Yahoo Lifestyle 15 "Agatha All Along" Episode 6 Behind-The-Scenes Facts Straight From Writer Jason Rostovsky
🚨 There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for Agatha All Along Episode 6! 🚨
1.First, Agatha All Along writer Jason Rostovsky said it was "really easy" but also "really challenging trying to put all these pieces together" when it came to exploring how William Kaplan became Billy Maximoff and what ultimately led him to the Witches' Road and Agatha.
"I think there's a lot about him as a character that I really connected with," Jason told BuzzFeed. "So, in some ways, it was really easy. There was an emotional honesty behind it. And in a lot of ways, it was really challenging trying to put all these pieces together and come up with connective tissues for such a strange backstory for a character."
2.Jason added that it was a real "collaborative experience" in the writers' room when it came to crafting how Billy Maximoff/Wiccan would finally be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Jason said, "Everything is a group effort on this show. Jac [Schaeffer, creator] and Mary [Livanos], our EP, were the guiding lights of this entire thing. I think that they did a really good job of figuring out what our intentions were and what our end goal was. And so it was a really collaborative experience of figuring out these two sides of this character and also the two sides of Teen."
3.When it came to introducing Billy/Wiccan to the MCU, it was important to the writers to "use things that were canon for him" from the comics in Agatha All Along, but also make his story surprising for comic book readers, too.
Jason explained, "I went back and did as much research as I could and found all the ways that I could connect with Billy and all the ways that we could use things that were canon for him [in Young Avengers] in this show."
He continued, saying, "I knew we really wanted to bring as much of comic book Billy and Wiccan into this as possible so that we could make everybody happy, but also give them an experience that's new and unique and something that feels real."
4.Incorporating William Kaplan's Jewish heritage from the comics into the show was exciting for Jason, who said, "In the lead-up to writing, I went back and watched my own bar mitzvah video, which was equal parts inspiring and traumatic at the same time, but it really did sort of open up a lot of what that could look like."
"It was really cool. Joe [Locke] did an incredible job. I mean, I'm such a huge fan of him. His Hebrew was beautiful. It was really just incredible to see," he added. "Joe really drove that home. I think he added so many layers to this and really made it feel so real and really vibrant. It was just really cool to see brought to life. I loved the design. I mean, everything about what the bar mitzvah looked like. It was just great. It was really cool."
Jason also got to be on set while filming took place for the bar mitzvah scenes. He recalled, "I got to visit the synagogue where they were shooting. It was really such a cool experience. And to meet Joe, Patti [LuPone], and everybody."
5.Not only did Episode 6 involve merging William Kaplan and Billy Maximoff's stories, but it also flipped Teen's motives, a character we'd been with since Episode 1. Jason said it was also exciting exploring Teen in a new way, too.
"He's somebody who's a bit more like a fanboy of witches, and then we learn who he really is in multiple ways. I think it was just a lot of fun finding all these different facets and elements and personas of Billy," he told BuzzFeed.
6.Jac Schaeffer knew she wanted to bring back Evan Peters's Ralph Bohner for Agatha All Along. It just wasn't always clear when and where he'd appear. Eventually the writers' room came up with having him be a great person to fill Billy in on what happened in Westview during WandaVision.
"I love Evan Peters, and it was interesting writing him because I think Jac always wanted to bring him back, and when we figured out where he was going to go and that it was going to be in my episode, it was really cool because I had somebody who was there that could bring all this intro to the table and really help me connect some of these pieces," Jason explained to BuzzFeed.
He added, "We just got to have a lot of fun with it, like bringing a mention of Sparky back. I got to kind of touch the highlights of WandaVision with that. And that was a lot of fun."
7.While Evan Peters was in a lot of WandaVision, Episode 6 of Agatha All Along is the first time we spend a prolonged period of time with the real Ralph. Jason said it was exciting exploring the "paranoid, traumatized character and looking into what it really looks like for the people of Westview who really had it bad."
He elaborated, saying, "When I went back and rewatched WandaVision again and tried to figure out who he was, I realized we never really met Ralph Bohner for more than a couple of seconds. Originally, I was like, Oh, great. Like I could go work off of this person, this character, like he's been built out. And then I realized we meet him for, like, 10 seconds, and he's screaming. I was like, Oh, okay, we're gonna have to really figure out who he is. It was such a blast and such a great character to write for."
Jason further explained that it was cool exploring the "inner experience of WandaVision, and trying to picture what it would be like to be in his shoes, to be driven by somebody else and puppeted by somebody." He continued, saying, "I tried to kind of build it around that, the emotional aspect of being fully possessed by a witch and moved around like a character in a show. Then everything else kind of just collected and orbited around that."
8.Jac Schaeffer knew that showing Agatha's detective story through the eyes of Billy in Episode 6 needed to be "more comedic" and have it be the total opposite of the "very prestigious, very badass persona" Agatha was imagining in Episode 1.
