There are just two episodes left of Marvel’s Agatha All Along and as we come to the end of The Witches’ Road, it’s hard not to notice that there’s something just a little unusual about it. We’re not talking the witchiness of it all. This is, after all, a magical path so a little bit of witchy strangeness is expected. No, the oddness in question here has more to do with fine details and the trials and, specifically, how they all seem to tie back to Billy. The deeper we get on the journey (and now that we’ve gotten a glimpse into Billy’s life as William Kaplan), the more we notice that The Witches’ Road and its trials seems to reflect Billy’s tastes and preferences and it’s making us wonder: is the road real at all or could this all be part of some new elaborate Westview hex that Wanda Maximoff’s son doesn’t know he’s creating in the first place?
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Now, even from the beginning Agatha Harkness’ experience with the Road has been suspect — we’ve theorized that she’s lying about having done it. After all, her being the only known survivor pretty much makes it easy for her to just assert her success because no one is there to challenge her, but when we really look at how the coven came together and got this whole party started — particularly just how involved in the whole process Billy actually was — it seems more like the reality of the Road has always been in question. Each of the other witches knew of the Road, but thought it was a myth — Alice and Agatha both even said so — but it’s Billy who convinces them it’s real and they should walk it.? More than that, when the coven tries to open the road, they don’t seem to have much luck but it’s when Billy is in danger that things really pop off and he’s the first to head down the path and onto it. He also seems to know the most about the road and while we’ve been shown how obsessive he is in his research as it is linked to his identity, to know that much about the Road seems unusual.
The Case for The Witches’ Road Being a Hex
The real “clues” that the Road could be something of Billy’s creation comes in when you closely look at the trials and how each one seems to line up with aspects of Billy’s interests and tastes. While each trial is focused on a different witch, they all seem to have some influence from Billy. The first trial lines up with Jen’s brand aesthetic, which is something that we saw in the flashback to Billy’s life as William Kaplan that Billy admired and was interested in. The second trial is centered around Lorna Wu and her Ballad, but the flashback also revealed that Billy is a bit of a Lorna Wu superfan who had her records and was apparently pretty regularly spinning them, particularly Lorna’s Ballad. The third trial is 80s horror film themed and, again, in the flashback, we are shown that Billy is a horror fan. Then, the most recent trial, the 4th, features fictional witches — notably Maleficent and both the Wicked Witch and Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz.
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You already know where we’re going with this: Billy has depictions of The Wizard of Oz and its witches in his bedroom. But it isn’t just the aesthetics of each trial that are very Billy-coded. Billy also seems to have some sort of innate mastery of each trial. He’s the person who figures out what they need to do each time and he’s also the one who is more or less always solving them in some fashion. That isn’t to say that each trial isn’t truly for the different members of the coven, but Billy seems to be very connected to each one in some fashion. Deviating from the trials, the Road also doesn’t seem to really conform to any real rules. There were no actual consequences for Lilia and Jen when they were tossed off of it. Rio came onto the road by being summoned, which doesn’t appear to be how one is supposed to access The Witches’ Road at all, and perhaps even more curious is that Jen spotted an exit: the unfinished transit system underneath Westview. For a Road that is supposed to be an all-encompassing journey once you embark on it, having an exit seems odd, but it does seem like something that might exist if the Road is actually a spell. Maybe Billy wanted there to be an “out” if things reached a certain point.
Does Billy Know It’s a Hex?
With so many elements of The Witches’ Road being very Billy-coded and connected to him in some way, it’s hard to not to wonder is the whole thing is a creation of his own magic that he’s not really aware he’s creating. It is possible that there is a real Witches’ Road that the myths and stories came from, but this one may be a hex, something created out of Billy’s own need. Agatha even tells Billy he’s so much like his mother and we know that it’s Wanda’s unwitting creation of a sitcom world for herself that led to all of this in the first place. It isn’t a stretch to consider that Billy, experiencing his own heightened emotions and having a desperate need for answers about himself and his brother, Tommy, may have accidentally willed this version of the Road into reality. He may even very well believe this this is all real; after all, Billy doesn’t really know how to use his powers. It’s an element that makes this all the more interesting. It is also worth noting that being able to create his own Witches’ Road is something that is very. much in the scope of his abilities. One of Billy’s powers in comics is reality warping — which really is a like mother, like son situation.
If the Road really is a manifestation of Billy’s magic, there are a lot of implications. First, it makes the deaths of Mrs. Hart, Alice, and even Lilia more profound and even more heartbreaking. It also would tie into the conversation between Agatha and Billy about witches being willing to kill other witches for their own goals — something Billy said he wouldn’t do but now seems less likely. It also makes one question what will happen when we get to the end of the Road. When Wanda was faced with the reality of what she was really doing with the hex, it was devastating. If we get to the end of the Road and realize this was all Billy’s creation, it could be devastating for him as well and there’s no way of knowing how he would react to that. It could also, however, work into another theory that we’ve floated previously about Agatha All Along being a redemption story for the titular witch. If it turns out that this Road really is a hex that Billy has created, Agatha has an opportunity to do the right thing and help guide Billy, rather than antagonize her the way she did Wanda. It opens up a chance for Agatha to be better, which could end up being where this whole path has been headed the whole time.
Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive Wednesdays at 9pm ET.
