Summary of “Agatha All Along”, episode 3

As entertaining as the first few chapters of Agatha all the time It looks like it’s time to take this show on the road. With “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials” Agatha all the time officially sends its characters on a rather linear journey to self-actualization, fame, redemption, and/or death. Just in case we weren’t listening last week, Agatha explains again what The Road and her fellow coven members are all about. Again, the breakdown is as follows: Lilia (Patti Lupone) wants to regain her divination abilities, Alice (Ali Ahn) wants to find out what happened to her mother, and Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata) wants to reclaim her magic, which was bound for an as-yet-unknown reason.

Teen, on the other hand, supposedly just wants to learn from Agatha and gain powers in the process. But the second he tries to tell the witches his name, they also see his mouth twist instead of hearing the answer. It’s obvious to everyone that something else is going on with this boy, and boy, does this episode provide some clear clues as to what that might be.

We’ll come back to that. Now it’s time to meet our witches (plus wife Sharon Davis Hart) on the road at an exciting new location: a pristine beach house with a built-in sauna and a kitchen to die for (poor Mrs. Sharon Davis Hart). “Was that there before?” Alice wonders. “You should stop asking that question,” Agatha replies before I can. You’re all witches! Why do magic keep surprising you??

For a moment I thought this house might ring a Magical sisters homage, but no. This Victorian home, full of family secrets and midnight margaritas, is so extremely and quintessentially New England, full of nooks and crannies and vintage stuff. Here, it looks like Grace and Frankie hired Chip and Joanna Gaines to spruce up their Malibu retreat. Once they all walk in, their entire look and outfits change to match the vibe, complete with all the luxurious linens and beige sweaters from Nancy Meyers’ dreams. (I’m sure costume designer Daniel Selon has fun with the show’s many genre shifts, but here I terribly missed Agatha’s gorgeous eggplant coat.) As Teen says in one of this episode’s several meta-commentary lines, “There’s a very ‘middle-aged second chance at love.'” He’s there for it, but Jen definitely isn’t.

As she looks at her unfamiliar reflection in one of the many shiny mirrors, Jen is horrified to find that she now sports a tasteful bob that makes her look like “one of my clients.” Well-stocked with her own snake oil line, Kale Kare, this particular property appears to be her own haunted house. According to Agatha, “The Road” – which stripped the coven of its powers along the way – will test each of the witches on their individual abilities. It’s a crash course in witchcraft, “emphasis on ‘craft.'” So when a bottle of wine offered by a professional poisons the coven, it’s Potions Master Jen’s turn to whip up the antidote.

As everyone searches the house for various ingredients, the episode takes on a bit of the atmosphere of a horror video game. Between the clearly defined mission (ingredient + ingredient = antidote/escape) and the POV shots sneaking around every corner, it’s all too easy to imagine getting to this level and clicking through the empty rooms to find each potion component. Neither the coven nor the episode has much time to dawdle, but I can’t help but think that this process could be done in a Magical sisters House packed to the brim with possibilities instead of a Big little lies The mansion is largely devoid of clutter or esprit, aside from exactly the ingredients they need.

On the other hand, I think it is not really about the details of this process. As the third of nine chapters, “Through Many Tricks and Trials” – written by WandaVision alum Cameron Squires—is more about establishing who these characters are and who has gone beyond their supernatural abilities. The hallucinations the wine induces in everyone (except underage teenagers) prove particularly revealing. Jen sees a sadistic doctor humiliating her and trying to drown her; Lilia is invited by a ghostly Italian aristocrat to look at some decaying skulls in robes; Alice thinks she’s found her mother, only to see the apparition sob, “Now it’s my turn, it’s going to kill me.” Big yikes! Each vision is brief, ending with a scream, but is effectively unsettling as it leaves new breadcrumbs of foreboding.

