If you had asked me earlier Agatha all the timeWhen the fifth episode, “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power,” aired, I was willing to bet it would focus on Lilia’s trial. You get the travails of the supporting witches – Jen, Alice and Lilia – out of the way relatively quickly, and then give Rio, who has the most history with Agatha, a more substantial episode for the sixth entry, and another more substantial episode for Agatha’s trial in episode seven. Two more episodes of Marvel’s standard CGI-heavy climax, interspersed with a Big Reveal about Teen that connects this promisingly different and distant show to the larger MCU, and you have a competent, if conventional, miniseries. We all learned our lesson about hoping that Marvel would finally break its formula next WandaVision‘s disappointing finale, right?

But the pre-episode recap tipped me off that this wasn’t going to go the way I thought it would. First a scene WandaVision: Agatha’s original coven, led by her mother in Salem, Massachusetts, tries to kill her in 1693. Instead, she turns the tables and kills them all. Then a few scenes from previous episodes of this show, all focusing on Agatha. Eight minutes later, Rio confirms it: this is Agatha’s trial.

Before we get to the trial, however, the episode opens as the Salem Seven – who, we learn, are the children of the witches Agatha killed in 1693 (“A wild, hive-minded coven bent on revenge,” as Rio describes them) – to overtake Agatha’s new coven. “The moral of the story, children, is always finish what you start,” says Agatha. “Besides, mercy is overrated.” Unfortunately, there’s no time to enjoy Kathryn Hahn’s impeccable text reading here, because these witches have to leave yesterday. And what do witches do when they have to go somewhere quickly? Lilia isn’t very happy about it, but Teen is right: they have to take out the broomsticks. Cue Aubrey Plaza, where one is served immediately Wizard of Oz reference to two episodes in a row, as they cackle a delightful Wicked Witch of the West as they race through the sky. The CGI isn’t great here, but it feels deliberately campy and cheesy, a piece that suits the tone of the scene. They crash land outside their next trial, which, like the previous episode, appears to take place in a cabin in the woods.

This time, however, it’s 80s teen sleepover vibes instead of 70s excess. Another change is that the moon phases mural that usually adorns the outside of the Process’s front door will be on the inside hanging from the wall. The connection is also more explicit: “A blood moon,” says Lilia. “When the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.” Teen doesn’t understand how this points to Agatha, but Rio explains that there is no one better to communicate with the dead than someone who has killed a lot of people. It’s not clear why Agatha’s trial has an ’80s theme, though I suspect Rio knows the answer to that too.

A Ouija board flies off the shelf, everyone’s digital watches start counting down from a 30-minute timer, and Agatha’s trial begins. She’s standing here against a wall; lashing out, trying to deflect. Delay the inevitable.

It is not clear to me how this process would proceed if Agatha did not let go of the planchette. Using the board, the ghost identified himself as Death and said he wanted to punish Agatha. Only after Agatha lets go of the planchette does her mother’s ghost appear and tell the others that in order to punish Agatha and complete this process, they must leave Agatha behind and finish the Witch’s Way without her. Before Evanora Harkness (Kate Forbes) appears, the coven was thinking of different ways to punish Agatha, but none were as specific as this. If Agatha hadn’t let go and summoned the spirit, they wouldn’t have known what Evanora wanted them to do.

Unsurprisingly, Jen is the first person to throw Agatha under the bus and try to leave her behind. Teen protests and stands up for her. But amid it all, Agatha’s conversation with her mother is the emotional core of the episode. “Why do you still hate me?” Agatha asks. ‘You were born bad. I should have killed you the moment you left my body,” Evanora replies. Even Jen has the good sense to look a little embarrassed when she hears that.

