Agatha All Along creator confirms the show’s deaths will remain ‘permanent’

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episodes 1-7.

The Witches’ Road has lived up to its dangerous reputation. Across the first seven episodes of Marvel Studios‘ Agatha All Along, multiple characters have met shocking, tragic ends as a result of the Road’s trials. Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) was the first to go, and she’s so far been followed by Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn) and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone). The latter character dies in heroic fashion at the end of Agatha All Along‘s seventh episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” when she sacrifices herself in order to take out the villainous members of the Salem Seven and buy her fellow witches more time.

“Death’s Hand in Mine” also reveals the true identity of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza). In an eerie encounter, Rio reveals to Lilia that she is Death herself, an act that later convinces LuPone’s witch to accept her fate. Despite the seeming finality of her self-sacrificial act, though, Lilia’s death has been met — like Alice and Mrs. Hart’s — with slight disbelief from fans. Marvel Studios, after all, has a proven track record of killing characters only to bring them back to life. It doesn’t, however, sound like viewers should expect that to happen with any of the Witches’ Road’s latest victims.

“This is a show about death,” Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer told Variety when asked about the fates of characters like Lilia, Alice, and Mrs. Hart. “Personally, I feel that when a person dies, you can still talk to them and feel them, and they can still be in your lives. But death is immutable. It is permanent. With this show, we wanted to pay respect to that. So this a more earnest and grave conversation about death than maybe you would find in another superhero project.”

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

When she was subsequently asked whether or not the Salem Seven really are as dead as they seem at the end of Agatha All Along episode 7, Schaeffer further confirmed, “Yeah, the Salem Seven are dead. They’re off the board in our show, is what I will say. Lilia has saved everybody!” Schaeffer’s comments, notably, don’t fully eliminate the possibility of characters like Lilia, Alice, or Mrs. Hart ever appearing again onscreen. It seems like fans shouldn’t expect them to ever literally come back to life, though.

To its credit, Agatha All Along has proven itself unafraid of killing its characters at the drop of a hat. The now-confirmed presence of Death herself, therefore, only adds an extra layer of danger and unpredictability to the series’ forthcoming two-part finale. Schaeffer has refrained from teasing too heavily what viewers should expect from Agatha‘s final episodes, but she did tell Variety “there is more Agatha, there is more Rio” to come, as well as “some truth to be shared about Agatha.”

Fans only have a few more days to wait before they find out what that “truth” is, along with whether or not Plaza’s Death is able to claim any more lives before Agatha All Along reaches its ultimate conclusion.

Agatha All Along‘s two-episode finale premieres Wednesday, October 30 on Disney+.