Welcome back to the blog readers. Before I go on with the formalities, I do have to apologize for the error in last week's review where I still cast doubt that "Teen" was indeed Billy Maximoff, but Marvel came out and confirmed it themselves, so now we know "Teen" is Billy Maximoff. Now, on to the formalities. Agatha All Along has been a massive surprise for me, because I did not expect this show to be any good (or at least as good as WandaVision (2021)). Would we be able to keep up the momentum with this week's episode, titled "Familiar by Thy Side," written by Jason Rostovsky, and directed by Gandja Monteiro? Stick around to find out.
NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.
This series has been a pleasant surprise because I have found myself really liking the side characters and the WandaVision-esque surprise story we seem to be getting. With last week's shocking ending revealing that "Teen" is Billy Maximoff, what were we in store for in this episode? Well boys and girls, I'm here to tell you. We were in store for a fascinating look at Billy's backstory as we learn who he was and who he now is thanks to a great performance from Joe Locke (who has become the clear MVP of this series).
This week, Joe Locke has given us a clear frontrunner for MVP of this series as he essentially plays two separate characters in this episode. The first is a Jewish boy named Wiliam Kaplan that seems about as innocent as Joe Locke is, and Locke plays him with about as much charm as Locke has as "Teen" from the first five episodes. I really found Kaplan to be a tragic character due to the situation he finds himself in (but more on that in the story analysis and Theory Time). The second character he plays, Billy Maximoff, is a lot more meaty of a character than William Kaplan because it is a continuation of the character in WandaVision but with more autonomy over himself. I feel as if Maximoff is the character who needs more fleshing-out and I do think we will see it in future episodes.
I do love how we are getting an advancement of the story to a place we should be getting to two-thirds of the way through so far. We finally get some explanation regarding "Teen" and his motivations. We start on the life of a 13-year boy named William Kaplan that is just celebrating his bar mitzvah in Eastview as he runs into Lilia during his celebration. She gives him a palm reading and realizes what is about to happen to him and places the sigil on him. The party is cut short as the Hex in Westview collapses. William and his family watch it happen as they wind up swerving on the road and hitting a tree, killing William instantly. After some time, the soul of Billy Maximoff possesses William's body as he learns he can read the minds of people.
Billy spends the next three years trying to figure out who he is and how he got to this position when he meets Ralph Bohner who survived the events of WandaVision (and claims he was the one who killed Sparky. You bastards!) and Ralph gives Billy and his boyfriend Eddie the information Billy needs to deduce who he is. This gives him the motivation he needs to break into Agatha's house in Westview and look for the entry into the Witches' Road, which leads us into the events of the first episode. But we see these events from the way they actually play out and hear the conversation in the second episode where he tells Agatha he is Billy Maximoff.
In the present, Agatha makes her way out of the mud trap that Billy put her in at the end of last week's episode and reveals her suspicions about Billy. She deduces the reason he is walking the Road is to find his brother and not gain power like he claimed. She also tries to convince him to walk the remainder of the Road together as he does not have full control over his powers. He reluctantly agrees but lays the groundwork that he does not trust Agatha at all ever. I do really enjoy us getting the backstory of Billy and how he came to be, but there are some burning questions that I have that I will present in Theory Time.
That will do it for the review of Agatha All Along's sixth episode. Now, on to Theory Time because there are some insane things we need to talk about.
Welcome to the sixth installment of Theory Time, where we discuss the more intricate details of each episode of Agatha All Along more in-depth. This week, we have a real doozy of an installment because questions were answered, but also because more questions were presented.
The first question I would like to propose involves how exactly the soul of a person that was not real manifested itself into the body of a real and very dead person. As we saw in the episode, William Kaplan was killed in a car accident and the soul of Billy Maximoff manifested in his dead body. I know this has happened in the comics, but Mephisto was involved in those stories. Unless we still have not gotten all the answers with three episodes left, the question still remains: how did this happen? Like I said, there are three episodes of this show left and time aplenty to give us a concrete answer on this. Maybe I was right and Mephisto is involved somehow someway. I mean, he has been namedropped on this show already, so it would not be too far-fetched.
Another inquiry I have involves Wanda Maximoff herself. If you remember at the end of WandaVision, when her and Vision say goodbye to Billy and Tommy, clearly the boys (and later Vision) disappear when the Hex goes down. Wanda gains possession of the Darkhold from Agatha and later is able to see her children across universes. If William Kaplan was killed and Billy possessed his body at the same time the Hex went down, then how is Wanda able to detect her children (that are real) across universes but not that the soul of one of the imaginary ones manifested itself into a dead teenager from this universe? People have used the excuse that Lilia's sigil prevented Billy from being detected by Wanda but Lilia is a low-level, no-name witch. Again, I am not too mad about this because we still have three episodes to get an answer about this.
This already has been the longest installment of Theory Time yet, but I have one final point I want to discuss. This involves the whereabouts of Rio and the further speculation into the true nature of her character. I did mention in a previous installment of Theory Time that people have been speculating that Aubrey Plaza's character is not Rio, but in fact the character of Death. I also mentioned that I was not a believer of the theory quite yet, but there are things going on that are really making me sway towards belief of this theory. This does involve the clues that I mentioned in that discussion, but there is something else though. In the "mid-season trailer" released earlier this week, Rio says something very interesting. She says "In the end, all roads lead to me." This could be a Bohner-level misdirect or a flat-out confirmation that Vidal is actually Death. We know now that the eighth episode will explore Rio and Agatha's past. What if Rio is Death and Agatha hates her because she was forced to kill her son in compliance with the deal Agatha made to sacrifice him for the Darkhold? There is something there.
That will do it for this sixth installment of Theory Time. See you guys next week for our seventh installment of my favorite thing to do with these reviews.
Agatha All Along is killing it two-thirds of the way through as Joe Locke is becoming a real highlight and as some questions are answered, more questions are presented. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.
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