Agatha All Along Episode 7’s Big Death Isn’t as Tragic as It Seems
Agatha All Along episode 7 "Death's Hand in Mine" adds a new, temporal twist on the "no body, no death" rule.
This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 7.
With Disney+’s Agatha All Along being held up as one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings of late, who knew that a campy homage to The Wizard of Oz could be quite so heartbreaking? Following the (expected) reveal that Joe Locke’s Teen was actually the son of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Agatha All Along’s latest episode finally gave Patti LuPone’s Lilia Calderu her trial and revealed the Queen of Cups’ importance.
The clue was in the title of episode 7 “Death’s Hand in Mine,” but more than the long-awaited confirmation that Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is actually the MCU’s own version of Lady Death, it seems like Lilia is the latest member of the coven to leave the Witches’ Road in a body bag. Before you start lamenting the loss of the fan-favorite divination witch, her “death” might not be all it seems.
After realizing the Wizard of Oz-inspired trial was Lilia’s own, the Sicilian sorceress got caught in a loop of her own memories. Lilia had been coming across a “kooky” all season, but it turns out that her bizarre snippets of dialogue make sense when stitched together. Giving us similar vibes to Lost’s ionic episode, “The Constant,” Lilia is effectively skipping through her memories before eventually arriving at her end on the Witches’ Road. Instead of going with Agatha and the rest of the coven when completing the task, Lilia has one more nugget of foresight and remembers “The Tower reversed.”
While some thought the Tower reversed could be related to Wanda’s death at Mount Wundagore, it led to Lilia saving her friends but sacrificing herself to defeat the Salem Seven…or so it would seem. Several viewers on Reddit have spotted that we don’t see Lilia’s body, and although some claim having her impaled on a floor of swords would’ve been too graphic for an MCU series, others are reading further into it. Notably, the fact this episode is Lilia’s trial and the tarot table reads, “Your Path Winds Out Of Time,” is pretty symbolic of her character.
Episode 7 revealed how Lilia’s previous lines, like “Alice, don’t” and “Try to save Agatha,” fit neatly together, although she threw a new one in. Lilia’s parting words of wisdom to Agatha say, “When she calls you a coward, hit the deck.” It’s likely that the “she” is Rio, and with the finale on the way, a fight between the former lovers seems inevitable. How would Lilia know about Agatha’s need to duck unless she’s somehow seen the fight happen? Lilia’s episode ended with a flashback of her learning Rio is Death in the tunnels beneath the Witches’ Road. This moment hasn’t fully played out, suggesting a typical “It’s not your time” twist where Rio will use Lilia to get to Agatha.
The same episode implies that death isn’t all that it seems in this magical branch of the MCU, with others picking up on Billy asking Agatha if Wanda Maximoff is really dead. A typically cryptic Agatha said, “Yes, no, maybe,” further teasing that Elizabeth Olsen could soon be back in action. Agatha confirms she saw a body but makes it clear even she’s not sure whether the W. Maximoff body from episode 1 was actually Wanda or just part of her spell. We know Rio is there to collect the “bodies” of those who die on the Witches’ Road, but not what happens to them afterwards. Who’s to say there’s even a body when it comes to Lilia? Looking at an interview between The Wrap and Agatha showrunner Jac Schaeffer, the latter confirmed Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) was definitely dead because we saw the body.
Even if Lilia is dead in a traditional sense, she seems to get some sort of happy ending. Episode 7 ends with Lilia meeting her long-dead Maestra (Laura Boccaletti). The implication is that even though her trial on the Witches’ Road is her death, it’s not a fixed point in time. This would also explain why Maestra is so willing to accept death if she knows it’s not the definitive end. We’ve seen Doctor Who pull this off with Alex Kingston’s River Song. Just because she died the first time audiences and the Doctor met her, the series’ “timey wimey” nature made her a regular. Responding to the Lilia theory, one Redditor suggested: “She explains that the flow of time is an illusion. We see her go back to her childhood after her death. Does her consciousness technically just bounce around forever to some extent?”
Despite fan hopes for more from LuPone, Lilia giving each of her partners one last weapon adds to the sense that Lilia’s journey has come to an end. Alongside the “duck” comment, she gives Billy back his spellbook and reminds Jen she’s the High Priestess. All of these are likely to gain a new meaning in the finale, suggesting that even if she is dead, Lilia lives on in all of them. If Lilia is gone, at least she goes out on her own terms, saying, “I loved being a witch.” Even though we’re not ready to say goodbye to LuPone’s brief time in the MCU just yet, there’s a small chance we haven’t seen the last of Lilia Calderu just yet.
The two-part Agatha All Along finale premieres Wednesday, October 30 at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.