Welcome back to the blog readers. It is no secret that Agatha All Along has been such a huge surprise to a lot of people, who have been engaged with a whole lot of the aspects of this show, including the honestly great story and the endearing characters (and the legendary performers behind them). It sucks that this is the final episode of this show, but it will live on. What would we think about the finale of this show, titled "Maiden Mother Crone," written by Jac Schaeffer and Laura Donney, and directed by Gandja Montiero? 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.
Based on what we saw last episode, I did not know just what to expect from this series finale, because everything up to this point had been so unpredictable. And even though last episode really felt like a finale, this episode in my opinion felt almost like an epilogue of sorts. And I do have to say, for an epilogue, I think we got another great episode that ties into the last one. The story wraps itself up in a great way, and Kathryn Hahn may just give the best performance of her career in this episode.
Kathryn Hahn has been one of the standouts of this series, and especially during her tenure in the MCU as Agatha Harkness. She has been nothing short of incredibly entertaining and unequivocally herself as our favorite witch. I was curious to see how she would do in an episode based around her, that especially was the final episode of this series, and I truly believe she gives a phenomenal performance in this finale. First off, we see her understand what it is like to be a mother, which I know is personal to Hahn because she is a mother. But to see the complex emotions that come with being a mother to a sick child and what that grief wound up doing to her was one part tragic and another part brilliant, because we get to see what made her the way she was, and a brilliant performance from Hahn is the anchor of that.
Like I alluded to previously, the how in terms of getting to that point is very well told. I am going to present the story in two halves: the past and the present, much like I did with the fourth episode of The Penguin (2024). We start with a flashback to 1750 as Agatha is in labor with her son as Rio approaches her. Agatha begs Rio to not take her son, to which she can only offer time as she gives birth to her son that she made from scratch, thus giving the child his name of Nicholas Scratch. To keep Death occupied, Agatha makes it her mission to kill witches, and in the process the pair create what will come to be known as the Ballad of the Witches' Road. By the time he is six, Nicky has grown to not appreciate his mother killing witches, but she ensures him she does it so they can survive. One night, while they are sleeping, Rio comes for Nicky and she makes him kiss his mother twice: one for him and one for her as he goes with her. This devastates Agatha, who stumbles upon a witch who desires to travel the Witches' Road, revealing in a montage the Road was a con that Agatha made up to lure witches into blasting her with their powers, therefore absorbing their power and killing them. This leads us into the present as she is performing the Ballad in her basement with Jen, Lilia, Alice, and Sharon, and is shocked to see the door open, also revealing she know Billy made the Road real the entire time.
In the present, after Agatha gave herself up to save Billy, he realizes he may have made the Road up as he is confronted by a ghost of Agatha, who calls her sacrifice a calculated move and reveals to Billy the Road was never real until he made it real. He then tells Agatha of the guilt he feels that he got Sharon, Alice, and Lilia killed until she shrugs him off and admits she was going to kill them on day one, but also that Jen survived. She tells him that he will get used to this feeling but he shrugs her off and tells her that he never will, and returns to her basement in Westview to send her to the afterlife, to which she resists. When pushed, Agatha reveals she is too afraid to face her son in the afterlife, hence why she is a ghost (as she has unfinished business on this realm as explained by Rio), as the two finally realize their similarities and set out on a course to find Tommy. I think the story of this episode was utterly brilliant, as we finally get to see what makes Agatha Agatha. And the theory that someone presented that the reason the episode is titled "Maiden Mother Crone" is because she went through all three phases of the broche. I am heartbroken that we are at the end of this show, but there are some things I want to acknowledge have been resolved.
That brings us to the end of the review of the final episode of Agatha All Along. There will be no Theory Time as I previously mentioned, but a few things I want to touch on that got resolved.
The first thing that I want to mention in terms of resolution goes all the way back to the first episode, and I think that going through the entire show to understand this is very crucial. In the very first episode, when Agatha is in the "Agnes of Westview" drama, Rio asks her if she even remembers why she hates her. And after getting the full context, it makes sense. Agatha, in her mind, begged her love not to take her son from her, but she broke that trust by taking him, even if it took six years. It also makes sense when Rio was telling the rest of the coven in the fourth episode that Agatha was her scar because she did something that she did not want to do but had to because that was her job. Although we see that Agatha is not a good person, it is always nice when these shows and films allow us to briefly sympathize with not just our heroes.
The final thing I want to talk about in terms of resolution is the idea that Agatha made up the Road and Billy created it. This is something that people started to notice by the sixth episode, some even around the fourth. I personally did not subscribe to the theory that Agatha never walked the Road or pussied out of walking it, and her mixup with Jen about the lyrics of the Ballad being "coven true" or "coven two." But as the pieces started falling into place, I started feeling it and wound up believing it. Although I did not expect the twist that not only did Agatha not walk the Road before, the Road was never real to begin with. That just goes to show how powerful Billy truly is, because he literally made something intangible tangible. I also find myself agreeing with people that say Agatha may not have walked a real Witches' Road, she walked a metaphorical one with her son, which would make the "coven two" versus "coven true" debate more tangible. She was the surviving member of a "coven two" with her son, and I find that very touching.
Agatha All Along ends on a very high note, giving us some tragic backstory and a career-best performance from Kathryn Hahn. Thank you all so much for joining me on this journey, and I will see you soon for the review of the season as a whole.
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