[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Agatha All Along.]

The Big Picture

By the end of ‘Agatha All Along,’ Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) becomes a ghost, teaming up with Billy (Joe Locke) to find his brother Tommy.
There are no immediate plans for a sequel series, but there are potential stories that could still be explored.
Agatha’s ghostly fate was planned from the start, as was the fact that the season was not meant to be a redemption arc for her character.

Agatha All Along closed its season out after an emotional journey down the Witches’ Road, the reveal of what Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) was really up to, the explanation for why Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) killed all those witches, and the realization that you just can’t outrun Death (Aubrey Plaza). And while we did get answers and explanations, we were also left with questions, the biggest one perhaps being, what comes next for the sardonic, more than 400-year-old witch? Now dead and a ghost who’s not interested in joining the afterlife, Agatha would rather team up and go on another adventure with Billy, this time to find his brother Tommy, than actually face her son, Nicholas Scratch. Thing is, no one can avoid their life (or death) forever, which means it will all inevitably catch up with her. Hopefully, we’ll get to see when that happens, in some way or another.

After watching the season finale, Collider got the opportunity to chat one-on-one with showrunner Jac Schaeffer about all things Agatha All Along and whether we might get answers to any of the still lingering questions. During the interview, she talked about collaborating with Marvel, how there aren’t currently any plans for a sequel series, the pieces of the story that could make for tales for another day, her reaction to the character reveals that were spoiled by Funko, figuring out the look of Billy’s crown, how early they knew they’d be going the ghost route, the most challenging sequences to shoot, deleted scenes, Agatha’s very bad deeds, that Agatha and Rio kiss, the meaning behind the “ask a straight lady” line, and her favorite moments of the season.

Collider: To start with a fun and silly question, how is Señor Scratchy? Will we hear from or see that rabbit again?

JAC SCHAEFFER: Oh, poor Señor Scratchy. Señor Scratchy is a story for another day. We had a lot of hopes and dreams about what we were gonna do with Mr. Scratch, and it didn’t work out for this one. So, another day, Mr. Scratch.

Although Funko Toys Spoiled Two ‘Agatha All Along’ Character Reveals, It Prevented Speculation
Image via Disney+

Three episodes into this, Funko spoiled the reveal for Billy and for Death. How frustrating was that for you?

SCHAEFFER: That was a tough one. All respect to every individual that works on these shows, both on the actual production, and marketing and merch and parks, and everything. The number of people who touch this show, I love them all and I’m grateful to them all. That one was tough to take. I knew that people would suspect Billy. I was ready for that. But the Death leak was a tougher one. Although, things happen for a reason. I didn’t know that the character of Blackheart was a thing from the comics, so it’s possible that people might have been hanging onto Blackheart, all the way to the Death reveal, and then maybe would have had some feelings. So, maybe it worked out for the best.

Clearly, this is not the end of the story that you were telling, especially for Agatha and Billy. How soon are we going to see them on their journey to find Tommy? Have you had conversations about a sequel series?

SCHAEFFER: We certainly had conversations along the way of this show about, what does it look like for Agatha and Billy, as a team? But as far as what happens after the show, right now I’m focused on this one, and there aren’t any immediate plans beyond it.

Agatha is someone who has been around for centuries. At what point did she acquire the Darkhold? Is that something we’re ever going to hear about again?

SCHAEFFER: There are a lot of pieces of this show that are stories for another day, which I would like to think means, even though we have a lot of story, there are avenues and side stories. The Darkhold piece, I liked that as a rumor about Agatha, as an urban legend that she traded her son for the Darkhold. Doctor Strange 2 really did the Darkhold in a huge, enormous way, so it was really never our intention to explore that with Agatha because all the copies were gone at the start of the story so it felt like moving backwards. But I’m sure there’s a worthwhile story, should anyone be interested in how Agatha got it.

Does her child have a father? Will we ever learn anything about him?

SCHAEFFER: That’s another story for another day. For this story that we’re telling, that’s focused on Agatha and also focused on Billy, the parentage of Agatha’s baby is, we felt, irrelevant.

Related ‘Agatha All Along’ Episodes 8 and 9 Recap: The Ghost of Witches’ Road Past Buckle up — we’re haunting the narrative!

I’m sure you had many conversations about every aspect of the story you could tell in the amount of episodes you had.

SCHAEFFER: Yeah. It requires a lot of discipline to say, “We’re not gonna answer that. That’s not our focus.” I think that’s the trick. In any project, in TV, features, or whatever, you have to ask, “What is my focus?,” and keep your eye on the ball. Luckily, it’s the MCU and any of this can be explored in future properties.

Once Teen is revealed to be Billy Maximoff, we see the crown on his head. Was there a lot of conversation about how that would look, what it would be, and even just the color? Was all of that important?

