This review contains full spoilers for Agatha All Along Season 1, Episodes 8 and 9.

It turns out it is was Agatha all the time. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. The two-part finale of Marvel’s Agatha All Along brings the story of The Witches’ Road to a conclusion that’s rewarding but also, frustratingly, somewhat unsatisfying, depending on what kind of answers you’re looking for. The show does a good job of tying up some of its mysteries and rounding out its characters, but too many other important questions were left unanswered.

The show’s central thread centers on wicked witch Agatha Harkness forming a mother-son/mentor-mentee relationship with young wizard Billy Maximoff, and in that regard the final two episodes are a win. It seems Billy’s true superpower is seeing the best in people – even unrepentant magical mass murderers – and it’s a great feat for him to get through to Agatha, to the point where she actually acts selflessly for once. Agatha chose Rio’s kiss of death to spare Billy, which led to a tragically beautiful death, right down to the patch of purple flowers her body leaves behind.

Then of course we got the big twist of the show. I didn’t see it coming at all, so I was blown away when Billy realized he was unknowingly using his reality warping powers to create the Witches’ Way. Like mother, like son. With this revelation, many of the show’s more peculiar moments suddenly make perfect sense, such as Agatha asking Billy if he was sure he would never kill to get what he wanted. Coupled with Agatha’s backstory in the final episode, where we learn how she came up with the ballad while raising her son Nicky (made from scratch), it really shows how complicated this show was from the start.

While the main story stuck the landing beautifully, some subplots unfortunately didn’t do so well. There are plenty of little things I could nitpick about, but the main gripe in my opinion is that the finale (and as a result, the show in general) doesn’t explore what makes Agatha Harkness tick with any satisfying meaning. Why does Agatha feel so guilty about losing Nicky when it wasn’t her fault that he essentially died of natural causes? We’re told that Agatha never addressed the false rumors about how she lost her son (such as trading him for the Darkhold) because the truth was worse… but that’s not true at all. Who can blame her for being a mother who wants to spend as much time as possible with her son?

We also don’t know why Agatha’s mother was completely convinced that her daughter was born bad. That could have at least explained why Agatha was okay with killing countless of her own kind over the centuries. I found myself waiting for a big reveal that would at least make me sympathize with why Agatha ultimately became such a ruthless killer, but that answer never came. It feels like the show is missing an essential piece of the Agatha puzzle, and as a result, some of the emotional moments towards the end don’t land with as much oomph as they should. This is reminiscent of WandaVision’s finale, where it felt strange that Wanda faced no consequences for kidnapping and torturing an entire city. Agatha All Around makes me feel the same way – some crucially necessary story beats are frustratingly missing.

Another part of the finale that feels somewhat underbaked is Agatha’s relationship with Rio, who we had previously learned is the embodiment of Death. Marvel readers know that it was Thanos who courted Lady Death in the comics, so I was intrigued to learn more about how she came to favor Agatha in the MCU. But that too remains unexplained. Even in the flashback to a young Agatha, the two are already lovers. Without knowing how or why they got together in the first place, it’s hard to feel moved by their final confrontation. That said, the battle does have a stand-up-and-cheer moment when Billy makes a grand entrance in full Wiccan gear in comic style. Simply put, it looks great.

While Death’s character isn’t entirely satisfying, the overall handling of death as a concept is well done. From Alice commenting that it feels unfair that her life ended just as it was about to begin a new chapter, to Agatha struggling with the traumatic loss of her son, the show pulls no punches when it comes to examining how we process events. inevitable of death. It was hard to watch Billy come to terms with how he is unintentionally responsible for the deaths of Sharon, Alice and Lilia, and it was equally moving for him to mark their names in stone so they weren’t forgotten. The fact that Billy accidentally killed three people with his powers feels like something that will follow him for a long time as he continues his MCU journey.