Agatha All Along Recap: Life Swap
When WandaVision broke its format for a grand reveal, it cleaved itself in two. There was before, when the show got to play in its own bizarro-world sitcom sandboxes, and there was after, when it had to tie back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe from whence it came. The schism was inevitable but one that still disappointed me; for all of the overarching Marvel bells and superpowered whistles, I was more into WandaVision when it was just the individual story of one extraordinary woman going through the all-too-ordinary experience of grief.
So when it became clear that Agatha All Along was about to explain what’s been happening to Teen all along, I was nervous. I love a good flashback episode, but a Marvel one can make or break a show like nothing else.
Thankfully, Jac Schaeffer didn’t have to turn Billy Maximoff’s episode into a de facto Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. adventure this time. Instead, the Agatha team gets to explain how Billy Maximoff came to inhabit Teen’s body and who Billy Maximoff actually is as a person. We even get a glimpse into the mind-set of William Kaplan, the sweet Eastview kid whose appropriately “Magick”-themed bar mitzvah became the prelude to Billy’s transformation.
Director Gandja Monteiro immediately achieves the balancing act of keeping “Familiar by Thy Side” close enough to the show’s witchy world while rooting it in the very human story at the heart of Billy’s. She frames each step of William’s big day with an eye for tender detail, following him in the moments before he walks into temple with his parents (Paul Adelstein and Maria Dizzia), beaming from underneath his blue yarmulke. (The only blue “crown” we see in this episode, actually.) Even before the episode confirms that this kid did indeed have to die for Billy to live, my heart broke right open watching William dancing at his bar mitzvah, all shy grins and bony shoulders and Joe Locke at his most Heartstopper.
Lilia, apparently the Kaplans’ hired psychic of the night, also sees the cloud coming for William in his palm’s “broken” lifeline and does her best not to lose her entire shit. Though she reassures poor doomed William that he’s just “becoming a new man” (no kidding), she hurriedly fashions a sigil, drops it into his jacket pocket, and promptly forgets the entire interaction. I’m still waiting for Patti LuPone to unleash her full powers on this show, but until then (I’m not bothering to entertain the idea that Jen and Lilia are dead), this semi-spooky scene will have to do.
At this point, I was wondering what the hell Wanda’s breakdown did to create the new iteration of Billy standing in front of us today. But this episode’s reveal is quietly much worse and more devastating than I could have imagined. Yes, the end of Wanda’s hex broke up the bar-mitzvah party, but it was his parents’ all-too-human panic that led to their car skidding off the road and crashing into a tree, killing William and freeing his body up for Billy to move in. Adelstein and Dizzia are devastating as they embody two parents trying so hard to give their son time and space to heal, not realizing that he’s already dead. It didn’t escape me that in both the scenes after the accident and those three years later (i.e., the present day), the Kaplans are unfailingly kind and supportive of their son, whether it means hiring a psychic for the gangly dork dancing with his friends or offering their goth teen a horror-movie night and pot roast for his boyfriend (Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Eddie, an adorable counterpart for Billy in no time at all).
From here, “Familiar by Thy Side” quickly catches us up to speed on how “William” came to understand that he’s actually Billy. Like most teens, he feels different from everyone else; unlike most teens, this is because he’s actually the transferred spirit of a child conjured by a witch mourning her all-knowing robot husband. But the only thing he can remember from before waking up in the hospital is coming to in his shattered car gasping, “Tommy!,” which isn’t very helpful at all. More helpful, though, is the sketchy Reddit guy he and Eddie meet in a parking garage to discuss what actually happened underneath that weird red dome, who just so happens to be an especially twitchy Ralph (a.k.a. Evan Peters) (a.k.a. Agatha’s fake Pietro) (a.k.a. “Fietro”) (a.k.a. “Bohneriffic69”) (nice).
In another world, the story of Billy Maximoff would’ve been its own Disney+ series, and every clue toward his true identity would have its own episode. Things being as they are, it’s just one piece of the Agatha All Along puzzle, and so things start falling into place real fast. Unlike last week’s whiplash-inducing episode, though, I’m mostly fine with it this time; “Familiar by Thy Side” might be the series’ longest episode to date, but it also runs an extremely reasonable 42 minutes. Network dramas routinely solve murder mysteries in less time, and judging by this largely well-constructed episode, Agatha maybe should’ve embraced this pacing all along.
