This review contains full spoilers for Agatha All Along Season 1, Episode 7.
First off, I should mention IGN’s regular Agatha All Along critic Joshua Yehl is traveling this week, so I’m covering this week’s review. Hopefully my opinion is not so radically different as to make no sense within the context of his weekly thoughts, particularly when he returns for next week’s finale.
Second off, are they trolling us?! A week after Evan Peters returned as Ralph Bohner, this episode ended by playing “Time in a Bottle,” a song that will make most of us think of Peters’ terrific spotlight scene as Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past!? Quicksilver, the very X-Men-universe character we thought Peters was reprising on WandaVision until we got Bohnered with one of the MCU’s most frustrating fake outs? Come on!
Okay, okay, the song made a lot of sense with this specific episode of the show, but still, it stings…
Honestly though, that song was a lovely and fitting send off for Lilia, who got a great spotlight here that allowed Patti LuPone to shine. And really, “Days of Future Past” is how you could describe Lilia’s life, as we got to see the world through her perspective and understand much more of how she was leaping into her body at various points across hundreds of years. From Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan to The Haunting of Hill House’s Nell to various characters on Doctor Who, Fringe and Star Trek, the idea of this sort of time skipping within your own life is a very compelling yet also frequently sad one – the idea of getting these glimpses that could fill you with excitement or dread waiting for something monumental to occur.
This episode did a much better job than the fourth did with Alice, during her trial, of investing us in Lilia on a deeper level. It managed to deftly feel both like a standalone anthology-type episode all about her, while also giving us a major reveal on another character for the larger story (more on that below) as we head towards the finale. Though many had realized we’d seen Lilia trying to warn Alice not to save Agatha in earlier episodes, we got that and many other Lilia moments expanded on here in an effective manner, going back to when Agatha and Billy first recruited her. Seeing Lilia as a little girl, and realizing that’s when she first had some understanding of her fate, was very poignant. It was pretty obvious Lilia wasn’t going to make it out of this episode alive, and felt the weight of that upon her shoulders the whole time.
Who better to play a sarcastic, sexy take on Death than Aubrey Plaza?
And what a way to go! Though the Salem Seven ended up not being much of a major threat in the long run, despite some creepy moments, it was still very cool to see how Lilia took them out. Reversing the tower and sending them hurtling onto those hanging swords above them (well, now below them) was awesome – even as she knew it would be her end as well.
So let’s talk about that big reveal – the one that was spoiled for some already by a dang toy announcement. Those who missed Funko revealing its upcoming Agatha All Along Pop! toys with the name “Death” beneath what was clearly the Aubrey Plaza/Rio Pop!, I envy you. It’s a shame it happened, and it makes it impossible for myself and others who saw it to know if we would have actually seen this reveal coming or not based just on the show’s clues given we’ve had that information in our minds for weeks already. Regardless, it’s a cool place to go and gives this character such a different dimension.
Obviously Death’s role in the comics’ Infinity Stone/War saga and Thanos’ adoration of her can’t be included in the MCU at this point, but this is still the manifestation of freaking Death! It feels like no matter where Agatha All Along ends, there’s room for Plaza to reprise this role in any number of projects going forward, especially those that dive into more supernatural or cosmic arenas. And who better to play a sarcastic, sexy take on Death than Aubrey Plaza?
Other thoughts
Yes, it was both unsurprising and good that Lilia and Jennifer were not so unceremoniously killed a couple of episodes ago, as last week’s episode inferred. But it also feels weird there was any assumption they were dead and gone by Agatha and Billy, given how easily they seemed to survive, just as Agatha did. It was amusing that Agatha bragged that she was the inspiration for Oz’s Wicked Witch, though the hyper-specific nature of everyone’s cosplay-type costumes (including Billy as Maleficent) seemed so different from what happened in the other episodes and their different eras. Since it ended up being Lilia’s trial, maybe she was just a big fan of these characters and caused it subconsciously? It was funny to have Agatha mess with Billy with her “Yes. No. Maybe!” reply when asked if Wanda was really dead. But what did she mean telling him she saw Wanda’s body? Was she only referring to the first episode, with the imagined body in her HBO crime drama scenario? Because it doesn’t seem like she could have taken a quick trip to Mount Wundagore while under Wanda’s spell. Any fellow Bill & Ted fans think “Iron Maiden? Excellent!” when “Everyone into the Iron Maiden” was said or just me?I’m cool with a corny dad joke, but Agatha went too far with “Hey, things are looking up!” about the swords above them. I can’t condone that level of corniness. However, Jennifer made up for it with a lot of good lines throughout this episode, though the best was probably “Five minutes Lilia would never say something like that.”
