Have I Got A Weird One For You!
Well peeps, I have a controversial theory for y’all. Don’t worry though, this isn’t your typical “Billy is the evil mastermind a la WandaVision” theory you’re probably assuming from the title. I think they’ve thoroughly disproved that and as many have pointed out, re-using that same arc is just bad storytelling. So please bear with me as we have a lot to get through here.
We’re actually going to be exploring several theories here to get to our final destination, but first I need to share my perspective coming into Agatha All Along. I have never been interested in comic books and never very interested in their TV or movie adaptations. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been something I occasionally dipped my toes into, but never cared to really explore. Wikipedia says there are over 50 MCU releases (movies & series) and I have only watched 17 of them, so I have to approach my theories as an outsider who lacks the deep lore knowledge, and I’ve had to lean heavily on a great community of fellow nerds on Discord who have that deep knowledge to fill in gaps and challenge my ideas.
Let’s start off with some background.
We know that the MCU doesn’t do direct adaptations. They find a character they want to include, find an interesting comic story they were in, and use that as the guideline for writing a movie or show. We also know that Jac Schaeffer is not a comic lore expert (she admitted to not knowing Mephisto existed back when WandaVision came out). So we can’t rely solely on deep comic lore to tell us how things are going to be in her series. We do know that AAA loosely adapts the 2015 Scarlet Witch comic run where she walks the Witches’ Road with ghost Agatha, so we can draw some background from there.
On the flip side, though, we also know several major points where they’ve already diverged from both the 2015 Scarlet Witch plot and the backgrounds of multiple characters, so we have to keep that in mind when exploring our own theories. We need to respect the source material, but we should also approach any theory asking how we can make it work with the fewest assumptions and new characters possible. So let’s get started.
What do we know so far?
In the comics, the Witches’ Road is a cosmic realm outside space and time that is intrinsically linked to the Goddess of Witchcraft. Marvel explains that various monsters and other mystical creatures reside there, and that the forest “gives way to mind-bending psychedelic landscapes deep within”. We also know that Chaos is supposed to reside there, and the comic series depicted a cosmic battle between Witchcraft and Chaos.
In Agatha All Along we see none of that imagery being used; the forest has stayed largely the same for their entire journey, broken only by the landscape of each trial; no monsters, (except the Salem Seven) have shown up on their travels; and there’s no grand cosmic battle between Witchcraft and Chaos (that we know of). In fact, everything we see at the beginning of the Road can be directly traced back to Billy’s understanding of witchcraft and the Ballad.
Wait, what did I just say?
Let’s unpack that claim real quick. Billy, in episode 3, says the Road is “just like I imagined it” suggesting that the basic appearance of the Road was pulled directly from his imagination. He is also familiar with the overall aesthetic of every trial: he specifically calls out the vibe of the first one; for the second we know he’s a huge fan of Lorna and her version of the Ballad; the third is a pretty stereotypical cabin in the woods, sleepover type horror setting and he has similarly themed posters in his 16yo room; and the fourth trial it straight out of his 13yo bedroom. People have also pointed out that furniture from his bedroom sets gets reused in some of the trials. Even the morgue imagery we see for what’s presumably Billy’s trial makes sense when we consider he knows he died and came back to life.
Now we can grant that the Road changes for the coven as Agatha states (if we even believe she knows what she’s talking about), but having so much imagery come directly from his past is suspicious. Sure, we can also point out that the house in the first trial also looks like what one of Jen’s customers would own and the second trial’s recording studio is also something Alice would be intimately familiar with, but what about the last two? How does a horror flick cabin in the woods relate to Agatha’s past? And how does the whole Disney castle and witch aesthetic have anything to do with Lilia? It’s obvious that the Road is drawing from each of their pasts to unpack their trauma and present appropriate trials, but we see that the seed of each trial is based on Billy’s understanding of the person and their situations.
We also directly see Billy directly driving events throughout the journey. He chose to track Agatha down, he appealed to her vanity in an attempt to manipulate her into helping him walk the Road, she realized she could use his plan to walk the Road for her own purposes, and they gathered the coven. On the Road, he’s the one who points out that Witchcraft isn’t about the power, but about the craft when Jen questions how they’re supposed to complete trials without power, he thought of the sous vide in the first trial, he had the summoning spell when they needed a replacement green witch, and he suggested the brooms as a way to escape the Salem Seven (even if that plan ultimately didn’t work as planned).
So you’re saying Billy cast a Hex like Wanda?
At first, I thought so, but we’ve seen instances of the Road not going his way, following its own rules, and him not being safe from the dangers of the trials. I think what we’re seeing goes beyond him simply running a scenario of the Road in his mind, but we have a bit more to explore before we can fully dive into that. What is the Road in the MCU? Has Agatha actually walked it before? Why does Agatha think Billy is pulling a Hex?
Agatha thinks what?
