‘Agatha All Along’ Boss Jac Schaeffer on Forgoing Wanda in Finale: “It Didn’t Feel Fair to Agatha”
[This story contains major spoilers from Agatha All Along’s two-episode finale.]
Just as she did in 2021 with WandaVision, Jac Schaeffer and her latest Marvel series, Agatha All Along, have left fans wanting more of her storytelling spell.
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In the Gandja Monteiro-directed two-episode finale, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) and Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke) completed their journey across the Witches’ Road, but the mystical realm turned out to be nothing more than a byproduct of Billy’s subconscious and his pop cultural interests. Most of all, his spell-created dimension was inspired by “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road,” which Agatha’s 6-year-old son, Nicky Scratch, originated in 1756. That’s also the same year that Agatha’s former lover, Death (Aubrey Plaza), took Nicky’s life, and despite her willingness to satisfy Death’s latest demand of Billy, Agatha swerved at the last minute, sacrificing herself instead to save Billy.
This action opened the door for Ghost Agatha, a destination that Schaeffer and her writers’ room had in mind from the start.
“Point A was getting Agatha out from under Wanda’s spell, and point B of the show was turning her into a ghost/Billy’s spirit guide,” Schaeffer tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Those were the poles of the show that we were all committed to, and so there wasn’t pushback to [Agatha’s sacrificial] kiss of Death.”
The ninth episode, “Maiden Mother Crone,” then concludes with Ghost Agatha and Billy venturing off to find his twin brother, Tommy, whose soul has now inherited the body of a young drowning victim. However, the showrunner can only guess as to which Marvel property will resume this storyline.
“The intention is that Billy now has Agatha as his spirit guide, and that Billy wants to find Tommy. How? When? Where? I don’t know the answers to those questions,” Schaeffer admits.
Of the original makeshift coven that embarked on the Witches’ Road, Zamata’s Jen is the only living survivor out of Agatha, Lillia (Patti LuPone), Alice (Ali Ahn) and Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp). Schaeffer knows full well that the series doesn’t have the most uplifting conclusion, but with Death being a literal character on the show, the alternative didn’t land when tried on for size.
“People are wired to expect a proper happy ending, and we did write that, but it felt disingenuous. So we went for the real,” Schaeffer says.
Schaeffer also didn’t rely on cameos as a way to provide that degree of gratification. It was widely speculated that Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda would be resurrected by the end of Agatha, especially since the deceased body of “Jane Doe” stood in for her in the series premiere, and several characters openly questioned her fate. But, in the end, Schaeffer didn’t want to undermine her title character or the series’ thematic work involving the absoluteness of death.
“[Wanda’s resurrection] wasn’t really a for-real conversation, and to speak plainly, it’s a larger conversation of casting, logistics, availability, and budget,” Schaeffer says. “Also, to me, on a creative level, it didn’t feel fair to the character of Agatha. This is her story, and the idea of bringing Wanda back felt like it would upend that in a way.”
Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Schaeffer also discusses the lack of a coda despite writing several options, before addressing her own uncertain future in the MCU.
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Now that you can talk about almost everything, how did you summarize the journey of this show in your earliest pitches?
The sentence I used over and over again was that this show is a spell. That is what I wanted most of all, and it was the thing that gave birth to the idea of the ballad. The idea was that the ballad is a spell that opens the road, but, really, the ballad is the thing that motivated Billy’s subconscious to create the spell that creates the road. It’s actually a long con inspired by, essentially, a lullaby that a little boy [Nicky Scratch] made. So it’s the nesting dolls of spells.
The other sentence that I said all the time is, “Agatha is a liar.” So that begs the question, “What’s her truth?” and I knew that we were running at a final episode that would reveal her truth.
I now understand why you didn’t have Agathio, or Agathario, kiss in episode four; you were saving it for Agatha’s sacrificial kiss of Death in episode eight. How did Marvel brass initially react to Agatha’s demise?
Well, we knew she was going to die because we knew we wanted her to be a ghost. Point A was getting Agatha out from under Wanda’s spell, and point B of the show was turning her into a ghost/Billy’s spirit guide. Those were the poles of the show that we were all committed to, and so there wasn’t pushback to the kiss of Death. It’s the death blow of the big Marvel battle, but it also is the culmination of this romantic relationship. Those two things came together in a way that felt right to all of the creative folks on the show, and there wasn’t much pushback.
I liked that you made a comic book story that didn’t overly cheat death, and so many stories today, not just superhero tales, partake in that practice. Has that been a pet peeve of yours?
It’s not a pet peeve of mine. One of the things that’s really fun and special about comics, generally, is that these stories can go on for decades and decades. That is due, in large part, to people dying and coming back, and so there’s a soap opera quality to it that can be magnificent. But I really wanted to explore, in the scope of things, this small idea of Agatha having a son who died, something that simple and that human. And if we were going to do that, then we couldn’t play it fast and loose with all of the other deaths. The fact that we then brought Death on as a character, it felt like our job was to have a more honest exploration of death and how people meet their ends and the permanence of that. So it wasn’t me reacting to the landscape, but I did see it as an opportunity to do something unexpected. People are wired to expect a proper happy ending, and we did write that, but it felt disingenuous. So we went for the real.
