stoically

[stoically]

First Meeting

“What’s your name?”

“Rio.”

“You’re gorgeous, you know.”

“I do. I like to hear you say it, though.”

Agatha looked at the bodies around her, then back up at the woman leaning against a tree, toying with a knife and studying her as if she were a tome worth deciphering. She didn’t need to ask if the stranger was a witch or even what her specialty was—one look with the Sight and she could see how strong she was, a column of green and black flame, power such as Agatha had never seen.

So the only real question was whether Agatha would be able take her to bed before she inevitably killed her.

“What’s all this then?” Rio asked, flicking her knife to point at the bodies.

Agatha looked around the clearing, clicked her tongue in dismay, as though she’d only just noticed the desiccated corpses at her feet. “Would you believe I walked up and they were already like this?”

The other woman gave her a toothy smile. “Do you know, I wouldn’t?”

“Then I guess I probably killed them.” Agatha spread her hands, shrugged like ‘what are you going to do’. “Want to get revenge?”

“Hmm. Should I?” Rio strolled out and examined the bodies, poking one with a booted foot.

“Seems like the right call,” Agatha said, arms open, inviting attack. “Sisterhood and all that. Go ahead, give it your best shot.”

Rio burst into high-pitched, grating laughter, annoying to hear but pretty to watch. “Do people actually fall for that? You so clearly want me to blast you!”

“Honestly? All the time,” Agatha said, only a little disappointed. “But then, most people tend to overreact to this sort of thing. You’re taking it very well.”

“I’m used to bodies.”

“Ooooh. Very mysterious.” Agatha sauntered forward, keeping one eye on the knife and the other on Rio, the latter simply because she was great to look at. “I like a little bit of mystery. Keeps me on my toes.”

“I’d prefer to sweep you off your feet.”

Agatha was more and more pleased Rio hadn’t chosen to blast her straight away. This was going to be fun. “Normally, I do the sweeping. For you, I might make an exception.” She wouldn’t, but she knew a challenge when she saw one and she did love a challenge.

Even if the challenge in question had an extraordinarily grating laugh, a shrill shriek of delight. “Oh, Agatha Harkness, you’re going to be fun.”

Agatha went still. “How do you know my name?”

“I know more than that about you. The Salemite coven killer. Matricide. Witch-slayer.”

Agatha didn't react outwardly, except to cross her arms across her chest. "You're very well-informed."

"Well, you've killed a lot of people. That kind of thing gets my attention. And look at you, so much power for a single witch, and all of it stolen."

Agatha couldn't tell if she was being complimented or insulted. "Have a problem with that?"

Rio shook her head. "Not at all. I want you to keep going. I want more bodies. I'm greedy that way."

So the gorgeous green witch was also crazy. That was fine with her, sexy and crazy could be an exciting combination, at least for a while, and after that, well, there was all that glorious power, hers for the taking. "Come with me then," Agatha purred, her voice husky with promise. "I'll get you all the bodies you want."

For a moment, Rio fixed her with a look that speared her in place, a butterfly on corkboard. Her breath caught in her throat in a very literal sense, her lungs frozen in her chest, unable to expand. Something vast and unknowable examined her as she might have examined a particularly interesting bug, right before she crushed it underfoot.

And then Rio looked away and she found herself gasping for air. "Keep talking like that and you really might sweep me off my feet," the other woman said, her hands behind her head, the smile on her lips a bloody gash, a wound in the world.

For a brief moment, Agatha had the sense to be terrified.

Then she simply refused to be. So the other woman had some tricks, that only made her more interesting.

And Agatha had some tricks of her own, especially in this particular game.

She stepped forward, cupped the back of Rio’s neck and pulled her closer, then kissed her, a rapacious, demanding kiss. She knew she was good at it and from the way Rio clutched at her, the other woman agreed, melting as Agatha worked a different kind of magic with teeth and tongue. When Agatha pulled back, she gave Rio the self-assured smile of a witch who had never doubted that she could have anything she wanted, including the woman in front of her. “Watch me,” she said.

Rio swallowed, struck briefly mute, and Agatha was already strolling past. "Come along then, darling," she called without a glance back.

Behind her, Death, the final hour, the last breath, touched her lips, murmured a very quiet 'wow' and trotted after Agatha.

Want to read some of Rio’s thoughts on Agatha? Try the thief

Want to read a post-breakup fic where Agatha tries to pierce the veil between the living and the dead and maybe even succeeds? Try the veil

[stoically]

Hmm, I agree Rio doesn’t want to kill Agatha but I’ll take it in a separate direction. She wants Agatha to grieve and forgive her. That’s what this whole saunter down The Road was to Rio. That’s why she’s there. From the beginning.

“Do you remember why you hate me?”

Agatha, still deep in the throes of Wanda’s spell, discovers the burned books at the library (all the copies were destroyed) the very scene before Rio shows up.

”Get to the part I’m not going to like,” Agnes says.

