exist Wanda VisionCreator and head writer Jac Schaeffer has firmly established himself as a master of the miniseries, demonstrating a meta-level understanding of television in a way that both appreciates and critiques the form. exist Agatha has alwaysthe writer/director proves himself a master puppeteer, playing with the audience’s assumptions and gleefully usurping them. The sixth and latest episode, “Familiar by Thy Side,” feels like a triumph for the series, following the rally in the final seconds of the previous episode, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power.”
From the beginning, the story of Agatha Harkness—and her attempts to recapture her great glory before her ill-fated encounter with Wanda Maximoff—has been framed as Agatha’s disdain for all those around her. Manipulation. From the people she forcibly recruits for her Witch’s Road journey, to the way she takes advantage of nameless puppy-like teenagers (called teens) who are desperate for her approval, to the shocking moments of absolute evil she displays, this is that this is a show about repeatedly messing with our helpless desire to see a murderous witch redeemed. so far.
It was really funny, the next sentence I wrote was no: “It turns out it was the boy who was manipulating Agatha all along!” Because it’s much more complicated than that. This week’s episode is the longest yet, adding an extra 47 minutes to last week’s brilliant 30 minutes – and we discover that everything we thought we knew so far is told through two completely different but… Viewed through overlapping blurry lenses. Both Agatha and…Billy Maximoff begin to understand that they have successfully manipulated the other. God, if this show is manipulating us, misleading us into debating whether the teenager is Agatha’s son.
It all proceeds at a measured pace that feels very different from anything else the series has offered before. If anything, the pace of it is frenetic.
Episode six begins with the (unconvincing) rite of passage of a younger version of the teen—now suddenly named William Kaplan—like something from an entirely different show. We see the arrival of the Westview resident, who sings from the Torah to his proud family, followed by a lengthy after-party sequence during which William visits a hired psychic who She was in the booth with the curtains drawn. It turns out that she is Lilia Calderu (played by Patty LuPone). When she read her palm, she was suddenly shocked. Not only did she realize that her lifeline was divided, but she also suddenly saw a tarot card – -tower. Deeply disturbed, the witch clumsily tries to defuse the situation, then creates a sigil and hides it in his coat. A mark that made her immediately forget about him.
When the warning came that something had happened to the dome above Westview, the after-party was canceled, which was of course the final event Wanda Visionthe family car veered off the road and brutally crashed into a tree due to the interference of the light show. The parents were injured but William was killed and his father rushed to a passing police car for help. When he returns with a police officer (who, seemingly coincidentally, is another witch – Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ari Ann)), William appears to be miraculously resurrected, despite his loss memory.
We then jump forward a few years, and here’s a lot of uneventful and enjoyable plot about the teenager and his boyfriend, to the point where Not-William begins to understand who he might actually be: one of two (fictional?) Wanda’s son, created as part of her sitcom idyll. We later learn that at the moment of his “death,” when the spell was broken, he took advantage of the suddenly dead body and jumped involuntarily. He’s Billy Maximoff, and he wants to know what’s going on, and he believes Agatha is the only one who can tell him. Although, she is still under the influence of Wanda’s spell and is currently believed to be a true detectivestyle police.
Therefore, in this sequence of events, our understanding of the opening plot must be completely rewritten. The scene where Agatha is talking to Rio Vidal played by Aubrey Plaza (although now I’m pretty sure she isn’t), when she hears a break-in upstairs, the chase scene, the interrogation, Staring at the one-way glass, we now know it was a painting… We knew at the time it wasn’t real because we knew she wasn’t Jodie Foster solving grizzly crimes, but we had no way of translating it.
This becomes even more exciting when we realize that Billy was never desperate to become a familiar figure and wasn’t trying to figure out whether Agatha was his mother, as everyone was fully convinced. He always knew she wasn’t. Oh, and we second-guessed the show, wondering if Agatha thought he was her son, and it turns out she knew who he was from the beginning. Rio’s previous statement, “You know, he’s not yours,” was bluff of the cruelest kind.
We’re also now stuck in a crazy confusion about how much of Rio de Janeiro actually exists. She certainly didn’t attend the interrogation, and was almost certainly not in Agatha’s home during Billy’s break-in, and it’s likely she wasn’t involved in the epic battle between the two after Billy’s kidnapping. Why? Because remember when they were fighting over the knife and she got a cut on her hand? Why on earth did Agatha suddenly recover soon after she had no magic? In hindsight, it seems far more likely that he wasn’t cut in the first place. I guess she won’t real Appear until the witch calls her down the road. (This would also explain why Billie broke her spell in episode two, and we saw Leo do it.)
It was a delight to learn at the end of episode six that not only did Billy always want to find his missing brother Tommy, but that Agatha always had doubts about who he was. it is us who is in the dark and two them They are disrupting us and each other. All the moments we thought we’d gleaned some insight—even when we claimed to have guessed he might be Wanda’s child—left us reeling.
Oh, how amazing is it that Billy wears a blue headband on his head in episode five, which turns into a Wanda-esque blue crown by the end?
And we haven’t even touched on the excellent parking lot scene from Ralph “Mr Bonerifici” Bohner (Evan Peters), who plays the meta role in Quicksilver/Piertro Maximoff. Wanda Visionfollowing its role in non-canon X-Men Movies, but not the MCU.
Now it’s time to wonder if all of this might be a bluff, and it’s almost inevitable that there might be more twists and turns in the final three episodes, the last two of which take place on Halloween, which are pretty awesome. I’m so glad I made the mistake again.