We need a little background on Agatha before we dive into this one. We know that she’s a spirit witch and her special power is to absorb the magic others attack her with. She joined her mother’s coven, likely she was simply born into it, and something happened that prompted them to put her on trial and ultimately try to kill her. We know she claims she can’t control her power, she somehow hooked up with an avatar of Death, had a son, something happened and he died, Death took him and that ended their relationship. We know she acquired the Darkhold and it seems to have kept her protected from death until she interfered with Wanda’s hex and had it taken from her. We also know she’s infamous, “Witches like you are the reason people think we poison apples, and steal children, and eat babies.” And we know she’s rumored to be the only witch to have successfully walked the Witches’ Road.
So why would she think that Billy is manifesting it now?
Before we can answer that we need to examine her personality. We see genuine moments throughout the show; points in time where the facade cracks and you see how much pain she holds, how much she really can care about other people. Most of the time you see her mask, what I like to call “the smartest, baddest witch in the room” persona (think “babies are delicious”). In that persona she lies and manipulates and conceals information to her own agenda. Now how does this knowledge matter to our question? When the mask is in place we can’t trust anything she says, and we only ever see her express any knowledge of the Road or acknowledge she walked it when she’s wearing that mask. In those private, genuine moments we only see fear and confusion as she struggles to cope with their journey down the Road.
I’m of the opinion that Agatha didn’t believe the Road is real. At a minimum, she’s never walked it before. If she had, she’d have more than just “more vague insight” as Billy puts it in episode 7. She also doesn’t appear to have the self-awareness required to have successfully walked the Road before and she’s clearly never confronted and processed her trauma from what happened with her mother’s coven. It’s been suggested that maybe she simply cheated her way through her last time on the Road and maybe Rio helped her, but I am unconvinced. As of episode 7, so is Billy, “Now I wonder if you’ve ever been on the Road at all.”
Now let’s get down to business! (to defeat the Huns?)
We can conclusively say that Agatha had no intent of summoning the Road the night the coven gathered. Something that was brought up in our Ballad breakdown is that the conjuring of the Road should happen at midnight, likely during a new moon and requires a full, true coven. If Agatha had previously walked, she would have known those rules. She intentionally gathered an incomplete and false coven and they performed the Ballad at sunset rather than midnight.
Everything she says and does, even the moments of sincerity we see when no one else is looking, tells us that she was planning to gather them and have them attack her to drain their powers and her backup plan was to have them trapped in the house and forced to fight the Salem Seven when they showed up.
Another important consideration with respect to spell work is intent. It doesn’t matter what words you say or actions you take if your intent isn’t there.
Something else that’s important to note: during her and Billy’s conversation in episode 6, she says she’s suspected since they first met. It’s unclear how truthful she’s being in the moment, but it’s clear she’s known there was more to him since she first learned of the sigil. It’s clear that at least some of her suspicions are tied to her feelings toward her own son, and that on some level she hopes he could be Nick, but she also has a connection to him from WandaVision and it’s still a pretty recent memory for her since she doesn’t seem to remember much from her Hex other than the cop drama. That possible connection though, would have been enough to fuel the fire and keep her suspicious of who he was.
With all that established, it starts to make sense why Agatha would suspect Billy. She experienced the Hex firsthand; twice. She knew she had nothing to do with the door appearing and she’s standing there in a profound shock; one of the few times her mask slips in front of anyone other than Billy and Rio. This profound shock continues through to the end of the episode and is called back to at the beginning of episode 3 (that smile when she looks at Billy). It’s only after she collects herself and puts her mask back on that she addresses the coven “I never doubted us for a second.”
Continuing on, her reaction to him saying “It’s exactly how I imagined it” was “Yes. It suits you” wink. If we look at the first trial, it’s clear she’s not taking it seriously: she barges into the house, she mocks the “obvious breadcrumbs”, she refuses to drink the wine, she even tries to break out of the house when fear starts to set in. She only complies when Billy threatens to drink and her maternal instincts come to the surface. The next episode starts with another call-out, while Billy is digging the grave, Agatha is contemplating Sharon’s body and comments “I didn’t think you had it in you”. Billy is the only person in hearing range and asks “You didn’t think who had what in them?” and she replies with a wink.
The beginning of episode four is really telling. Up until Sharon died, Agatha didn’t expect the trials to be deadly because she thought Billy didn’t have it in him to kill someone, especially someone innocent like Sharon. Her response to Billy criticizing them, “We didn’t look out for each other. That was our fatal mistake”, was to quip “Well it was fatal for Mrs Hart” and look right at Billy. Then his comment “I wish we could go home” is met with a look of consternation, like “do you really now? You started this”. His comment “People can’t be replaced” gets a challenging “can’t they” (she saw Wanda “replace” Vision and if she does suspect he’s Billy by this point then she also knows he had to have jumped bodies). However, she then pivots immediately to the idea of summoning a “backup” green witch, indirectly invoking Billy’s spellbook. He has exactly the spell they need (how convenient).
Episodes five and six are where things really come to light though. Billy’s confrontation with Agatha in episode 5 tells us a lot about both characters.
“How could you? How could you kill her?”
