#also Lorna using the song as a way to protect her own child

[fixated-on-something]

Hhhghghghggh Agatha making the ballad with Nicky the deaths of thousand of witches caused directly by the literal representation of her grief for her son… Billy making the road real in the same way that Nicky made it real initially… my blood my flesh my bone… mother maiden crone… down down down the road… down the witches road… are you walking this road alone? We walk the windy road. But I can’t heal you. I can’t protect you. I cant divine when she’ll return. Who’s she? Rio is death. No one in history has had special treatment like you. You call what you did to me special treatment? You gave me nothing. You only took. Please, my love! I need more time, please I want more time! This can’t be the end- This has to be the beginning! I broke the curse I can actually do something with my life now! I killed them all. I’m a murderer. You’re just like your mother. Is this how Nicky died? Agatha am I killing this boy so my brother can live? No, Billy.

Sometimes boys die.

[child-of-the-danube]

MASSIVE AGATHA ALL ALONG SPOILERS SO SKIP IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE EPISODE

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Time to yap, my sisters in the craft 🔮🧙🏻‍♀️

Positives of the final two episodes:

1. Jen finally being free

2. Agatha showing she actually learned from her coven in her final battle with Rio - she used Alice's protection spell, Jen's moon water spell and listened to Lilia's advice about hitting the deck

3. The parallels of Agatha and her coven:

- She was in the same situation as Lorna. A mother who knew her child was doomed from the start and did everything in her power to protect them and keep them alive for as long as she could, only for it to be fruitless in the end. And despite it being fruitless, the children did feel the love and were aware of the sacrifice, and sometimes that is enough. Alice and Nicky's memory will forever live through the songs their mothers made for and with them. The memory of their love outlived both them and their children and will keep on living on for long after.

- She chose to give her life for someone she just met but clearly felt strongly for the same way Lilia did. A lifetime of running from Death. A lifetime of collecting knowlegde for it to appear useless. A lifetime of seeing Death everywhere, of being persued by her, of being lonely and heartbroken with grief. And then going out by embracing Death by your own will to give another a chance and do at least once what you failed to do for centuries - protect.

- Her and Billy making a story come to life out of love and grief for their family. She set the foundation and he made it come to realisation. Both took away from others but only one gets be exempt from the consequences and able to achieve what they were after from the start.

4. Agatha being the happiest she's ever been when Nicky was with her

5. The acceptance in her voice when she says "Sometimes...boys die"

6. The fact that the dandelion seed in Nicky's hair that she kept for centuries saved her in the final trial oh my god 😭 😭

7. Agatha's love for Nicky being so strong that a silly little song they made together became world known. "You...I made from scratch" AAAAAAAAAAAAA

8. She calls her power "my purple" cause Nicky called it so 💔💔

9. THE KISS

10. Showing that it was Agatha's desire to keep Nicky alive and later on when he died her grief turning her to addiction that caused her to become this famous witch killer. She was never purely evil. What she did was, and it is not an excuse, but still. The parallels between her and Wanda being ready to destroy entire worlds and lives just to get their children back... A mother's love can make whole valleys bloom but it can also make mountains crumble to dust and my heart is not ok

11. Agatha doing for Billy what she couldn't do for her own son. Giving him a chance to live

12. Ghost Agatha's first move being annoying her adoptive son lmao

13. The road's entrance becoming a memorial to Sharon, Alice and Lilia

14. Billy getting the wake up call that he is not so different from Agatha or Wanda. His grief created a literal death trap and consequently killed Sharon, Alice and Lilia, even if Agatha is telling him Alice was her doing and Lilia was by her own choice

15. Agatha finding her purpose as a mentor in death

Negatives:

1. We were cheated out of a proper Agatha and Rio backstory. How did they meet? How did they fall in love? What happened in the centuries between Nicky's death and entering the road? How often did Rio come to Agatha for Agatha to be so clear about the one thing she wants when she passes being not seeing Rio? She is Death's only exception, only love, only scar. WE DESERVED MORE!!! How did Agatha bag a literal god????

2. Once again, a story that started out and was marketed as a story of women ends up being just means to help a man's story build up. I mean, I should have expected that but still leaves a bitter taste. Wiccan is an interesting character but I feel cheated out of knowing more about Jen. I wanted her backstory before being bound. I wanted Agatha pre-Salem trial and post Nicky's death for more than a power draining sequence through the ages. I wanted Agatha and Rio developing this bond that held up for 300 years. I wanted the Salem Seven to be more than a 5 second threat. Billy will get his own show anyway, like come on.

