Content warning: Agatha Harkness and Rio Vidal erotic fanfiction in tweet form.

Disney+

 

This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episodes 8 and 9.

At last, sapphic fans of Disney+ series Agatha All Along got their wish: a kiss between the witch killer Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Death herself, Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza). The two delivered, according to some, the most satisfying smooch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as Marvel’s first kiss between two gay girl supers in its on screen history during the series’ riveting two-episode finale Wednesday night.

To no one’s surprise, gay girls all over the internet set their phones ablaze posting in ecstasy as well as anguish; the kiss between the two characters, shared during episode eight, was not just a culmination of series-long sexual tension between Agatha and the goth lesbian personification of Death who, as we’ve gleaned throughout the show, have centuries-worth of on-again, off-again ex-girlfriend drama. The kiss was also the consequential climax of a saga between the two dark witches, as Death sought lusty vengeance on Agatha and taunted her throughout the series with the possibility of her demise.

So, in this long-awaited game of “will they, won’t they,” which was really more like a “will Aubrey Plaza kill Kathryn Hahn in a sexy way, or won’t she,” reader, I am here to tell you that Aubrey Plaza did in fact kill Kathryn Hahn in a sexy way. This historic kiss was their last — the kiss of Death — a terminal fate chosen by Agatha in order to sacrifice herself to save Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke), who was stealthily pursued by Rio after he used his powers as Wiccan to cheat death itself.

A shared sentiment from many of those immediately reacting to the kiss online noted the passion and devastation found in this cinematic moment. “The way they’re kissing so intensely because they know that once they locked lips it was over,” wrote a one prosaic X user @lezzie0lsen, “they know in this very moment this is their last time together, they let their hands linger as Agatha goes up to make the most of every last second.”

“Rio holding onto Agatha’s wrists because she wants to keep her close,” @lezzie0lsen wrote on, commanding a one Them blogger’s attention with the force of such fanfic-like ekphrasis, “because she knows Agatha will leave her again the second the moment ends, she truly loves her from the bottom of her heart, this is all so sad.”

https://twitter.com/lezzie0lsen/status/1851821721948483911

The kiss has been long-anticipated by fans of the witchy series set three years after the end of WandaVision. In the series premiere, Rio licked Agatha’s hand in a sapphic (and slightly blood-play oriented) moment of intimacy, and the two also had an almost-kiss at the end of episode four. Ahead of their airing, fans noticed an intimacy coordinator credited in episodes six and eight, which we now know was for a kiss between Billy Kaplan and his boyfriend, and this final kiss of Death, respectively.

In a September interview with The Wrap, showrunner Jac Schaeffer gushed about Rio and Agatha’s onscreen “crackling chemistry,” all but confirming the two as an official couple. “Everything they’re saying is coded, you know what I mean? And you feel that,” she told the publication. “We just super leaned into it. It was so combustible from the beginning.”

The show’s very gay cast, in addition to noted bicon Plaza, included actors like Heartstopper’s Joe Locke and Saturday Night Live’s Sasheer Zamata who came out to Them as queer last month. From casting alone, fans have been speculating about whether queerness would be explicitly acknowledged in the series, especially since it would mean the first time Marvel has featured a kiss between two sapphic supers.

Though, this isn’t the first time a kiss between two beautiful women has occurred in the MCU. In Netflix’s Jessica Jones series, Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) and her ex, Pam (Susie Abromeit) shared a kiss, but they are, notably, not centuries-old witches entangled in a romantic yet fatal game of cat and mouse.

While presenting at WSJ Magazine’s Innovator Awards, the Agatha All Along actor called out the comedian after his racist comment at a Trump rally set the internet ablaze: “Thankfully, my sweet abuelita wasn’t here to hear that disgusting remark.”

At first glance, many on the internet feel Agatha’s death in Agatha All Along is a devastating iteration of the tired “bury your gays” trope — a queer relationship finally comes to fruition on screen and the title character immediately dies because of it. But Agatha’s ghost quickly returns in the next episode and cracks jokes throughout the finale as she and Billy decide to team up and find Billy’s brother Tommy in what feels like a future chapter of Agatha’s story on screen as the canon “Ghost Agatha.”

Maybe it is technically “bury your gays” as Agatha was literally buried and turned into magical fertilizer for an earthy headstone of mushrooms and flowers, but if her character gets to continue on as a ghost, and if she died kissing a hot woman, we’re reserving our complaints for now.