Agatha All Along Episode 6 Makes Wanda’s End Even More Tragic

This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 6.

One of the biggest mysteries thus far in Agatha All Along has been who put the magical sigil on Teen (Joe Locke) and why. Because most of us (rightfully) assumed that Teen was Billy Maximoff, many of us also assumed that it was Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), or some version of her across the multiverse, that put the sigil on him. Even though she presumably died during the fall of Wundagore in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it was just enough of a possibility to give us hope that she at least knew he survived in one way or another. But now that we know it wasn’t Wanda who put the sigil on him, it makes her ending even more tragic.

Episode 6 “Familiar By Thy Side” reveals that William Kaplan became Billy Maximoff after dying in a car accident in proximity of the Westview Hex as it was falling and Wanda was saying goodbye to the versions of her sons Billy and Tommy that she had created. The soul of Billy found its way into William’s body, leaving William with no memories of who he was before the accident.

Before this even happens, however, William has the sigil placed on him by Lilia (Patti LuPone), who happened to be working as a fortune teller at his bar mitzvah. After reading his palm and revealing that his life will essentially be split in two, she enters into a trance-like state, one we’ve seen her enter many times before when she has a vision of the future. In her trance, she creates the sigil and slips it into William’s jacket pocket, instantly forgetting him when she snaps out of it. Because the sigil was placed on William before Billy even entered his body, there was no way for Wanda to know that he survived in this universe.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is already a tragic end to Wanda’s story as-is. The nuance and care her character received in WandaVision is notably absent, and she’s portrayed as the absolute villain, cutthroat in her desire to reunite her family. After doing whatever it takes to find her children across the multiverse, the only logical end that this movie sees for her is for her to end her life to vanquish the evil of the Darkhold across the multiverse. But now that we know that Billy survived, and was so close to his mom, even for just a small amount of time, Wanda’s villain turn is all the more devastating. 

This episode also reveals that the Avengers took some responsibility for the Hex, claiming it was a training exercise gone wrong. And yet, none of them bothered to check in on Wanda at all before Doctor Strange shows up asking for her help, as far as we know. It’s no wonder that the Darkhold was able to corrupt her so deeply. She was grieving not just one family, but two, all by herself in the middle of nowhere.

It would have been one thing if Multiverse of Madness happened because Wanda put a sigil on Billy while in the Hex, either on purpose or accidentally since she was still learning how witchcraft works, and then forgot, prompting her search across the Multiverse for her sons. It’s still tragic, but at least we would know that the sigil was there because she was so desperate to protect her boys, to hold onto hope that they would return to her, even as they were fading away from this world.

Lilia placing the sigil on him instead means that when Wanda presumably died, she truly thought her sons were lost to her forever. There was no version of Wanda in this universe that knew Billy survived, pre-sigil or post-sigil. Wanda sacrificed herself at Wundagore because she didn’t think she was worthy of their love anymore, in any universe.

Lilia’s powers are still a bit of a mystery. We know that she seems to slip in and out of time through her visions, sometimes becoming possessed by them, as we saw when she wrote the list of coven members for Agatha. While we still don’t know why she was driven to mark Billy with the sigil, it adds a whole new layer to his story.

Was the sigil meant to protect him from Wanda? Or was it meant to set him on this journey down the Witches’ Road? Maybe a little of both? Whatever the reason, Billy’s story is just beginning, now that he’s free from the sigil that kept him hidden from the world, and Wanda, for so long. If she’s still alive, somehow, this is great news. It means she can find him, and potentially Tommy again if Billy is successful in finding him at the end of the Road. But if this version of Wanda is truly dead, hopefully Billy will find a way to honor both himself and her legacy – the kindhearted mother and hero she wanted to be, not the grief-stricken monster the world now sees her as.