Before the horror trips begin, however, there’s time for a little small talk. Alice and Teen bond over their trauma from around age 13 – Teen’s trauma remains vague but is mentioned – and her tattoo, a protective symbol her mother insisted on during a tour stop at the legendary Red Rocks venue in Colorado. Then, just minutes before the poison bloats their faces like bad fillers, Jen tries to warn Teen that Agatha is not to be trusted. He has no interest in denigrating Agatha, but still can’t ignore what Jen says next.

“Did you know she traded her own child for the Book of the Damned?” Jen asks. No, Teen didn’t. To be honest, she doesn’t know for sure either; Nicholas Scratch has become something of an urban legend over the centuries. So, in the present, Jen is content to drop the biggest clue and/or red herring yet regarding Teen’s true identity: “I doubt she’d even recognize her own son if he showed up on her own doorstep.” The only thing more obvious than that sentence is the emphatic “Oh really?” look on Teen’s face as she walks away.

Given this, Agatha’s hallucination of a crying baby becoming the Darkhold, and her uncharacteristic protective instinct to stop Teen from drinking wine, the writers seem to be OK with us concluding that Teen could be Nicholas. This is because either (a) he Is Nicholas, (b) it’s not him and they’re happy to play with us, or (c) they’re planning a different twist. Since we’re so early in the season, my gut tells me it’s (c), but only time and The Road will tell.

By the end of the episode, Jen manages to concoct the right antidote—with the help of a “cauldron” made from a farmer’s sink and a sous-vide cooker. And even though Agatha balks at the idea of ​​teamwork so much that she nearly smashes the floor-to-ceiling windows to throw herself out, the prospect of dying in such a senseless way forces her to play along. She proves particularly adept when she stops Jen’s burgeoning panic attack with a rare (if ambiguous) compliment. “I always hated you,” Agatha admits, “but I left you alone because what you did was important.” It would be great to know a little more about what that means right now; I’m rarely one to call on TV shows to run longer, but this one has moved along so quickly that it feels a little like these 35-minute episodes should have been 45 minutes.

So on they go! Everyone takes a dose of the antidote before time runs out and the house floods (which is now underwater, by the way – things happen fast on The Road). They remember Mrs. Sharon Hart Davis just in time to force a drop down her throat before time runs out and the oven door flies open as an emergency escape, supposedly signaling that they’ve beaten the level and can move on… but no.

Unfortunately for her and all fans of Debra Jo Rupp’s perfect comedic vulnerability, it looks like it’s game over for Sharon. She comes out the other side of the oven pulseless, dyed blue like a fish carcass washed ashore. Even Agatha, who for most of the episode forgot she existed and/or wrote her off as an unavoidable liability, seems shaken. As crazy as the trials of The Road can be, they’re definitely not kidding around.

• Rooster Line of the Week: In response to the coven’s claim that she couldn’t “cheat” on The Road, she immediately whined, “Why NOT, who SAYS THAT?”

• …is it bad that I asked Agatha “Why did we all must drink the poison wine”? Maybe The Road would have rebelled, but they would still need unpoisoned blood for the antidote and there’s no guarantee they would have brought a random (or so) teenage buddy along for the ride. One for all, all for one, etc., but how about a little logic??

• How WandaVision, Agatha all the time is a self-reflective show that’s very aware of the pop culture surrounding it. Still, I could use less obviously metaphysical lines like “helpful interjections, random woman with no obvious magical properties” and more funny observations like “this is definitely a place where you sip your tea with both hands.”

• I’m not sure yet what Lilia’s random outbursts are all about (e.g. “Try to save Agatha!”), but hopefully she/Lupone will get a real spotlight episode soon that will enlighten us.

• And now a short elegy for Mrs. Sharon Hart Davis, who may or may not be dead (this is Marvel magic, after all), but who definitely doesn’t deserve all this crap. From Wanda’s mental imprisonment to being betrayed by a much-needed glass of wine that shut down all of her internal organs, Sharon has had a rough go of it and I wish her nothing but peace and untouched Talbots handbags on the other side.