SCHAEFFER: Yes. Anytime the Marveliness of the thing comes to the fore, especially when it’s about the kit, that becomes a group effort that involves Kevin [Feige] and larger Marvel. For instance, with the crown, I had opinions and a say, certainly, but (executive producer) Mary Livanos has led the charge on that, working directly with Daniel Selon, our magical costume designer. I knew I wanted it to be an electric blue. I knew I wanted it to resemble Wanda’s. But the specifics of exactly the size and how it wraps around his head becomes a larger Marvel question.

Some people were immediately posting side by side photos of Joe Locke and Elizabeth Olsen to compare their crowns.

SCHAEFFER: Isn’t it amazing? You wouldn’t say that Joe Locke and Lizzie Olsen look alike, but they both have cheekbones and jawlines and searing eyes for days. When you put them side by side, it’s really arresting. I was so thrilled to see that.

And I feel like this show has the most fantastic pair of eyebrows anywhere.

SCHAEFFER: Eyebrow Game 2024, Agatha All Along. Agreed.

Agatha Was Always Going To End Up as a Ghost by the End of ‘Agatha All Along’
Image via Disney+

Were you always planning to go the ghost route with Agatha? Was that something you always knew you were leading up to, or did that change?

SCHAEFFER: From the absolute beginning, we were always gonna land Agatha as a ghost. I was so tickled that it wasn’t a really big fan theory because it’s one of the few things that’s directly in the comics. She spends so much time being a ghost, so I was waiting for all the, “She’s gonna be a ghost! She’s gonna be a ghost!” And it wasn’t very loud, which was terrific. That was always the thing we wanted. This is a witch who is over 400 years old. The show is about death. We knew we wanted her to die and become a ghost. The messaging of that, the thematics of that, and what the moment of her death was, was all a larger conversation, but the end game was always Agatha and Billy and being his spirit guide.

Was it intentional that you also wanted to show her mother as a ghost before that?

SCHAEFFER: Yeah, that was the world building of it and the establishing of it. If we were gonna land her as a ghost, we needed to have some semblance of rules around that inside of the MCU. I was really delighted, I can’t remember how the idea was hatched, but that we would see Agatha’s mother as ghosts, that we would understand the aesthetic of a ghost, that we would understand that Rio doesn’t like ghosts. It was a to-do list for me, for a long time, of more rules about the ghosts and Rio and how that all works. Ultimately, we liked it being a little more instinctive, that somehow ghosts are beyond Rio’s reach. It’s tied to the idea that a ghost isn’t ready to surrender to death yet. We also liked the idea that Agatha isn’t ready to surrender to death, not because of Rio, but because of Nicky.

Was this ending the ending that you had always wanted? Did you know from the start what your full ending would be, or did things change and evolve along the way?

SCHAEFFER: The final final scene evolved quite a bit. Going into prep, we knew the first half of episode nine would look the way it did. But the final scene in the basement, between Agatha and Billy, was one of the last things to fall into place, and that’s pretty typical of a Marvel project because you have the burden of whatever the handoff is. They’re very hard to land because they aren’t complete. There is not a Marvel property that is truly well and good done, so it’s tricky and it takes a while to find your lane on that.

Related Our Biggest Unanswered Questions After the ‘Agatha All Along’ Finale Where do we go after the Witches’ Road?

Was there a shot or a sequence that ended up being the hardest one to film?

SCHAEFFER: The demon stuff was very, very hard. That was a person in a suit who had to be hoisted up on top of the partition. That was very hard. We had very little time to do that. The cabin was a very, very difficult shoot. Because of the way we shot the ghost, both Evanora, Agatha’s mom, and ghost Agatha later, we were doing it practically, so we had to double shoot everything, which took forever and was very, very difficult. And then, toward the end, we were shooting multiple things at a time, because that’s what happens as you get to the end. So, episode seven, generally, was just very, very challenging to do because of the nonlinear and lining everything up and making sure it worked. Also, the rest of the show.

We already love Kathryn Hahn, as well as Aubrey Plaza and Patti LuPone. Everyone in this series is great, but for me, Sasheer Zamata came in and stole the show. She was absolutely terrific, and it felt like the writing was so well suited to her and her talent. Did you know what she was capable of when she came to this character? Did that change and shift and grow, at all?

SCHAEFFER: What I didn’t know is that Sasheer would bring the rigor of research to the role. Sasheer was really interested in the history of witches, specifically Black midwives. We spoke with a professor about the history. We did these breakout sessions to talk about her character, so that we could get it right, and that foundational piece was so fascinating and important to Sasheer as a person, and also for her work. You’d have to ask her, but I think that was a lot of the reason why her performance is so grounded and that there’s real intensity to it. She’s dropped in, in a way. She shows up, and she’s pretty and vain and bitchy, and you think, “Okay, great, I’ve got it.” And then, it just grows and grows and grows.

