Agatha All Along‘s final two episodes revealed the surprising truth about the MCU’s Witches’ Road. That magical pathway of trials and tribulations was both exactly what it seemed and nothing at all like it appeared. How was that possible? To answer that question about the Witches’ Road, we have to start our walk to the Road via a detour in Salem, Massachusetts, centuries before.
The Witches’ Road began as a song Agatha Harkness and her son Nicholas came up with together. But following her son’s death, Agatha learned other witches believed there really was a special realm that would grant their greatest desires. So she turned her child’s song into a deadly ruse. Agatha All Along reveals that Agatha used the promise of the Witches’ Road to lure “gullible witches” to her. She then stole their power and killed them when they attacked her for mocking them because they had failed to open a door that didn’t exist.
Agatha did this for hundreds of years, and it was how she planned to get back her missing powers in her Westview basement. She didn’t reach out to Lilia, Jen, and Alice so they could all go to the Witches’ Road together. Agatha was planning to goad them into attacking her, taking their magic, and leaving them dead.
That’s why she grabbed Mrs. Hart Sharon Davis as her Green Witch fill-in. Not because Sharon had secret magical powers but because it didn’t matter. It was all fake, so her Green Witch could be, too. The song, the Witches’ Road, the need for a coven, all of it was a lie told by a grief-stricken murderer obsessed with gaining more and more power, the kind she’d once hoped would be enough to save her son from his fate. The Witches’ Road was never real on Agatha All Along.
At least, The Witches’ Road wasn’t real in the MCU until Billy Maximoff made it real. On Agatha All Along, Billy/Wiccan conjured The Witches’ Road from nothing without even meaning to or knowing he did. He possesses the same incredible power of creation as his mother, the Scarlet Witch.
Wanda Maximoff transformed Westview into her own sitcom-paradise on WandaVision. Billy did something far more interesting. He subconsciously used own his powerful magic to make The Witches’ Road look exactly like he imagined. He pictured the road as a type of Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick pathway of intrigue, possibility, and danger, so that’s what it became for Agatha All Along‘s witches. Billy Maximoff then built each witch’s trial from movies, songs, pictures, and decor he loved.
Billy realized all of this when he returned to his bedroom and saw before him all the evidence of what he’d invented from his mind. It was as though Verbal Kint was both Keyser Soze and the cop interviewing him.
Since a door never should have appeared in her basement, Agatha had known all along Teen was Wanda’s son. The Scarlet Witch had also turned her magic on a kind of autopilot inside her Hex, as she was running complex magic miles from her own home on WandaVision. Billy had done the same with The Witches’ Road on Agatha All Along.
Unlike the people of Westview, who suffered under Wanda, Billy at least gave his coven a chance. He made it possible for those who walked his Road to get what they most wanted. Jen Kale wished to be un-bound and she was. She left The Witches’ Road with her power back for the first time in a century. Billy himself also managed to find his brother Tommy, who’d been missing in the ether. He then gives Tommy a new body just as he had found himself a new vessel in poor William Kaplan.
In some ways, even Alice and Lilia got what they wanted from Agatha All Along‘s Witches’ Road; they just paid for their wish with their lives. Sharon, who didn’t even know what the Road was, was the unwilling and unintended sacrifice Billy made to make all of this possible. Turns out all magic, even unintentional magic, comes with a cost.
Agatha All Along‘s Witches’ Road was real; it just didn’t exist until Billy made it real. Now that he knows the truth, it might never exist again, just as Wanda’s Hex is gone forever. And just like the Hex caused so much suffering, a guilt-ridden Billy might make sure no other witch every dies on his creation again.
Or The Witches’ Road might now exist forever in the MCU, a magical realm waiting for another coven to walk it. Tommy and Billy were creations of the Hex, and they survived its destruction. They didn’t need the Scarlet Witch to keep using her magic to keep them alive. Once she made them, they existed independent of her. The Witches’ Road might not need its creator, either—and perhaps it will live on in the Marvel Universe even as Agatha All Along draws to a close.