Warning: This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along
Agatha All Along just aired one of its most eventful episodes yet and revealed that one new MCU character is more powerful than Doctor Strange and an Infinity Stone combined. Agatha All Along is the second installment in a trilogy of series that began with WandaVision and will conclude with Vision’s untitled solo series. While Agatha herself has a direct link to Wanda as the arch-villain of WandaVision, Agatha All Along also confirmed that Teen is Wanda’s son, Billy Maximoff AKA Wiccan.
The show also introduces a host of new characters, as Agatha assembles a coven to travel the Witches’ Road. Unfortunately, the road has proven particularly treacherous as half of the original coven has now died. Lilia Calderu was the latest of these in Agatha All Along Episode 7, aptly titled “Death’s Hand in Mine.” Before her heroic death, however, Lilia demonstrated one of the greatest powers the MCU has ever seen.
Lilia Calderu’s Powers Explained
Lilia Specializes In Divination
Lilia Calderu is a Divination Witch whose powers mostly center around precognition (the ability to see future events) and clairvoyance (the ability to sense events from a distance). Lilia possesses the typical bevy of witchcraft-related powers on top of these, over which she is staunchly protective in the face of their misappropriation in pop culture. We may never know if Lilia’s full power-set may have been more extensive now she has died, but Agatha All Along shows that she is capable of some particularly impressive feats that elude most magic users.
Power
Examples in Agatha All Along
Precognition
Lilia predicted future events intermittently throughout the show, though she only came to grips with them in her final moments.
Clairvoyance
Lilia is the one that senses the Salem Seven entering the Witches’ Road, allowing the coven enough time to escape.
Witchcraft
Lilia created Billy’s sigil, fashioned a flying broomstick, and is proficient at reading Tarot Cards.
Agatha All Along has thus far highlighted how the witches that comprise Agatha’s coven are struggling with their powers – or, in the case of Sharon Davis, never had any to begin with. Until “Death’s Hand in Mine,” Lilia was no different, as she was repeatedly suffering with unexpected and seemingly unwanted visions. Agatha All Along Episode 7 ended, however, with Lilia gaining direct control over her precognitive powers as she almost effortlessly slipped through time in a decidedly linear fashion. The implications of this power are hard to overstate.
Lilia’s Divination Makes Doctor Strange’s Infinity War Moment Look Weak
Doctor Strange’s Precognition Is Infinitely Vague
Custom image by Ollie BradleyIn Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange once again wields the Time Stone in the Eye of Agamotto to peer into 14,000,605 possible futures. He then divulges that he saw only one in which the Avengers of Earth-616 would emerge victorious against Thanos, proceeding to do all he could to ensure that was the timeline they adhered to. In doing so, he seemingly missed options that might not have been fatal to Tony Stark, as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness showed that Thanos was beatable through other means.
It is possible that Doctor Strange of Earth-616 saw the Darkhold as an option but intentionally avoided it.
Lilia, meanwhile, was able to traverse one timeline and use her knowledge to her advantage. This ability means that Lilia could have known with absolute clarity that the Avengers were going to succeed on their timeline, nullifying all doubts that the Avengers felt about ensuring Strange’s one timeline played out. There is no telling how Lilia’s input might have changed the events of the Infinity Saga’s climax, but her foresight, unlike Strange’s, is unassailable – meaning what she saw would come to pass regardless of how the Avengers decided to act.
Lilia’s Powers Change How You See Infinity War
They Also Negate The Point Of The Multiverse Saga
With the Avengers’ time-traveling shenanigans, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were precursors to the Multiverse Saga as the concept of branching timelines was introduced. Nevertheless, Lilia would have seen that the events of the Snap were always going to be undone and that Thanos was always going to be defeated. To that point, she may have been one of the only people on Earth that saw this certainty, making her powers tantamount to Loki in his current guise as the overseer of all timelines.
It is ironic, then, that her debut came at the height of the Multiverse Saga in Agatha All Along, though it helps to make her tragic death even more meaningful, as the motifs of the multiverse can now continue to thrive without her knowledge negating choice entirely.
Strange’s precognitive moment on Titan was an early example of how the main motif of the Multiverse Saga is free will and its ties to the butterfly effect. Lilia Calderu’s crystal clear precognition, however, negates all of that, diminishing choices and their effects in creating branches and variants. It is ironic, then, that her debut came at the height of the Multiverse Saga in Agatha All Along, though it helps to make her tragic death even more meaningful, as the motifs of the multiverse can now continue to thrive without her knowledge negating choice entirely.