We felt she had the longest arc. She had turned into the worst version of herself, and we wanted to get her back to her origin. Me, personally, I’m so here for pregnancy and birth, generally, and I love to put pregnancy and birth into my work. And so, the idea that was her calling as a character, back before she was bound, we just wanted to get her back to that integrity. Sasheer is tremendous in the show. With some of the performers, there’s the version of them on screen, and then there’s the person. For me, Sasheer and Jen are weirdly linked, so when I see Jen fly away, I’m like, “Look at Sasheer go.” If you met her, you would get it. There’s something about her physical presence where you look at her face and you’re like, “Wow, this lady is not messing around.” There’s so much weight to her. She makes really great eye contact. She’s just a very powerful person.

‘Agatha All Along’ Showrunner Jac Schaeffer Hopes to Release the Deleted Scenes
Image via Disney+

Do you have many deleted scenes? Could there be any cool extras down the road that we could see on Disney+?

SCHAEFFER: Yeah, there are some good bits and bobs, and I’ve spoken to Marvel about releasing them. I would say a lot of the deleted scenes are just enhancing story logic and they things that were cut because we felt like we had already covered that particular beat or we felt that the audience would get it. Sometimes with these puzzle box shows, you realize, after the fact, that you’ve overwritten it. In a self-congratulatory way, you’re like, “Look how clever we are,” and you can pull back on some things.

It’s so interesting how this series feels more intimate in its storytelling, but at the same time, you built a forest to house The Witches’ Road in a soundstage. What was it like to find that balance between telling a personal story for these characters while also making it feel like it’s part of this bigger world?

SCHAEFFER: I think that’s working at Marvel. When I write on my own, it’s usually pretty small. The ideas are big, but the scenes are small. But there’s an expectation, obviously, at Marvel that you make things big. That’s what we’re all here for and why we’re doing it at Marvel Studios. We’re providing spectacle. This show was in the fantasy or Halloween space, and it was really fun to feel like that was new for the MCU. The MCU has not built a forest like this before, so it was great.

Related ‘Agatha All Along’ Ending Explained: How Does the Witches’ Road End? A final twist waits at the end of this path.

I found myself asking questions about Agatha while I was watching the finale. I thought, if The Witches’ Road was never real and this was all a ploy so that she could steal these other witches’ power, does that make her even more of a villain than we realized? How can you justify that kind of body count? So, how do you view Agatha? Is she a villain? Is she the hero of her own story? Is she someone who’s just done a lot of bad things, even if they may have been done out of pain? How did you look at that?

SCHAEFFER: I definitely don’t think she’s the hero of her own story. I think that she still has work to do, and I think that’s why she’s a ghost. Every member of the coven, with the exception of Rio, reaches a point where they are a better version of themselves by the end, except for Agatha. I think there’s growth, in that she lets Billy in and she partners, for the first time in centuries, but she is a ghost because she hasn’t fully arced out. She hasn’t fully made peace and accepted the truth of her life and the truth of herself. I find the hero/villain binary reductive. That’s why I do these shows. I want to explore it and I want to be like, “You think this person is a villain? Just a second, they’re a hero. And then, vice versa.” Like everything, it’s a flow. It’s a pendulum.

If you look at it too closely, yeah, Agatha is a mass murderer and that’s not okay. But this is the MCU. This is a genre space, it’s a supernatural space, and there is a little bit of latitude in there. What I’m most interested in is, why did she go on a mass murdering spree after son died? It’s because she couldn’t cope. It’s just a metaphor. She’s not a real human person killing real human people. She can’t fill herself, and that’s what the metaphor is. But I do think it’s interesting that, at the end, she’s still capable of being flippant about the people she’s killed, and Billy is 100% not. That is the important distinction between them. The body count is real. I couldn’t really say this through press [before the finale had aired], but we didn’t want a redemption story for Agatha. We wanted to thread the needle of, yes, she and Billy end up partnered at the end of the show and off on another adventure, but we are not redeeming this villain. There should be concern that the ghost on Billy’s shoulder is Agatha Harkness. That should make everyone nervous.

You also created this backstory for Lilia, made a custom tarot deck of it, and then had it hand-stitched on her costume. Is every one of those steps intentionally thought out, or is that just each department contributing in their own way?

