Agatha All Along's two-episode finale delivered heaps of exciting twists and turns, not to mention a hefty number of revelations that set the stage for future stories.
Variety recently caught up with showrunner, writer, and director Jac Schaeffer to break down "Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End" and "Maiden Mother Crone." The trade learned more about both the decisions made and whether we were ever going to see characters like Tommy Maximoff and Mephisto.
Schaeffer confirms that they decided Billy created the Witches' Road "about a month into the writers' room" and explains, "We had already been circling this idea that Agatha had walked the Witches’ Road with her son, that he was perhaps buried on the road. But then Giovanna Sarquis’ had this idea of Agatha singing the 'Ballad' on the road with Nicky, and it all started to slot into place."
"Billy made the road, Agatha did in fact walk a road, but it was a real road in nature with her son, and he’s the one who came up with the 'Ballad.' She took the 'Ballad' and turned it into a con."
That con saw Agatha deliver body after body to Death, all while she became more powerful and avoided being reunited with her son in the afterlife. The romance between her and "Rio Vidal" is hinted at throughout the series and culminates with a kiss, but there were once plans to show us more of their past.
"We had these really pretty visuals of Agatha killing people and then seeing Rio across the bodies, like that line, 'They met over corpses.' I mean, I saw it in my mind. It was really beautiful and also quite funny. And then the room took it in a direction that then they lived together in a cottage, and we talked at length about it, to the point of, 'Is Rio Nicky’s father?' We went down those paths, and they were very gratifying to explore."
As for how is Nicholas Scratch's father, Schaeffer refused to confirm anything. "That’s a story for another day, but ultimately for me, it’s irrelevant in this story. The truth is that even if I did have an answer, I don’t cover it in this property. So it is fodder for a story for another day, that I maybe don’t have control over."
It's that final run-in with Death that seals Agatha's fate and, for the writer and director, the villain becoming a ghost was always the plan in this series.
"We knew she would be a ghost from the very, very beginning of developing the show. It was always that we were going to end her as a ghost. She’s not in the comics really very much at all, and when she is in the comics, she’s often a ghost. So it was like, 'This is where we’re going.' I think when she is her best, she is a mentor. That’s what she’s meant to be."
Agatha All Along ends with Agatha and Billy setting off to find Tommy Maximoff after Wiccan finds his spirit a new body. While Schaeffer confirms that they considered casting an actor to play Speed, they ultimately decided against it while Marvel Studios figures out the speedster's future.
As for the body Billy sends his twin to, the showrunner says, "We wanted to hint at, 'This is kind of a rush job, that he finds the closest best body in this moment, and it’s not a good place.' That sequence was written by Peter Cameron. There’s a lot of story economy in setting up the promise of Tommy, who we will hopefully see in a later property. We had to keep it simple."
"We know that he needs to be about Billy’s age, and it needs to be a death of a young person that is tragic, and we want it to be visual. We thought the drowning in the water would be cinematic, but also afford us the opportunity to obscure him."
Mephisto, meanwhile, may have been namedropped during the course of this story but Schaeffer never considered giving him a role in Agatha All Along.
"I hope this doesn’t upset anyone, but Mephisto has never interested me. But we have an early, early document that included him in a potential antagonist, but I don’t remember ever really taking that seriously. And also, within the MCU, logistically, it wasn’t right for our show. I will say, it was not my intention to toy with anyone with the Mephisto stuff."
Finally, asked about why Agatha All Along doesn't have a post-credits scene, she confirmed, "That’s a Marvel decision. I know nothing more than that...I wrote a number of tags, because you always do on every Marvel everything. I love writing tags. I was told that we weren’t going to do a tag on this show. That doesn’t affect my work, or my vision for the show."
All episodes of Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.