Agatha All Along episode 7 breaks new ground for the MCU by delivering a magic Marvel take on the best Stephen King adaptation to date

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(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu in Agatha All Along

Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 7, so turn back now if you haven’t seen it yet…

It feels like forever since Marvel has been this good. That’s what first comes to mind when the credits roll onAgatha All Along‘s seventh episode, ‘Death’s Hand In Mine’.

Although this might sound like a rather backward way to start discussion of the chapter at hand, it’s actually rather fitting to kick things off “close to the end”. This is an episode that’s out of time, evoking other twisty time-travel stories of the past – including one of the best that horror icon Stephen King never told…

Timey-wimey

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Patti LuPone as Lilia and Sasheer Zamata as Jen in Agatha All Along

Agatha’s coven fights against an ever-dwindling clock this week that brings them one step closer to the end of the road (and therefore the end of the show). But more importantly, the narrative itself is also out of time: a slippery, nonlinear beast which jumps back and forth between the past and the present, skipping seconds, minutes, and even centuries in the blink of an eye.

Keep an (evil) eye out(Image credit: Marvel Studios)Here’s all of theAgatha All Along Easter eggsyou may have missed so far

Keep an (evil) eye out

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)Here’s all of theAgatha All Along Easter eggsyou may have missed so far

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Agatha All Along

Here’s all of theAgatha All Along Easter eggsyou may have missed so far

Amidst all the time-hopping, Lilia jumps back to the beginning, a few centuries ago to her own childhood, where she’s seated across from an old Sicilian woman who knows exactly what’s going on. “You are visiting, eh?,” she asks old Lilia in young Lilia’s body. “How long has it been?”

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What seems unhinged to the rest of the coven, and even us as viewers, is perfectly normal for Lilia’s teacher who’s well aware of how disorientating it can be to experience snippets of reality out of order. Because as this episode reveals: “The flow of time is an illusion.”

Defying time (and gravity)

(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Lilia in Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along isn’t the first story to play around with this idea. In recent years, both Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan and Nell from The Haunting of Hill House have followed a similar nonlinear path through their lives, not to mention various characters in sci-fi ventures like Doctor Who and Star Trek. But the one that Agatha All Along evokes most clearly, the one it owes the clearest debt to, is Castle Rock. Or more specifically, the seventh episode of season 1, where Hulu’s underrated gem proved itself to be so much more than just another tribute to horror writer Stephen King.

(Image credit: Hulu)

Bill Skarsgård and Sissy Spacek in Castle Rock

We leave them both falling, Lilia defying gravity in her Glinda-inspired dress while Ruth fell back into time itself, close to the end and the beginning all at once…

Whether Agatha All Along is a poignant homage to Castle Rock or a more liberal borrowing of Ruth’s narrative journey is irrelevant. ‘Death’s Hand In Mine’ and ‘The Queen’ are exceptional episodes of TV in their own right, both serial and stand-alone masterpieces in each of their respective shows, connected yet entirely separate. So it doesn’t really matter which came first. Which is just as well, because “the flow of time is an illusion.” Yet even so, it really does feel like forever since Marvel has been this good.

Agatha All Along episodes 1 to 7 are streaming now. Ensure you don’t miss an episode with ourAgatha All Along release schedule.

And for more on the wider MCU, check out our guide to all of theupcoming Marvel movies and showsor get up to speed with our breakdown of theMarvel timeline.

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