on how Billy is behaving toward Agatha now and in the last couple episodes? No.

Like, this is just because, and I don't mean to minimize. Just because Alice died. Listen, I don't mean to minimize killing Alice, but he thought he killed Lillian Jen. Like, he thought they were dead.

He sort of moved on from that. But his entire, you know, like as we saw last week, he had figured out who he was. He says in this episode, it's clear to us he didn't understand the depth of his power. That's clear. Right. But he sought out Agatha. Yeah. Specifically. Yeah.

With a great enthusiasm. Mm-hmm. Right? Knowing from Mr. Bone Horrific that she was, like, in other people's estimation, a monster. Mm-hmm. So...

Are you like, oh, yeah, this is exactly how Billy would be behaving toward Agatha? Does that feel totally right to you? Or is there anything about it that feels a little just a touch too extreme? And again, I would like to be clear. I do think that killing Alice was bad. I do think that killing Alice was bad. Well, unlike some people on this podcast, I do give a shit about Alice. So I will say that. I love Alice. Like, I—

I feel like, should he be almost like mourning the loss of the, oh, I'm excited to be your partner in this thing a little bit more or no? Well, I have questions about that. How much of that was like a little bit of an act? So last week, though, it felt like we saw that that was sincere.

I think his enthusiasm for discovering the road was sincere. Yeah. But I don't think he was like, Agatha, she's the best. I think he was like, Agatha, she's the key to get me what I want. And he's intrigued by her and interested in her. And like hopeful that this partnership is good. And so now he's just like, I don't need you. And so I have no reason to pretend that I have any interest in being near you. That's like pretty sinister to me.

I think Billy has a little bit of sinister in him. Yeah. Is your buy-in on Billy's manifesting the road theory that we talked about at length last week. Yeah. Based on the fact that Billy says, I wish Lillia was here and right then, later in the episode, but right then she busts through the bookcase. Yeah. I think I'm less sure about

than I was last week. Definitely less sure than I was last week. That's because I haven't been, like, Grima Wormtongue whispering in your ear my theory enthusiasm. And if you ever need a top-up, you can just call me. I still believe that it's possible. And what I love about it is that it feels...

entirely possible and also like it could definitely not be the case and they've set up both of those outcomes well yeah and that's actually much more interesting and exciting to me than something being so clear yeah which like is a little tease for one of the notes i have on the okay great on the episode and a reveal we had a decent mix of people buying all the way in and people pushing back on our discussion around that theory and again like anything i'm just gonna hold it

Loosely. Loosely. Loosely. The pushback seems to be largely centered on the way in which the trials are also tailored to the individual witch and their specific trauma. Is that something Billy would know? In the case of Alice, maybe Jen less so. Is that something Billy would unknowingly intuit given his mighty, mighty sort of mind reading powers? But to be crystal clear, and we got a couple emails about this, I don't think...

If it is a hex situation... Yeah. And I'm actually, like, even more in now that we've seen the subway tunnels. But, like... Yeah. If it is a Billy created a hex similar to his mom's hex situation... Yeah.

I don't think it's the same as Wanda sort of forcing the townspeople of Westview to play a role. Yeah. I think all the witches are being themselves and acting autonomously. Yes, agreed. I think he is even... I know he is, if he is doing this, even less aware than Wanda was. Because there were times when Wanda wasn't fully aware of what she was doing, willfully ignoring what she was doing. And then there were times when she knew exactly what the fuck she was doing. Yeah. I think Billy has just done this...

Without knowing. And so he's not puppeteering the witches. They're going through their own genuine emotional catharsis, making choices, learning and growing and all of that sort of stuff. To your point about earlier about Agatha, Agatha playing the role of a cheerleader for Jen through her trial and then not being the doubter in this trial. Yeah.

The cheerleader in this episode is Jen. And so I think this idea, and we'll get to more discussion about Jen as the path forward sort of idea, but could this be an intentional handing over of leadership role from Agatha, head of coven to Jen? I priestess. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Meanwhile, back in a ditch. Yeah. It's a tunnel, but I just am falling in a ditch. Yeah.

We get the first of several time jumps from Lillia with a side of muddy Jen. And at this point from Jen's POV, Lillia has already explained who Billy is, the tarot trial, that they have to look for a bookcase, and vaguely the nature of her time skipping. She'll get to more explanation about that. Fun fact about tarot. Invented in Italy in 1430. Wonderful.

Perfect connection. If we have it our way, we will get to talk to some people who worked on the show and get maybe some info from them. And this is one of those like chicken egg situations in a writer's room where I'm like, did they decide they want to do tarot? Yeah. Did some research, found out it was invented in Italy centuries ago. And they were like, let's have our tarot character be from Sicily, you know, centuries ago, something like that. But this idea of...

Lillia telling Jen that Billy is a Scarlet Witch's kid. Yeah. And Jen telling Lillia that Billy is a Scarlet Witch's kid. And that going back and forth and back and forth in time. Yeah.

That's a bootstrap paradox, baby. We love it. We love a bootstrap paradox. Very Whovian. I was thinking of our guy 12 quite a bit. I think my fate... Actually, my... Because there were a bunch of examples of this, of course, in the episode, given the way it's structured and the way that Lilia is unstuck in time and moving across time. You've forgiven him. You're not mad at him anymore. That was my favorite version of the bouncing around. I thought that was great. But...

Part of what was so smart about this is, again, it's like this vibrant emotional brew. Because you're tickling the sci-fi part of your brain, right? Thinking about things like a paradox and whether you're traveling across time, your consciousness is traveling across time. But there was such a...

heaviness to this. You know, the way that Lillias, like, that I told you? Yeah. And I thought, so watching this for the first time,

This is a really fun episode to re-watch. Watching this for the first time, it's really smart because we, of course, as viewers, even though I've been theorizing and speculating a lot about this, oh, you were even like, I mean, maybe like week by week three of the season stitching together how you thought the quotes were going to fit, right? The...

The fact that we are very much rooted in Lillia's point of view, right? Because we also have not yet experienced the scene that Jen has had. You're saying we're disoriented the way that she's disoriented. Yeah, we are out of time along with Lillia. We are, like, firmly having the same experience that she is across the episode. So that, like, sense of being confused, but then also being like, you think I'm batty, but I'm not batty. I've been paying attention. I've been watching the show. I'm ready to follow along. Like, it just felt very effective.

Right. And then you have the despair of having to confront then because you are so rooted in her point of view and her perspective. What it would be like to live your life this way and how I was thinking of the line we've heard a couple of times across the season, like the burden and blessing of the coven. Yeah. And like the burden and blessing of something like this. Not a lot of blessings. Right. And like and who did we hear that from?

But then it becomes a blessing. Yes. And you have to like work your way toward that embrace and you can only do it with the coven and with the other people around you to help. And so like the idea that this thing, this ability, this gift, the sight, so many people

would think that that was an incredible power, would covet it, right? Would want to be able, it's like very like, again, three-eyed raven-y, right? You know, could you, and not to like spoil the end of Game of Thrones, but like this was one of the things that I was always interested in debating about.

Should a person who knows that much ever be in a position of power? No. No, of course not. But what's more important than story? What's more important than story? So, you know, for Lillia, for us to watch this journey from fearing this, resenting it, needing to distance herself from this ability because other people came to fear her for it and judge her for it because of what she was able to see and then share in an effort to help. I think I

I want to yes and what you said. It's knowledge you don't want. I want to yes and what you said because you're like, the, how traumatizing it would be to live your life this way and I think what's even more traumatizing about this is that

She lived her life this way for a time when she was a child, and then it went away, and now it's back. And how scary that is. It's not something you've been coping with your whole life. It's something you thought you had already conquered, and now it's back. And it's not just something that's back. It's a child fear that's back. But do you think she thought she conquered it? I feel like she knows she hid it away and didn't want to look at it.

I mean, that's I feel like that's kind of semantics around conquered. I just sort of mean she thought she was done with it. Right. Because what she does in this episode is conquer it. Right. And like the she's a she's repressed it and she has not. I don't think she conquers it. She embraces it.

isn't that how she conquers it? By embracing it. That's the win is like that you don't have to beat it. Right. You succumb to it. But I think she... It's not control, right? The way that I'm using conquer is just to sort of wrestle it into submission so that she could live her life in a linear fashion, right? And yeah. And then it comes back and she's terrified. Yes. And to that end of...

The snappishness, it was reading very like dementia patients analog to me, this idea of like older women or older people. I've had family members experience dementia and there's this like defensiveness that is just so heartbreaking to navigate and to watch and really understandable. Yeah.

We get to watch Lilia go through those little moments that you were talking about that we've been trying to stitch together all season. Let's hear a little bit. Which is it? Am I wispy or am I kooky? They're both, if I'm honest. Alice! Alice, don't try to save Agatha! Yes, I love this plan. I just think that maybe we should find the ingredients first, though, right? Lilia. What do you see? What do you think of this?

I loved it. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun to feel the pieces click into place. Every time we got to see it, it was really, really fun. It felt just like very tidy. Yeah. Yeah. Very slide puzzly. You have all the pieces there and they were always in the border, right? Yeah.

