The next time we see Rio, she crawls her way out of the ground and appears with the coven on the Witches’ Road, immediately conjuring a flower to coyly give to Agatha. Even though the two literally tried to kill each other the last time they saw each other and Rio sent the Salem Seven after Agatha. When the two share a semi-private conversation in the recording booth Rio says that maybe this journey could be “like old times,” to which Agatha replies “work and play.”
As the coven shares stories of their scars, Rio says that “A long time ago, I loved someone, and I had to do something I did not want to do, even though it was my job, and it hurt them. She is my scar.” To which Agatha replies by stealing a glance at Rio and immediately saying she needs to go stretch her legs as an excuse to leave the conversation. Rio soon follows, and the rest is history.
As Sasheer Zamata so eloquently put it in a recent interview with Variety, “Witches are queer, inherently, just because we are outcasts and set aside for many reasons. This show shows a really good representation of different types of people and that we can all use the power we have within to go forward and be great.”
Agatha All Along already had an inherent queerness to it just by existing. It’s a show about women cast out from society, trying to reclaim their power. Then they added the Teen (Joe Locke) who is established as canonically gay in the second episode when we see his boyfriend call. But most other Marvel projects likely would have stopped there.
The first confirmed queer character in the MCU will forever technically be a Russo brother cameo in Avengers: Endgame because a scene confirming Valkyrie’s (Tessa Thompson) bisexuality was cut from Thor: Ragnarok. She finally got her moment in Thor: Love and Thunder, 18 Marvel projects later. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was confirmed as bisexual in season one of his show slightly before that, and Eternals featured the franchise’s first gay couple not long after, but queer representation is still not where it should be in a series with such a large volume of content. We shouldn’t have to beg for crumbs in order to see ourselves on screen.