“Here I am,” Rio replies.

The chief then makes a comment about how Rio is going to help ‘you’ get to the finish line faster. Which Agnes immediately makes clear she does not like. Rio starts off the conversation by saying it’s been a long time. Because, we find out later, Agatha’s been using the Dark Hold to hide herself. Even from Rio.

When Agnes asks what she’s doing there Rio says ‘my job’ but shows no interest in what Agnes assumes her job is (investigating). What is Rio’s job? As Death we see it’s to ferry souls across to the other side. We see her do her job with Nicky and with Alice. She says she was ‘just doing my job’ when she talks about her scar. But she’s clearly not there to ferry Agatha’s soul. She doesn’t even attack her. So what ‘job’ is Rio there for? (Maybe as a partner?)

Agnes suggests Rio’s there to ‘steal her case’. To which Rio says that line we all adore. “No. If you want to be in control, you can be.” There are so many layers packed in that. The flirting layer, the Agnes fantasy layer, the Wanda spell layer, and potentially the why Rio is really there layer. The Agnes fantasy layer allows Agnes to role with her little FBI/small town detective role play. The Wanda spell layer shows that Rio’s saying Agatha can take control of herself back from Wanda’s spell. The why Rio’s there layer. Why she spends hours trailing after Agatha’s coven and patiently waiting for something. Rio’s letting Agatha be in control, until she’s hurt and raw about Agatha not ever wanting to see her again and starts to poke and prod for what she’s really after.

Agnes stutters a bit but immediately pulls the conversation back to the investigation. Rio asks “is this really how you see yourself?” with a look around Detective Agnes’ ‘office’. But she asks about the case, about Agnes’ theories regarding it. Agnes rattles one off about the perp carrying the body. “Seems logical, but you don’t really believe that.” Then shows a picture that Agatha made up. A picture we know from Billy’s POV episode is just of her neighbours yard. Which is when Agnes says “if there’s one thing we can agree on these cases are always about the place, the history of it, the people in it, the secrets buried beneath it. That’s where the answers lie.”

And ‘lo that’s exactly what this show is about. The place (The Road). The history of it. The people on it. The secrets buried beneath it. There’s mysteries here and Rio wants ‘Agnes’ to solve them.

The second time Rio shows up she interrupts Agnes staring at her son’s room, full of a life he did not live, to feed her and stare at her longingly (because it’s a universally acknowledged truth a lady cop can’t be good at her job *and* have a good home life and we already know Agnes sees herself as a lady cop whose good at her job). When Agnes says she has a lead in the case Rio replies “that’s not why I came over”. If we accept that the case is a metaphor for Wanda’s spell that adds a whole new layer to the response. They talk about it for a bit before Rio leans in and says “can I ask you something?” Agnes agrees and the question Rio asks, the reason she came over, is “Do you remember why you hate me?”

“No,” Agnes says.

“Are you hiding evidence?” Rio quickly asks.

“No,” Agnes lies.

“Well,” Rio says softly, “you’re only lying to yourself.”

Again we have the in spell layer of understanding (Agent Rio knows), the about the spell layer (Rio is poking at where Agnes and Agatha divide) and maybe that third layer. The why is Rio here layer. Why does Rio care if she’s Agnes or Agatha. Why did she show up the moment Agatha knew Wanda died? Fast forward a scene to Billy getting caught breaking in and ‘questioned’. When asked what he was after he says “The Road.”

“What road?” Agnes asks.

“You of all people should know,” Agnes’ imagination of Billy says. Agnes looks immediately to where Rio is hidden (or she imagine she’s hidden) watching. Agnes sees the dark stain on Billy’s fingers which ‘he’ explains away as ink from the finger printing (definitely no Darkhold here).

Finally she responds with “I was on a road this morning. It led to something pretty awful.”

What’s so interesting about this scene in particular is that we get to see it from another perspective. But we’ll come back to it. Because the very next scene is the morgue scene where Agatha starts clawing her way out of the spell. All while Rio encourages her. “But you don’t have to stay there, do you?” Rio asks. “Yes. Claw your way out.” Rio demands. Then she says almost softly “good.”

“There are two Jane Does in this case,” Rio explains. “And you know her name now. So, what’s yours?” She asks almost gently before mysteriously disappearing as though she was never physically there at all. Now if all Rio wanted was for Agatha to shake off the spell in order to kill her Rio would have no reason to be so gentle and proud of her for doing so. Then when Agatha was figuring out people were real and not just a figment of her imprisoned mind Rio blows down the door. Literally. To lunge at Agatha with bared knives and giggle about how she missed her. “I missed you.”

”I hate you,” Agatha denies.

“How long has it been, Agatha?” Rio asks.

“Not sure,” Agatha lies.

“Since you acquired the Darkhold,” Rio says and her voice is trembling. “You hid behind all that dark magic,” she sneers. “But then you lost it. And now,” she raises her eyebrows with excitement, “touch.” Rio forces her blade into Agatha’s neck just deep enough to draw a drop of blood. “You’re vulnerable.” Rio almost laughs.