Anyway, Ralph and his bucket hat of bones are chock-full of extremely helpful information. For instance, he casually drops the fact that Wanda and Vision had twins, one of whom could read minds just like Billy, much to his own anxious horror, has been doing ever since the accident. This is also why Ralph can’t hide the fact that he really hates Agatha — like, a Jennifer Kale amount — ever since she used him as “a puppet” for all her Wanda-adjacent experiments. He warns Billy away from this “ancient freakin’ witch who’ll eff your shit up,” because Mr. Bohneriffic might be traumatized, but he’s still not rated R.
Billy wastes no time ignoring Ralph completely. In fact, he immediately goes home and does a li’l Google — and when that fails, a reverse image search — to connect the Agatha dots himself. This detective-lite scene is also scored by Lorna Wu’s version of “The Ballad” that we’ve heard so much about, and hearing it on Billy’s record player (of course) only confirms that (a) it rules, and (b) I really wish we’d heard it in this kind of depth before Alice’s trial. Give us the original before the cover!
According to the deep(ish) corners of the internet Billy finds on “Brujapedia,” Agatha’s been spotted everywhere from Salem to the Titanic to with Dolly Parton’s man. She also may or may not know something about the Road described on his beloved record. Once again, Agatha’s notoriety does nothing to stop Billy from immediately driving over to Westview to see her for himself, and the reality is … well, about what you might expect for a witch mid-breakdown.
While Wanda sucked everyone into her sitcom fantasy with her, she cursed Agatha to act out her own TV dramas alone, essentially chattering nonsense clichés and pointing her plastic garden-hose “gun” at whoever passes by. Seeing Agatha’s Mare of Easttown detective shtick in the context of the real world makes it seem even more hyperbolic, her butch slouching even more growly and gay, which I frankly didn’t think was possible. (Yet another win for Kathryn Hahn!) Billy’s actually charmed by it before she kicks him in the side out of nowhere, which just about sums up Agatha’s entire deal. But he tries to release her from the spell anyway, reciting something he found in a book and apparently nailing it on his first try.
With that, we cut back to the present, where Agatha is dragging herself out of the hot steaming pile of gross to confront the kid she now knows for sure has to be a Maximoff. (“Otherwise none of this would be nearly as dramatic.”) It’s jarring and a little sad to see a dead-eyed Billy smashing his sigil after spending so much time with lovely William and his curious magical successor, who wanted to know his true identity so his boyfriend could love the real deal. To quote a witch-related piece of pop culture neither William nor Billy got a poster for: Something has changed within him, something is not the same. But Billy still flinches when Agatha, admittedly projecting a whole lot of her own childhood-trauma junk onto him, delivers a passionate speech about how Billy shouldn’t feel guilty for anything he’s done while just trying to survive.
“That’s what makes you a witch,” she concludes with a genuine smile that Billy can’t bring himself to return. If that’s what being a witch is, he might not want it. But if it’s the only way to see his twin brother again, so be it, and so we continue on down the Road.
The Snarkhold-overs:
• Besides Lilia, Alice and Jen have also unknowingly been a part of Billy’s life — Alice as the cop William’s frantic father flags down, and Jen as … a YouTube influencer with flawless skin. I guess it would’ve strained credulity even on a magical show to have Jen be his ER doctor or whatever, but relatively speaking, lol.
• The set design of William’s room versus Billy’s is excellent, from the stark color schemes to the shifting posters (Houdini and adventures like The Wizard of Oz and The Black Cauldron that clearly influenced Agatha All Along for William, The Craft and Carrie for Billy). Easter eggs for days, I’m sure.
• Kathyrn Hahn Line Reading of the Week: The “Do you want to poke the bear?” exchange. Just, the whole thing. (Runner-up: “I’ve killed … ehHhHhhHh … my share.”)
• Noting here that Billy never sees Rio at Agatha’s house during the corresponding scenes from the pilot where Agatha definitely saw Rio, so … noted.
• “You and your mother have the same tell.” “Which is?” “Very inconvenient for you.” And me! Tell me what it is!
• “I was a terrible influence on Wanda and Vision’s kids. And I poisoned a dog.” RIP, Sparky, cut down in his prime by Bohnerrific69.