'Agatha All Along' Wiccan Reveal Takes Sigil Maximoff For Joe Locke
The magic of Marvel Television is about to rock a Billy
Wednesday’s fifth episode of Agatha All Along, "Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power," saw “Teen”, played by Joe Locke, grow increasingly frustrated as the other coven members dismiss and undervalue him, even after Agatha Harkness (played by Kathryn Hahn) causes Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn)’s death. The last straw? Agatha smirks, becoming quite callous as she whispers, “Are you sure? You’re so much like your mother.” Blue magic begins forming at his fingertips. Jennifer Kale and Lilia Calderu (Sasheer Zamata and Patti LuPone)’s eyes turn blue in apparent possession, and throw Agatha off the road, letting her sink into the mud that earlier nearly sank the since-deceased Sharon, before they themselves get the same treatment. Teen is now donning a crown highly resembling that of the Scarlet Witch. It was Billy Maximoff all along, so cue Billie Eilish's "You Should See Me in a Crown".
Back home in the UK, Locke can breathe a huge euphoric sigh of relief. The pressures from keeping a big 2+-yearlong secret are completely gone. "It's so nice. I feel like I'm breathing. I love it," he says, revealing took four doses of melatonin the night of the episode to sleep past the near 3 AM reveal local time and deal with the fallout at a more reasonable hour. "I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I'm just going to drug myself and then wake up to my phone blowing up, which it did." While Locke did keep his silence, there were already so many clues that viewers caught on to in the leadup to the show’s premiere, even just starting with Locke being gay like Billy, whose hero name is Wiccan, and there haven’t been many gay characters with any sort of Agatha connection. And there were leaks. Of the clues actually in the series, Locke likes to point out the image of Wanda's crown is stitched onto Billy's sweater, which he believes many would miss because it’s on the back.
Showrunner Jac Schaeffer knew from the beginning the widespread speculation, and prepared Locke for the idea that the surprise would be something beyond the reveal. "You can do the most unsurprising thing in the most surprising way, and that's how you hook an audience," Locke mentioned. But with that reveal in place, "The show starts getting real," he continued. "The show starts with Billy being very much the familiar, the secondary to all the witches. Now we know he is also a witch, and that changes things. Also, we now know that he has the ability to cause harm to them. Therefore, he is now the most powerful person on the Road. What does that change in the dynamic of the group and how does that change the future of those relationships?"
What remains this season, Locke absolutely loves, like with the sixth episode that premieres Wednesday. It explores Billy's true motivations, why he's on the Witches’ Road to begin with, which isn’t for his previously-stated reasons of power, as Agatha specifically asks him what he gets out of traversing the Road. The core of his soon-to-be-explored backstory seems to be whatever happened at the age of 13, according to a newly-released midseason teaser. The footage showcases Billy Kaplan, born in Eastview to parents Jeff and Rebecca Kaplan, in a car crash during or technically before WandaVision, startling them as he spots the Hex being formed. There’s also Billy, Lilia and Jen taking on costumes of Disney heroes and villains, and some flashbacks to Agatha and Rio’s Salem days.
Locke calls the seventh episode "the best episode” because of “Jac Schaeffer's incredible form and storytelling." he recalls "We talked a lot about playing with the gray area," talking about planning out Billy’s story with Schaeffer. "At the end of episode 5, we don't know what happens to those witches, but he's not doing a good thing. We played a lot with, does that make him a bad person? Is he a good person? Which then draws parallels to the motherly figures in his life. Wanda does evil things but isn't necessarily evil. Agatha, questionably, is evil, but there's more to that, as well. We know that he's been lying to her, and we play a lot with those dynamics of how duplicitous he is. The facade of the fanboy teen, is that completely fake or is that actually still a real part of him? This is the stuff that I found so interesting in playing him."
Watch the midseason teaser as Marvel Studios’s Agatha All Along rolls out its final 4 episodes Wednesdays at 9 PM Eastern until October 30 on Disney+.
Source: Entertainment Weekly