“Only physically,” Agatha says. They fight a bit with Rio using, as OP said, only knives and fists.

“Do you remember pain,” Rio asks almost happily. “Kind of tickles, doesn’t it.” This is the second time Rio asks Agatha about remembering. The repetition raises the question, for me, if the first time was truly just about breaking Agatha out of Wanda’s curse.

They fight some more before Agatha gets Rio in a choke she’s in no hurry to get out of given how she holds Agatha’s hand to her neck. “You can’t kill me,” Rio taunts.

“You can’t kill me. It’s not allowed.” Agatha returns and the almost light hearted feel to the fight disappears. Rio kicks Agatha off her and raises to her feet with magic alone. She’s not smiling any more. She’s not playing either. She blasts Agatha for the first time since she said she missed her. At first glance it’s easy to read this as Rio wanting to kill Agatha and being upset she can’t. But that’s not it. She knows she can’t kill Agatha. What she’s truly upset about is the mocking “it’s not allowed”. The call back to those same rules which saw Nicky taken from Agatha and led to Agatha hiding from Rio with dark magic.

”Maybe I can’t kill you, but I can make you wish you were dead.” Rio threatens. Which is an odd call back given the previous exchange. Agatha can’t kill her, but she can make her wish she was dead.

”Wait, wait, wait. This isn’t what you want,” Agatha says. She talks about how Rio wants to see her at her best. Which Agatha takes to mean powerful, formidable. With her purple back. But Rio’s quick to offer Agatha ‘so take my power’. Then smiles when Agatha says that’s cute. And I think there’s truths hidden in these lies Agatha tells herself. That Rio does want to see her at the best but that doesn’t just mean magically powerful. It means being able to see Agatha. Or, as per episode 4 when Agatha asks what happens next and Rio says “I get the pleasure of watching you do what you do best.”

Agatha suggests Rio let her get her power back then come find her. Rio then talks about how she’s not the only one who wants to see Agatha dead.

“I could just sit back and watch,” Rio suggests easily.

She threatens to tell them where Agatha is but proceeds to tell Agatha who and when to expect her enemies. Enemies she hasn’t yet had a chance to inform. But somehow already knows Agatha should expect by sundown. Exactly as you would if you were setting someone up. Oh, wait. And because Rio totally hates Agatha she follows that up with telling her that her black heart beats for her and licks her hand to heal her. This is sarcasm by the way. Rio totally did this just to tell Agatha that her enemies are coming now that she’s no longer hidden and Rio isn’t allowed to kill. “You can’t kill… it’s not allowed.”

Hmm, now that I think about it I wonder how much that line pissed Rio off because she knows that means she can’t protect Agatha from the Salem Seven. And Agatha hates her so a polite or well meaning warning might very well be ignored. Or not acted upon with the haste Agatha needs to act. As it as she nearly didn’t gather the ‘coven’ quick enough to protect herself before Billy hijacked her trick. And how exasperated must Agatha have been to get not even 24 hours free from a Maximoff’s spell before descending into another one?

Then we jump to episode 4 interestingly titled “if I can’t reach you/let my song teach you”. When Billy is injured and Agatha’s trying to figure out “what else can we do?” Lilia tries to reassure her with “he’s young, he’s strong”.

“Don’t.” Agatha tells Lilia. “Don’t.” Agatha begs Rio. Rio sits back and watches. In another heartbreaking parallel Agatha’s helped in her efforts to save the boy she cares about (this time) by a protection witch, a potions witch, and a divination witch. The three things she tells Nicky in a later flashback she can’t do for him. Billy lives but Rio’s still watching Agatha’s reaction.

While Agatha’s watching over a sleeping Billy (and now we get why she didn’t trust him to heal while he slept without overseeing it) the rest of the coven talks around the fire. Lilia, whose job is to see, says to Alice “sad is better than angry” about grieving her dead mom.

Then we cut to Billy waking up. An interesting call back to Rio asking what Agnes’ name is in the form of Agatha saying you don’t need to know someone’s name to know who they are. And Billy dropping the question. “Agatha, what really happened to your son?” (A question she ignores). She walks away to go sit beside Rio and talk about scars.

When Agatha flees (again) Rio follows her and they hug. Tight. Before Agatha cups her face and leans in (which seems to be Agatha’s go to ‘kiss me’ move). And Rio interrupts her. Stops their moment to say “that boy isn’t yours.” Causing Agatha to physically step back. There’s a beat where Agatha gives the smallest nod and Rio waits. Before Agatha smiles politely (falsely) and walk away. Rio closes her eyes for a moment too long and the episode ends. Rio cockblocked herself in order to say this, waited for a response, and was disappointed when it was (still) Agatha putting her mask back on. Sad may be better than angry but Agatha’s definitely not ready for it yet. And Rio’s disappointed by that. Because Agatha’s anger about Nicky’s death is directed at Rio.

