Editor’s Be aware: The next article comprises spoilers for Agatha All Alongside Episode 7.The final a number of Wednesdays have meant so much to Marvel followers. We now have gotten to see the long-awaited Agatha Harkness solo sequence, Agatha All Along. Now we’re within the penultimate week with episode 7 having simply aired and air it did. According to Deadline, the episode introduced in a whopping 4.2 million views globally in simply 24 hours. That efficiency truly confirmed up the sequence premiere by 35%. It is also acquired the second-highest rating of a Marvel show on IMDb. The highest performing was the season 2 finale of Loki. So what was the magic about effectively… the magical present?
Agatha All Alongside follows Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) three years after the occasions of WandaVision. She’s been below Wanda’s spell for that complete time. As soon as the spell breaks, she nonetheless finds herself as powerless as she was on the finish of WandaVision. With the “assist” of who followers have since discovered is Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), she places collectively a coven to stroll The Witches’ Highway. The Highway is a darkish and harmful path, that includes a sequence of trials that many witches do not survive. And that brings us to Lilia Calderu. Performed by the insanely gifted Patti Lupone, Lilia confronted her trial this week.
Lilia “Emotionally Unravels” within the Non-Linear Episode
Because the Divination Witch, Lilia’s trial concerned Tarot. For people who do not know, Tarot are a kind of playing cards typically utilized in Pagan practices to assist divine what’s in retailer. They consist of twenty-two “Main Arcana” playing cards and 56 “Minor Arcana.” We have heard Lilia (abruptly) mutter playing cards from each Arcanas over the past a number of episodes, questioning what they’d level to. Now we all know.
The playing cards characterize the coven that Agatha assembled to stroll The Highway. In Deadline’s interview with showrunner Jac Schaeffer, she talked about Lupone’s push for Lilia’s story line to play out the way in which it did. “She advocated for — there have been instances the place I attempted to chop stuff and he or she by no means wished to chop something as a result of she loves the phrases.” Schaeffer explains that, “[Lupone] wished to have a whole lot of conversations. She wished to know Lilia’s arc, as a result of she emotionally unravels over the course of the episode, after which builds herself again up.”
The episode performs out of order, as a result of Lilia experiences it out of order. Over the course of the sequence, Lilia has not solely muttered playing cards at random, but in addition seemingly had premonitions, every of which has come true, and we see them culminate on this closing episode for Lilia. The Tarot unfold she performs requires every of the playing cards she’s talked about over the past seven episodes, together with herself: The Queen of Cups. From Agatha’s Three of Swords, to Alice Wu-Gulliver’s (Ali Ahn) Knight of Wands to the Demise card revealing that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) has been Demise All Alongside (get it?), all of them performed a pivotal half in Lilia’s story in addition to teasing what’s to come back. Jennifer Kale’s (Sasheer Zamata) card, The Excessive Priestess, implies she’s part of the trail forward (and hopefully that is a clue to the viewers that Jen will survive The Witches’ Highway!)
Regardless of Schaeffer saying placing all of the items collectively was “actually exhausting,” it performs superbly. Schaeffer says of the inventive course of behind the episode, “My mind melted, the writers, Cam Squires and Gia King, their brains melted it.” What works so effectively is that though the viewers are experiencing the occasions of the episode out of order, we’re experiencing them from a singular standpoint: Lilia’s. Lilia’s private expertise grounds us when nothing else appears to make sense within the episode till the very finish. By the point that we get to Lilia’s heartbreaking “I cherished being a witch”, we have grown so hooked up to her journey that viewing it out of order does not compromise the emotional touchpoints.
Whereas we’ll miss our Queen of Cups dearly, particularly after Lupone’s excellent efficiency, followers have two extra episodes of Agatha All Alongside nonetheless to come back. The ultimate two episodes will air subsequent week, simply in time for Halloween on Disney+. You possibly can atone for all of the episodes now. Stick with Collider for the newest updates.