It was just about making the picture look exactly right, like seeing the Survivor logo come into one of the places they're still using slide puzzles. We had like a quarter of the picture in like the wrong corner. Exactly. And it just like, yeah, slid up into place. Great, great comp. Time for divination. Yes. With Lillia's Maestra, who I would say has a lot in common with the Ancient One, would you not say? Told us one to his character. Yeah.

I loved all of this. It was great. The actress, Laura, I would say Boccoletti is how I pronounce her last name. I thought she was a real highlight of an already like fantastic episode. I think everything, there's a version of this character that is like hokey or corny or boring. And I thought she was so, I was just so moved by this. And by the way in which we watch this sort of cycle of

Teacher, student, teacher, student, teacher, student of like teaching Lilia who can then impart, you know, to members of her coven what she has learned about death, et cetera, et cetera. I just thought it was.

Really beautiful. Yeah, I loved this as well. And it was impressive to be able to, I mean, we technically have seen this person before, right? This is the skeletal figure with death looming behind who Lillia glimpses in her trauma flashback in episode three when they're all making their way through the house. But it was one of those things where on the one hand, we got everything that we needed in the span of these episodes.

And what we were able to glimpse. But it was also, it was so good that it made me want like the full chronicles of the original Sicilian coven because the performance was so great. But just the wisdom, right? And like, I love thinking about that too. That of course, I mean, of course, as we see, this is young Lillia sitting there physically in that chair.

She is there hearing that at the beginning of her life and the beginning of her journey, but it's only at the end when her consciousness ports back and she has all these other experiences that she's able to bring to that moment that she's able to perceive and receive these words. And there were just so many beautiful and like...

Not just beautiful, but hard lessons, like things that require you to look inward and really assess yourself and that are uncomfortable and that like require a willingness to interrogate. It's a really hard balance to pull off because it was like...

somewhat confrontational, but also, but not unkind. Right. And that's, you know, and that's this idea of the witch as a character, as a figure that is constantly pushing and questioning and interrogating to get to the real truth, but not in a wicked or nasty way. Yeah, and this first thing, and that will be true across the series of little vignettes we get, but this first exchange really like primes us for that.

this is a fiction you told yourself and tell yourself still. Like, ah, the easy road. I mean, this is...

Yeah. Right? Like, this is a lesson. This is feedback for me. It's feedback for all of us. Yeah. The next time you say, like, I'm not good at this, are you just taking the easy road? The easy road. But I love what you're saying because the fact that that, what could just, in a certain circumstance, feel like a pure rebuke is really ultimately a way of saying embrace your ability. Yeah. Embrace your strengths. Yes.

Embrace the thing about you that you fear and that's terrifying, but that makes you uniquely who you are. It was lovely and an important lesson. Also, the economy, to your point, the economy of this character, who we probably, we get, definitely get less than 10 minutes of screen time with, I would say. Oh, yeah. Maybe less than five minutes of screen time with.

Huge impact in my mind. And but the way that the economy of her immediately understanding, oh, you're visiting. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so we immediately know that she is someone who is sharp, knows everything. And we want to pay attention to what she has to say. Absolutely. Loved it.

We leave that, the easy road, back to the hard road, back to the ditch. Lilia snaps back to the quote-unquote present, not quite the present. And yeah, Jen thrills me to my core. Great Jen episode. When she mentions the subway station. Before we see it, she mentions it, and I'm like, there!

the titles I was really excited what a win for the house of our podcast what a win for Sharon Davis what a win for the Westview Historical Society just incredible stuff um our listener Becca wrote in about with another musical reference of

the musical Hadestown, which is a retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. And in that musical, the road to hell is a railroad line. That's an off-repeated sort of like lyric in that. And it's a literal railroad. And it's sort of this like 1930s depression era depiction of Orpheus and Eurydice. But Becca was bringing up some of the themes for that musical, this idea of...

Orpheus having to sing through his trials to get down the road. The lyrics, do you trust each other? Do you trust yourselves? In the Wait For Me reprise. Anyway, Becca recommends this musical. So do I. She mentioned there's several versions of it on Spotify, which is true. The concept album, the Broadway cast album, and the New York live recording. She and I both co-signed the live recording. I...

That's just the best version. So listen to it. It's incredible. Okay. More crucially, it's themes this episode. This, like, again, this dementia angle of all of this, this idea of a forgotten woman, which is what Lillia, how Lillia will describe herself later. This idea of confusion, which again, feeds back to that, like, Castle Rock comp to the episode, the queen. I just thought this was like really...

really moving. Yeah. And again, in an economy of lines. Yeah. One of the things I really liked about this, the you think I'm baddie, is that it, sequence is that

She's surely right, right? You know, like that people throughout her many years have thought something like this about her, even though the gaps went away and now they're back. That this is like, and the reason that that's not just sad, but really interesting to me is because Lilia stood there in her shop.

her front for Lillia's leggings, and said to Agatha during the recruitment phase for The Covenant episode two, no, I didn't read your, yeah, I didn't do any reading here. Like, I know who you are because of your reputation. And so Lillia resents, as she should, this false perception that other people have of her, but she's doing that to Agatha. And part of the reason the show has worked as an ensemble is because the characters make

similar mistakes in all directions. And so part of the reason that they're able to ultimately, like, grow is because they recognize in somebody, in themselves eventually, something that they, like, resent in someone else or the other way around. Yeah. And that's been a very satisfying, like, I think, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about something else later that happens in the episode that's, like, a very potent example of this. But,

They're all on uniquely, truly individual journeys. There are specific things happening for all of them that are about their histories and their presence and their futures.

But they're connected to each other in a way that is really heightening the impact of the shared experience. Like, when we have a moment, like, Lillia's turning the card and embracing my coven, you feel that so keenly, and it's not in any way diminishing our ability to understand her journey. It's the opposite, right? Because we have this investment in her journey through this episode and through the season, then we understand what it means for her to embrace them as her coven. It's been, it's like, that's where, again, the short episodes...

That's just amazing to me, actually, that there's been enough room to do that for that many different characters. The journey of... I mean, we get an on-the-nose version of this when we zip through time again and we see Lillia say, at first we didn't like each other and now I love you guys. That's a bit like, you know, just saying it. But if you compare...

Jen's reaction to meeting Lilia, which is you need a chemical peel. Yeah. To like, and again, that is sort of age based. This idea also, this idea of like aging for a witch who was centuries old, you know, to your point about suppressing, tucking away, putting away your power, your ability. Did that,

have any sort of influence or impression on her aging versus Jen and Agatha who are also centuries old right yeah um and what that means to be an older woman walking through the world and how the world perceives you because of that and the frailty that they assume you have and all that sort of stuff um I thought that was incredible um let's listen to Lilia and Jen talk about this

The flow of time is an illusion, Jen. Most people don't realize that. When I was a child, I experienced my life out of sequence. I would get these flashes, these gaps. Now it's happening again, and it's getting worse. That sounds terrifying. Why is it getting worse? Maybe because I'm close to the end of the road. Yeah.

The difference between you need a chemical peel and that sounds terrifying, why is it getting worse? You know what hit me even more than that was just the thing that comes right before that beautiful exchange we heard, which was just the, no, tell me. I mean it. Yeah. Like, just...

Giving a shit, like actually giving a shit, right? Not making fun of somebody, not diminishing them, not making them feel like weird or small. This is a group of people who like society at some point has made has made feel like on the outside. And so when they do that to each other, as we've talked about across the season, they're

even more tragic. Like, they're allowing that, like, noxious rot to creep into themselves and then they port that out to each other. So, like, for Jen to do that, say, no, like, explain it to me, I actually want to understand, just felt like the most

monumental thing. On, as I've mentioned on Trial by Content the last few weeks we've been watching all these witch movies and so I rewatched The Craft this week and The Craft is a movie that I love, gets, you know, gets several nods in this show but The Craft is a movie about a group of teenage girls who find, like, sisterhood and power with each other against the people who are bullying them or treating them like crap and all this sort of stuff like that and then they turn on each other.

And then they pull each other apart. And watching the craft and thinking about the show at the same time, I was like, that feels so teenage girl to me. It feels so right. Yeah, absolutely. That you would turn on each other distressingly. But I really like this version of the story that we're getting where it's like... And the question of who or what is the enemy is something that's going to come up again at the end here. Yeah. But I like...

This idea of, yeah, to your point, overcoming this, like, overcoming the way in which they have bought into, like, the patriarchy, essentially. It's real! The patriarchy. And just sort of, you know, seeing each other. I thought, too, just hearing Lilia talk about this, the emotion, you know, the sobs that start to kind of choke out. It's getting worse. So, so moving and sad and painful. Incredible performance. And...

To think about how over centuries of your life, it was bad, got better, got worse, and

It wouldn't matter how active and present the gaps and the flashes were at any point. It always would have been a thing that had happened to you. Oh, yeah. And so you carry it with you every second. That's what I was trying to get to earlier is this idea of, like, when it comes back. If it's something you feel like you have mastered, whatever word you want me to use, mastered, I don't know, put away. I was thinking of it like when...

