TL;DR – It is flashback time, which might have been the most expected position the show could take.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this film.

Agatha All Along Review –

If you are a Disney show and you just made a significant character reveal before you move into the closing episodes, you better believe that it is time for a flashback episode. I am not sure that this is a particular Disney choice, but it feels like one. But the question is: is this a good flashback episode? Well, that is what we will look at today.    

So, to set the scene, William Kaplan (Joe Locke) was just a normal kid in Eastview when his Bar Mitzvah was evacuated during the final battle in WandaVision. Chaos ensues everywhere as his parents, Rebecca (Maria Dizzia) and Jeff (Paul Adelstein), try to get the family home. But, little did they know that this day would forever change the family in ways no one could have predicted. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

The question everyone was asking was how the very dead, in a never truly existed kind of way, Billy end up in the body of William? There were a lot of ways this could have happened, and I think Mephisto appearing in Fortnite this week didn’t help the speculation. However, I think they found the best way to get the character of Billy Maximoff into the body of Joe Locke without making the character feel unsympathetic. William just got unlucky with a tree and was in the right place at the right time. It also helped the show slightly lean into that Heartstopper vibe that they were hoping for.

Getting to see how Billy goes from the hospital to Agatha’s was a bit fun, especially seeing how he ran into all the other witches before they made the coven. However, it was primarily inconsequential, well, bar two factors. First, it was great to see the original multiverse bait Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters) back, and they had to work hard to make Evan Peters look haggard. Secondly, it was very interesting that Rio (Aubrey Plaza), the only other witch to survive Billy’s purge in Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power, does not appear in the episode. There were a couple of moments when they had to explicitly block her out of the scene in the flashbacks.     

In the end, do we recommend Agatha All Along: Familiar by Thy Side? I do think it was an improvement on last week, and taking a breath before we rush into the final part of the season will likely be a good choice. Hopefully, the rest of the season can use this as a launching point for swinging for the fences.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Agatha All Along yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Agatha All Along
Directed by – Gandja Monteiro
Written by – Jason Rostovsky
Created by – Jac Schaeffer
Based On – Agatha Harkness created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby & Jack Kirby and Wiccan created by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung
Production/Distribution Companies – Marvel Television & Disney+
Starring – Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Evan Peters, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Patti LuPone & Debra Jo Rupp