Our heroes’ journey on the Witches’ Road continues in episode five of the Marvel Disney+ show, “Darkest Hour/Wake Thy Power.”
The latest entry begins with a fox, crow, snake, and owl prowling the forest floor of the now very blue-hued Witches’ Road. Giving significant Endor-meets-Dagobah vibes, the animals pass behind trees to cost effectively transform into four-sevenths of the Salem Seven, who, wisely or not, have somehow found a way to pursue the coven into their life or death trial. The black-robed figures then peel back their hoods to reveal… masks. They do look cool, however, and writhe around like ferrets in wood chips to sniff out their quarry.
Lilia, having a premonitory dream, awakens the rest of the group to inform us the Salem Seven have indeed arrived through “a door left open” by last week’s summoning spell to invite Rio. It’s here we learn the Seven are the children of Agatha’s original slaughtered coven, who became “a feral, hive-minded” band of shapeshifters on a crusade of vengeance against Agatha. “The moral of the story is always finish what you started,” Agatha quips, before adding, “also, mercy is overrated.”
Realizing they’re surrounded, Teen suggests a “hexenbesen” (a spell that would traditionally transform a broom into an improvised aircraft, but any sort of tree growth will do) which the rest of the group immediately dismisses as corny. They give in, however, and perform a cute ritual where they create and share their own modified tree roots with one another like a crafting circle, before taking off in a scene reminiscent of the speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi. While soaring past a humongous “blood moon,” Teen asks, “Why haven’t we be doing this all along?” in a nod to common complaint about the Great Eagles in The Lord of the Rings movies. As if in answer, the Road steers them back to their next trial—a different location this time—and we’re transported to a cabin in the woods, eliciting a 1980s-themed summer camp slasher movie.
Each member of the coven, too, is dressed as if they’re ready for a sleepover with the Wakefield sisters, with Teen’s outfit a nod to his comic book inspiration (keep reading…). While it’s unclear why this trial is 1980s-themed (aside from the fun set dressing, I guess?), Rio deduces it must be one specifically tailored for Agatha, as the giant red moon outside indicates “the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest” and “who better to commune with the dead than someone’s whose put so many in the grave?” Sure, let’s go with it.
Naturally, an Ouija board presents itself, and upon reading the rules, we learn “a spirit will be released” if any participating practitioner removes their hands from the planchette. So, who plans to commune with Agatha from the other side? Well, after Agatha does a decent impersonation of Debra Jo Rupp’s late character, Sharon, shit gets real and “D-E-A-T-H” commands she be “P-U-N-I-S-H [E D].”
As the group members sharpen their claws, speculating on the best way to humiliate her, the board seemingly brings forth a demonic force and possesses Agatha. She begins contorting her body, walking on her hands in a backbend like Regan in The Exorcist before seizing Jennifer in a stranglehold. When Lilia turns on the lights, the spirit reveals itself: Evanora Harkness, Agatha’s own mother! She tells the coven they must finish the Witches Road without Agatha, as she was “born evil,” but Rio rejects this. Alice expels Evanora from her host body, but caught in the moment, Agatha instinctually sucks the life force from her coven-mate, killing her.
Around this time, the Ouija board’s planchette begins to spell “N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S-S-C-R-A-T-C-H,” apparently confirming Agatha’s son is indeed dead. Having this confirmed is evidently punishment enough, and the third trial is completed, just after the ghostly voice of a child tells Agatha to “stop” her post-possessive rampage.
Afterwards, we learn Alice is indeed truly, most sincerely dead, and there’s nothing the witches can do to bring her back to life. Teen is outraged by the development, but the rest of the coven appear to take her passing in stride—far more so than when Sharon snuffed it in episode three, strangely. “Death comes for us all,” Lilia shrugs, while Jennifer agrees each member of the group is equally thirsty for power. The idealistic Teen scoffs, “So that’s what it means to be a witch? Killing people to serve your own agenda?” Agatha, doing that thing where she hurts others to protect herself, asks him in an aggressively, sexually-coded way, “Are you sure? You’re so much like your mother.”
Upon hearing this, Teen snaps, overtakes the minds of Jennifer and Lilia and has them grab Agatha and toss her into the mud. As she begins to sink, Teen reveals himself to indeed be Wanda’s magically created son, Billy, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger almost perfectly mirroring the 13th episode of Doctor Who’s “Trial of a Timelord” season, in which Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor is pulled into a pit of quicksand as a future, villainous incarnation of himself stands idly by, watching. We cut to the credits to the strains of Billie Eilish’s ever-popular “You Should See Me In a Crown.”
In the last recap, I opined Alice’s character would have been better served dying at the end of her own bespoke episode, as the feint with the obviously destined-for-greater things Teen being gored by a shard of glass (resolved in minutes) undermined any actual sense of severity the trials present. So much for “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” being a protection spell, I guess? As this is Agatha‘s series, it’s no secret the other members of the coven are meant to be cannon fodder and it’s difficult to imagine that the likes of Alice Gulliver-Wu, Jennifer Kale, or Lilia Calderu will survive to appear in Avengers: Doomsday. It’s also strikingly odd how calm the group is about her death—not only having risked their lives in a literal trial by fire on her behalf just the other day, but also since they collectively lost their shit over the demise of the conscripted Sharon/Mrs. Hall. Then, it was believed they couldn’t finish their journey without a complete coven, but now its anybody’s game? Even if the witches are acting on pure self-interest alone, this is confusing.
On the other hand, it makes sense for the franchise. WandaVision was allegedly a series about overcoming grief, but when we next met the Scarlet Witch in the Doctor Strange sequel, she went on a multiversal killing spree before getting squished by a mountaintop. It doesn’t feel as if anything in these MCU shows have any lasting consequence on the movies, and vice-versa, but now that seems to be creeping into this spinoff-of-a-spinoff on a mere episode-by-episode basis. Still, I’m curious to see how this series resolves, and even more curious to see how it doesn’t impact any sliver of the wider MCU moving forward in the least. That’s witchcraft for you.
There are just four episodes of Agatha All Along to go, with the final two airing back to back on October 30.
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