I don't want to get, like, I won't say, like, a specific illness or anything like that, but it's just sort of, like, if you have a medical condition and you feel like you have cured yourself of it. Right. And that is a thing that had happened to you. And then it comes back in the terror of that. Right. And also for someone like Lilia, that terror being associated with, like, childlike terror. Yeah. I was thinking a lot about The Sixth Sense and Haley Joel Osment's character and this idea of, like, to your point about, like,

Oh, that'd be kind of cool to see dead people. No, it's terrible. Yeah. He's dramatized. Yeah. And so. No safe harbor ever. But then he learns to embrace it, which is, you know, spoilers for the sixth sense. A lot of spoilers for the sixth sense there. Okay. So this is the moment when she says, you know, when she says it's coming back because I'm nearer the end. Yes. This is a moment where you and me and everyone we know, we're like, well. That's a wrap. That's a wrap on Lilia. That's a wrap on Lilia. Yeah. Yeah.

It did not, for me at all, diminish the power of the ending of this episode. And that is something that I think again and again and again. Yeah. You and I might be on slightly similar pages with the death reveal. But like, I would say with the Billy reveal, it's about execution. And that was the Billy moment was such a moment that it was like, even though we knew from day one who that was. Landed. It was a moment. Landed. And Lillia, even knowing...

Yes. She's definitely going to die and probably in a way that she's sacrificing herself and embracing death and all this other stuff. Yeah. Did not diminish the way this episode lands at the end. No, I think I agree. I think for me, it ultimately heightened it because we feel so, I mean, the like of the, maybe I'm close to the end of the road. Okay. Oh, no, they mean of her life. And that is the end of the road. Oh, it's all, it's all connected. Yeah.

The fact that it felt so clearly like we were marching toward that made then the confidence and just it was such an assured moment for Lillia when she said, I am the traveler. She knows. She could be seconds, minutes. You know, it's there. It's happening. Does she try to run? No.

Does she just look up and accept it and wait for the swords to pierce her heart? No. She's like, I will be in control. And we haven't seen her entire life, but we can glean from what we do have access to. Like, this is a rare level of agency and acceptance, and that's the beauty of it. So the fact that we know she's about to, like, fucking bite it.

made it actually all the more satisfying to watch the choices that she makes in the moment. Which is why I picked the clip at the beginning. What will you do with the time you have left is what Hermione Starr asks her, right? And she's like, she picks the road on the left. She knows what she's walking towards. When I was talking to my friend Danielle about this last night, she brought up, she's like, what's the Hitchcock surprise versus suspense thing, right? You can surprise someone with Lillia's death or you can...

Let us know she's headed towards death. And so every step she takes, we're thinking about that too. Yes. All right. So we jump forward to the castle.

And Lillia gets tackled by Agatha mid-read to avoid a dropping sword. Yeah. And she angrily confronts Billy, who, as you pointed out, is confused because we already said this. I thought we were cool. We are not cool, teenager. Teenager. Damn. Damn, using his full name. Fantastic stuff. I would also just like to say that I believe Did You Not See? Imminent Impalement in Your Future is a nod to...

It has to be. Oh. You didn't see that coming? Like recurring bit, which is like not my favorite thing that's ever happened in the MCU. But that felt like a little Pietro nod right there. Not the last Pietro nod maybe in this episode?

Because we close out with a Jim Croce song, which plays over a different Pietro in a different franchise. Okay. And then Billy and Lilia have this one-sided conversation about his power, about Alice, where he is reading her mind and responding to it.

Love this. And I really love this too. It is, again, slightly disorienting for us until we sort of are able to track what's going on. And thinking about what Billy said in the last episode about when he can hear thoughts, he says, so this thing, he said this to his lovely boyfriend. So this thing happens when I'm with someone I care a lot about and they're having intense feelings. So what this tells us is he cares a lot about...

about Lillia. Yes. And Lillia has very intense feelings about what happened to Alice. Yes. And all of that is... Unlike me. No, I'm kidding. I love Alice and I mourn her. No, you don't. You don't give a shit. It's fine. Coventude. Yes. Covenation. Yes. Covenation is good. Coventude is very good as well. I also just loved that this was... Because again, like, Billy and Lillia are different. Their powers are different. Their experiences are different. But

But when you watch this conversation, this one-sided exchange, and we've just been moving through time with Lillia, it's like this, we are watching this scene, this exchange between two people who are not experiencing, in their own unique ways, existence.

In a common fashion. Yeah. Right? And, like, for Lillia, that's the way her mind is bouncing through time. For Billy, it's the fact that he doesn't need another person to speak in order to be able to converse with them. And, like, that's not linear. It's not common. And so even though it's distinct for each of them, it is a thing they share, which I loved. And what is a coven if not common cause with people who can only understand the unique thing that you're going through? Um...

Agatha calls Lillia Dory. Great stuff. Which is objectively funny. But Jen defends Lillia, which, again, this is just a great protective Jen episode. And especially coming so fresh off of Jen being number one angry accuser in the Cabin in the Woods episode. Yes. I also thought this was a moment where, like, when Jen says, so trust me when I say you're not mad at the kid anymore. Mm-hmm.

There's a version of the show.

Made by different people. So not that... I did not actually fear that it would be this version, but there's a version of this where that is just using Lillia's power as a shortcut, right? As a way to, like, not have to deal with all of these scenes and exchanges. And ultimately, those are, again, not just, like, plot mechanics, but they're going to be key breakthroughs between these characters. Or it's going to be interesting for us to have to confront the fact that it actually wasn't because of the bootstrap paradox. It's like...

This information just always exists in this loop, in this story. And that's like, so I didn't actually doubt that we would like see the things we needed to see in the course of the episode. But I was really thinking about how many versions of a show like this exist.

It'd be like, well, this is how we can use the power to our advantage to not have to actually confront how this would work. It's like when Lily was like, I thought I could just skip this entire muddy walk through the tunnel. Exactly. Yeah. I had that thought. I was thinking about that. And it was maybe like my third time around where I sort of satisfied that. Not that you're not dissatisfied by it, but I sort of satisfied it in my own brain because I think that conflict resolution comes from...

the mind reading convo like that's them hashing it out so it does happen it just happens out of order for her um we get the focus up Calderu we can be culturally offended later line incredible wonderful um and then uh he Billy asks Lily about the sigil yes and he says I'm glad you're here now and she says because now you need me and that does like a witch um um

Because now you need me. Now he can manifest the things that he needs and make them come before him. We'll come back to that. But yeah, I saw who you were and who you would become. We'll talk about that more later as well. Anything else you want to say about this? So I was thinking about this last episode when we watched Lillia decide to place the sigil on Billy. And I didn't end up mentioning it in the pod and we didn't talk about it. But like, it was really on my mind again here. Yeah.

I don't know how much it's on the show's mind, so I don't think we need to linger on it, but I...

Thinking about free will in the context of Lillia's power is really interesting to me. Like, I think what she says here is very nurturing and protective and like the instinct is right. The intention is right. But I am sort of like, is that your decision to make? I just think that that's true. I think this is similar to something else you're raising. And I think what's just true about all of these witchy practices is they are like one stiff breeze away from... Yeah.

Yeah. And when you have this kind of power, like, what do you do with it? And I think that's so fascinating. Like,

you want to protect this young person from having to face all of these things. But, like, you don't get to decide that. And I think this is an episode that's very tender toward Lillia. But Lillia doesn't get to decide that about William, about Billy, about the Kaplans, about Wanda, about Vision, about Tommy, about any of them, right? And so that's, I don't know. Again, that's interesting to me. And it makes it a richer text because the characters are also complex. I think it makes it better. Okay. Okay.

We zip back through episode clips again. Yes. Lilia muttering, like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Painful. Traumatizing. Yes. This is where I was thinking the most about the Haunting of Hill House episode with the bent neck lady, because there's, which you will never see. Bent neck lady is an absolute no for me. Haunting and then bent neck lady. Haunting.

No. Hill House also just sounds terrifying. Skip ahead if you don't want any info on Haunting of Hill House. But there's a character. I mean, all the kids in Haunting of Hill House are traumatized because they grew up in a haunted house. But Nell is this little girl who grows, who all of her life saw this very scary bent neck lady in moments in her life. Complete trauma, gave her sleep paralysis, all sorts of stuff like that. And then we loop through time and find out that it is actually her she like...

Oh, no. And so she then has to zip back through time as the bent neck lady traumatizing younger versions of herself. And she's just going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

What? Are you rooted in nature? Not especially, no. Are you nimble with your craft? If I was, I wouldn't be here. Have you a coven? Oh, keep it cut. Which requires a coven? What for? It didn't work out for me the first time. It's sure not going well now. It's better to be a hermit, to be a fraud. So much fear, even now. Please just tell me how to control what's happening.

Your task is not to control, but to see. It means a lot to me that we were both thinking about Tom Bombadil in this moment. I wrote stranger slash Tom Bomb in my notes. Tom Bomb. Yep. I miss him. Same. And his hedgehog teapot. Very much. Same. A witch requires a coven. So good. This idea of not controlling from rings of power, as I mentioned. Yes. And then I kind of like...

