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It’s been a long time coming, but Agatha All Along finally pulled the curtain back on its other big secret, after revealing that Joe Locke’s Teen is Billy Maximoff, the son of the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Spoilers past this point, but Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) isn’t just THE Green Witch… Rio is Death.
The reveal was unfortunately spoiled a few weeks back thanks to a Funko Pop! package, but viewers of the show seem to have figured it out anyway. Rio has been conspicuously absent — or popping up, literally — when a character dies. She crawled out of Sharon Davis’s (Debra Jo Rupp) grave. Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) practically begged her to not take Teen’s life when he got impaled on some glass. She laughed out loud when the Ouija board in Episode 5, “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power,” said that Death was there with the coven.
In fact, we already saw Rio as the literal avatar of Death once, back in Episode 3, “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials.” There, while the coven was hallucinating thanks to some poisoned wine, Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone) flashed back to her younger years and saw a skull-headed figure in a robe with a scythe. Turns out that wasn’t a metaphor: it was Rio.
It was also Lilia who put it together, while doing a tarot reading for herself — and the coven — when she put together the above clues, and pulled the Death card last. Ee even got to see Rio in her Death garb, in the tunnels under the Witches’ Road.
There’s obviously a lot more to get into here, and it seems like we’ll be flashing back through time in next week’s Episode 8 to discover much more about Rio/Death’s origin, how she met Agatha, and how Agatha’s son Nicholas Scratch fits into all of it. But for now, she’s Death, and all roads lead to her.
It seems dumb to talk about Death as a character, but Lady Death is a character in Marvel Comics, stretching all the way back to 1940’s Marvel Mystery Comics #10. Created by the legends Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, she’s most often seen as a skeletal woman in a robe with a scythe — just as she was seen on Agatha All Along. One of the universal constants, she’s the opposite of her brother, Eternity, who was seen as the being Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) was trying to get to in Thor: Love and Thunder.
While Death has been depicted in multiple ways in the comics, and even by multiple characters including a human named Marlo Chandler, the character is most associated with the villain Thanos. Or more specifically, he is associated with her, as Thanos is in love with Death. The original goal of using the Infinity Gauntlet in the event of the same name was to eliminate half the universe as a tribute to Lady Death to gain her favor — not as a way of culling resources, or whatever Thanos was doing in the MCU.
Usually, she spurns Thanos’s advances — which is why in the end credits scene of Avengers, when one of the characters references that attacking Earth is “to court death” and Thanos smiles… Yeah, that’s why. Since that Thanos/Death relationship wasn’t used in the movies, it’s possible they may do a riff on it here with Agatha and Rio, but we’ll have to wait and see.
As is, one of the biggest characters in Marvel Comics has made their way to the MCU in the form of Rio Vidal, aka Lady Death. Now, how about she kisses Agatha already, huh?
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along premiered September 18 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET on Disney+. It streams weekly, leading up to the two-episode finale on October 30. There are nine episodes, in total.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Agatha All Along, with premiere dates:
Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 1: “Seekest Thou The Road”
Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 2: “Circle Sewn With Fate Unlock They Hidden Gate”
Wednesday, September 25, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 3: “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials”
Wednesday, October 2, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 4: “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You”
Wednesday, October 9, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 5: “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power”
Wednesday, October 16, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 6: “Familiar by Thy Side”
Wednesday, October 23, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 7: “Death’s Hand In Mine”
Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 8
Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 9
“]] Agatha All Along finally revealed the real identity of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal: she’s Death. Here’s what to know about the twist. Read More