Now we go to Billy’s POV of his ‘interrogation’.

”What were you after?” Agnes asks.

“The Witches Road,” Billy says excitedly.

“What road?” Agnes demands.

“Oh my god,” Billy says with a new understanding of how deep Agatha is under the spell. Then it moves on. No ‘you of all people should know’. No dark fingers. No ‘I was on a road this morning’. No ‘it led to something pretty awful’. No Rio sitting back and watching.

Now follow me my friend, to glory at the end. The Road is over, Agatha said she never wants to see Rio again after having a very internalized panic attack interrupted by Rio figuring out Agatha was trying to hide Billy from her.

”I want my prize!” Agatha screams.

“So. Do. I.” Rio says slowly. They talk about how the agreement of getting Billy was/wasn’t met. And since he’s not there “that means you’re coming wth me.” Honestly Rio doesn’t seem to care Billy’s not there. She doesn’t care about actually killing Agatha. She’s way more interested in being upset, and sad, Agatha’s calling her evil. In making Agatha hurt physically because (back to their first fight) it’s the only way she’s vulnerable and Agatha just hurt her (if not physically). In calling out Agatha for being a coward because she loves Rio but doesn’t want her. And very noticeably none of Agatha’s cuts are deeper than Rio has already shown she can heal.

Billy shows up, Agatha gets her purple back, and Rio (whose unavoidable job supposedly demands she off the boy who isn’t Agatha’s) gives them the choice about who goes with her between them. Which tells us everything about what Rio’s truly after. Let me reframe the ‘choice’ Rio just offered. ‘Willingly give up, nay, convince the boy you care about who is doomed to Death to, of his own free will, embrace dying or willingly return to your estranged partner you’ve been displacing your anger on and running away from’. Well. I suppose Rio did say that Agatha could be in control if she wanted. She just didn’t say that either way there’s only one thing she really wants. She wants Agatha to forgive her. Because this is what the options boil down to. Stand in my shoes when I did my job for Nicky or come back to me.

We see this in the fight with Agatha’s magic back too. Rio’s opening move is to yeet Billy away. Then these two prove they match each others freak by flirting while they fight.

“Power looks good on you,” Rio says admiringly.

“Honey, everything looks good on me,” Agatha agrees.

”Seems like you’re having fun.” Rio comments.

“Who, me?” Agatha cackles (with joy?). They’re smiling at each other. Before Billy returns the yeet so Agatha and Billy can share a bonding moment and decide fighting Death is futile (but only physically apparently, Agatha still hasn’t given up the emotional fight).

Rio returns and Billy tells her to take him. Agatha agrees, as promised, she offers him up. And Rio chuckles and shakes her head. Not in disbelief. Not in happiness. More with a familiar disappointment. Agatha saunters away, smiles that polite fake smile she uses as a mask, and Rio does what she says she would. She sits back and watches. She makes no move toward Billy. No move to stop Agatha. No cheer for having ‘won’ because this isn’t a win. Agatha ducked out the choice Rio offered by pretending she doesn’t care about ‘the boy’. It’s Billy who does something. Who asks, again, if this is how Nicky died.

This time when Agatha leans in for a kiss, Rio kisses back. Not prepared at all to let her go. Not now. Not if there’s a hope of forgiveness.

If Rio had truly wanted Agatha’s death she wouldn’t respond to it by wrapping herself up in her cloak so she could hug herself and taking off her human face. Something she only ever did around Agatha (in the show) when she was distraught that Agatha said she never wanted to see her again.

And that’s why I believe the reason Rio’s there has been about her wanting Agatha back. Ideally by Agatha forgiving Rio and allowing herself to grieve Nicky but honestly by any means possible.

Re: “Rio's goal is to kill Agatha so she can be with her forever”

My brother in Christ, if Rio's ultimate goal this series was to kill Agatha we wouldn't have gotten past the first episode.

Okay okay, I get how it can be confusing because Rio literally says she wants to see Agatha dead in episode one and tells Agatha she'll let the Salem Seven (who do want Agatha dead) know where she is.

But it is noteworthy that Rio tells Agatha what she is going to do and when the Salem Seven are expected to arrive. Rio is usually surprisingly fair in how she deals with Agatha.

Rio has always met Agatha at her power level

In episode one, even assuming Agatha was protected by Wanda's spell and Rio couldn't harm her there, once it was broken Rio went "full analog" – to quote Hahn – with her knife, the only magic she used being the wind blasts.

Guys, that's not a serious murder attempt, that's foreplay to them. Violent, bloody, sexy foreplay.

Also Rio has healing powers. That's a thing they have very clearly shown.

To be clear, my read is that Rio can't actually kill anyone before their time ("You can't kill me, it's not allowed") just hurt them really really badly until they maybe choose to die ("I can make you wish you were dead"). Which you could argue equals killing I suppose, just slower.