The next time you text me and you're like, I'm not feeling very well. So like every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah. I'm going to say, are you rooted in nature? Are you nimble with your craft?

Gorgeous writing. Are you rooted in nature? Are you nimble with your craft? Nimble with your craft. Sensational. Just as Picato. What a shame. Okay, so... I really, really, really, really loved this. And your task is not to control but to see. All of the language and phrasing is beautiful. Again, just like with the earlier scene, you're not doing this the way you're supposed to do it, but all of that is rooted in...

Embrace who you are. And so, like, Lillia's trial, Lillia's lesson is one of embrace, right? Embracing community, sisterhood, the coven. Embracing who you are. Embracing, like, this thing that... The fact that, like, her power and her ability...

The thing that she was able—like, when we hear her talk about, like, warning the coven about the fever that was going to take them all. And it made—it's not just that, you know, we've heard elsewhere in the series, she was cast out of villages and all this. Like, other people feared her. It's that, but also it's like feeling like a pariah, but it's also feeling like it made no difference. Right? So it's all of that. And the have you a coven, what a shame, or which requires a coven, what for it didn't work out for me the first time really made me think about—

When we think about WandaVision and Agatha all along as a shared text, right, as part of the same story, what are these stories about? They're about a lot of things. That's part of why they've been so compelling. These are both stories about what you do when you lose something or when you lose somebody. Like, where was Wanda's coven? Where were the Avengers for Wanda? Why was no one checking in on Wanda? Still a great question to this day.

But, like, I think what I love most about it is that it's a story that acknowledges and actually ultimately, like, accepts...

That people make mistakes and do bad things when they feel like they have lost something. And that doesn't make them inherently wicked. They can work their way back if they find people who can help them. That's just a beautiful, beautiful lesson. In terms of the specific questions she asks here, I don't want to read the same one we got from Nina that I really loved. Nina writes, as little girls thinking about our futures, we are trained to ask, who will I marry? Will I be rich? What will my job be? I was thinking about that.

The lyrics of Que Sera Sera. Anyway, and ponder those questions. How different is the expectation of life when the questions are, are you rooted in nature, nimble with your craft, part of a coven or community? The values behind these questions are so potently different from those we usually see in Western culture. The craft one here obviously relates specifically to witchcraft and magical power, but the nature of it goes beyond what in normal contexts

asking what is your job is asking your craft can be your job it's our craft we get to talk about our deepest passions with the people we care about wonderful but it can also be your passion your side hustle Lillia's leggings your art your spirituality it's a much wider question about where the true value lies in your life which sometimes aligns with your finances if you're able to be paid to do what you love but often does not and I just really loved that idea yeah

Are you rooted in nature? Are you nimble with your craft? Have you a coven? Do you have a community? Yeah. I love this. Also, this idea, better to be a hermit of fraud. Yeah.

To your point that you keep hitting that I love this idea of like them falling victim to the fact that Lilia has in a slightly annoying fashion, I would say, been constantly hammering this question of, you know, they have all these terrible stereotypes, all these like terrible, broad, offensive stereotypes of witches. Right. And here she is playing the medium, playing the fraudulent medium, doing exactly the thing that she's really against. Right.

Back in the ditch. Back in the ditch. Yeah, she says she hid this part of her weight because all she saw was death, and to your point, and it didn't help anything. And that's just tremendously devastating. It really is sad. What did she make of her... This is when she finds the spell book. The book. Tucks it away. She'll give it to Billy at the end, but she does not show it to Jen. Mention it to Jen here. It's very, my back is turned to you and I'm tucking it away. It's like a very secret...

Did it feel secretive when she gave it to Tina as he was walking through the door? Less so, but something about the framing of this shot, we kind of linger on her as she's looking at it. We can see more than we've been able to see before, like the engravings on the cover of it. Is she...

clocking what this is does she know how it will come into play we'll get to later parsing what she says to Agatha so she obviously has a sense of what awaits like it was just notable to me that she didn't say oh I found teen spell book yeah I wonder why yeah great fun I don't know love it

Jen and Lilius bought the bookcase. Very Matthew McConaughey and interstellar, which our listener Sarah pointed out. Love that. And we're back in the castle. And this is Lilius, nimble in her craft. Confident in what she needs to do here. She's not quite right yet, but she's still confident.

And insisting that things have to be done in a proper order, shuffle and cut, and everyone's impatient. And she's like, no, we're going to do this the right way. I love this. You know what else I loved about this? Speaking of just like the framing again. Yeah.

The suit of armor? Yeah. It's just like Alice is there with them. Aww. Right? Beautiful. That made me really happy because I love Alice and did not think it was okay that Agatha killed her. I would just like to keep repeating that in case there's any confusion. It was like she was there with them. I also thought who massacred the spread was iconic. Um...

Do you love Alice or do you love the idea of Alice? Because Alice isn't just a suit of armor. She's a fully fleshed out person with a heart and a soul. Yeah. And a very cool tattoo. A very meaningful tattoo. Billy asks, am I William or am I Billy? And I have a lot to say about that. Hit me. I'm going to say it later in Dairy Corner. But I have a lot to say about it.

And then she, I loved this sequence where she just like very efficiently and very confidently explains the spread, explains the safe patches. And like, it was so, it was just crystal clear. I just loved it. Yes. And we needed this info. It was going to come back around in a second, but I'm just like, I wasn't confused at all. This is also a great example, not only of like efficient, tidy information,

explanation and your story, but something we talk about a lot across the things we cover where it's a very rich and rewarding thing for the people who want to then go to like Tarot Corner TM, right? Mm-hmm.

But you don't have to do that at all. You have all of the information you need here to understand what the characters are going to be doing in the rest of the episode and what it will mean to them. And then there are so many little touch points for you to access further if you're interested. It was great. I loved it.

Um, anything you want to say about teens reading, which gets cut off here? Well, I thought certainly, obviously, the first card, the magician. Great stuff. You have enormous potential, the ability to turn all of your goals into reality. Dun, dun, dun! Turn all of your goals into reality by perhaps manifesting this version of the road. Enticing, delicious, very fitting. Indeed. Uh,

The sun. Good fortune. Joy. Reunion. Billy gets... It perks up. Reunion. Tommy. Tommy. So that's nice. And, you know, the swords are falling. Agatha and Billy, it's not actually for them. It's Lillia's trial. She's the traveler. But, again, as we said earlier, that doesn't mean we're not learning meaningful things or, like, glimpsing clues that actually will pay off. I have a different interpretation of the card, and we will get to that in Theory Corner. I'm very excited to do that. Okay. Um...

But Lili's reading is cut off because Lili is back through episode clips again to reach her maestro for the third but not yet final time. Yeah. And we get the clip that opened today's episode and I just loved it because, again, we are – I'm a forgotten woman, then remember yourself? Yeah. That's the line of the season. That I'm just going to be – I think I should, like, write it on my mirror or something like that. Yeah. Then remember yourself. Yeah. I mean, this is like –

This is the... It's a different lesson than what is grief, but this is the what is grief of this series, right? This is the line that I think people are going to be, like, quoting and telling themselves and telling other people. Not if you want a straight answer or ask a straight lady. Maybe also that. There's room for all of it. Yeah. But, I mean...

This is a story, as we have discussed at length, about community and sisterhood and coventude? Covenation. Coventude? Covenation? Coventude. Coventude! But in that line... Secret invasion costs so much more than this show. It's never going to leave us. It's never okay. Because of platitudes, at least. So there's that. Then remember yourself. You can't embrace...

the community. You can't embrace other people if you're not able to embrace yourself. And I love that then it's like... To paraphrase the bard, RuPaul, if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else? Exactly. And I... You said chicken and the egg earlier, and I like that it's not...

Because I think that this can... When there's a lesson like that in a story, there's always the risk that it's going to be like, well, wait, what if I can't get to that point on my own? Right? You're telling me the people who I make my way toward are going to be the ones who help me, but I can't do that unless I'm willing to love myself, but I can't love myself. It's another paradox, right? And I really love that the show is like, there's no... It's that they're all entwined with each other. Yeah. Right? And the...

That openness, that willingness to embrace yourself and others, it's happening like in tandem for the characters in the show in a way that it's not linear, just like Lily's story isn't linear. And I think that makes it more powerful. I think that's so beautiful. I think if we go back to what we were talking about, the line you were pointing out with Jen, like, tell me. Yeah.

Like, remember yourself, but a way to remember yourself is for someone to care enough to ask you, tell me. Beautiful. And then we get this, part of this is this concept that I think we really need to understand.

Hold dear in our hearts and minds as we consider Rio's role for the next two episodes of this season of death not being something to fear necessarily. You talk about it like it's a comfort. It's what we all have in common. Death comes for us all is something we heard Lilia say in episode five and her maestro says here.