Jason said, "Jac had a really great vision for it, and so I kind of just tried to accomplish that on the screen. It was fun to play around with Billy and Agatha falling off a roof and tripping and Billy as more of an apologetic sort of frazzled character rather than a hardened cat burglar who knows what he's doing."
Recreating Episode 1 from Billy's perspective also required putting a lot of "little pieces" together for the audience. Jason recalled, "What do we have to answer from that episode? Like finding the cameo on the ground and how do we get that there for when they pick it up? That was fun, too. Putting some of the mysteries together and the puzzle of it."
9.The fun details and Easter eggs in the detective scenes were a collaborative effort between the Agatha All Along writers. Agatha using a hose nozzle as a gun was an early idea, and there was even a version where she "draws it and [it] dribbles some water, very sadly."
Jason told BuzzFeed, "Then it just became a gun on her hip. In fact, the first time I had seen it, I forgot that we had the hose in there. I didn't even notice it in her holster. And then, on a second watch, I was like, Oh my god, the hose survived! It made it. It made it on screen. I think that's the fun of having so much detail. Like, in every frame, there's so much to look at that it's even fun for us to go back and figure out what survived, what made it into the final, or remember a bit that we did that we totally forgot and crack up over it."
He also added, "Jac was really great about giving [the writers] little assignments that sort of sparked these major, tiny moments. They were so much fun. And it seems like for everybody else who's seen it, they've also kind of latched on to these little bits that we got to do."
10.The interrogation scene between Billy and Agatha included some improv, including the "poke the bear" moment.
Jason recalled, "There's that interrogation scene between Joe and Hahn that was just incredible. The 'poke the bear' bit that went on. I was cracking up. I had not seen that before. It was really great."
In the final cut, you can even see Joe trying hard not to laugh at Kathryn. Jason said, "It works great in the world as well. I couldn't imagine watching somebody acting that out and not laughing."
11.According to Jason, Evan Peters brought a lot to Ralph's return that wasn't written on the page. For example, Evan "built some of his witch kit" and he "came up with the witch spray" moment.
"That was just hilarious," Jason began. "It's so cool to see somebody come to the table with so much and really build out that character more than was on the page. So that was a great improvised part that I loved."
12.The "most challenging" scene to write in Episode 6 is when we return to the Witches' Road and Agatha and Teen "reunite," with Agatha finally knowing that Teen is Billy Maximoff.
Jason told BuzzFeed, "We had a lot to accomplish with that. It was so great to work with Jac and everybody on this. Everybody brought so much of the vision, but Jac always had it really clear in her mind what we needed from that scene. So being able to write toward something was so helpful, but it was also another puzzle of figuring out how much does Billy let on. And now we have somebody else, another player on the road now, who is manipulating and has an ulterior motive."
He added, "It was figuring out how much of what Billy wants and how much of what Agatha wants we reveal, and how much they would reveal to each other. I think that was one of the most complicated scenes to write, but so wonderful to watch, like, Joe and Hahn make it look so easy."
13.Having Billy's motive for being on the Witches' Road be to find Tommy was a "really important piece" for the writers, and it "felt natural" that Billy would be trying to find "the other half of himself."
"The name Tommy, the existence of these two kids, these brothers, is really one of the most important things for Billy to figure out where he came from and what happened to him. And I think that sort of became the center of his experience," Jason said.
He continued, saying, "Not so much in the way that it is in the comics, but they do kind of share a soul. They were created in the same way at the same time. They're twins. So it felt really clear that that would be his main goal. And then we got lucky that it also became a clue for him to figure out who he is and what he needs to do to find him."
14.One of Jason's favorite moments is when we find out Lilia is the one who placed the sigil on Billy. He said, "Here's Lilia doing something wonderful for this kid and trying to protect this boy that she cares a lot about."
When thinking about the ramifications the sigil created — like Wanda's entire arc in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Jason said the bigger picture wasn't something he was initially thinking about when writing. He explained, "I think I was pretty in the weeds with it, so I maybe didn't at the time know how scary it was to have to weave all of that together. It just kind of happened, but I loved that moment so much in writing it. I love it so much. I think it's really cool how connected by fate these coven members are and how connected Billy is to all of them."
He added, "We knew there was gonna be a psychic. We knew that the theme of the bar mitzvah was gonna be just a really spooky kind of scary thing. It was natural to have her there."
15.And finally, it was important for Jason to include all of the coven members in Billy's backstory and connect them all. He said, "I definitely had chills watching it, and I really felt the power of them all existing as a part of his life before we get to the road and form this coven for real."
Jason said writing the coven and making them part of Billy's story also resembled how he felt in the Agatha All Along writers' room.
He explained, "Something that was so incredible about this room was that we felt like a coven. It felt so much like Billy's experience. You get to join this group of people who are incredibly smart, impressive, and talented and learn a lot about yourself, who you are, and what you're able to do through them. I think being able to include all the coven members in his episode was emotionally very easy for me because it's kind of how I felt at the time. I felt really connected to these people who taught me a lot."
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New episodes of Agatha All Along start streaming on Disney+ on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
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