But this is Agatha Harkness: all she really needs to survive is a bit of time to scheme and manipulate and do her usual girlbossing, gatekeeping, and gaslighting – and I think Rio also knows this. Agatha keeps surprising her, for better and worse.

Yes, Rio gets BIG MAD in episode 8 because Agatha says possibly The Worst Thing to her but the first part of their confrontation is technically physical torture, not murder attempts.

I know it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here but my point is that having Agatha dead isn't Rio's ultimate #1 goal. It's not so clean and easy.

There's something to be said about how the wounds Rio inflicts speak to how Rio sees herself hurt by Agatha emotionally in the relationship i.e. death by a thousand cuts, the severing of her Achilles tendon.

There’s probably something also be said about the relationship a being like Rio has with physical pain. Trees feel pain. Everything living does. Rio mocks Agatha for dulling herself to it using dark magic.

But I digress.

Anyway, note: it's only after Agatha gets magic back that Rio starts throwing magic blasts – and even then she seems to be holding back.

These two are possibly the worst two witches to fight each other directly like this because Agatha can't absorb Rio's magic or she'll die. She has to actively block or avoid all hits. And I bet this isn't something Agatha is used to dealing with considering she had no issues taking Wanda's magic.

And Rio is aware of this because she’s just lobbing quick little green blasts Agatha's way. It's not a torrent of magic like what Agatha is gleefully unleashing.

It's also the Watsonian (in-universe) explanation as to why this fight is so short. Because you literally can't straight up fight Death. Rio is a hard counter to Agatha's special siphoning ability just like how Agatha was a hard counter to Wanda's magic (insert your scissors-paper-stone visual of choice).

Rio doesn't want Agatha dead, she wants Agatha to want her

It's clear that Rio is grieving when Agatha dies. This isn't the outcome she wants. They're also both crying during the kiss it's great.

Rio wants what Agatha specifically tries to deny in the deal Agatha proposes: she wants to keep pursuing Agatha, to keep seeing her, provoking her, to be shocked and surprised by her. To keep loving her but also, to keep hurting her.

Because Agatha also hurts her right back. And Agatha knows she has Rio constantly on the emotional backfoot, that Rio – despite centuries of hatred thrown her way – still humours her more often than not and what levers to push.

I don't think this can happen with Agatha dead and gone.

To be fair, we don't know what the rules are in this world's afterlife. The only insight we get into Rio's job is her scene with Alice and that still leaves a lot of things unanswered: Does Rio just escort souls to a destination or does she have more control beyond that, like a domain? Can souls refuse to go with Rio? How do ghosts happen?

I had previously assumed Rio needed to allow it but Schaeffer says that her vision in that moment has Agatha's using an evolved form of the power to take Rio's magic by touch.

And with that, it's telling that it's Agatha who ultimately ensures that she dies (with the "calculated risk" of becoming a ghost), siphoning Rio's death magic energy.

Agatha embraces death, embraces Rio, but she also doesn't – Rio's clever witch got away again.

[stoically]

Love the idea that Agatha’s always been able to literally suck the magic out of people without them having to attack her. She just wakes up and chooses violence. And honestly the most violent way she could have done this to Rio was by kissing the magic out of her.

couldn't help but slow down the kiss and improve the lighting so i can watch it on repeat and go insane.

i also cut out the live billy reaction

[stoically]

Oh but gang, it’s worse then we thought. Because Nicky was supposed to be dead the moment he left Agatha’s body. And Rio was supposed to make that happen. Agatha’s mom just said “I ought to have done to you what should have happened to your son”. That’s a double blow to Agatha and a solid additional blow to Rio all at once. A low blow too.

And to make it more intense we see a hint of why Rio is so not okay with this. Beyond her hating her mother in law for hurting her wife. If Agatha dies a ‘normal’ death she goes with Rio. Ghosts don’t go with Rio. Rio is only okay with Agatha dying if it means she gets to keep her after.

tfw you hate your mother-in-law (for hurting your wife)

[stoically]

+ bonus

[stoically]

So I've just watched the finale and I'm feeling... Weird. I think part of it is because this show started with everything I like in a story (cool badass ladies, a queer romance, found family, redemption, etc etc) and ended up being... Not all that (most characters die, the romance is doomed, and I guess the redemption mostly happened but wasn't entirely satisfactory to me). Also, I'm someone who as Trauma (tm) with death so, I guess my brain's first reaction is "fuck that I just want them all happy and safe" and it takes me a while to accept when stories take these paths, however well written they might be.

Still, I thought it all went a bit fast in the last 2 eps, with parts of the show ringing just a little bit more hollow than I would have expected? I'm left feeling like the characters of Alice, Mrs Hart and Jen were treated a bit superficially (Lillia's story felt more complete). I also wished we had seen more of Agatha's past because spending centuries just conning witches then killing them is... a bit boring? (maybe we learn more about her in WandaVision, I haven't seen it). And obviously I wished we had seen more of Agatha and Rio. It's like the show couldn't decide if it was about Agatha or about Billy (partly because, I'm guessing it's setting up a 3rd show about him?), and with this short format we ended losing a bit on Agatha's part.