Do you want to take us to Harry Potter Corner, Deathly Hallows Corner? Yeah. I mean, I've already mentioned the Dumbledore, you know, Sorcerer's Stone to the well-organized mind. Death is but the next great adventure. But of course, what does that lead us toward? It leads us toward the, you know, the Tale of the Three Brothers and Deathly Hallows. And he then greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly and as eagerly

they departed this life and the third Peverell brother taking the hand. And it also made me think, it made me think not only of Dumbledore and then the three brothers, but of Gandalf, because it's very like Return of the King. Death is just another path, one that we all must take, right? So many of our greatest wizards are here.

Like Buffy Vampire Slayer? There you go. But in Buffy Vampire Slayer, there's this one, death is your gift. Death is your gift. Is like a really resonant line for me. Death's hand in mine as the line from The Witch's Road is this very much like common cause. Here we go together, you and I. Or to go back to Emily Dickinson, like,

That poem, because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves in immortality. He slowly drove. He knew no haste. And I had put away my labor and my leisure too for his civility. Like this idea of like death kindly stopped for me, his civility. Right.

Watch the TV show Dickinson or read more Emily Dickinson. You will not regret it. Yeah, I mean, this is something that has come up a lot in our favorite texts because it is something that people who care about emotionally resonant storytelling will think about. Things matter because they end. And that doesn't mean the end is something to dread. It can be...

a beautiful thing. And we think of then like death as this, again, the specter, you know, looming behind. I mean, they didn't do us any favors in that regard in this episode. No. Skeletal. No, but like the way that that has, right, been this haunting thing, this thing to fear and try to evade and associated with all of this trauma. Like that is really then a lesson and a trial that Lillia has to work her way through. I loved the swing of the camera.

When Lillia starts to realize what the fall means, that it's what is awaiting her and seeing her own life from this

other the shift we swing pat you know on the other side it's like she's on this other side now of understanding i thought that was just like a great a great little visual behind her maestro and we're on this side and then we swing to this other side i was waiting when it started to do that i was waiting for her to like turn into her younger self again or whatever because that's the kind of thing you do when you want to like hide and edit or something like that but it was just sort of like yeah her figuring it out i thought that was really cool i agree jack shaffer great camera work uh or to your dp as well um

And then we've been talking a lot about our guy Desmond Hume and The Constant, but I was thinking Spoilers for Lost, a television show that I love, Mal loves, and Jack Schaefer loves, so you should watch it. The best. Charlie Pace. The greatest hits and looking glass in episode television that we have already talked about on the Press TV. But this idea of like, Charlie Pace is a character who hears again and again and again until he believes that you're going to die, brother. So what are you going to do?

Right. You know you're headed to your death. What are you going to do with the time you have left? You know, you mentioned Hold the Door earlier, and I was thinking not only about that season six episode of Game of Thrones, but then thinking back to when they finally reached the Three-Eyed Raven at the end of season four. Yeah.

again, spoilers for another show that we're not talking about actually on this episode of TV, but that he knew what would happen from the moment he left. He knew when he went anyway, which was about Jojen. But the way the camera like lingered on Hodor in that moment and then how like rewarding that is to revisit. And just like, yeah, thinking about the rare and like courage taking many forms and like, and I'll stick with Thrones. You know, we talk a lot about like, you know, a man can only be brave if...

When he is afraid, like the way that fear and courage are linked and inform each other and how hard it is to move toward this thing that you know is coming. And in terms, again, of like the compact nature of this episode in this season, it is amazing to me that it was not

less impactful to do this with Lillia in this span of time and when she kind of comes to this like oh right falling like yeah later I was falling I will fall really landed and I just love to like you know the fact that she was not like in the to get my power back is it gone where did it go this is not the true reason and

And then it's interesting to think back through the season and be like, right, yeah. Yeah. Like, she has her power, right? We see, like, when they are calling the corners in the first place. Yes. Both Alice and Lillia have...

colored fire in their hands for a second before they're like, that's what she wants. Right. Yes. Right. Don't blast me, bitches. You know, and so, like, she was not bound. Nobody took her power, but she was afraid to use it. And that's actually, like, as much of a loss as any other. Yes. Devastating. Yeah. And, like, the fact that that gives, again, common cause for Jen and Lillian. I put it away or someone put it away for Jen and

Two roads diverged into Yellowwood. No, they're in the yellow version of the trial. They're in the tunnels. Wow. Robert Frost, welcome to House of R. Great to have you. Always welcome. Two roads diverged into literally Yellowwood. Jen's like, the exit. A subway. There it is. We do have questions about why a town like Westview would ever try to build a subway, but those may or may not ever be answered. But Jen's like, the way out. Lily is like, I got to go this way.

I would love for you to come with me. And she doesn't even say, I know you come with me because I've already seen it. I hope you'll join me. I hope you'll join me. Why? Because you are my sister in the craft. I love this. Especially 2Gen, the character who we heard kind of weaponized the, well, because we're sisters in the craft when they were trying to punish Agatha in episode five. That really just tells you a lot about the progress that they've made, again, individually and collectively, which I really loved. And I just thought the way even that Lillia said, like,

almost euphorically, I can see all the pieces falling into place. The gaps are filling in. I found it really moving and also kind of chilling in a very satisfying way because she is happy. But coming to the end. To be coming to the end. She's happy to have this understanding, but she knows what it means. And that brings her comfort and peace.

So we get Lillia's reading. And again, Patupon. I know what I did wrong. Yeah. And then she just, it's me. I'm the traveler. I thought this was incredible. The just card after card and the connection to every prior episode of the show and all the cards that have come up. And we've been calling them out. It's so satisfying. We've been calling them out. There are still some visual moments that I didn't clock at the time, like

Agatha with the three branches behind her mimicking the card. So like, there was some imagery I did and some that I didn't. And I loved all of that. So Lillia, Queen of Cups. Yep. The Traveler, The Coven, Three of Pentacles, What's Missing, Alice, Night of Wands, Path Behind, Lost.

Jen, high priestess, path ahead, growth and discovery. Agatha, three of swords, obstacles, heartbreak, grief. Billy, windfall, the tower reversed. And Rio, death, destination. We'll talk more about Billy and the Coven later. Yes. We've already talked a little bit about this idea of like what you're the path ahead, Jennifer. Mm-hmm.

Trailer spoiler, skip ahead if you don't want a trailer spoiler. We have seen in the trailers Jen crawling out of the ground into Westview. Yeah, just like through the top of the subway car, presumably. Just a hop, skip and a jump above the subway car. So like she's making it up. But this is this is a question that I want to put this here.

Because I think Jen being the path ahead is a good answer to this email that we got from Brooke.

Because as we were talking about earlier, this idea of Agatha sacrificing herself. And we've already seen Lillia sacrifice herself in this episode and Alice sacrifice herself in an episode. So this is what Brooke wrote. If it's true that the ultimate intention of the show is to set up and develop Wiccan for the Young Avengers project, and Agatha's ultimate journey on the witch's road is to sacrifice herself for Billy's safety. And again, I think this is the logical conclusion of the story they've set up. Then the logical extension of this

delightfully witchy feminist story has been written entirely in service of a male character, meaning that to some extent they're all getting fridged for him. And frankly, I think that kind of sucks. And it means that Agatha's story isn't even really about her. I'm really, really hoping that the writing team is able to ensure that this is Agatha's story at the core of this miniseries and not using Agatha as a vehicle for someone else's success in the MCU machine. So I have been thinking about that before I got this email from Brooke.

And I see and register and have had fleeting flashes of this concern myself. I just really trust Jack Schaefer that it won't feel that way. Yeah. Even, it will depend entirely on execution. And I don't mean like-

Killing someone. I just mean how it's deployed. Yes. Will this feel like Agatha's story? Will this feel like a satisfying conclusion to Agatha's story? Yeah, this is... I've had a couple moments where I thought about this as well, kind of anticipating this outcome. But I'm with you. How it's executed will be what determines the success of it. I just... I also don't really worry about this. And I think...

This feels to me like almost the flip side of, like, you know, something I talk about incessantly with, like, the idea of stakes with Infinity War, right? And just because the characters came back doesn't mean the movie didn't have stakes. Because, like, life and death are not the only outcomes that matter, and that's part of the lesson of the show and part of the lesson of this episode. And so I think this is, like, a really interesting email and a valid thing for people to be thinking about.

If Agatha dies and Billy lives, that does not to me mean that Agatha's story was just about Billy making it to Young Avengers. And it doesn't mean that the show was just about that. I just don't think that's the case. And so like... Again, I think it depends on deployment. It can't... There is a version, which I do not think Jack Schaefer is capable of making. Yeah. But there is a version of this story where I agree with you that like...

