‘Agatha All Along’ Episodes Eight and Nine Recap: “Follow Me My Friend, To Glory at the End/Maiden Mother Crone”

*Warning: the following article contains spoilers for episodes eight and nine of Agatha All Along*

Halloween is finally upon us, and Marvel has unleashed the last two episodes of Agatha All Along, with a preview of things to come on the Disney+ side in 2025. I want to discuss this before going into this week’s final,e because after stating they would be deliberate in not filling the streaming service with ‘endless content’ as of 2023, Marvel is back with non-stop shows and movies next year, with nine titles planned to release.

They are Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Captain America: Brave New World, Daredevil: Born Again, Thunderbolts*, Ironheart, Fantastic Four, Eyes Of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies, and Wonder Man. All are releasing at a breakneck pace from January to December, with no tangible rest period between projects. Now, with Marvel Zombies and Wonder Man not having specific release dates (and with Fantastic Four likely taking Blade’s now available spot in November), we may be able to breathe a bit. Still, there’s no way in which this will not feel like ‘too much’ for the average viewer.

There’s obviously a logistical reason behind these. Many of the projects mentioned here have been sitting on a shelf long before the re-haul that occurred with Daredevil: Born Again. It’s almost as if they’re contractually obligated to release them before a specific date instead of spacing them out and taking their time, as they should have.

And I’m being completely honest here: it can feel exhausting to cover all of Marvel’s film and television side. Most of it has been enjoyable, so I’m not complaining (as a bonus, it led to some fun interviews conducted for this site!). However, releasing all of them at such a pace will likely accelerate the decline in superhero entertainment we’ve seen in a post-COVID society, with exceptions like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine dominating the box office. It’s part of the reason why I remain skeptical that Avengers: Doomsday (or Avengers: Reddit, as I call it) will capture the same feeling that Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame had on the public as a multigenerational pop culture event. 

But it doesn’t seem to be the case with Agatha All Along, which has endured a strong fanbase and ratings from its first two episodes to its two-part finale, titled Follow Me My Friend/To Glory at the End and Maiden Mother Crone. Gandja Monteiro directs both episodes and wraps up this part of Agatha Harkness’ (Kathryn Hahn) journey in a rather unsatisfying, divergent way from what its first seven episodes laid out on the table. I bet this is the type of finale Todd Phillips wanted to do with Joker: Folie à Deux, not giving any easy answers to its titular protagonists and, most importantly, not giving the fans what they want. Had the execution been solid, it would’ve been far more intriguing than the finished product.

Luckily for Agatha All Along, Monteiro’s proposition for the show’s two-part finale smartly challenges viewers. I appreciate a TV show that not only refuses to kowtow to the fans’ demands (and not handhold them as it was egregiously done in the fifth episode) but also doesn’t end in a listless CGI fight scene, like the finale of Secret Invasion. Sure, we do get a fight scene between Death (Aubrey Plaza), Agatha, and Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke), now in full Wiccan gear. However, it’s the least interesting part of this two-episode finale. That said, the action is well-crafted and fairly effective, though some threads between Death and Agatha’s relationship remain unresolved by the time the show ends.

The episodes work the most during its back half, pulling back the curtain on Agatha’s past and her relationship with her son, Nicholas (Abel Lysenko), in the 1750s. Monteiro shoots this elongated flashback in the ninth episode with an often melancholic lens, priming us for the tragedy that will occur when her son becomes ill and Death approaches. Many rumours fed her personality throughout the centuries regarding what she did to her son to obtain power, or, more specifically, the Darkhold. It was a recurring bit that made the other witches in her coven fear Agatha, even if she appeared friendlier than she did in WandaVision.

It turns out that these were fabricated stories by Agatha that posit her as a threat to all witches. Rather, her son died in his sleep. We lyrically observe him being taken away by Death as they walk into eternity, saddening Agatha forever. It’s how she tragically followed a dark path and then lured victims into thinking the Witches Road is natural if they sing a ballad that her son created. But it was all a lie: she used this belief in the Witches Road to kill several witches at once and obtain their power. We then observe how she survived repeatedly by making witches believe in a place that does not exist. 

In fact, it is revealed that she planned to do the same with Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice-Wu Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), and Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp), but was shocked when their song actually opened a doorway to the Wtiches Road. There’s a rather simple explanation for this. It turns out that Billy is the one who created the entire road, and was responsible for the deaths of Alice, Sharon, and Lilia. That’s a rather surprising twist I didn’t see coming, but it makes total sense when one realizes he’s the son of the Scarlet Witch. Feeling remorse for what he has done, he attempts to banish Agatha, who now appears as a ghost after being killed by Death in the eighth episode (well, she sacrificed herself by giving Death the ultimate kiss). 

But after Agatha tells him she’s terrified of dying to face Nicholas, Billy gives her the option to stay in the land of the living as a ghost. Who knows if she will ever reunite with her son, but as of now, she’s found a purpose to help him locate his brother, Tommy, which could be the focus of another MCU-related project, whether the upcoming Vision series or something else entirely (the Children’s Crusade, of course). What this will lead to remains to be seen, but we clearly have not seen the last of Agatha Harkness, in spirit or human form, anytime soon. 

All episodes of Agatha All Along are now available to stream on Disney+.