Anyway, curious of what you think of all that because your analysis are always super interesting, and like I said my own brain might be a bit biased towards resistance with this one. And obviously would love to read your fanfic(s) should you write any!

So, I've started and restarted a reply to this a few times, but I think what my answer boils down to is: we're meant to have multilayered responses to this finale. We're meant to sit with it. It's meant to change our experience of the show we've had to this point.

I think the best metaphor for this is the fact the revelation that Rio is Death. Bear with me, because I know this got spoiled for us way early on and we all knew it and were all just waiting for the revelation to drop - but imagine for a second that we didn't know that Rio, Agatha's ex-girlfriend and spooky fun vaguely-a-psychopath as played by the delightful Aubrey Plaza, is death. Your perception of Rio would have been turned on its head. Your perception of Agatha would have been turned on its head. Your perception of the Witches' Road and what we're even doing here with Death walking alongside us as a tourist would have been turned on its head.

Now, we all had an incredibly fun time even with the knowledge that Rio is death before we should have had it. But I think some of the power for what it meant for the story - and our perception of what was really happening - was muted.

Jen, at the beginning of 1.08, says, "She told us who she was from the very beginning."

Sit with that - because the same is true of this story.

---

It turns out that the Road is a metaphor for death. This isn't fully illustrated for us until Nicky, the author of the Ballad, walks down the road with Death's hand in his, and we go, oh. Oh.

Agatha tells us in the beginning that the Road doesn't exist, a rare instance of her giving anyone unbridled truth. And sure - the Road that our coven walked down doesn't exist. The Road that all the witches Agatha lured to the deaths believed in doesn't exist. It's a fiction. But it's significant that Agatha lured them all to the Road and killed them. They wanted to walk the Road. They died. Not "they died instead" - it's a two-fold statement. They wanted to walk the Road and they died. In a gruesome way, Agatha's been taking witches on the Witches' Road since the 1750s.

I don't think the significance of that is lost on Agatha, either, especially where we pick up at the beginning of 1.08. Lilia's dead, and everybody's reeling.

Perhaps Agatha more than anybody.

---

I also want to quickly take a look at Rio's accusation of Agatha regarding Billy.

"The bodies are really piling up." "Did you doubt me?" "Yeah, I did. I thought there'd be a trick in there somewhere. And there was! You were distracting me from him."

Because this is a revelation about Agatha's actions toward not just Rio, but any audience watching her - i.e., us the viewers. She's been distracting us! Not from who Billy is, we know that of course, but with regard to what the Road itself is. Agatha's known the Road isn't real the entire time. She's been protecting Billy from that knowledge. She's been protecting Billy from Rio. She's been protecting the coven itself from disintegrating. And, the biggest con woman move of them all, she's been distracting us - with less and less success as the show goes on - from the fact that she is not even the slightest bit in control.

---

So I definitely want to circle back to what you said about how the show started out with everything you like in a story, because oof, yeah, I felt that. I felt that hard in the finale. Coming off the impact of the incredible storytelling in 1.07, and the queer jokes and campy Wicked cosplay balancing out the sad, I think many of us spent the next week expecting some kind of emotional resolution that probably involved the remaining coven banding together in some more of that found family we've felt them becoming along the way.

Here's where things starts going wrong, right off the bat: they don't. Instead, they splinter. Not only are you aware of just how few of them are left (Jen, Billy, Agatha), but Jen and Agatha can't handle Lilia's death. Jen's distraught. The close up on Agatha running away out of the trial and back onto the Road, alone, shows her looking hunted and wild in her guilt. Everything that follows has its seeds in that moment of rending that began with Lilia's death.

From the beginning, the point has been that Agatha Harkness is a covenless witch. It's something we've seen her revel in - maybe simply because she has no choice but to own it. But the fact is that here, for the first time in centuries, she had a coven. She didn't intend to have one - she intended to kill them all in her basement and not think twice about them again. But events transpired the way they did. They became her coven. And one by one, they all died on the Road.

Rio, of course, has the words to cut right to the quick: "Your coven is shrinking," she teases Agatha cruelly. Agatha looks wild - because she's right. The worst thing is that she killed Alice - and she didn't mean to. She didn't want to. But she did, and in exactly the same way she'd intended to kill her at the beginning, the same way she's been killing witches for hundreds of years. "Your coven is shrinking," and it's Agatha's fault. It's Agatha's coven. It's Agatha's coven.

Hold on to that, too.

---

One of the things that I've been mulling over most is Agatha's character. She's so much fun in the beginning. We're all fucking charmed by her. We also don't have the full context of just how much of a serial killer she is.

So for me, at least, watching 1.08 and not only not getting found family, but getting an Agatha so far away from a "redemption" story that she only just barely is willing to not sacrifice Billy for herself, was kind of a rude awakening. Agatha's a lot more of a villain that I was prepared for. Surprise!