3. In connection to that, I know this one is a very subjective sentiment and I understand completely but it still pisses me off to no end. The fact that these witches, these centuries old women, who all had being covenless, lonely and in dire situations with their powers in common, went on this death wish trip with someone they didn't like at all as a last resort and got what they were lacking, learned to care for eachother, got their powers back, and that Agatha had the possibility to finally have a family and people genuinely care for her, turned out to be practically worthless in the end cause they had like 5mins of it is making me go insane. Alice said it best: "This is it? I was finally able to do something with my life and this is all the time I get?". The only one, aside Jen, coming out alive and having time to bask in the glow of his new-found power AND have the chance to do something with it is a fucking teenage boy who already got the privilege of cheating Death and the privilege of his family members still be somewhere out in reach to search for. The finale said "your life, struggles and resolution were just means to get someone else ahead". Call me a misandrist, so be it, but I'm fucking tired. Is one story where women are the focus and have a happy ending so fucking much to ask for????

4. THE KISS cause at what cost??? I repeat, this was the fastest, literal, bury your gays move I've ever seen. We knew it couldn't possibly end well, but damn. However, kudos to Kathryn and Aubrey making it so hungry and desperate, but also soft and real and full of emotion.

5. Billy being a dick and wanting to send Agatha back to "Rio's toxic embrace" like he didn't just watch her give up her life for him and tell her that she's "not that bad". My boy, you are truly strange in your holier than thou attitude sometimes

[malfiora]

Motherhood in WandaVision, Doctor Strange 2, & Agatha All Along

Many, many spoilers ahead

Summary

Starting with the obvious: Wanda creates her and Vision's twins, Billy and Tommy, entirely from her own imagination. After losing them when she takes the hex down, she embarks on a quest to bring them back to life, even if it means tapping into dark forces and killing anyone who stands in her way, as we see in Doctor Strange

During the events of WandaVision, Monica attempts to connect to Wanda, empathizing with her grief over Vision through her own loss of her mother Maria.

As an inverse of Wanda, America Chavez's mothers sacrificed themselves to save her, now making her an orphan as she dimension hops. Wanda initially tries to abduct America to use her powers, and America stops her by bringing her to an alternate universe in which the twins are afraid of her and call out to their timeline's version of Wanda.

Around this time, Billy's soul takes over William Kaplan's body, and while he doesn't remember anything else before that moment, he knows he needs to save his twin Tommy, whose soul is lost. He seeks Agatha to access The Road, which is rumored to grant any who completes it whatever they want. Along the way, Agatha learns who he is.

Billy rejects the idea that Wanda is his mother, claiming he already has a mom (implying William's mother), and Agatha plays along. Still, Billy's reality manipulation and Wiccan costume match Wanda's.

Not long before this, Alice Wu-Gulliver is able to break her family's curse and learns along the way that her rockstar mother's rendition of The Witch's Road ballad was actually a spell to keep Alice safe since her mother couldn't protect her from the curse.

At the end of Agatha All Along, we see that Agatha conceived of her son Nicholas Scratch by herself ("from scratch") but he was doomed to die young. She kills witches to feed him for as long as she can but Rio (Death) inevitably comes to him. It is Nicky's song that sparks the rumor of the Witch's Road, which Agatha uses to trick other witches to steal their power.

Agatha admits to Billy that she is afraid to face Nicky in the afterlife, and that he reminds her of Nicky. They walk off together to "go find Tommy."

Analysis

Grief (defined here as the response to the loss of a loved one characterized by sadness and/or anger and similar emotions) acts as a unifier and motivation. The mishandling of grief leads characters (Wanda, Agatha) to cause suffering to others and steal resources to protect or bring to life their loved ones. Both characters are redeemed by the empathy of another grieving character, usually a grieving child (Monica, Billy, America).

This manifests in grieving parent/grieving child relationships that then lend to a found family dynamic: Monica and Wanda, America and Wanda, Billy and Agatha. Despite Billy claiming that he doesn't see Wanda as his mother (most likely indicating that he sees William Kaplan's mother as his true parent), he still falls into this dynamic, first by default and then willingly.

Motherhood is also tied to sacrifice. On one hand, we have mother figures who sacrifice themselves to save or protect their children: Lorna dedicated her life to protecting Alice, America's mothers helped her escape their dying world, and even Maria can be seen as having sacrificed herself since she built up SWORD while dying thus enabling Monica's career path. On the other, we also have mothers forced to sacrifice their children: Wanda must release the twins as she lets down the hex, and Agatha eventually loses Nicky. This divide evenly splits the mothers who are seen as heroes and the mothers who are deemed villains.

And finally we have rejection. For some characters, this means rejection of their self; for others, it's a rejection of their mothers. For Billy, these are almost the same thing: he denies Wanda as his mother while also questioning his identity. This might be because Wanda has hurt many people and Billy didn't want to identify with that.

