The Three of Swords, Death, & Grief: Agatha All Along
The series ended and I am reeling.
AGATHA ALL ALONG MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD <3
The Three of Swords.
I dissect the imagery of this card that feels a tinge bit too sweet. The melancholy that coats it is a feeling I am all too familiar with, one that often feels like home. There really is a sweetness to the unbelievable pain of being alive, but it always comes with a price.
The symmetry of the three enlivens something in me that feels potent and on-going, but the piercing of the heart always makes my body skip a beat.
Grief, sorrow, and heartbreak— words that slide off of my tongue and into the ether, never to be found but always to be felt, again. The three quite literally depicts the moment where something penetrates through you, leaving a part of you on the stake. It is the moment of utter devastation, and the reeling that comes immediately afterward.
When the three of swords was assigned to Agatha (by the amazing Kathryn Hahn) in the incredible series (that I am now grieving beyond belief) Agatha All Along, I knew that I had much more in common with Agatha than I originally thought. She knew what it was like to have part of yourself left on that stake. She knew what it was like to lose yourself inside of losing something else. She knew what it was like to live your life through the lens of grief.
Death
Much of the following of Agatha has been from fellow proclaimed witches, or people who I would call witch-adjacent. Meaning they may have an interest in the craft, love the vibe of witches, or just in general are fascinated by the archetype. So when the death card was seemingly introduced in the Agatha All Along series as the very literal act of death— tarot readers and witches all over the internet were commenting about how this depiction was inaccurate, as the death card is not really about the act of “death”, but about transformation.
When I think about death, I think about a process—rather than a moment.
There are countless moments leading up to death, followed by countless more afterward. In the series, we see the literal death of multiple characters; including Lilia, Sharon, Alice, and Agathas son, and we see the many moments leading up to each death—and all the moments after it. Each of these deaths signified some kind of transformation, which is what the process of death really is. A transformation of someones identity, into something else. This is what the death card represents. The process of death, the process of transformation, and the leaving behind what has already died and inviting in what is ready to live.
Interestingly though, Agatha All Along took this a step further, and brought the personification of death into the picture. The female form of death, played by Audrey Plaza (brilliantly) is the character that from the very beginning is terrorizing Agatha, and trying to get her killed. We don’t find out she is death until many episodes in, but her being the “original Green Witch” gives it away in small doses.
Death as a character creates even more depth to the depiction of our beloved Death card, because it humanizes a process all of us are so deeply afraid of. It makes the process of death more than just a process, but an entity, that is looming in the shadows and constantly happening, rather than just a signature full stop.
Rio is around throughout most of the series, and though she takes her “bodies” with her at certain points (Alice, Lilia, Sharon, Agatha’s son) she is not the one “killing” people, she is merely the one encouraging the transformation. She is merely there to claim the sacred cycle of nature.
Agatha & Death
Agathas relationship with death is sexy and overwhelming from the beginning, as this queer couple have a tendency to make grand entrances. As when Rio makes her first appearance AS Rio in the series, she busts open the door and throws Agatha against the wall, threatening to slit her throat. The tension between them is cut worthy, and though Agathas life is being threatened—there isn’t much fear in her eyes (not until she hears about the Salem 7 anyway).
When we move further into the series, we start to see that Rio has been antagonizing Agatha for centuries, and that some “deal” has made them the way that they are, though we don’t find out about what that is until the last episode of the series.
When I was watching this series and putting the pieces together about Agatha and death, it really made me realize how much I resonate with Agatha. For her flirting with death, in some ways, is how she stays alive.
I’ve flirted with death all throughout my life. Though these days it is much less dramatic, I have gone through time periods that felt like death was a gorgeous sunny embrace, just waiting to warm up my chilled and prickly-haired body. I have spent hours fantasizing about what it would be like to take a final breath, and years in the crux of a mental illness that would continue to put me there. In a lot of ways, the flirtation I had with death was what was continuously keeping me alive and awake, and this depiction is played out so swimmingly with Agatha.
Though hers, is quite literal.
We find out in the last few episodes that death (her love) was planning on taking her son before he was even born, but Agatha begged for more time. Its obvious they already have a relationship, and Rio is heartbroken at the idea of having to take something from Agatha that she so desperately wants and loves. My theory of their relationship is that it started with Agathas killing of witches (which I will be talking about in more depth in another post soon, and how she is NOT the villain) and her continuous giving to Rio and Death. They started to develop this relationship through this, and when Agatha was giving birth to her soon-to-be-dead child, she begged for his life. Rio succumbs to her pleading, and gives her more time, but says it is limited.
It is clear that in order for Agatha to keep her stance and power with death, she must continue killing witches. She does this by having them attack her, and her power is to then take it all away from them, killing them in the process. She often uses her son as a ploy, to bring the witches in to harm them. Until one day, he refuses to do it, and that very same night— death comes for him. Agatha awakens to an empty bed. She is devastated.
Grief
The Witches Road, we find out, is a song that Agatha and her son create together, that ends up finding its way into the mouths of others—where lore is created. Lore that would make the ballad of the witches road not only a story, but a real place, where witches go to find what they have always been looking for.
This in so many ways shows how the ‘lore’ we have in modern day witchcraft is also created, not from ‘ancient practices,’ but from stories that have been passed down about them (but that is once again another post for another day).
For now, I want to touch on how Agatha uses this new-found knowledge of the lore of the road, and how the grief she experienced from losing her son, fueled it.
There are so many ways I could categorize deep grief, but having the capacity for clear thinking, is not one of them. One of my favorite books by Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, really brings together what the grief-stricken life can be like. You spend minutes, days, and months without a person—and still wonder if they’ll want to keep the shoes in their closet. You’ll spend hours on the phone cancelling all of their magazine subscriptions, only to wonder what time they’ll be home again. The grief stricken mind does not think clearly, because there is simply not a clear and definitive line between life and death.
Death is a process—rather than a moment. There are many moments leading up to it, and many moments after it. It is never a signature full stop.
When a loved one dies, we are left to wonder what the next step in their identity is. Because unless a person is forgotten, they never truly stop living. They live through their clothing, their art, their signatures, and their laugh that is still haunting you in your sleep. The grief of losing a loved one is so piercing and yet so unfathomable that going to the grocery store seems sinister, because you won’t be able to buy them the chips that they always loved, and you have to act normal about it. You have to act like its all completely normal that your life just turned upside down, and that a person you love is no longer in this phase of life with you. But at the same time, they are, and that definitive line never seems to get any clearer.
Agatha losing her son places her in this unclear non-definitive line, where she is constantly playing with death, and fueling her—too.
When she finds out the song her and her beloved son created together is being used as lore, I think a part of her wanted to go along with it, and unleash the witches road. She wanted to live out the lore to be with her son, and the only way she knew how to do that, was by killing the people who saw that it was all a sham. She, of course, had lifetimes of killing before her—so it wasn’t all because of the grief. But I don”t think she killed for no reason. I think she killed to stay alive, and to keep her son alive, too.
I whole-heartedly do not believe that Agatha is a villain, though she isn’t a hero, either. So what does that make her? Similar to Wanda, we are left to grieve with these people we have walked alongside with, who have spent their whole lives trying to deal with the grief of losing their loved ones. So much so, that they will hurt anyone who gets in their way of it.
So the question really comes to:
Can you really blame them?