That’s why I’m glad you didn’t bring Wanda back on this show, because it would’ve undercut that theme about the finality of death. But the show did have characters openly question Wanda’s fate, leading the audience to wonder if she’d appear in order to answer that question. So how close were you to resurrecting Wanda?
It wasn’t really a for-real conversation, and to speak plainly, it’s a larger conversation of casting, logistics, availability, and budget. Also, to me, on a creative level, it didn’t feel fair to the character of Agatha. This is her story, and the idea of bringing Wanda back felt like it would upend that in a way. I love Wanda desperately, and I feel she is a part of the show in that the repercussions of her actions ripple throughout this chapter. Of course, we also have her son, and we positioned him to have big feelings about Wanda and to not be lined up to immediately embrace her. So I’m interested to see where that thread goes in the MCU.
With the Witches’ Road being Billy all along, it makes me feel especially sad for Alice’s family. In hindsight, her mother became obsessed with finding a road that didn’t exist in order to free her family of a curse. Am I overlooking anything here?
Well, it’s all how you look at it. Your statement is correct. However, you can also say that in her singular focus to get to the road, Lorna wrote a version of the ballad that, because of her subconscious and her immense love for her daughter, became a protection spell for her Alice. So it’s just about the lens you use. Yes, if you look at Agatha’s actions, they directly caused wreckage inside of Alice’s maternal line, but it also led to Alice’s full understanding of her mother’s intentions and her mother’s love. It’s all just how you look at it.
The finale flashback really caught me off guard in a most welcomed way. I’ve just become so accustomed to the trend of flashbacks in penultimate episodes. Was there any debate about where to place the 1750s story?
I felt very strongly that it should go where it went. During post, I got some notes about trying it elsewhere, and while I did try it, it was one of the few times that I pushed back on a note. I’m really happy to take notes. It almost always leads to discovery and to a stronger holistic piece of work, but it was something that I felt really passionately about. I don’t love the final battles; I don’t love the climactic sequence. It’s not as much of interest to me as everything else, and so I gave 108 to [writer] Peter Cameron because he is good at that. So he wrote so many versions of that battle, and there’s a version where all these fossils, including Sparky’s [Billy and Tommy’s dog on WandaVision] skeleton, come out of the ground and get involved in the battle. It then became impossible when we committed to the practical aesthetic.
But we called [episode eight] the fake finale because I wanted to get it out of the way, and that’s my own shortsightedness. Peter’s excellent work, Gandja Monteiro’s excellent direction, Isiah Donté Lee’s terrific cinematography and Libby Cuenin’s amazing editing turned that episode into something remarkable. But it was the design to get those big pieces done in the penultimate episode, and then get to what I consider to be the most interesting stuff in the finale. Also, in order to advocate for that approach, I did talk about the Game of Thrones tendency to have the big battle in the penultimate episode.
Episode nine finds Agatha in 1750 as she’s entering into labor. She then sees Death and immediately knows that she’s demanding the life of Nicky. Why is Death entitled to Nicky? Is it comeuppance for Agatha’s Salem murders in 1693?
Our notion of Death is that Death is nature, and that Death is neutral in her job as Death. So we didn’t want to get into the cosmic rhyme or reason for when deaths happen and how they happen. We liked the idea that it’s potentially fated, but it wasn’t about Rio reaping people out of vengeance or vindictiveness or anything owed. She would be like nature — birth, death, constant flow — when she does her job as Death. But with Agatha, in their romantic relationship, that’s where we see a more human emotional side where [Rio/Death] is vengeful and wounded and tender and catty. So Agatha was just giving birth to a boy that, on Death’s schedule, was supposed to die, and Rio, out of [existing] love for Agatha, gave the child extra time.
Yeah, Death returns for six-year-old Nicky, and Agatha, in turn, uses “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” that she and Nicky co-wrote to manipulate witches into surrendering their lives and their power. That montage eventually sets up her surprise at seeing the Witches’ Road in her basement, but was that also your way of saying that present-day Agatha had it coming?
One of the questions of the show that Rio/Death articulates is, “Will Agatha Harkness finally meet her end?” We always knew we wanted her to die and become a ghost on the show, but the how of it was a discovery. So the “had it coming,” that’s not really how I would necessarily articulate it. We have this very intimate sequence where we see that she loved her son, and then he died. So she is grieving, and in that authentic grief moment, she is interrupted by an opportunity for a con. That opportunity means she doesn’t have to keep grieving. She sees an opportunity to pivot and to stop feeling her feelings. She can use this song to eat, and while she can try to fill herself, she will never be full. But she doesn’t have to cry tears for her son.
The show ends with Ghost Agatha and Billy going off to find Tommy. Is that setup for Agatha season two, Vision Quest or something else entirely?
I don’t have an answer for that. The intention is that Billy now has Agatha as his spirit guide, and that Billy wants to find Tommy. How? When? Where? I don’t know the answers to those questions.
