[Disclaimer: There are a whole bunch of Agatha All Along spoilers below. If you haven’t seen the show yet, or if you haven’t caught the last couple of episodes, you may want to skip this post and go read about the time Kristen Chenoweth trolled me on TikTok. Forewarned is forearmed.]
To be clear, I didn’t hate all of it. I liked how the backstory played out, and I appreciated the explication of Agatha’s convoluted relationship with Rio Vidal. (I’d figured out that Rio was Death a few episodes earlier, when she talked about having to hurt someone she cared about while doing her job. That jumped out at me as significant, even before Funko! Pop ruined the surprise for everyone else. Plus, her name translates to “River of Life,” which is, y’know. Pointed.)
I was also relieved that Jennifer Kale survived the Witches’ Road, and I am not convinced that Lilia Calderu is truly dead. We didn’t see the body, after all, nor did we actually witness Vertigo — who was never clearly identified in the show but kept getting billed in the credits — face-plant on swords with the rest of the Salem Seven. Hopefully, all three of them will reappear in the future.
What I didn’t like was how top-heavy the last episode felt. Granted, it was important for viewers to understand how “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” evolved, and that moment when Agatha had just buried Nicholas Scratch, and another Witch wandered up all, “Hey, looks like you’re grieving or whatever, but I need to make this about me for a sec,” was relatable AF. But because the history ate up so much time, the final scenes between Agatha and Billy felt rushed. We, as the audience, weren’t given much of a chance to process anything before the (current) tale came to a close.
That song, though. An absolute banger. Composed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the powerhouse duo who gave us “Let It Go” and “Remember Me,” the Ballad was an instant classic. Eight different versions were released, and Witches everywhere gobbled them up. Even before it officially appeared at the end of the second episode, it had become the Anthem of Our People, working its way into rituals and acting as an online call of solidarity.
And then the finale dropped, and we learned the real history of the Ballad. It was a con: The Witches’ Road did not exist. But Agatha had developed a reputation as the only Witch to have walked it, so she exploited that to trick other Witches into sacrificing their lives and power to her.
Personally, I thought it was a brilliant twist, although judging by public reactions, a lot of other Witches did not feel the same way. Some were downright horrified that we’d all ascribed esoteric significance to a villainous swindle, and I saw more than a few posts on Threads that were like, “DON’T SING THE SONG, IT’S EVIL.” Which — I’m only a little ashamed to admit — tickled me to the core, because frankly? We kind of deserved the bait-and-switch.
Witches are just as vulnerable to trends and marketing as anyone else, and as a subculture, we have a very bad habit of jumping on unfamiliar but glittery ideas without paying attention to where they came from, or to whom they may have belonged first. And since we don’t take the time to understand the origins of whatever concept we’re co-opting, we crash-land somewhere between disillusioned and furious when we learn the truth: Traditional Witchcraft is not 10,000 years old; our Pagan ancestors didn’t call the Autumnal Equinox “Mabon“; Christians didn’t actually steal Easter; Tarot is not a closed practice. Oftentimes, we end up directing our ire at the misinformation itself, instead of accepting that a little critical thinking would’ve prevented us from chugging it whole.
I’m just saying it wouldn’t have hurt to let the series conclude before unanimously claiming the Ballad as our fight song.
But there’s something getting largely overlooked in the current Agatha discourse, which has important applications for Witchcraft in the real world. Although unaware (as was everyone) that Agatha and Nicky were responsible for the creation of the Ballad, Lorna Wu was able to turn it into a protective spell — one that Alice managed to channel in order to break the curse afflicting her lineage. And there’s a lesson in that: If Lorna could use the Ballad for actual Witchcraft, so can we.
Fiction has always served as inspiration for factual magic, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t let Agatha spark our own creativity. My friend Dave, for example, has been posting Witches’ Road-themed incense and oil recipes on his social media, and the ritual of trading brooms before flight could make an incredibly effective introduction to a group meditation. I mean, hell, the Safe Passages Tarot spread has already taken off, and for those of us who cavort with Underworld deities, the perception of Death as the original Green Witch could have some really cool theological implications.
If we do try incorporate anything from Agatha into our beliefs or practices, though, we need to keep two things in mind. The first is that how something was used in the show doesn’t dictate how we use it. Yes, Agatha employed the Ballad to lure other Witches to their doom, but I promise nothing bad will happen if you hum it before a Sabbat.
That said, the second thing is non-negotiable: Whatever we take from Agatha, we have to — have to — make note of where we found it. I know all things related to the Witches’ Road seem ubiquitous today, but they won’t always be: Misattribution is very much alive and well, and there’s no way to know if future generations of Witches will retain our fondness for Ms. Harkness and her coven, or if they’ll even remember them at all.
Better to be honest in the present than burst the curated bubbles of our descendants. I would hate for a (previously) enthusiastic and idealistic young Witch, decades from now, to stare at her sisters and whisper in a voice cramped with shock and despair:
“It was written… it was written for television.”
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