Just in time for Halloween, Disney’s witch series Agatha all the time ended with a two-part finale. Before this week, the show (starring Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke and Aubrey Plaza) was consistently delivering some of the best Marvel television We have seen, with exciting twists based on emotional interests. So it’s a big disappointment that just a week later best episode, Agatha all the time ends with a fizz.

With Lilia’s sacrifice in last week’s episode, the surviving members of the coven find themselves at the end of the witch’s path. The only thing stopping the surviving trio from fulfilling their deepest desires is one final test and the looming presence of Agatha’s newly revealed ex-girlfriend. Death (Place). The first half of the two-part finale focuses on this process, in which the witches are asked to grow something in a lifeless concrete and metal enclosure.

Although it takes twice as long to tell the end of the story, Agatha all the time race through the end of Witch Street. This results in Jen, whose story about her mysterious bondage a century ago was teased for several episodes, getting a quick bow tied to her entire story arc and being sent away without much fanfare. It’s a deflationary moment as the show has hinted that it’s a big deal just waiting to be revealed, but when the only reveal is that Agatha accidentally tied Jen up for quick money in the past , this leads to nothing and the two resolve their differences for a few minutes. Never one of the series’ strongest characters, Jen ended her arc with this arbitrary ending, a week after Patti LuPone delivered the series’ best performance defining episode is a big misstep.

Once Jen is out of the picture, Agatha all the time is free to refocus on its biggest aspect, the relationship between Agatha and Billy. With death seemingly imminent for both of them as they fail to pass the trial, Agatha is able to help Billy connect with his powers and find out where his lost brother is, thus fulfilling the wish that led him to the Witch’s Road and sent security there, leaving Agatha to die alone. This moment also leads to the most heartbreaking revelation of the series: Agatha’s son wasn’t sacrificed by her on Witch Road at all, he simply died. When Kathryn Hahn quietly tells Billy that sometimes boys just die, it’s a heartbreaking confession that there is no power in the world that can keep death away.

But since this is a Marvel production and we haven’t even gotten through the first half of the finale yet, we can’t end on that emotional note. The climax of the first part culminates in another special effects-filled brawl in which Death and the team of Billy and Agatha fire different colored magic shots at each other. Until now, Agatha all the time has largely stayed away from action, instead focusing on interesting puzzles that the Circle must face in each trial. Trading all that originality for action that makes you shine made me wish the show would end as quickly as possible.

Luckily the show ends quickly enough. Agatha decides to sacrifice herself to save Billy, which she does by giving her long-time lover Death a passionate kiss, which immediately causes Agatha to keel over and drop dead. It’s nice that we actually got a kiss between Plaza and Hahn in the series, since they portrayed their characters as explicitly queer, but it’s almost laughable that right after that depiction, Agatha is killed off in arguably the most sensational way. repeated instances of “kill your gays.” Oh, and we actually have a whole other episode coming up!

You may be wondering what else is there to say since the series’ titular character just died! But part one ends with the revelation that Witch Road was brought into being by Billy’s powers, which unconsciously turned his dreams into reality. It’s a revelation that fans had already clockedbut one that still feels like a cheap trick that does nothing other than rob the mostly excellent show of meaning.

But before we even get to that, is the final episode of Agatha all the time begins with a long flashback revealing the story of Agatha’s son Nicholas. It turned out that the boy was supposed to die in childbirth until Agatha begged her lover to spare his life. Of course, all deals come with a price and Death warned Agatha that his time would still be limited. Of course, Agatha and Nicholas lead a fairly happy life for a few years until Nicholas dies in his sleep one night. However, what is supposed to be a window into Agatha’s soul at its most vulnerable feels more like a segue to a finale that has already been too long in coming. Marvel projects on both the big and small screens seem to believe that subtlety is the enemy. This is just another example of this mentality, as the single quiet moment between Billy and Agatha in the first part of the finale contains exponentially more meaning and power than this longer sequence. Instead of “show, don’t tell,” Marvel chooses to show and show and show until they hit you over the head with the realization that this should be sad. Of course, it is inherently tragic when a parent outlives their child, but pushing that emotion to the limit makes it less and less successful.

As his final and greatest reveal shows, Agatha all the time puts everything we’ve seen before in a much worse light. Instead of really being a show about Agatha, this is primarily Billy’s show. The death of every other Circle member (except Jen, who survives) is just a footnote in its origin story. To justify the series’ decisions, Agatha appears to be serving as Billy’s debate partner once again, now in the form of a ghost – perhaps the most egregious example yet of Marvel’s apparent unwillingness to commit to killing off a fan-favorite character to let in despite the death into which it has written them. As the series said, this whole journey shows that Billy, just like his mother, is a murderer who cannot control his dark powers. Just like the dead coven members who are nothing more than fodder for Wiccan character development, the whole thing Agatha all the time feels like another Marvel project that isn’t meant to stand on its own, but rather is fodder for the larger MCU machine.

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