Was there ever a post-credit scene, or did that final moment already feel like enough of a tease? Would a post-credit tease have been a hat on a hat?
Early on, I wrote a number of tags because I’m used to writing tags, and I actually love writing tags. Logistically, they weren’t possible for various reasons of casting, budget and those kinds of things. But, ultimately, it was Marvel’s decision not to have a tag. So the final scene, which was actually the last thing we shot, is meant to be the completion of this season, this series and its finale.
Is that vision of the drowning boy actually Tommy’s new body? Is that a done deal?
That’s our intention. When you hand off these properties, you never know how things will be used or carried forward or retconned, but for the purposes of this chapter, that’s how we see it.
One of the coolest moments of the entire series is when Rio tears the fabric of Billy’s faux reality to get where she needs to go. Did that idea emerge from having practical sets?
Absolutely. Until now, we’ve never been able to speak about the real creative reason as to why we chose a practical approach. It’s because Billy Maximoff, baby witch, made this hex, and he didn’t have the ability to create thousands of miles of a real Witches’ Road with real trees. So he needed a painted backdrop and a forced perspective and a fake soundscape. There aren’t actually animals on the road or frogs or whatever those things are. It’s all stagecraft. This is a kid who loves movies and horror and pop culture. So, essentially, in our minds, he created stages, and he was able to manipulate them in real-time. So they’re looking at a miniature, and then when they walk up to it, it’s a house that they go inside.
And that moment of Rio using her knife to cut through the backdrop was pointing at that idea. I’ve seen different interpretations of that moment online, and I welcome them, but that’s what we were doing. We were trying to get that WandaVision feeling of a jump cut and pointing at the falseness of the environment in that moment.
I always bring up Titanic’s subconscious influence on the scene where Wanda tucks in her kids as the hex collapses, and so I appreciated how episode eight briefly returned to that auditory vicinity of WandaVision. But I’ve also been meaning to mention that you actually made Agatha a passenger on the real-life Titanic.
Yeah, I did an exercise in the room where I had everybody come in with a list of Agatha through history, and I think Agatha on the Titanic was from that exercise. It was so fun to imagine where Agatha would have been bopping around before meeting her in WandaVision. It tickles me.
I really liked Agatha’s line, “Don’t steal her struggle,” as she urged Billy to not help free Jen. It then led to a master-class performance from Sasheer Zamata as Jen regained her power. Was it important that someone have a happy ending, comparatively speaking?
To me, it was important that somebody survive, and we liked that it was Jen. We felt that she had the longest arc and the longest road to travel. If you compare Alice, Lilia and Jen, they’re all out of touch with their power, but Jen is actually causing harm in her life. She’s gone in such an opposite direction from where she started as a healer, midwife and root worker. So we felt she had the longest road to travel, and that it would be the most satisfying to see her unbound and literally flying off into the sunset. But it doesn’t feel like a happy ending to me; it feels like catharsis. It feels like relief, and it’s very beautiful to me. Sasheer is really a wonder on this show, and that moment feels like a really beautiful exhale to me.
Episode six gave us the first one from inside Agatha’s house, but will we ever see the other uncensored versions of Teen’s biographical responses, mainly episode two’s car ride?
His monologue in the car was Joe [Locke] improvising, which was great. He was so cute, and it was really fun. He talked about his notion of his life as William Kaplan. So he talked about his parents, Rebecca and Jeff [Kaplan], and it was quite sweet. It must have been a little bit of Joe’s own biographical work in the Kaplan history of Billy. So we might see that, but I’m not sure.
The initial batch of Marvel shows were produced in a way that resembled their film processes. But then they pivoted to more traditional TV-making, which allowed for terms like “showrunner” (instead of the previous title of “head writer”).
(Schaeffer smiles)
Did that reshuffling make a pretty big difference on this go-round?
Not really. I was lucky in that the making of both WandaVision and Agatha All Along felt like we were huddled in the corner. They weren’t too tethered to these larger, enormous storylines. You need to do certain things that come down from Marvel, like, “We’re not going to do a tag on this one.” So there’s that kind of thing, but I feel like I had my head down while doing my job on this show.
The last six or seven years of your life has been all Marvel all the time, and it goes beyond your two well-received shows. (Schaeffer contributed to the writing of Captain Marvel and Black Widow.) So if anyone has earned an opportunity to zag, it’s you, but do you think there’s more Marvel in your future someday?
I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m excited for whatever is next. I love the people involved in this corner of the MCU very, very much, and I feel invested in their stories, but I also want to be a viewer. I want to see what happens [as a viewer]. So I don’t know.
After your massive flex in episode seven, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d like to see you direct your WandaVision and Agatha characters on the big screen.
(Laughs) It’s very nice of you to say that. That episode was really a labor of love.
Decades from now, when you’re reminiscing in front of a crackling fireplace, what day on Agatha All Along will you likely recall first?
The day the cast sang the ballad in episode two was really powerful. Directing that group of people, including Patti LuPone, as they were singing live is what I’ll think of first. We were all witches.
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Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.
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