This post contains spoilers for the finale of Agatha All Along and other Marvel titles.

In one of the final scenes in the Agatha All Along finale, Teen (Joe Locke), also known as William Kaplan or Billy Maximoff, questions Agatha’s ghost about whether others who died during the series have become ghosts, too. Agatha, in a spectral form, shakes her head. Her ghostly figure becomes increasingly solid, and she even manages to take back her brooch from Teen and attach it to herself, raising questions about her “ghost” status and leaving us wondering if she’s truly dead or still connected to the world. But then again, this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where logic isn’t always a top priority.

Until the two-part finale, Agatha All Along had been nearly flawless television. Kathryn Hahn brought a complex, tragic, and humorous take to Marvel’s Agatha Harkness. The series, a spinoff from WandaVision, carried on with ambitious themes of grief, motherhood, and the distortion of origin stories. The stakes felt real, as Agatha and her coven journeyed through the perilous Witches’ Road in search of their lost powers. By the end of Episode 8, half the coven and even Agatha herself had died, culminating in her noble self-sacrifice to save Teen. Her poignant choice to embrace death gave the series a climactic emotional high point.

Then came Episode 9, bringing a twist that undid much of this impact: Agatha returns as a ghost, suggesting there may be more seasons or spin-offs. This undercut the show’s exploration of mortality and its climactic moments. Death, a central theme in both the series and the wider MCU, was especially prominent in Episode 7, which centered on Patti LuPone’s character, Lilia Calderu. In a beautifully crafted, time-travel-heavy episode, Lilia faced the reality of death and gave up her life for her coven, reinforcing the inevitability of mortality. But Agatha’s return as a ghost diminished this message, echoing Marvel’s tendency to keep characters around to extend their intellectual property.

Agatha’s ghostly transformation seems partly a nod to fans and the comics, where she is resurrected multiple times. There’s also the practical aspect—Disney+ has a WandaVision spinoff, Vision Quest, coming in 2026, featuring a different version of Vision who still holds some memories of his past. With Agatha guiding Billy, one of Vision’s sons, she could well appear there.

In TV franchises, the easy route is to introduce minor characters to kill off, preserving main characters who might actually need to face a meaningful end. In this case, it’s simpler to lose Lilia, a one-off character played by Patti LuPone, who’s unlikely to reprise the role. But Agatha can’t rest because Hahn is now locked into the MCU’s long-term plans.

This fate isn’t unique to Agatha; other characters in the comic-book-to-film world face similar fates. Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance was supposedly the trilogy’s end, but a post-credits scene hinted Venom’s return in New York, likely involving Spider-Man. Even Iron Man, who died in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, is set for a comeback as Doctor Doom in future Avengers movies, despite Robert Downey Jr.’s exit from the role.