The following story contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine.”
THERE HAVE BEEN a number of instances in the time since Marvel Studios first started making movies where they’ve simply nailed a casting. We’re talking nailed—100% perfect, no notes, could not possibly have imagined better. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Chris Evan as Captain America. Tom Hiddleston as Loki. There are a couple more, but the truly perfect choices are few and far between. But in revealing that Aubrey Plaza’s Agatha All Along character is actually the Original Green Witch, also known as Death (seriously: Death itself!), they’ve added another to the list.
Ever since she burst onto the scene in the late 2000s with roles in comedic projects like Judd Apatow’s Funny People and NBC’s Parks & Recreation, Plaza has been the master of the deadpan. She’s absolutely hilarious when she wants to be, but has also proven through projects like The White Lotus, Safety Not Guaranteed, and Black Bear that she can provide depth and intrigue as well. She tends to give off a sarcastic, borderline goth mood—who could forget the time she presented alongside Jenna Ortega at the SAG Awards?. Quite frankly, is there anyone who makes more sense as Death itself than Aubrey Plaza? It’s the kind of casting that you hear, think about, and then simply say ‘Well, yeah. Of course.’
The literal manifestation of Death sounds like a wild character to feature in a superhero show about a coven of witches, but trust us—there’s lots of lore there (which we’ll touch on a bit below).
But we should also note that the clues of Rio Vidal’s real identity had been there all along: episode 7, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” largely focused on a trial for Lilia (Patti LuPone) as she reached the end of her life. Here, we realized that she has the ability to experience events out of order—and often can see into the future, even if it doesn’t always make sense for people around her. That’s why she was able to see William Kaplan become Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), and why she warned Alice (Ali Ahn) not to help Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), even though the message unfortunately wasn’t properly received.
There were other signs, too: when Rio first showed up, she was declared to be THE green witch. She told Agatha earlier in the season: “You get your power and I get my bodies.” And to that effect, every time a member of the coven died along the Witches Road, shortly after, Rio was not present; she was staying back to collect the bodies and souls of the deceased. In perhaps the best use of Plaza’s singular energy, when the Ouija board read “DEATH” earlier in the season, she laughed maniacally. Most likely read this as Rio just being nutty (and, honestly, great), but really it was a major hint toward who we were actually looking at.
But there’s more to Agatha All Along and the reveal of Aubrey Plaza as not only Rio Vidal, but the Original Green Witch, aka Death. Let’s get into it.
Agatha All Along revealed that Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is the Original Green Witch, and also Death. What does that mean?
Marvel Studios
Marvel Infinity Gauntlet
As mentioned above there’s actually quite a history with the character of Death in the Marvel comics. Death—who is, indeed, a sentient being, the sister of Eternity, who we saw looking like a personified galaxy in Thor: Love & Thunder —has had run-ins with several different characters throughout the years, most notably Deadpool and Thanos, both of whom fell in love with her obsessively.
Thanos, in particular, is known for his relationship with her. In the MCU, Thanos is chasing the Infinity Stones so he can eliminate half of the world’s population to stop overpopulation and save resources; in the comics, he’s obsessed with Lady Death and thinks that collecting them in his gauntlet will impress her (this happens in Jim Starlin’s famous Infinity Gauntlet run) . Ultimately, she’s not impressed, and even a little turned off; she helps to eventually defeat him.
Marvel Comics
It’s an interesting turn, then, that when we do eventually see Lady Death in the live-action MCU, it’s not in a romance with Thanos, but rather a different villain—Agatha. Agatha and Rio/Death have had a clear history hinted at throughout the series, and it’s clear that the final episodes of Agatha All Along will continue to mine that. But it’s also worth noting that Death is also not explicitly a villain in the Marvel Comics; she’s an inevitability of life, sure, but not always on the side of the baddies. That’s interesting, because Agatha herself is also rarely the villain in the comics that she presents as in the shows—Agatha is generally a resource and advisor for Wanda and the babysitter of Reed and Sue Richards’s children, Franklin and Valeria.
But what does the whole Green Witch thing mean? That’s just a way of saying that since she was the original green witch, the green witch, that she was the very first one to use Earth magic. She is death, after all.
So where does this all go? Episode 7 ended with Lilia sacrificing herself to save the rest of the coven—which now is just Agatha, Teen/Billy/William, and Jennifer—from the Salem Seven, still chasing them down. But since she presumably fell to her death and was impaled, maybe we’ll see the Lilia and Rio/Death aftermath to start the next episode.
What will really be interesting, though, is to see where things go in the finale of Agatha All Along and how they set things up for a potential future in the MCU. Agatha and Death are both major characters in the Marvel comics canon, and it would be interesting to see if the show repositions them to appear in stories for some other characters, such as the Fantastic Four (who have their first MCU adventure out in July 2025) and a perhaps-returning (who knows?) Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch.
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