‘If I could save time in a bottle’: Agatha All Along has a perfect song for Lilia’s story
Agatha All Along gave Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) her story this week. When the team gets to her trial, we see her back in action with Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Billy/William (Joe Locke), and Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata). And it was an absolutely breathtaking episode for LuPone.
**Spoilers for Agatha All Along lie ahead**
Lilia has been almost glitching throughout the season. With each episode, she shifts through time and we don’t know what is pulling her through different moments to make her say outlandish things. In episode 7 “Death’s Hand In Mine,” we get a reason for her outbursts. Lilia’s story takes us back to her life as a child in Sicily. She saw the death of her coven and couldn’t do anything about it, she knew how to fix everything but she could never be in the right time and moment to fix it.
When Jennifer and Lilia fall from the Road, Lilia knows what she has to do: She has to get back to her trial to help Billy and Agatha. The episode is split between Agatha and Billy trying to figure out the tarot trial without their tarot witch and that of Jennifer and Lilia trying to get to them. But what I loved most about it was how “Death’s Hand In Mine” gave Lilia her time to shine.
LuPone is a powerhouse of an actress, Broadway fans have known this for years. But getting to see her bring a gravitas to her performance as Lilia in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is something else. LuPone played this storyline not as a woman who has lost her mind but instead as a woman who was lost in time. Which is why the final song over the credits is one of the most heartbreaking and brilliant choices.
“I loved being a witch”
The song “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce played over the credits of Agatha All Along. With an ending that featured LuPone’s Lilia presumably falling to her death on swords (that she used to kill the Salem Seven), the cut to the trailers with Croce’s song was heart wrenching.
The song says “If I could save time in a bottle the first thing that I’d like to do is to save every day ’til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.” That song mixed with the shot of Lilia as a child getting to see her mother again was a lot to take in. But it is what made this episode so special. Yes, LuPone is brilliant but she was also given a beautiful storyline to work with.
We got another confirmed reveal that Rio (Aubrey Plaza) is actually Death, which was yet again brilliant to watch even if we all sort of figured it out. But what I loved about this episode is that it was Lilia’s. We didn’t have to worry about 20 other things happening, we just got to see Lilia remembering who she was and what that meant to her as a witch.
The part that hurts the most is that I want more time with Lilia. But, as the Croce song says, “But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.” LuPone is brilliant, we know this, but her performance as Lilia is next level.
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