Agatha all the time spent four and a half episodes establishing its main character as a manipulative liar who plays on the emotions of others to get what she wants. In episode two, she tries to goad the other witches into blasting her with their powers so she can steal them. However, it’s such a transparent effort that it feels like she’s not even trying; she does it more for fun than out of the expectation that this will actually work. But the intention is clear: she would, without a doubt, steal the power of one of her covenmates if given the chance. That’s why the final scene in the cabin works so well. Agatha’s mother possesses her and Alice bombards Agatha with magic to drive her mother away, but Agatha strips Alice of her power. Teen breaks the spell and stops Agatha from torturing Alice when he sees the planchette moving on the Ouija board again. This time it’s Nicholas Scratch, and when she hears her son’s name, Agatha falls silent. “Mama! Stop,” a disembodied voice calls. This is her real punishment. The attic stairs drop; Alice falls to the floor, dead.

In the aftermath, back on the road, Agatha claims that it was out of her control, that she didn’t kill Alice on purpose. Teen doesn’t believe her, and it looks like Jen and Lilia don’t either, even though they’re both strangely calm about it. This, Jen says, is what they are all about: regaining their power. “Death comes for all of us,” Lilia adds.

Agatha is a witch who lives in the space between truth and lies: she will happily embrace rumors, even malicious, terrible rumors, if they obscure the truth. She plays on people’s perception of her – as a notoriously cruel and dangerous witch – to keep them at bay. You can see the twist here in Hahn’s brilliant acting, as she figures out how to use this situation to her advantage. She uses Jen and Lilia’s tacit acceptance as a cover and stops trying to deny that she killed Alice on purpose. I think she was actually telling the truth; it was her mother’s spirit that drained and killed Alice, not her. But everyone already knows that Agatha is a murderer; claiming credit for another body will only enhance her legend. So Agatha does what she does best: she becomes defensively cruel, hitting and hurting others to protect herself. The final exchange of the episode confirms what everyone had guessed from the beginning:

Teen: ‘So that’s what it means to be a witch? Killing people to serve your own agenda? No. Not for me.”
Agatha: ‘Are you sure? You look so much like your mother.”

Teen is Billy Maximoff, Wanda’s son. His hands crackle with blue energy while Jen and Lilia’s eyes turn a matching color. They throw Agatha off the road into the quicksand, and she disappears under the mud. Then Billy also shoots Jen and Lilia into the quicksand. Rio is, I think, still in the test house, so it’s not a total party killing (and come on, we all know the show will bring Agatha back somehow). A crown, very similar to Scarlet Witch’s crown, appears on Billy’s head as the music begins: “You should see me in a crown,” Billie Eilish sings.

It’s a mic-drop moment, one of those extremely rare moments where an on-the-nose music cue is actually perfect because of how obvious it is. This is Billy simultaneously announcing his arrival and his heritage, a warning that he is not to be tampered with. You saw the twist coming from a mile away; it was no surprise that Teen turned out to be Billy in the end. But the way the reveal played out was so perfectly constructed that it didn’t matter if we all knew what was going to happen. The surprise in “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power” wasn’t Teen’s identity; that was it Agatha all the time managed to create a perfect reveal that felt truly earned.

Stray observations

• • Kathryn Hahn’s Debra Jo Rupp impression is S-tier.
• • So many questions about Billy; did he know who he was all along? Or did the memories and strength return in his darkest hour, as the episode title suggests? Based on the look he gives Jen after she tells him, “Familiars don’t get a vote” (around 3:30), I think he’s played them all from the beginning. Either way, it’s a brilliant bit of foreshadowing of that something Something’s going to happen from Joe Locke that you won’t be able to see until the second time around, and then it’s so obvious that you’ll wonder how you missed it the first time.
• • Other board games lying around the cabin include Clue, Pente and Sweet Valley High.
• • When they use the Ouija board, there is a poster behind Teen for Point Reyes National Seashore, which I can only assume is a nod to John Carpenter’s The fog.
• • Agatha wears a sweater with the number three on it; Teen says the Ouija board is suitable for children aged three and over. Real Ouija boards are recommended for children eight years and older.
• • In the last episode, Lilia blurted out “Three Swords.” This time she says ‘Knight of Wands’.