Summary
Agatha All Along introduces a trial format and claims its first major casualty in a frantic episode.
The Witches’ Road is the kind of nebulous idea that can essentially be whatever the writers want it to be at any given time. And that’s good since it allows Agatha All Along to play out like a case-of-the-week procedural without seeming to distract from the overarching plot. Episode 3, “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials”, feels like that as Agatha’s new coven tackle – albeit reluctantly – their first real obstacle.
In Episode 2, the coven escaped the Salem Seven and finally landed on the woody Witches’ Road, which is where things pick up here. The excitement of having found the mythical place, which even the witches thought was just a myth, is tempered a little bit by the fact that they’re still dragging Sharon along, who remains a sitcom neighbour and not, crucially, a witch of any kind.
Having said that, though, none of the others have access to their powers either, which is the road’s convenient gimmick. It’s a string of trials designed to test the actual “craft” part of witchcraft, as Teen, who may be Agatha’s son (which we’ll get to in a minute), dutifully points out.
Loose Lips Sink Ships
An emerging theme of Agatha All Along is that Agatha seemingly refuses to dispense crucial information even when it would be beneficial to do so. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether this is just a bad writing trick to surprise us with more drama or allow other characters to provide exposition about things, or another low-key reminder that Agatha remains a villain and has motivations of her own.
There are a couple of examples of this early in “Through Many Miles/Of Tricks and Trials”. The other witches notices that Teen has a sigil preventing him from revealing personal information about himself, and Agatha claims not to have noticed until now, which we know isn’t true. She also doesn’t bother to warn anyone that straying from the Witches’ Road is potentially fatal until Sharon wanders off and is almost dragged through quicksand.
What’s she up to? Therein lies the rub, I suppose.
The First Trial
Most of Agatha All Along Episode 3 is set inside a chicly decorated house where the first trial takes place. The coven, all newly attired, find a note on the fireplace mantle that reads thusly: “My age has value. I’m no fun alone. I mess with your mind. My tricks are well-known.”
Accompanying the note is a bottle of wine and five glasses, sans corkscrew. When Teen goes off to find one, Jen follows, warning him about how terrible Agatha is. This is our first mention of Teen’s potential parentage. Jen says Agatha sacrificed her own son for the Darkhold – she calls it the Book of the Damned – and claims she wouldn’t even recognise him if he turned up on her doorstep, which prompts a worried reaction shot from Teen. We’re obviously supposed to think he’s her son, but it’s so obvious at this point that I wonder if it’s a red herring.
Anyway, the wine. Once the bottle is open, all the witches except Agatha – who tips hers into a plant, proving once again she hardly has the coven’s best interests in mind – neck a glass, which causes their faces to swell up as if they’ve been stung by bees. It’s the precursor to a more extensive range of poisoning symptoms that Jen identifies as being caused by Alewife’s Revenge. After the swelling has subsided, they’re in for delirium, hallucinations, and death. Lovely.
Agatha All Along | Image via Disney+
Wanda Maximoff Gets A Mention
The only person safe from all this is Teen, since he’s not allowed to drink. But Agatha’s attempts to avoid drinking her glass fall flat; everyone else notices her subterfuge and push her to neck her automatically-refilled glass. She’s in for it too.
Sharon’s hallucination is where Wanda Maximoff gets mentioned directly. It’s probably a nothing reference just to remind us that we are, in fact, still in the MCU, but it’s worth pointing out all the same. All the other witches experience their own hallucinations – it all gets a bit horror-lite here – and a ticking-clock device is provided by the living room windows cracking with the pressure of water outside. Unless an antidote is brewed quickly, it’ll be loss of motor function and drowning to look forward to.
Agatha’s hallucination is pretty telling – she hears a child crying in a bassinet but finds the Darkhold inside, not a baby, which supports Jen’s claim earlier that somewhere deep down Agatha’s nursing the guilt of sacrificing her own child for dark power. Again, unsubtle, but might come to matter.
RIP Sharon, We Barely Knew Ya
The first trial is a success – sort of. With Jen taking the lead – I suspect each trial will foreground each of the witches and their specializations in turn – the coven eventually manages to brew an antidote in the kitchen sink, the final ingredient of which turns out to be the blood of the unpoisoned, courtesy of Teen.
Just as the timer runs out and the windows shatter, the witches are able to escape through the oven and back onto the Witches’ Road. But not, apparently, without cost, since poor Sharon is dead. She was the most obvious first casualty given her lack of plot utility, but it’s a bit of a surprise that Agatha All Along was willing to kill someone off as early as Episode 3. Still, I appreciate the drama.
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