Everything is not all one thing. You know what I mean? It doesn't have – just because her story ends here doesn't mean her story was only about launching Billie because whatever choice she's making is an evolution of her character. Yeah, exactly. Which is the story we're watching and I agree with you on that. Character on an arc. I think you and Brooke and I have all seen bad versions of this story. And I think Brooke and parts of ourselves are –

Well, within our rights to be wary just because it has been done badly in the past and we're hopeful it won't be done badly. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll, you know, we'll reserve final judgment then until we see it. I think a character who went to Westview seeking Wanda's power...

working her way toward a place where after finally being able to look at her own pain and the mistake that she maybe made before and how she lost her son and what she did with the Darkhold and all the stuff that we don't totally know about yet and we'll, I assume, find out in the next two episodes, maybe making the choice between, and obviously we're making a lot of assumptions in the prompt and answering and addressing the prompt, but power is not the thing, that's not the fork in the road that I'm going to choose, right? That to me would be

That would be a lesson learned and like a life well lived, even if Agatha doesn't make it out and Billy does. So I yeah, I agree. I just have a lot of confidence and trust in the story. I think it's a completely understandable thing that this would be a worry that modern superhero viewers had. While we're on the Jen subject, this idea of like her the parting words from her.

are you're the path ahead, Jennifer. Yes. Autumn pointed out the parallel between the end of episode three where Jen literally shoves Lilia out of the way to get out first through the oven door. Yeah. And the end of episode seven where Lilia pushes Jen out to close the door on her that it was beautiful. Or Jen, I would say, or Jen staying in her circle in Alice's trial when teen, yeah, what do you live in that circle now? You know, like...

What a difference. This is like, I mean, there are ways in which this is Jen's story is what this episode is making me feel. So I think, and the fact that in episode three, Agatha said that the work that Jen was doing was important. Yeah. I left you alone. Right. Because the work you were doing is important. And we took that to mean kind of literally maybe birth work or whatever it was. But what if there's something bigger here for Jen High Priestess? I love it. Questions. Yeah.

Agatha is the obstacle. Yeah, great stuff. But to go back to the explanation of her card, Three of Swords, it's heartbreak and grief. So is the obstacle Agatha as antagonist or is the obstacle the trauma that Agatha has experienced that she has to work through? Sorrow. Conflict inside the human heart? Would you say it's the only thing worth writing about? I might.

The death reveal. You want to talk about this. Tell me your thoughts and feelings. I did not like this. You didn't like it. No. I'm sorry. I just... There's something slightly awkward about it. Yeah. Yeah. It felt... I think part of the awkwardness was them trying too hard to make her tableau into the tarot card. Yeah. Do you know? Yeah. She had this like head crook had to be holding and things. It was just like a very unnatural pose. Yeah. I think also like...

Yeah, there was that. There was... It's an episode where we're moving back through the series a lot. And so on the one hand, I think the way that we flash from Rio emerging from the grave in episode three to Rio saying, I get my bodies in episode four to the Ouija board who's here with us tonight, death and the cackle in episode five feels very like at home and of a piece with the way the episode is broadly structured. But I think like unlike Lillia's flashes...

which are there to stitch together the story of her life. This felt, this did the thing that just I have like a pet peeve with, as you know, which is like reminders we don't need. Of things we just saw. Of things we just saw. I would agree with you, except...

So the idea that we were, like, so far ahead on this idea that Rio is death. Yeah. I would like to think we would have gotten there on our own. Yeah. But what is true is that the internet got there so quickly, largely due to a leak that happened from, like, a toy design that popped up online. So I think this, like, groupthink of, like, Rio is definitely death. Because we might still be stuck in, like, is she death? Is she Blackheart? Is she this? Is she that? Yeah. And in that case, this reveal might have felt a bit more like...

do you know, impactful? Yeah. And like, I don't know. I think that what you're saying about the look of the face, there was something about it. It's just all of it felt a little, there's been so much harmony, right?

And rhythm in the show, everything feels like it's at the right frequency. And this just didn't. It felt like a pitch off. Yeah. And I think some of it is just even the, like, Rio is, like, the very sort of dramatic. I just, it did not. It felt very, it fell flat for me, ultimately. So I had a chat with a bad baby, a listener, who was also...

a co-composer of the show and was a co-composer on WandaVision as well. Delightful. Michael Paris gave us, I hope, Michael, I hope I pronounced your last name correctly. We just had a little chat on the phone earlier today because he just wanted to talk to us about some things. And to your point about it being kind of jarring, part of me wonders if that's slightly intentional because this is what he said about, he talked to me about a few themes. Rio's musical theme. Yeah. He was like, with the witches, we were going for something very like organic, like,

feeling very like connected to the rooted in the earth yep nimble in their craft all the stuff like that he was like with rios we were going for alien territory with her sound like something more foreign than the witchy world also wanting to capture like the duality of her character um and her the natural power to her the natural um like massive energy of her

So they used real instruments. Like, he's like, I played the clarinet. You did that. But then they worked and processed and distorted it so that it sounds familiar but different, eerie, just a little off. And so I'm not saying that as an excuse to cover something that I think you rightly sort of, like, didn't work for you. But I wonder if that's what they were, like, sort of aiming for was something that just feels like a wrong note inside of a symphony that you were sitting there enjoying. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think...

Part of it also was like, it actually does make sense to me that because Lillia has been haunted by the specter of death, and because Lillia is about to die, you know, we've seen again the figure of death behind. Like, it makes sense to me that Rio would appear to Lillia and say, don't you recognize me, Lillia? That's all, that's, I know, fine. Yeah. But then the, there was something also that just felt flat about then Lillia just sort of like telling the group. Yeah.

I like the bad boys. What can she say? What can I say? I like the bad boys. That was iconic. I have no notes on that. That was great. So Michael also said about, I'm going to look at my notes directly because I don't want to misquote him. He says, she's not evil. She's not a supervillain. This isn't Thanos coming to wipe out the world. This is acceptance in the reality of death. This is sort of the vibe that they were trying to get through with her theme here.

For Billy, and this reminded me a lot of some of the stuff we talked about with Bear McCreary and Sauron and Halbrand. Remember that? Like, Bear McCreary's, like, Sauron's theme was Halbrand's theme backwards. So for Billy, occasionally throughout the show, they have dropped the first three notes of the Wanda theme just as, like, a little fun Easter egg. Yeah.

Billy's theme is not like an inverse of her theme, but it starts with a similar three-note structure chord progression to make it feel connected but different enough. Love it. Which I really love. But that he was like, the note he said that he got from Jack on this is that Billy, as opposed to like sort of the...

bells, the Harry Potter-esque bells and all these other sort of like woodwind instruments that go with the other witches. Billy is the modern day witch. They want synths, guitars. He's an emo goth kid. Also the feminine energy of Billy as we see him fabulously in Maleficent drag in this episode. And I love the, but, and also a hint of darkness. And this is to go back to your comment about like,

the sinister nature inside of some of these witch characters. That it's there and they're not ignoring that. That's part of all of it, you know? Yeah. Agatha also, playful and bouncy, but also she can be evil. That is all part of her theme. That is very important to him. When they went into Nikki's room in the Mare of Easttown parody, they used a detuned piano playing her theme. Mm-hmm.

to make it feel very sort of unsettling and mournful. Love that. I love all of that. He said there's a sonic palette for all the trials. There's a ticking clock sort of metronome vibe to all of the, the trial score. And in this one more than any, you can just constantly hear the gears turning of the ceiling as it's dropping the souls down. Yes. And,

So I love all of that. And then there's a coven theme. So Lillia doesn't have her own theme, but when she, these moments where you're like, she's at the table, she's purposeful, she's putting the cards down. This is the coven theme that's playing, not Lillia's theme. And she doesn't have her theme, but like- Right.

I needed you, my coven. I needed you, my coven. Beautiful. So beautiful. Beautiful. Anything else? The idea that, like, they wanted eras for each individual episode, the eras tour that is The Witch's Road, to go along with the production design and the costumes, so that the instruments that they're using are very, like, we're going to use 70s instruments, we're going to use, we're going to do John Carpenter 80s horror for that episode, all that sort of stuff like that.

that. So... Awesome. That is most of what we talked about. Not everything, but it was a really cool conversation. Thank you, Michael, for reaching out. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, loved it. Okay. So, Lillia holds the door. Yes. She hands Tina's book, and then she gets off one more cryptic line about the future when she says to Agatha, when she calls you coward, hit the deck. Tell me your interpretation of this line. So...

My assumption is that this is about Rio. I think that's a reasonable assumption. Which then makes me nervous. Yes. And scared and sad. Because what I want is for those two to just spend episodes eight. Well, maybe we go to the past in episode eight and then they spend episode nine having a lot of great sex before the end of the show. It could also be Jen. Hit the deck for some sex. Could it be that? Maybe. No lower decks?

It could also be Jen. What if Jen calls her a coward and sort of shoots her? Because the idea of Hit the Deck is don't take the power. Say no to the power. Yes. Absorption. Evolve. Past blast me, you bitches. Yes. Past what happened with Alice. Yeah. Make a different choice. Right. So...

hit the deck I love this idea of like when she calls you coward again my friend Danielle was like this is so back to the future don't call me chicken coded which I really love it's not that's not necessarily a trigger for Agatha that we've seen but I just thought that that was kind of funny but like um

But the question is, like, when she calls you coward, hit the deck. So you're envisioning someone who identifies as a she blasting power at Agatha. Is that just the WandaVision conclusion that we didn't really love? Is Jack Schaefer going to boner it and make it better this time? Mr. Bonerific. That'd be great. Bonerize it. The question, I don't think this is the case, but does Lillia,

have to have been there to have seen a thing in order to predict it? This is a good question because there was a point certainly earlier in the season where we assumed that that was not the case because we were like, who's speaking through Lillia? Before we started to suss out that this was just different moments in Lillia's own experience manifesting. But if everything we've heard is Lillia speaking,

From something she glimpsed and then we're seeing in this episode that she then experienced those things. Does that mean, what does that mean? Does that mean that she's coming back? Stay tuned for Theory Corner. This is something I pulled up the subreddit that I loved, which is that as Agatha and Billie and Jen go out the door, Lilia gives Ozwatch alert.

