okay, okay, thinking about the “please, my love” scene.
agatha killed before nicky was born. we know it; we know that that’s how she gets her power, and that she seemed pretty well-practiced at murder in the scenes we saw with nicky, so i feel it goes without saying that keeping him alive/keeping rio busy wasn’t the only reason she ever killed.
but agatha only begged for life twice. once for her own, pleading and crying before her mother, her coven, before realising that they’d never spare her. and a second time — for nicky. to rio. to death.
it struck me that while there aren’t many many parallels to the salem scene, aside from the beautiful contrast between evanora trying to kill her child and agatha trying to save hers, there is one really clever choice — and that’s her dialogue.
“do this and i will hate you forever.”
agatha is smart, and cunning, and dangerous. she’s flamboyant, sure, but that line isn’t just dramatic; it’s childish.
she denies, first. (“it cannot be.”)
she threatens, second. (“i will hate you forever!”)
and when she realises that she is not bargaining with rio, her wife, her love, but with death herself? agatha does what she did all those years ago, what she only does when she knows love will not save her. she begs.
that’s why part of her despises rio, near three centuries later. not just because she took their son — because she mirrored the only person agatha had ever been afraid of. because rio, the only one who ever understood her trauma, took life from her despite her begging in the same way her coven attempted to.
