Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Agatha All Along’s finale

It used to be the case that you could set your watch by MCU post-credits scenes, but times have changed. Starting way back with Iron Man in 2008, stingers became immediately and irresistibly synonymous with Marvel’s tentpole franchise, and it wasn’t until Avengers: Endgame over a decade later that the trend was broken. Now, MCU post-credits scenes are no longer a guarantee, even when they might seem to be inevitable.

Marvel’s Phase 5 TV shows have actually almost all avoided a post-credits scene, which has been particularly gratifying for the growing crowd of voices who don’t think they’re entirely necessary. The MCU has worked itself into a situation where too many stingers set up vague future projects that aren’t being paid off, and – let’s face it – we’re all too impatient for a repeat of Eternals‘ post-credits promising Blade’s arrival when his actual movie wallows in development hell.

Echo is the only MCU Phase 5 show with a post-credits scene.

Despite that cynicism, you could have been forgiven for believing that Agatha All Along would include a post-credits scene, particularly with the looming shadow of Scarlet Witch hanging about the place. It was a project that always felt destined to hint at her survival after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness‘ ending, after all, but in a somewhat shocking turn of events: Agatha All Along has no post-credits scene at all. And even more shockingly, it was the right thing to do.

Agatha All Along Didn’t Need A Post-Credits Scene

The WandaVision Spin-Off Does Something Far More Satisfying

If there’s one thing to take from Agatha All Along, it’s how well showrunner Jac Schaeffer crafted her artful deception. 3 years after the MCU Internet Fanbase lost its collective head over Mephisto hints that simply weren’t there, Schaeffer weaponized the potential for Scarlet Witch’s return in a way that consciously played into that same, painfully inevitable bubble of expectation.

There is, no doubt, a multiversal plane where Agatha All Along‘s post-credits scene jumped back to the ruins of Mount Wundagore, and showed rubble levitating at the spot where Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff made her sacrifice, but that’s not this universe, and we should be grateful. To do that would have been cheap and unnecessary, and instead we all get to continue the hopeful delusion that Scarlet Witch will return to the MCU somewhere in the future without it overshadowing Agatha All Along‘s excellent ending.

What Agatha All Along Offers Instead Of A Post-Credits Scene (& Why It’s Better)

We Didn’t Need Wanda, But That Doesn’t Mean All Hope Is Lost For Scarlet Witch

In place of any post-credits scene, Agatha All Along’s ending instead sets up what comes next with the ghost of Hahn’s delightful antihero offering to become the “spirit guide” alluded to in the phony Ballad of the Witches Road to Joe Locke’s Billy Maximoff. Rather than leaping to a big tease to the – so far non-existent – Scarlet Witch solo movie, we got a tantalizing hook for whatever comes in place of Agatha All Along season 2. If I were a gambling man, I’d suggest that would be a new version of Marvel’s Avengers: The Children’s Crusade.

In that story, set in the wake of House of M and Scarlet Witch’s spiral out of control that led to the death of several Avengers, Wiccan and the Young Avengers set out to find Wanda after her years-long absence from Marvel Comics. It’s a typically complex storyline that deals with the aftermath of Wanda’s infamous “no more mutants” spell, and unites far more Marvel characters – including the X-Men – who wouldn’t yet work in the MCU.

But Agatha All Along‘s ending offers some hints that Billy will now be on his own “children’s crusade” to find not Wanda but Tommy, in a story that would surely have to deal with the Maximoff kids’ journey to closure one way or another. By avoiding a post-credits scene explicitly setting up Scarlet Witch, and ending on the promise of finding Tommy, Agatha All Along serves its surviving characters perfectly. The next chapter is set up, and there could absolutely be a route back to Wanda, but we should all admire the bravery of not giving it up so easily.