Agatha Courage, Billie Knowledge, and Jen Ahart before closing off the room. And thinking about that, I was like,

Oh, and when she's at Billy's bar mitzvah, she's dressed as Professor Marvel in the movie Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy meets the wizard before she goes to Oz, he's Professor Marvel and he's got the turban and the crystal ball and stuff like that. So that puts her in sort of like the wizard mode, which is kind of fun. I love that. I mean, we were, I was at least trying to like,

comp match who was who on the road. And I think especially like something, someone like Jen, who's the panacea, the potion bottle is a little heart shape. So that's like her Tin Man heart that she's carrying around. Love it. Wonderful. I loved being a witch. Killed me. As a closing line. So good. Beautiful. So, so, so, so, so, so, so good.

And then she flips the tower. Yeah. At least five of the seven hit the swords. There are five audible... Five snakes. ...blade-through-spine sounds, for sure. Two of the seven can fly. Right. The crow and the owl. So they're still out there. I would say. Yeah. And we already mentioned sort of how Lillia looks different here, very Alice down the rabbit hole. Like, the way her dress... I didn't, like...

I had questions about her being dressed as Glinda. I was like, I couldn't really figure out thematically. But it looks very sick in the slow-mo fall. Her, like, various skirts flapping around her. I loved it. And then remembering that Patti, when you go back and watch the Ballad of the Witches Road, when they're trying to open the portal in the first place, Patti's part is the down, down, down, down in the background of everyone else singing, like, the melody. Right. And she's really projecting it, so...

It's tough. Let me end with young Lilia with her maestra. My understanding, so I've seen some people interpret this and I disagree with this interpretation that she's looped back around and now she's going to do it differently or something like that. Because of the let us begin. But I, to go back to that episode of Castle Rock, the queen, Sissy Svasek, they, that is a story told at a time. A tragic thing happens in that story. But we end, not at the end, but

middle-ish with an upbeat memory. Right. And that's just like kind of a very beautiful and sad, poignant, bittersweet way to end an episode of television. Yeah. And it's, you know, especially because we've heard so much in this episode about how

scared and lost and sad and resentful and alone young lilia felt yeah to see that smile as she sits down like possibility yeah right yeah hope it's hopeful it's a hopeful note and it's a reminder for us and for the character who in the process of this embrace got to that point of peace and comfort and acceptance of herself and an embrace of her power like

That young girl sitting there has a lot of horror ahead of her and a lot of loneliness ahead of her and a lot of pain ahead of her. But it actually will be okay because she will reach this moment where she gets to smile and say, I loved being a witch. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. I loved being a witch. It's really good. Really nice. Great season of TV. I can't believe we only have one week left. Two episodes, but one week. The fuck? Can I interest you in some Theory Corner? Please! Please!

I'm calling this section, so who is dead, comma, actually. Alice. Hit me. Is Alice dead? No. Because?

because I think there's the setup in the story of the... Okay, for a couple reasons. One, there's the protection of the tattoo, right? And I think it would be, to quote Teen, kind of a bummer if Alice's trial was about, like, beating this curse and this thing that was haunting her family, and then she just sort of died anyway, though I guess there's a, like...

Well, that's life lesson there, too, maybe. Death is a comfort. Not like that, I guess. And I think also that feels maybe important for Agatha to not actually have killed Alice. That feels important. The tattoo plus, and we mentioned this before, her repeated line in the ballad, I'll See You at the End, that she does when she sings her mom's version. Right. And then...

I hope this is a payoff. When Alice finds Agatha's house at the beginning of the show without having the address. Yeah. And she walked in and she's like, I used to be a cop. You'll find that's an answer to a lot of questions. And I flagged that line. I'm like, what's that telling me in advance? If Alice rolls up to the final trial and they'll be like, how did you find us? And she says, I used to be a cop. You'll find that's an answer to a lot of questions.

I don't know. I'm ready for it. The Salem 7, we think it's now the Salem 2. Covenant 2, Owl and Crow. Covenant 2. Okay. Oh, man. Lillia. Mm-hmm. Given this episode of television, you and I both vehemently agree that Lillia needs to be dead by the end of this season. Yeah. I feel she needs to be dead now. We did not see or hear her body hit the floor or the ceiling either. We only heard five smacks. Yeah. Yeah.

In regards to Alice and Lilia, I feel so certain that we're going to need the entire coven for whatever happens at the end. It's possible that we could get Lilia in ghost form. Yeah. Rio fucking hates ghosts. Rio hates the ghosts. But I think Lilia would have moved on. So I don't know that I see Lilia as a ghost. This is a tricky one. When she pulls the three of pentacles, what's missing...

Three of Pentacles, collaboration, community, singular voices waiting to harmonize. I needed you, my coven. So we think she's thinking about her coven in the past. But this idea of what's missing us as a true coven together. And when she was talking about the what's missing spot on the spread, she says it's the reason for your quest. It's the coven is the reason.

And then if you look at the Three of Pentacles card, and we've referenced these tarot cards a couple times that go with each individual character on the show. Yeah. That Marvel put out. You can Google this. I'm sorry. This is actually a video pod, but I do not have an image of this to show you right now. The card for Three of Pentacles seems to show Agatha, Jen, Lillia, Alice, Rio. Mm-hmm.

And Billy holding hands. And I can only fucking hope singing the Ballad of the Witches wrote one last time. Billy's there. It's not the five. It's six of them. Yeah. This is the coven. This is embracing death in the form of Rio and embracing Billy as their black heart. And this is so they need all of them. Mm hmm.

So does Lilia know what happens, hit the deck when she calls you cowards? Because she's there. Because she's there. But my idea, it doesn't fit very well. Yeah. But my idea is she actually dies in the tunnel when she sees Rio. It's hard to understand because then she wakes Jen up. But time is not linear. It's not linear. Mallory. But why else would death appear in like her regalia? Yeah, that certainly seemed like when death was claiming her. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So like... Yeah. Yeah.

Is she going to be at the trial, but then meet Rio in the subway tunnels beneath Westview? I'm open to it. Okay. I'm open to it. She definitely has to die. We really agree. Okay. William Kaplan. Is William Kaplan dead? Welcome back to William Kaplan plus Billy Maximoff equals Billy Kaplan theory. And this is one I'm really invested in personally. Yeah.

Is the ultimate goal here re-resurrecting or, uh...

of unearthing William Kaplan from inside of the body. We heard the heartbeat stop. Young William Kaplan, who just had his bar mitzvah, seemed to have died. Yes. This is what Billy says in episode six to his boyfriend. I died that night, and when I came back, I was different, something else, something more. Yeah. I'm not William Kaplan, at least not entirely. I still don't remember anything from before the accident. Right.

In episode six, when we replay the de-sigiled events of episode two, Agatha says, why do you need the road? And he says, power is what I'm missing. And then she says, who are you? My name is William Kaplan. Say again, I'm Billy Maxmoff. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this is just, I'm both of those things. And I...

We pointed out this idea that he was being called William Kaplan in that episode was a good way to distinguish between the two. Yeah. But the character is Billy Kaplan. It feels so deliberate that they're not calling him Billy Kaplan yet. That it feels like. Yeah.

The blending of the two. Billy's insistence that he has a mom, Rebecca Kaplan, the legend that you are. We are not denying the Kaplan part of Billy. And Billy's burning question in the reading that was cut off, am I William or am I Billy? Yeah. Why not both? Part of his reading was the magician card. Yep. Which is you have enormous potential and the ability to turn all of your goals into reality.

In the comic books and in storytelling in general, there is the concept of the Demiurge, this creator figure. And in the comics, this is the mild, I guess, Marvel Comics spoiler. Billy is on his way to becoming the Demiurge, the Demiurge to come. So this idea of his ability, the chaos magic, the creating the hex, all of that. But he can do massive things. Like perhaps...

Bring William Kaplan back from the dead. Resurrect William Kaplan inside of his own body or unearth it. The what's missing. You mentioned, so the son, good fortune, joy, reunion on the what's missing part of Billy's reading. You mentioned that as Tommy. The son, S-U-N. Right. The son, S-O-N, Tommy. Right.

But is it the son, William? Is the reunion Billy and Tommy or is the reunion Billy and William together in one body? Your lifeline is broken into two, is what Lillia says. Right. When Lillia reads the windfall, what is all this for? What are we getting from this quest according to Lillia's read of her own cards? Yeah. Tower reversed, disaster, destruction, sudden upheaval, but reversed, it means miraculous transformation. Yeah.

