Agatha all the time wraps things up with a two-part finale (“Follow Me My Friend/To Glory at the End” and “Maiden Mother Crone”) that offers some pretty clever twists, but ultimately another in a long line of Disney+ MCU projects is ends almost exactly where it began.

Although Agatha all the time Although it was a story of redemption, the series’ most important revelation is that the path of the witches was actually a story continued through the ages by Agatha (…all the time!) to harvest the witches’ souls and leave them as desiccated husks while she runs away with her powers. Harkness herself invented the song with her son Nicholas and took it on tour, performing it in pubs and around campfires to attract occult victims such as a murderous organ grinder and her repentant monkey.

She planned to do the same with her newest coven we met on the show, except for the The ritual actually worked this time. As we find out, Billy/William/Teen/Wicca unwittingly used his own repressed powers – inspired by the reality-warping legacy of the Scarlet Witch – to make Agatha’s centuries-long deception a reality. The show’s attempts at pop culture themes, after all, weren’t just set design, but were directly inspired by elements of Billy’s own bedroom, like a spiritual concept board, although almost everything runs through the filter of his lover Seen Posters.

It was all very satisfying and clever (if not quite as flawlessly constructed as Patti LuPone’s twisty love story last week), but again, it didn’t do much for our heroes in the long run. Although we discover that Death has claimed Agatha’s son and that she and Agatha do indeed have a shared history, their relationship is not properly explored in the final two episodes, beyond an even stronger textual acknowledgment of what has already been hinted at. We learn that Death has given Agatha “special treatment” for centuries, having allowed her son Nicholas Scratch to survive a fateful stillbirth, only to claim him in one direction or another a few years later.

I suppose Death had nothing against Agatha’s countless corpses either; I’d like to know if this ever aroused the suspicions of the FBI or mummy enthusiasts. It’s clear that Death and Agatha have a complicated love-hate relationship, but we denied the two of them getting their own episode to unpack it, instead expecting a relatively quick confrontation.

In the final trial of the series, Agatha, Jennifer and Wiccan find themselves in a mortuary equipped with grow lights for houseplants and are tasked with using the elements (for death encourages) to plant a seed kept in Agatha’s locket life, you know). ?). While the three argue about how best to accomplish this, it eventually turns out that Agatha was also the one who “tied” Jennifer after an anonymous benefactor asked her to do it (although it’s suggested that she never needed her powers, so I was right that someone would float the idea before the end).

When she learns this, she is able to cast a counterspell and fly away. Leaving Agatha and Wiccan behind, she must complete the trial herself, having achieved what she sought along the way. Around this time, Agatha also assists Wicca in retrieving a donor body for his brother Tommy, whose spirit is apparently still suspended, allowing him to achieve his desired goal and also freeing him from the streets.

Although Agatha is able to complete the process alone with some dirt and her own tears, Death still wants to kill one of them – either Agatha, her centuries-old romantic passion, or Wiccan, who we learn keeps reincarnating in other dying bodies will unless he finally surrenders himself to Death itself. After a fight between Death and Agatha (one that at least briefly betrays Marvel’s penchant for a big VFX banger)Wicca returns Agatha’s help in his superhero costume and they have the difficult conversation about who will live and who will die. Although Wiccan feels guilty about his role in the deaths of the rest of the coven and initially agrees to fall to the sword, Naturally Agatha picks up the bullet, walks straight towards Death and kisses her on the lips.

Although Death is apparently pleased with the offering – and we and Wiccans alike actually see Agatha die, her body forming a Rio-approved flower bed as it rapidly decays – in the final episode, after a long flashback, Agatha’s story with her begins explain son and the creation of the myth of the road, Wicca discovers that Agatha remains on earth as a spirit. She refuses to go over because she cannot bring herself to see her son again. Luckily, this is the start of a possible second season, and her jokey spirit (now with more comic-accurate white hair, which makes it very funny that the comics only relatively recently resigned themselves to making Agatha look a little more Rooster-like) does sets off on a journey with Wicca to find his newly inspired brother Tommy.

Well, unless the series Is renewed for another season, that’s all she wrote for Agatha all the time. There’s a lot to enjoy here from moment to moment, but it’s still hard not to notice that the series didn’t quite nail it all The plenty to bring many of these characters forward dramatically. In the end, Agatha remains dismissive and morally dubious – but it’s not like there aren’t consequences here. Agatha may still be there in some form, but death has caught up with her. Wiccan is still searching for his brother, but has established himself as a wizard. Jennifer is back in action and hopefully gets to hang out with Man-Thing sometime. Sharon, Alice, Lilia, Wanda (no cameo here), and the Salem Seven are apparently all dead, and we still have no idea why the primal force of death itself posed as a woman named Rio Vidal for a few episodes. other than a distant interest in William Maximoff’s soul.

But even with those consequences, how much of it Agatha all the time Whether it was ultimately worth it remains to be seen. Like the other Marvel shows on Disney+, things happened, newly introduced characters died, and nothing that particularly changed the status quo of the more important films actually happened. We are another step closer to this Young Avengersif that’s your thing, as Marvel is slowly but surely starting to introduce versions of that famous Gillen/McKelvie version of the team.

But we’ve seen this before on Marvel TV: If Wiccan ever shows up in an MCU movie, Young Avengers Otherwise, he’ll be reintroduced in a way that you don’t need to have seen this series to understand what he’s about. Even if you look at it as a standalone thing, separate from the machinations of the larger MCU, nothing really significant happened Agatha all the timeaside from a few well-executed character deaths. When our heroes discover that they wake up in a circle and find the shoes they took off at the start of the journey, I felt it.

Still, at least it was absolutely perfect Easttown mare Parody.

Agatha all the time is now streaming on Disney+.

Want more io9 news? Find out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe in film and television, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.