“I couldn’t control it”
“Yes, you could have. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not”
“You wanted her power. That’s what this has always been about for you, isn’t it?” … “So that’s what it means to be a witch? Killing people to serve your own agenda? No. Not for me.”
Up to this point, Agatha’s mask has slipped, the scene plays largely sincerely and she’s trying to reason with him and defend herself. This is the turning point. The mask goes back in place and she calls out what she sees as the same hypocrisy as Wanda; the “tell” they both share.
“Are you sure? You’re so much like your mother.“
In that moment, she knows he’s Billy Maximoff and is calling him out because she believes even now that he is manifesting the Road just like Wanda created the Hex. Then, after she digs her way out in episode 6, she makes the comment “Gosh, you really are a Maximoff. Otherwise none of this would be so dramatic.” She gestures around when she says “this”, meaning the whole situation, The Road.
So you’re still saying Billy cast a Hex like Wanda?
Agatha believes it, but no. I think they did something much more interesting. I mentioned earlier how we haven’t seen the cosmic battle between Witchcraft and Chaos, or any of the monsters, or the road growing progressively more unreal; how every piece of imagery can be traced back to Billy’s imagination; how we see him driving events forward through the whole Journey; surely then this is a scenario he’s playing out then? Let’s see what Marvel has to say about Wiccan.
We know that he has the potential to rewrite reality in a way beyond what even the Scarlet Witch could accomplish. Wanda managed to trap a single town in the Hex and could only manipulate reality within that spell, but we know that Cthon said she was more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme and it was her destiny to destroy the world. Strange says that with the power of the Darkhold she was powerful enough to destroy the entire multiverse. Billy is said to be even more powerful.
We see no mention of Witchcraft of Chaos as abstract entities within the MCU the way we now have Death. There’s no mention of them in the Ballad or the lore that we’ve been shown throughout the story so far. Taking my assumption mentioned earlier, that the MCU isn’t going to adapt a character or entity if they can avoid doing so, and given the obvious divergences from the comic depictions, it’s safe to assume the Road’s origins and nature are not being directly adapted in the show, but what is this new origin? In the grand scheme does it even matter?
Arguably, no, I don’t think we need a full breakdown of the nature and origin of the Road for the story told so far to be compelling and good. I still choose to leave you with my theory. Buckle up.
I propose that the Road never existed. Until now. Billy literally reshaped reality and created the Road without meaning to and without consciously knowing he did it. His power and understanding of it formed the seed from which it grew, but it was never under his direct control, it’s not an active spell he’s casting like the Hex. It has grown its own will, learning from the coven walking it, shaping itself to their understanding of its nature.
So why create the Road if he can just manifest what he wants?
Because he’s unable to control his powers. He’s also very much still a kid in many ways. We see him taking the Ballad literally multiple times throughout the story. We see that he has only a surface understanding of most witchcraft and that his powers only manifest at times of great emotional turmoil. He didn’t choose to create the Road because it was convenient; he was trapped in a house under assault by creepy witches out to kill Agatha and anyone who got in their way. In the moment his goal was the Road, and so “Darkest hour, wake thy power” and “Face your fears, a door appears, the time has come to go” became literal. His deep fear triggered his powers and his psyche latched on to the one thing at the forefront of his mind: The Road.
But where is my priiiiiize?!
If Billy created the Road, then how does this end? What is the prize for finishing?
Let’s take a step back and review the meaning of the Ballad. By now we have enough evidence to say that the Road isn’t about gaining any specific prize at the end. It’s about what you learn on the journey. It’s always been a metaphor for the journey of life.
Consider what each of the witches has gained so far from their trials:
- Jen was shown that it was her trauma that bound her, she can’t unbind until she gets over the trauma. We were shown that she is still capable of doing magic because in the moment she’s twice now done so.
- Alice got shown the truth of her mothers love for her and she was able to heal and move on. She chose to accept herself as a witch and protector
- Agatha’s trial was supposed to be reconciling her trauma with her mother and son leading to personal growth. Jac says the coven passed the trial, so I expect that the finale will have her finally confronting that trauma and finding some kind of resolution to that trauma, she just isn’t there yet.
- Lilia learned to stop fighting her powers and “see” which let her finally understand herself for the first time in her life
And we all expect Billy’s trial to be about reconciling his two pasts and finding a new path forward
The power you get from the Road comes from within, the personal transformation, and from your connection to your true coven; that’s what the Ballad has been telling us the whole time and that’s what Lorna understood when she wrote her version: “I have learned the lesson”. That’s why the protection spell is so powerful, not because it’s tapping into some metaphysical place of power.
But that’s just a theory…
Have fun everyone and thank you for humoring me.
– Twitch Yarby –
Myths & Mischief 
2 responses to “Was it Actually Billy All Along?”
[…] Was It Billy All Along?! […]
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[…] More specifically, in mythology, arches represent the door between time and space through which one passes to enter another world. In the original art, it makes complete sense to have an arch inside a cathedral. Why would they use this symbology for the Witches’ Road? Unless it’s an actual other realm disconnected from our own. (It’s not. It was Billy All Along!) […]
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