During Agatha All Along‘s time-skipping seventh episode, Lilia’s mother told her, “Death comes for us all.” Only it turned out Death had been there from the start of the show. The coven learned the secret Agatha Harkness has been keeping from her fellow witches about her ex. We’ve been asking for a while now: who is Agatha All Along‘s Rio Vidal really? Well, we finally learned that Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal is the MCU’s Death, an Agatha revelation that completely changes the stakes for all of the characters at the end of The Witches’ Road.
When she was a child, Patti LuPone’s divination witch Lilia experienced life out of order. It was a miserable way to exist, so she put that aspect of herself “away.” Her time-jumping malady only returned when she met the ill-fated William Kaplan. It then got much worse when she joined up with Agatha. On the Agatha All Along, she’d enter trance-like states and speak what seemed like nonsense. Lilia herself never even remembered those moments.
She finally pieced the puzzle of her prophesies and cries together during her final moments alive. The Tarot Card castle was her trial, and as she placed the final card to name her “destination,” she told her coven that Rio is the figure “all roads” lead to. Agatha All Along‘s Rio Vidal, as we suspected she might be, is literally the MCU’s Death herself.
That’s Rio’s “job,” the one she vaguely referenced earlier in the season. Rio Vidal is why the Ouija board said “Death” was in the room with the witches in Agatha All Along‘s fifth episode. Rio made it onto the Road not because of a summoning spell but because she came to claim Mrs. Hart’s body after they buried her. That’s also why Agatha turned to Rio and quietly pleaded “don’t” when she thought Teen would die. Rio, “the original Green Witch” who will take everybody returned to the earth, would have been the one to take him, just as she was the one tasked with taking Agatha’s son Nicholas long ago.
Rio Vidal’s real secret identity as Death on Agatha All Along doesn’t make her inherently evil, though. Lilia’s mother was right when she said Death comes for us all. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or bad, righteous or evil. Death is, seemingly, neutral. And yet, that doesn’t mean Rio Vidal is, not after what we’ve seen her do on the show.
Death isn’t the (possibly still-in-love with her ex) former partner of every coven’s leader. Death doesn’t have a wildly emotional and complicated past with every untrustworthy, power-hungry witch out there. Because while Death might be neutral about most people, Rio is clearly not neutral when it comes to Agatha Harkness. Rio helped her former lover break free of her imprisonment, but we still don’t know why. What exactly does Death want with Agatha and her coven in Agatha All Along? Is Rio just there for “the bodies?” If so, there would be easier, less messy, and less burdensome ways to get them.
The MCU’s version of Death seems to want something more on Agatha All Along. Does she want to see Agatha suffer? To see Agatha dead? Or does Death, guilt-ridden over taking the child of the person she loved most, want to help Agatha? In some ways, she helped Alice and Lilia. They both died on The Road, but they also got the one thing they most wanted (Alice learned what her mother did for her and ended their generational curse; Lilia found her coven and wasn’t alone anymore).
Maybe they were always going to die, and Rio Vidal made sure they got what they wanted before their deaths. Maybe she’s doing the same for Agatha. Or maybe she needs to reach the end of the Witches’ Road herself so she, too, can get her wish. Even Death must want something.
We’ll get more answers about Death in Agatha All Along‘s season finale, but no matter what Rio Vidal wants, Agatha should definitely listen to Lilia and hit the deck when Death calls her a coward. No matter Rio’s true intentions, good or bad or something in between, we trust Lilia way more than Death itself.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who would try and get along with Rio Vidal. You know, just in case. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
