Agatha all the time

The hand of death in mine

Season 1

Episode 7

Editor's Rating

5 stars

*****

Photo: Disney+

I watched the whole time Agatha all the timeI was thinking about the time I saw Patti LuPone star in the West End Pursue. (Boast.) (Stay with me!) There are so few performers at her level that I didn't mind being so high up on the balcony I could barely see anything. I knew it wouldn't matter as long as I could hear that voice commanding the room from the stage to the ceiling.

When the show finally reached its signature number (“Ladies Who Lunch”), which the entire audience had clearly been looking forward to all along, LuPone did the whole thing without even getting up from her barstool – and her crushed. When she ended the song with the beam-shaking command “everyone RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!”, everyone immediately obeyed. I mean, if Patti LuPone shakes a martini glass in your general direction, you actually have no choice but to do exactly what she says. And so we all stood dutifully and clapped and cheered and lost our minds until the only person in the theater still sitting was LuPone. To understand it, we didn't have to take in the full force of their power.

Until this episode, it felt like I was rooting for a still-sitting LuPone. It's not that she wasn't great, because of course she was. All I knew was that there was no way on this show that she was just shaking a maraca and having random “crazy” outbursts. No, if you're going to hire LuPone, you'd better have something great waiting in the wings that she can grab with both hands and make completely her own. I expected it Agatha to give her this moment, but didn't know how.

That brings us to “Death’s Hand in Mine.” It's an incredibly ambitious chapter, and not just because of its non-linear narrative (which makes it impossible to recap from start to finish, so I won't even try). We find ourselves at a critical moment in the overall trajectory of the series, having just discovered Teen's dual identity and connection to the larger Marvel Universe. This episode manages to integrate this and reveal a completely different, but no less personal story, spanning centuries of fear and pain. It seems that Lilia's lifelong fear of her own divination powers has been building up for so long that she has reached a real breaking point and the only way out is to push through.

After a brief interlude in which Agatha and Teen attack each other again, the episode largely follows Lilia on her scattered journey through time, from the dirty tunnels beneath the street to her own Tarot trial to her very first tea leaf reading class with her maestra (Laura Boccaletti). As written by Gia King and Cameron Squires, it's a nesting doll full of revelations, but also a maze and a series of psychological psycho-outs. It rewinds and rewinds to fill in all the “gaps” in Lilia’s memory, which is a porous place on a good day. However, things got even worse along the way.

It turns out that Lilia experienced a complete mess on the road. She weaves in and out of trials with just enough knowledge of what lies ahead to be afraid, but never stays long enough to really use it. To Lilia's own horror, the last time she felt this way was when she was a teenage witch with no real control over her own powers and could only watch helplessly as her family's coven died of fever. She's been a prisoner of her own fear for so long that she can barely remember the form of her powers without it; The street forces her to embrace everything she is, to spectacular and ultimately deadly effect. “Your job is not to control, but to see,” her maestra tells her. It's permission to unleash a power that has long feared and angered her, but also to look at herself with the same sudden clarity with which she has turned against others for so long.

Lilia's reading of her own tarot page is an important piece of the overall Road puzzle, but “Death's Hand in Mine” also makes it particularly elegant by depicting Lilia's final act of mercy towards herself. It's the LuPone spotlight episode I've been waiting for, and she doesn't even sing a note—an unexpected move in an otherwise very musical show, but one that pays off because her acting is just as nuanced and bold as her voice.

This confidence in his strengths and his vision is the result Agatha all the time In general, it's such a powerful surprise, and Death's Hand in Mine elevates that on more levels than just storytelling. At this point in a franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that's it so hard to develop a very own visual language for each individual project, but AgathaWe achieved it and I have no choice but to respect it. The set alone for Lilia's trial is so lush and spooky that it's easy to forget that they're all standing around dressed as Disney characters. (Jen, roughly made to look like a gnarled version of Snow White's evil stepmother: “I don't want to talk about it.”)

Perhaps it was inevitable that this series would have to evoke its all-powerful parent company, but Jac Schaeffer (who also directed this episode) has found a way to both embrace its Marvel origins and take a different path. We haven't even gotten into the fact that Agatha just goes ahead and confirms that she's queer to anyone without eyes and/or basic deductive reasoning. When she can't answer Teen's biggest question about Wanda (“Is she really dead?”) and Rio (“Where is she?”), she shrugs: “Do you want straight answers?” Ask a straight woman. I have to ask again if the Marvel Powers That Be actually read the scripts for this show! Do you just know? How Is this highly anticipated spin-off gay?! It's just bizarre to see Marvel's official social media accounts posting such blatantly queer #content while the all-powerful Disney parent company seems to (supposedly) be scouring films for anything that might even be remotely gay, but I guess once again it's down for the witches, they couldn't burn to move forward. Disney villains have always been queer anyway.

With that, we truly say goodbye to Lilia and LuPone, both of whom brought something special to this series that will be sorely missed. While Agatha and Teen's emotional turmoil have largely been the show's defining emotional journeys, LuPone takes the opportunity to highlight Lilia's life with both hands here. Her ultimate sacrifice scene is appropriately grand, as Lilia literally turns the entire process on its head by flipping the tower card and sending her and all of the Salem Seven flying up and into the swords waiting on the other side.

But it's her confessions to Jen in the Underground that really struck me. LuPone and Sasheer Zamata both join in, immediately creating a paired dynamic that I'm already missing. When Jen honestly asks Lilia why she ever wanted to hide her own power, she opens the door for Lilia to be honest with herself, perhaps for the first time in her long life. If I had sat on the top balcony for the moment, Lilia snaps that she is “not”. confused“I would have prepared for the standing race.” What a joy to see LuPone letting Lilia rage, whether she's covered in dirt, carrying Glinda, or exchanging quiet wisdom with her Sicilian elder. Seeing LuPone and Lilia finally in their element is a thrill that makes the episode's final twist even more impactful. “Death comes for all of us,” as Lilia told us, and indeed Rio is looking for her.

• So, yes, confirmed: Rio is death, and I have to say: hot! I love her full Grim Reaper look from Dío de los Muertos almost as much as Agatha's. “What can I say? I like the bad boys.” (That's my choice too Kathryn Hahn's Line Reading of the WeekBut as always, I'll accept further nominations in the comments!).

• It's very funny that everyone realizes that Death is “the original Green Witch” while Agatha literally stares at them with bright green face paint. So much for being the most notorious witch on the street.

• Teen wants to know, “Am I Billy or am I William?”, and while I’m pretty sure the answer is “Why not both,” I’ll continue to call him “Teen” for now out of respect for his journey of self-discovery .

• Thrilled that Lilia insists that Jen represents “the path before us.” I feel even more strongly that Jen's obvious potions trial only skims the surface after the deeper emotional revelations of Lilia and Alice's trials, and hope that Zamata gets the spotlight she deserves in the next two (!) episodes .

• Another episode, another banger of an end credits song. “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce is the perfect, bittersweet way to say goodbye to Lilia and LuPone (“There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them.” has / I've looked around enough “I know that you're the one I want to go through time with…”). RIP to a real one, may she read tea leaves in the garden forever.