Agatha's so far away from "redemption", in fact, that she's only just barely starting to feel empathy for other witches. She's just starting to be affected by people who aren't #1. And that's a trauma response. And it's so, so, so deeply rooted in her that she's only just starting to be able to conceive of the idea of people who care for her. Of the possibility of being able to live in community. She's not ready for a redemption arc. There was no way that the kind of redemption arc she'd need could fit into nine episodes, because so much of it would for her be predicated on a mental shift that Agatha just hasn't arrived at yet. She's still so angry. She's still so traumatized. She's done almost none of the work. And even at the end, even with the final gesture of sacrificing herself for Billy, that's not a final act of redemption, oh Agatha's now a good person/forgiven/insert word frame of choice.

What this show did in terms of redemption for Agatha was set her up to be in a place where she might want it - where she might want to do and be better for Billy, and someday, for Nicky.

And it's significant that that point comes for Agatha in dying… and after death.

---

This show is about death. The Road is about death. Death is a character on the show.

Like, okay, you're saying. Fine. But what about my gay fun times? What about my queer romance, my found family?

And please know that I'm there with you.

I'm not hugely in touch with what the larger fandom is saying and how they're reacting because I have my little echo chamber here on tumblr and a few friends who have actual social media, but even here I get the sense that we're all kind of :/ for fairly similar reasons. What happened to the show I fell in love with?

And for me, the last few days, I think it's been important to realize that the fact that the show I fell in love with didn't suddenly become a different show. It didn't pull a bait and switch. No twists were in bad faith. Everything has been right here in the text of the show from the very beginning.

And I think it's important to see the story that Jac Schaeffer et al. were actually telling vs. our expectations of what they were telling, or worse, what we wanted them to tell. For just one example, I was convinced we were going to see Alice again - maybe Lorna Wu, too. I wasn't expecting it to be for the sole purpose of recognizing that not only is she dead, but to give Alice herself the space to say that it wasn't fair, that she wasn't ready, that she'd just broken her family's curse, that now she can really do something with her life! Because, ugh, yeah! It's not fair, for all those reasons! But that's also death. Likewise, Sharon's just dead, and worse, her death was pretty much meaningless. Lilia rediscovered herself again, and she chose her death to save everyone else - extremely meaningful. But at the end - she's just dead. We don't see her again. She's gone. She, like the others, walked the Road and away with Death.

I loved these covenless witches. I loved them finding themselves together. I loved them bonding around the campfire and discovering community. I miss them all, so so much. But they told us from the beginning how haunted by death all of them were: Alice and her mom, Lilia and her coven in Sicily, Billy and William Kaplan, Agatha and her son and her ex-lover. And of course, Death herself. Forget haunting these individuals - she came to actually join the temporary coven. Like, fuck. They told us what this show was about.

---

This show is about death, but it's more complicated than that: we'll take our cue from Rio again, who, in being Death, is also the original Green Witch. In short, this show is about Green Craft, "growth and decay in constant flow."

So yes - almost every single witch in the coven dies. Yes, it's permanent. No, the queer romance isn't resolved happily. No, Agatha doesn't have a redemption, satisfying or otherwise. And no, none of it follows what we've come to expect from found family story trajectories.

But the focus shouldn't be solely on the decay. There's a whole cycle of growth coming up after it, even now, and it's being made possible by the death and decay that we just witnessed. And most importantly, it's confirmed that this isn't the end of the story - just the end of "Agatha All Along."

---

I'll finish by actually answering your question - I've been sitting with the finale for a few days, because I also felt weird about it. And I think that's the right word: "Weird." Very spooky season-esque, first of all, but also not tipping all the way right into "bad".

The first thing to acknowledge is that no story is perfect - they were limited by nine episodes by what they had the space to show, and finales are really hard to get just right. The second is that you're allowed to not like any or all of it, especially when something happens that asks you to change your entire understanding of the story thus far, i.e. the Road isn't real, or when you have a particular trauma around death and it turns out that that's what the whole show is about in ways we hadn't fully realized. The third is that it's worth sitting with stories sometimes and seeing how they marinate and develop in your brain and your soul over time. All of these things can and should coexist.

This isn't my first go-round with a series finale that initially made me ???, so I was fortunate in that I felt like I had a cheat sheet. I've still got some marinating to do to see how this continues to change for me. But it's helped me to realize that my ??? reaction is what the story wanted me to have - that the characters are reeling right along with me. Not just Alice in shock about her death, but also Billy at the implications of his creation of the Road regarding his responsiblity for what happened on it. We're meant to feel this way… and then we're meant to reconsider the journey we've been on, the Road we've walked with all of them and the death we've died alongside them, and see it anew for what it really is.