So the tower is, of course, related to what we see in this episode here. Yeah. But this idea when she puts the tower car down, she sees William with. Yes. In the tent with the tower car behind him reflected upside down in the crystal ball. She sees William there. Yeah. This idea of miraculous transformation. Can Billy Maximoff.

turn himself into a hybrid of these two things. I really like this idea and the very like Wizard of Oz concept of the thing you've been looking for has been within you the whole time. Why would we do this? The why I think is the easiest thing to answer, which is our concern that we registered last week when Agatha said, so you broke the rules, big deal, right? You found an empty vessel and you moved in. Right.

And Rio, as we were reminded in this episode in a way that you did not enjoy that very much, is here for her bodies. Yeah. So what if she's here for William Kaplan's body, which is at least three years past its expiration date, right? Yeah. And she said to Agatha, that boy isn't yours. Right. So if Rio's there for the body, to reap the body... Mm-hmm.

Can she reap it if they bring William Kaplan back and put him in his body? Mm-hmm. And is that what we're headed towards, this moment? And would it not be a moment of catharsis for Agatha to help save, whether or not she has to sacrifice herself to do so, help save this boy when she couldn't save Nikki, her own boy? Yeah. I... You don't like this. No, I do. I think this is horrible.

Hard to pull off, but potentially for that reason, quite satisfying if they can. WandaVision was in many ways a story about how wrong it is to, like, play God, right? This is a very, again, Frodo-Gandalf kind of idea. And it's a story now, William Kaplan didn't get to make that choice, but it is, again, like we've been talking about a lot today, a story about, like,

acceptance. And so I think when we talk about power and the craft and grief and loss, any time we dabble with any sort of like reconstitution or resurrection, I think there's at least a risk of running afoul of some of the lessons of the story. I also think there is like a very practical like, wait, is...

William Kaplan just kind of like in the little sidecar on the Billy motorcycle. This is what you raised last week as a concern. That would make me nervous. I think it has to be just a complete frappe on the blender. Yeah, a melding. And so if Billy does this, not because...

he is seeking to gain something, but because he realizes that the thing he did, and also not just because he's seeking to avoid the basically consequence of the re-ereaping, because that would ultimately be selfish. From Agatha's perspective, it wouldn't, but from Billy's, it would be, right? But if he does it because he recognizes that in breaking the rule, what he did, even though he didn't cause the crash, was wrong, then...

Yeah. And that he wants to right that wrong, then there is something at play there that I think serves as a shield against those other worries. I don't want William Kaplan to just be like a tiny little voice in the back of Billy's mind. That would be terrible. Yeah.

If he's there and he's like, yeah, let's do some tea leaf readings. I've wanted to do that. He's like, where are my Houdini posters? Why did you take down all my Houdini posters? That would be great. That would be great. I also think it's like, I guess another thing on my mind with it is like, I don't think we need literal William Kaplan there for Billy Maximoff to love Jeff and Rebecca. Well, he already does. Exactly. Yeah. But like, I think because in the comics, to tell people who have not read the comics,

And we mentioned this last week, but like Billy Kaplan with the soul, Char, of Billy Maximoff is raised from an infant with the Kaplans. Yeah. And we did get a concerned email from someone being like, I don't like this idea of erasing the existence of those 13 years of that character in the comics. So what if we can just blend it? Yeah. Put it in the blender.

And if it's connected somehow to him just sort of like embracing all aspects of his identity in the way. Yeah. Lily is like, I put it in a box and I put away. Yeah. Right? William Kaplan's in a little box inside of Billy Maximoff. We just got to let him out. Yeah. And if Agatha can help doing that with her special brand of witchy therapy, which she likes to do. I'm interested in it. I like it. I think it could be great. I wonder how to do it in two episodes where it feels like William had a choice. Yeah.

I love, and I mean this genuinely, how you're always concerned about free will. I just like— You don't think that Billy, 13-year-old Billy, is like, I would like to live and have a hot boyfriend. But does he want to—does he want someone else living in his body with him? Like, if those are the terms—

Yeah, you get to come back, but I'm here too, and this is my life now, and I joined the coven, and we're wicked. Can you see if we can get an interview with William Kaplan to make sure that he consented to all of this? Consent is king. Okay. Last but not least on are they dead actually, Wanda Maximoff? The answer is yes, no. Absolutely not. Maybe. Zero chance that Wanda's dead, which is where we've been since Multiverse of Madness. Zero chance.

How long it will take for us to know for sure that Wanda's alive, I think, is like what you said earlier. When does Elizabeth Olsen want to reprise the role? When she's bored and she wants to come back to San Diego Comic-Con and wow them. Not as Doom, but as Wanda Maximoff. Okay. This is like look ahead, Theory Corner-ish. The Green Trial is what's next. We saw through the exit, through the Iron Maiden. Yes. That we're on to the Green Trial. Bright and vibrant. So this is...

ostensibly the Rio trial. Yeah. You know, Spotify green. Quote. Ringer green. This is, I'm about to get into light trailer spoilers. Oh man.

I love a trailer. Spoiler. I love to talk about trailers. We have seen in the trailers Aubrey Plaza in a very pretty green Salem outfit. There's a bodice. There's a cloak. It's the whole nine. Okay. You love a bodice. Do you think Jen was around back in the Salem days? No. No.

I don't. Do you? I mean, she's known Agatha for a very long time. Another child sacrifice. Yeah. All this sort of stuff like that. Like, she could have. It's possible. That felt to me more like she, other people are spilling the tea. I'm just saying, if we get a flashback that's Rio and Agatha in... Mm-hmm.

I'm going to call it Salem times, which is not a time, but let's just say it's a place. I thought you, I really thought you were about to say in bed. One apple. That would be great. Intimacy coordinator back on the menu. Jen could be there. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know what Salem in that time was like for black women. I don't know that I care to find out. Bad. Yeah.

So, yeah, will the next episode be a journey through Agatha's mind a la WandaVision in episode seven? Are we going to find out in episode seven what really happened with Nikki? She told Billy he could just ask her and she would tell the truth. Is that what we get here? The true origin story of Agatha Harkness in episode seven. Then episode eight. Oh, sorry. That's episode eight. Episode nine. Yeah.

Billiam. Billiam. Kapama. That rolls right off the tongue. Perfect.

Anything else that you want to say about theory or like upcoming episodes or our absolute abject devastation that this show is almost over? So, okay, since we're in theory corner and we're in trailer breakdown corner, what do you think is going on in the shot with the heads with like the hospital gowns in the room and them touching each other's heads? And what are we? I have two theories. Okay. Is it Agatha taking Billy's power to help him for good? Is it unlocking? Because we've unlocked his memories already. Yeah.

Is it unlocking William? It's letting William Kaplan out of the box. Yeah. And melding the two. This is the key frappe stage. Okay. This is the blender. Or is it come inside the Pensieve that is my mind and journey through my memories with me? Yeah. That would be great. But I think it's the William thing. I think that's what that is. And I think...

Because I think the lighting in that sort of like hospital setting is purple. So that feels like it's Agatha's true trial. Yeah. Yes. Versus the fake Cabin in the Woods. For sure. Yeah. Agatha's true trial awaits, no doubt. So green. Yeah. Salem flashback. Yeah. Purple, weird hospital setting. Yeah.

we feel like Jen will be fine at least. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. Hospital setting also makes us think of what we saw. Yeah, the doctor and Jen, which we definitely have more to learn with that for sure. I don't feel like we fully exorcised that ghost. No, absolutely not. Yeah. Okay. Fun. Okay. Exciting. Sad. Sad.

Do you think the Salem Seven are going to, the remaining two are going to play any sort of meaningful role? Nothing, like, meaningful. Yeah. We'll cast the final two aside just as quickly as we did these five. Maybe Agatha can be like, I'm really sorry I killed your mom, so I don't know. The new improved Agatha. What I also hope, if Agatha dies, or if she doesn't, here's what I... Yeah, I think it would be great if Agatha could make...

The choice that is a sacrifice and choosing William, William, William, William, and putting somebody else above herself, writing that wrong, and still make it out alive. That would be great. I like the idea of her writing off in the sunset with Rio, whether alive or dead. Yeah. That they just, like, go and leave. Yeah. And Jen's the path forward. But Agatha, either dead or alive, goes off with Rio. In a carriage? Dare we dream? Chariot. Chariot.

So to recap, Mallory Rubin cares infinitely about free will and consent and choice and not a single shit to give for Alice. You heard it here first. I do not think it was right that Adam killed Alice. That does it for us. Yeah. Here on the House of R. I had a great time. Me too. Lovely to see you this week. Fantastic. Delightful. The road is a fickle mistress. Thanks to...

Who am I thanking? There they are. We can see them. We can see them today. There's Steve Allman. There he is at the control panel. I see John Richter back with us. Is that the full suite of thanks? That's it? Okay. Thank you to John Richter, hopefully soon to be award-winning podcast artiste, and Steve Allman on the edit, our dinner rank with pal for all of his tremendous production work.

Joe me a dinner on, on the social and we'll see you through tears of witchiness next week.