Agatha All Along Director Addresses Joe Locke’s Dark Side

Agatha All Along star Joe Locke brought some darkness to The Witches’ Road last week and the series’ director took some time to talk about it. Jac Schaeffer has been leading folks on this journey with Agatha Harkness since the WandaVision days. She told The Wrap that the close confines of this coven has made every one of these witches a little bit on edge. Last week, everything finally boiled over after Agatha took out Alice Wu-Gulliver in a moment of chaos. That led to Teen tossing the remaining coven members into the muck of the road. As icing on the dastardly cake, Joe Locke’s character has been revealed as Billy Maximoff, and will spark a ton of emotions from some of the coven as well. (Provided they ever make it out of that mud to finish out these trials.) Schaeffer has noticed that her witches have taken on a bit of an edge from the moment they all stepped onto the road. It seemed like things were going okay after Alice’s trial in Episode 4. That quickly left the building after that magical confrontation. All of this is on purpose though, and we’re going to have to keep watching to learn more.

“It’s more about a coven itself, and the idea of blessings and burdens alike, and that witches in a coven are ride or die, but also, given certain circumstances, will also stab each other in the back,” Schaeffer argues. “That was, from the beginning, something we were interested in, because witches are coded as villains, right? Like treacherous, self serving, villainous, evil, violent, duplicitous, right? That’s the thing.”

“So it was important to us we weren’t doing ‘It’s a girls weekend! And it’s all about bonding and loving each other!’ We very much wanted the bonding,” The director recalled. “I mean, that campfire idea, I wish I could remember which of my brilliant writers came up with the campfire idea, but it was very early, and I was like, ‘100% However we do it, we’re getting these witches around a campfire.’ And I’m an enormous fan of Jaws, so I’m like, ‘We’re doing a scar comparison. We need that vibe.’”

So we’ve established that Billy Maximoff is a big meanie now. But what does that mean for the rest of the trials on The Witches’ Road? Last time we checked, the rest of the coven was still down there in the mud and with no real plan to escape. An exclusive clip that Marvel released with ComicBook earlier today hints that there might be a way out. But, nothing is certain right now. We also had the chance to sit down with Joe Locke and ask about where his relationship with his friends stands after all that drama in Episode 5. The Agatha All Along star is keeping details close to the vest. However, he did have something fun to say about Billy’s motivations moving forward.

“You’ll have to find out this week!” Locke teased me. “We definitely know that he went on the road looking for power, which is a lie. He’s got power. So, what was he looking for? Why does he want to go on the road? Why has he been lying to Agatha this whole time?”

Clearly, the Agatha All Along team is still hiding some pretty massive Secrets behind all of these teases. From our count, there are still the mystery of Rio Vidal’s actual identity, what’s going on with Mephisto, Agatha’s powers being restored, maybe a Scarlet Witch resurrection, and for good measure, the future of the magical side of the MCU, all still on the docket. It’s a little bit wild to expect Agatha All Along to pull the curtain back on all of these mysteries. But, you can probably bet that 3 to 4 of them will get their conclusion in this Disney+ series.

Do you think Billy Maximoff is the secret villain of this show? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!