SCHAEFFER: It depends. I would say that if you have an excellent room that is doing deep work, those tendrils will make their way through everything. That’s what happened with WandaVision and that’s what happened with Agatha. It was Daniel Selon’s idea to stitch the tarot into Lilia’s costume. It was Daniel Selon’s idea to put the symbols in Billy’s sweater. That is him and his brain. That’s him looking at the material and enhancing it and carrying it forward. My job, as a showrunner, is to empower that kind of work, and to hire people who are so good at their jobs and who understand the vision, and then make it better. So, in that particular instance, that’s not me. That’s Daniel. But my assistant Brittany [Horn] created the tarot cards. She has the talent and the artistry, but I’m also over her shoulder being like, “Can it be like this? Can it be like that?” It’s case by case.

That ‘Agatha All Along’ Kiss Between Agatha and Rio Was Not the Result of Fan Service

Did you have a sense of how fans would react to Agatha and Rio? Was it important for you to include a kiss between them, at some point?

SCHAEFFER: It’s funny, I didn’t anticipate that the fans would need a kiss. That was never part of the conversation in the room. We wanted the kiss because we wanted a kiss of death. That’s what I wanted. My hope for it was that it would be sexy and beguiling and violent and toxic, and the only way for it to end is a kiss of death. They can’t actually be intimate, in that moment, in a way that doesn’t harm one of them. That’s what I wanted out of it. But over the past weeks watching this, the writers’ room has been like, “Yeah, they do kiss.” Everyone was like, “They’re not gonna kiss. They’re not gonna give it to us.” And we were like, “Just wait. Here it comes.” But to answer your question, it was never about fan service because we didn’t anticipate it. It was really about what we felt to be the natural conclusion of this relationship at this time.

They’re so great together that you just keep wanting to see more of them. Had you planned to show us more of that, like how they originally met? Were those things you wanted to get into, but it just didn’t fit into the season?

SCHAEFFER: Yes. We talked a lot about those things, and it’s not like it didn’t fit in, it was that thing of needing to have discipline and keep our eye on the story. I feel that those are stories for another day. We did a lot of really fun ideating about their meet cute. Did they live together? What did it look like? But it felt like we needed to cut to the quick of Agatha’s story.

Related Will ‘Agatha All Along’ Return for Season 2? Here’s the Tea on a Potential Spellbinding Comeback Will we see Kahtryn Hahn as the delightfully vile sorceress again?

The line, “Hey, you want straight answers, ask a straight lady,” is probably one of the most memorable lines of the entire season. It’s also a moment that clarifies some things and made fans very happy. Was there a lot of thought put into that line, and even where and when to say it, or was that just something that was an easy and natural moment that came about?

SCHAEFFER: It’s a line that I wrote, that I felt strongly about, more because of what it says about Agatha’s character, as opposed to what it says about Agatha’s sexuality. I also felt it served that purpose, as well. To me, it felt like that perfect line that’s hilarious and has so much meaning. It’s not there to be like, “Yes, viewers, this woman is gay.” I don’t think Agatha believes in labels. If anyone asked her, I just don’t think that she would subscribe to any one label. But I think what she’s copping to there is that she, as a person, is never gonna be a straight line. She’s never gonna really level with you. That’s why, at the end of the show when she says three lines to Billy that are truthful, he knows they’re truthful. She tells the truth throughout the show, in various moments, but people don’t think she’s telling the truth, but it’s only that last scene where she speaks her truth with the person on the opposite side of the conversation knowing that it’s the truth. To me, that is really the heart of that line. But it also cops to the queerness which we love.

What was your own personal favorite moment this season, and was it something that you loved from the moment you wrote it, or was it something from just seeing it once it was done?

SCHAEFFER: The response to episode seven and to Patti’s performance, specifically, was so gratifying and I believe so deserved because she is a national treasure. And then, the end of episode five with the Billie Eilish needle drop. That was a needle drop that I had to advocate for, so it was really satisfying that it hit for people.

Agatha Harkness, following the events of “WandaVision,” embarks on a quest to reclaim her lost powers. Teaming up with unlikely allies, including the son of her former enemy, she faces new mystical threats while navigating a complex world of magic and intrigue.Release Date September 18, 2024 Cast Kathryn Hahn , Joe Locke , Sasheer Zamata , Ali Ahn , Okwui Okpokwasili , Debra Jo Rupp , Patti LuPone , Aubrey Plaza , David Payton , Emma Caulfield Ford , David Lengel , Asif Ali , Amos Glick , Elaine Valdes , Paria Akbarshahi , Chau Naumova , Bethany Curry , Athena Perample , Alicia Vela-Bailey , Britta Grant , Marina Mazepa Seasons 1 Number of Episodes 9 Streaming Service(s) Disney Plus Directors Jac Schaeffer , Gandja Monteiro , Rachel Goldberg Showrunner Jac Schaeffer Expand

Agatha All Along is available to stream on Disney+. Check out the season finale trailer:

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