Alice initially rejects her mother's career and belief in The Road, believing that the obsession drove her mad. Upon learning the truth, she accepts everything, which empowers her to break her family's curse.

On the alternate Earth in Doctor Strange 2, Wanda's rampage is only stopped by her fear of rejection from her children.

And of course, Evanora rejected Agatha centuries ago, claiming that Agatha was born evil. This is most likely why Agatha acts like a villain: she was told from the beginning that that's all she is. We can see in her repeated pleas to her mother that she "can be good" that Agatha longed for her mother's acceptance, or at least to be spared her wrath, but she never got it. Interestingly, Agatha's parenting of Nicky is exactly the opposite. She cherishes her son, dotes on him, even refuses to get upset and comforts him when Nicky disobeys her.

In a nutshell, the MCU places motherhood along the continuum of heroism and villainy that is defined by what a character must sacrifice and how they handle their grief. While the depth of emotions surrounding this trope is a shortcut for creating accessibly deep characters, this still feels like a narrow view of femininity. This of course harkens back to Natasha Romanov's abominable character moment in which she claims to be a monster because she can't have children. If the definition of womanhood is the ability to have babies, and then the definition of motherhood is to die or lose, then the MCU is basically arguing that its women are disposable props. Based on how compelling the femme characters since WandaVision have been, this doesn't seem intentional, and in fairness non maternal femme characters (e.g. Rio, Lilia Calderu, Jen) are still given emotional depth and range and interesting arcs. So hopefully Marvel will continue to show motherhood as an aspect of life that can add depth to a character, and not an inevitability fraught with death for all women.

[ismisetk]

Agatha All Along finale thoughts pt. 3!

Spoilers…

If someone interrupted me like that after I just finished burying my child and I had the power/backstory Agatha had, I’d con/kill them too.

“The truth is too awful” - it isn’t that losing Nicky to natural causes is worse than willingly trading him for the darkhold, it’s that it was so ordinary and she wasn’t strong enough to stop it. “Sometimes, boys die.” She knows deep down that she got more time than what was promised and she hates herself for wanting him too much. For being so human and vulnerable. And she turned the song they had made together into something that helped do the one thing he had asked her to stop doing.

No wonder Agatha was able to figure out Lorna’s ballad was a protection spell so quickly - she probably cried the first time she heard it. It was always about mothers guiding their children to a safer destination than they themselves had came from.

Alice’s death was sad but it was also so very real. We don’t always get the chance to live our lives. And sometimes people die in the protection of others because they are truly that selfless and brave.

I really don’t think she knew it was Jen that she had bound. The way she spoke to Jen when she was panicking, how she talked about leaving her alone because what she was doing was important. Agatha’s first wound was her mother and the last one she allowed to be inflicted on her was losing her son. She doesn’t mess with mothers and their children. Even with Wanda - I believe she was genuine in offering to fix Wanda’s spell so she could live with her kids and Vision. She wanted to teach Wanda how to control her magic and keep the family she had created out of chaos.

Agatha gave birth in the middle of the woods, all alone, and yet she still silenced herself? She must have been terrified. She’s clearly left some place in the middle of labor, was she chased out of town?

Agatha can be good, but even when she isn’t, she is still worthy of love. But no one has shown her that, except Nicky. Even with Rio, I think Agatha believes their relationship to be transactional. Agatha gives her bodies, Rio loves her. I’m not saying that’s correct but I think it’s what Agatha views as the core of their relationship. Especially after the night Nicky died when she didn’t provide the witches.

She isn’t a hero, but I don’t think she is a villain. At least not anymore. I think she has no idea who she is without her magic and reputation shrouding her or the darkhold corrupting her. The only times she didn’t have those, she was a scared young girl or a mother on borrowed time.

I think she turned around at the end because she was just so tired. She got all her power back but if she left Billy to die then she would be throwing back all the growth she had gained through walking the road. I think she’s self-aware enough to realize that even if the road wasn’t real, she was still changed by the experience. She uses the advice/expertise of her coven members, she doesn’t drain Billy dry. As she’s walking away I think it crystallizes that she can get peace on her own terms rather than give into her darkest instincts. No it wasn’t how Nicky died, there was nothing to be done for that, she realizes she truly couldn’t save him and neither could Rio. However, she can save this boy. She thinks it’ll make Nicky proud, or at least start to make a dent in what she perceives to be her list of faults that she’s added to since his death. I also think it was her way to show Rio that she forgave her.

When she says she can’t face him, I still believe that. She has had hundreds of years without him, betraying his memory in her mind, but there is still a boy who she can help. She knows Nicky is safe with Rio.

She is absolutely hilarious and should have some down time to just chill tf out and go to therapy.