This week’s episode of Agatha All Along solved one of the show’s biggest mysteries: who is Teen, played by actor Joe Locke? Turns out — spoilers past this point — his mother is the Scarlet Witch, and ergo, he is Billy Maximoff, aka Billy Kaplan, aka Wiccan. But the episode also definitively shut down one theory, that Teen is Nicholas Scratch, the son of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn). So if Teen isn’t Nicholas Scratch… Who is? Or rather, what is up with Agatha’s son? Is Nicholas Scratch dead?
To back up the truck for a second, in the premiere episode, “Seekest Thou The Road,” we caught up with Agatha still trapped in Scarlet Witch’s (Elizabeth Olsen) hex from the end of WandaVision. While most of the episode took place in a light parody of Mare of Easttown titled Agnes of Westview, we discovered that Agatha had a son named Nicholas Scratch who has either gone missing or is dead.
This gets hinted at further in Episode 3, “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials,” when Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) explains to Teen that Agatha is rumored to have sacrificed her son for possession of the Darkholds, a mystical tome.
“Did you know she traded her own child for the Book of the Damned?” asks Kale, referring to the Darkhold. “They say no one really knows what happened to him. They say he might be dead. Others say he might be a demon or an agent of Mephisto.”
Later in the episode, thanks to some poisoned wine, Agatha has a hallucination of a baby’s cradle; and instead of a baby, the Darkhold is tucked up nice and tight. Episode 4, “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You” also gives a strong piece of evidence about what happened to Agatha’s son, during Rio Vidal’s (Aubrey Plaza) “She is my scar” speech. “A long time ago, I loved someone,” Rio says. “And I had to do something I did not wanna do, even though it was my job. And it hurt them. She is my scar.”
The not-so-subtle hint is that Rio had something to do with the disappearance of Nicholas Scratch; and she certainly knows something about it, as the closing line in the episode is Rio telling Agatha that Teen is not her son.
But we’re not done there, as Episode 5, “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power,” gave us the biggest piece of evidence yet as to what happened to Nicholas Scratch. During a Ouija seance, Agatha is possessed by the ghost of her mother, Evanora Harkness (Kate Forbes). While Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) dies trying to free Agatha, Teen goes back to the Ouija board and discovers there’s a second spirit present, as the board spells out “Nicholas Scratch.” Teen says the name out loud, proving that he is not Nicholas Scratch (he has a magical Sigil that prevents him from saying his name), and we hear a kid tell Agatha, “Mama. Stop.”
The implication is that Nicholas Scratch is dead, a ghost with unfinished business, and was a child when he died — not a baby. While that’s a fair amount of supposition there, that’s the info the show is giving us at the moment. And this dovetails nicely with a dangling plot point from WandaVision Episode 5, “…On A Very Special Episode.” After finding the Maximoff family dog, Sparky, dead, one of Wanda’s kids (Tommy, played by Jett Klyne) says, “You can fix anything, Mom. Fix dead.” While Wanda, confused, says, “What? No,” Agatha (called Agnes at the time) looks shocked, about to burst into tears, and says, “You can do that?”
The earlier show moves on from there, but it was clear at the time there was more to that story… And now we’re getting it. The exact sequence of events has yet to be revealed, but Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son, does indeed seem to be dead and traded to Mephisto for the Darkhold. Rio may have even made the exchange, even though she didn’t want to.
So Teen isn’t Nicholas Scratch. And, likely, no other character on the show is secretly Agatha’s son. She’ll still have to confront whatever it is she did by the end of the series. But as of the end of this week’s episode, it seems she’ll be confronting the ghost of a dead child.
Agatha All Along Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along premiered September 18 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET on Disney+. It streams weekly, leading up to the two-episode finale on October 30. There are nine episodes, in total.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Agatha All Along, with premiere dates:
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 1: “Seekest Thou The Road”
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 2: “Circle Sewn With Fate Unlock They Hidden Gate”
- Wednesday, September 25, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 3: “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials”
- Wednesday, October 2, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 4: “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You”
- Wednesday, October 9, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 5: “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power”
- Wednesday, October 16, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 6
- Wednesday, October 23, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 7
- Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 8
- Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 9
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