Agatha All Along is giving us some answers, while raising new questions, in episode 4 this week, though it does seem to be slowly spelling something out. That would be the true identity of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal, a Green Witch. Or rather, the Green Witch, as she says.
We know she’s more than that, and also more than Agatha’s ex-lover, a big first for the MCU. But that whole situation is a bit complicated when Vidal is…well, who she is.
The running theory that now seems to be panning out is that Rio Vidal is Death. As in, the actual character Death, or Lady Death, from Marvel comics, who at one point had a significant storyline as the love interest of Thanos himself. That is…probably not how things are going to play out here, luckily for Agatha.
We can start with an old clue, her name. Rio Vidal translates to some approximation of “River of Life,” a river being a key part of the underworld and the phrase “river of life” often being referred to as the blood running through our veins.
But this week?
- Her claim to be the Green Witch, a magic based on the earth, indicates some sort of primordial power (note: there is a character called Gaea in Marvel, an elder god of growth and healing, which has been another Rio theory, though that seems much less likely in context).
- She literally emerges from the grave of Mrs. Hart, and you don’t get more death-y than that.
- She and Agatha let the other witches overhear her talking about getting witches killed so she “gets the bodies” (I’m not quite clear on why they wanted them to hear that).
- Agatha gives a subtle “don’t” for her not to take Teen as he’s seemingly on the brink of death.
- Rio talks about hurting someone she loved by “doing her job” which may mean either killing her son Nicholas Scratch, or at least taking him to the underworld. And if she did that, she would know that Teen is not in fact her son, which clearly Agatha has theorized, and she shoots that idea down (the main alternate theory for Teen is that he’s Billy Maximoff, Wanda’s son, which seems essentially predetermined at this point, but that’s a conversation for another day).
So, it seems pretty clear that Rio Vidal is indeed Death, but how that manifests in the MCU will be different than the comic character, the Thanos-beloved cosmic entity that is normally a part of galaxy-spanning storylines rather than going down, down Witch’s Roads. They’re clearly not going to be doing that Thanos storyline, nor from the looks of it, any of her other comic appearances. I can’t find any connection to her and Agatha in the source material. But that’s the MCU for you, you take characters and slot them where you need them. And yes, I would argue Agatha All Along has greatly benefitted from the insertion of Aubrey Plaza’s Rio, and Death (and death) is clearly an important part of the story in this entire series.
The ultimate reveal of Vidal’s identity remains to be seen, but with all the hints they’re dropping we may not have to wait too long. I mean we went from Teen is a rando, to Teen is Agatha’s son, to Teen is probably Wanda’s son in like three weeks. We’ll see what we learn next week.
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