[stoically]

i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

[stoically]

video ive been thinking about for days

[stoically]

Here's a comic I made for Halloween! It's sorta like Power Rangers but with casual swearing

[stoically]

I know it's no longer a novel observation how the entire internet is enshittified now but it's still shocking that so many of the things we depend on had such a sudden and marked decline in quality.

Google results are mostly ads. Facebook is 90% ads, 10% domestic terrorists. Twitter is... well, not Twitter and it's only good for Nazis to yell at each other in the hopes they make .0004 cents per tweet. Instagram is ads. TikTok is misinformation central. YouTube serves forty-seven ads per second of videos watched.

Every news article is behind a paywall, and some of them are just AI-text garbled from someone else's much better article, also behind a paywall.

AI art has made it impossible to find images you want. It's also exploded the use and potential use of misinformation. Your data is now being fed to generative AIs to make cheap slop that only makes information harder to find and source.

Everyone wants you using their app instead of a web browser so that you aren't allowed to block the 3,487 ads per page that have to load.

Amazon is full of fake or low-quality dupes of the things you actually want to buy. Netflix and other streaming services are raising prices, cutting available shows, and erasing the existence of shows in order to avoid paying writers. Art hosting sites such as DeviantArt allow your work to be scraped for NFTs and generative AI without your consent or any form of compensation. Spotify has demonetized over 80% of their tracks and pays the rest astoudingly low, worse than the other streaming services which also underpay.

Everything is a subscription service which means not only are you paying for the same product in perpetuity but you never technically own any tool you use and your right to use it can be revoked at any time. Everything has to be a "smart" product so when the business inevitably folds and/or the servers shut down, your product no longer works. Hope it's not something you need!

Every company no longer accepts phone calls but routes you through a series of automated messages until finally dumping you off to an overworked and underpaid person who has no power to help you. Speaking of phones, you can't use them for calls. There are so many robocallers and scams that no one in their right mind picks up the phone anymore. Texts are going the same way. No one wants to dig through 100 scam messages to find the one from the person they actually want to talk to.

It's all just the inevitable end result of capitalism. It doesn't have to be this way. But there needs to be regulation, and fast, or the "Dead Internet Theory" will no longer be a fringe theory.

[stoically]

There have been so many “jd vance says something incredibly creepy about women” clips surfacing I’ve genuinely lost count

[stoically]

Me: The problem is I’m a lesbian.

My therapist: Um, that doesn’t sound like a problem?

Me: No, it is. I have a fear of accidentally cutting someone if a knife is too close to a throat.

My therapist: Oh you poor dear, you’re going to be alone forever.

Me: *crying* I’ve never been flirted with and I don’t know if I should be happy or sad about it.

My therapist: Have you considered archery?

You couldn't handle this. Mm, you'd be surprised.

Agatha All Along (2024) The 100 (2014 - 2020) House Of The Dragon (2022 - ) Killing Eve (2018 - 2022) Jennifer's Body (2009) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003) Black Sails (2014 - 2017) Lucifer (2016 - 2021) Once Upon a Time (2011 - 2018)

[stoically]

This.

[stoically]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

[stoically]

since tumblr is where i indulge my marianas trench fixation...

force of nature tour - 9/30/24

on one hand, i wish i'd been a fan in time to witness the suspending gravity tour [or during fix me (2006) and the pop-punk beginnings, but for the sake of emphasis it's reasonable examples only]. on the other, my dislike of haven (2024) made it so easy to be normal during the vip q&a session and photo op for which i splashed out.

or as normal as i get. i did ask a question, going full meta-writing nerd for the occasion. i find your music to be rich with the theme of 'the stories we tell ourselves' and how they're informed by classic narrative structures. what were some of the formative stories that have shaped your worldview?

since there was a novel in my back pocket that the band might have noticed when we were posing for the commemorative picture, i felt i had done a decent job establishing myself among fellow audience members. no matter how level-headed you are about parasociality, it's a good feeling to Concretely Exist to artists you admire for a short time and no matter how shallowly the concrete is poured.

josh ramsay is also fucking good at his job of playing to the audience, and i was in a particularly dance-y section of the front rows that got its fair share of attention. live music, you magic-ass phenomenon.

speaking of how live music alters and anchors your relationship with its recorded counterpart, i'd been low-key dreading haven (2024) being the point of the setlist but, more than once, i was pleasantly surprised by their choices and had a good time. "turn and run" i hadn't been expecting, and i realized i love "into the storm" far more than i'd thought.

for the latter, they had this bubbler going and it looked like snow in the lighting and i kinda got chills about it.

in summation: you got me, boys. i'm looking forward to the next album. i simply won't listen to haven (2024) that often in the intervening years.

[stoically]

I keep meeting artists who complain that Tumblr Is Dead then when I check their blog they've made four posts in six months and all of them were self promo lmao. Influencers whining that "tumblr is useless for engagement" tells me every part of the problem, like sorry you can't just show up and farm this userbase for clicks by waving buzzwords around the way you can on tiktok. This is the Excited About Stupid Things website reblog some shitty fanart or die