‘Agatha All Along’ Episode 4 Recap: “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You”  

Jen: “Do I hate her? Or do I want her phone number?”

Alice: “Same.” 

Everybody in Agatha All Along is having a really good time. But Aubrey Plaza is forever having the absolute best time. From the second she flew across the room to flick her blade against Agatha’s neck – make way for the memorable .gif! – to her instantly memorable Episode 4 return, Plaza’s has brought such a menacing hotness to the proceedings Rio Vidal that even characters like Jen and Alice have to hand it to her.

Putting aside Plaza’s cornering of the market on cool character names – she’s emerging from graves as Rio Vidal, but also taming Megalopolis as Wow Platinum – what her performance embodies is the fun that’s become Agatha’s biggest operating principle. Yes, Rio only clawed her way out of that grave as an improvised green witch replacement for Sharon Davis, who apparently died at the end of the last Witches’ Road trial. That isn’t fun, even if it’s Marvel, where true and permanent death is just a suggestion. What is fun is seeing Rio’s effect on the group dynamic. This coven is shook. “So…the dangerous but charismatic lady’s back,” Teen offers to Agatha, who’s clearly emotional. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

She does want to talk about it, how the relationship between these two has fared over the centuries. Like after Rio tempts her with a whispered “Boo!” to the ear, and Agatha alludes their experience together. (“LIke old times…work and play…”) But the personal stuff between her and Rio will have to wait, because another tempting house has appeared on the Witches’ Road. A waxing moon on the doorway, Fleetwood Mac tour posters inside, and pictures of Alice’s rock star mom. Lorna Wu (Elizabeth Anweis), who always said the Road would save Alice, is said to have died in a hotel fire while on tour. But as the coven receives a round of new duds and enters the house’s 1970s-style recording studio, it’s Lorna and her hit song “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” that are their guide.

More meddling from Rio allows the group to overhear how Agatha has traditionally murdered all of the witches around her. But when brands appear on Alice’s shoulders – her mother had them, too; “I convinced myself they were birthmarks” – and a metronome begins its maniacal tick, it’s clear another curse has found them. The same curse Lorna Wu defended from her coven – her fans – with song. The only solution is for the improvised coven to perform their version of “Witches’ Road,” and that’s how we get the latest musical number to feature in Agatha All Along. With their leader on vocals, Alice takes her seat at the piano while Jen picks up a bass, Teen plays the guitar, Lilia fits zills onto her fingers, and Rio gets behind the drum kit. Of course she’s a drummer.

“If I can’t reach you, let my song teach you/All you need to keep my love alive…”

“Stop phoning it in! Play like a witch!” Maybe they can’t fully trust Agatha as a coven leader, but she keeps them in line as a bandleader, and as Alice sees a manifestation of the curse – a demon-like figure with gross leathery wings – the fire and chaos in the Witches’ Road recording studio suddenly return to calm. Lorna Wu wrote the song like a protection spell, and singing it worked. They broke the latest curse to befall them, did a little team-building along the way, and are once again back on the Road. But not without taking a hit. While not seemingly dead like Sharon, Teen is bleeding badly from a shard of flying glass. It’s teamwork time again as Jen casts a spell, and as his wound begins to close, Rio observes Agatha’s concern as if considering her attachment to Teen.

When Teen comes around, he has concerns of his own for Agatha. Was she the one who put the sigil on him? And what really happened to Agatha’s son? You know, the one given a tantalizing Easter egg name in A.A.A. Episode 1, Nicholas Scratch. The one she is said to have traded for control of the Darkhold. Agatha answers Teen’s first question with a bit of interesting witchly lore. “No. Actually, I wouldn’t know. The sigil works on the witch who cast it as well.” As for the second question, it’s still too charged a topic.

With Teen upright and the group clear of another Witches’ Road trial, they engage in a few war stories of their time in the witch trenches. They’ve all got scars to show for it, particularly a frustrated Jen, who describes how a trap lured her to be bound. “I still don’t know how he did it without magick,” she says in another of Agatha’s tantalizing information droplets. And then it’s time for the person having the most fun to also bring the expositional heat. 

“I’ve got a scar. A long time ago I loved someone. And I had to do something that I did not want to do, even though it was my job. And it hurt them. She is my scar.” Agatha is sitting apart from the group. Rio goes to her. They embrace. The “dangerous but charismatic lady” is doing it again. And just when it really seems like Agatha and Rio will kiss, this moment of tenderness and rekindling is broken by the realities of their shared history. Despite what she’s feeling, Teen cannot replace what Agatha lost. “That boy isn’t yours.” Or is it not so much loss as what Rio was forced to take from her? 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.