Agatha All Along Episode 4 Takes Cues From An Amazon Prime Hit And One Of Rock's Biggest Legends
by Nina Starner · /FilmThis article contains spoilers for "Agatha All Along" season 1, episode 4 — "If I Can't Reach You Let My Song Teach You."
In the series premiere of Disney+ and Marvel's latest project "Agatha All Along," Kathryn Hahn turns in a pitch-perfect performance as Detective Agnes O'Connor, with the entire episode mimicking the HBO hit "Mare of Easttown" before the "TV magic" is stripped away to reveal that Agnes is actually Agatha, a now-powerless witch. In the third episode, the show offers up its own take on another HBO favorite, "Big Little Lies." So, what popular series does the fourth episode, titled "If I Can't Reach You Let My Song Teach You," reference? That would be "Daisy Jones & the Six," a huge Amazon Prime Video original based on the best-selling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
How and why does the show manage to pull off an homage to "Daisy Jones?" It's all thanks to Agatha's fellow witch Alice Wu-Gulliver, played by Ali Ahn. In the previous episode, as the coven all experienced terrifying visions of their fears, Alice saw her late mother Lorna (Elizabeth Anweis), who tells her daughter something horrifying and cryptic: "It's my turn, it's going to kill me." We also know Lorna was a musician based on Alice's stories about her, so when the gang arrives at a mysterious house on the Witches' Road decked out like a recording studio, it's clear that Alice's musical talents — and her mother's version of "The Ballad of the Witches Road" — can save them from certain harm.
Alice's mother Lorna definitely resembles Daisy Jones ... and Stevie Nicks
As soon as the coven enters a house that pops up on the Witches' Road unexpectedly — a house Alice wants to avoid at all costs — they're all suddenly transformed in that they're all dressed in spectacular 1970s clothing. ("Daisy Jones & the Six" takes place from 1968 to 1977, the year the titular band breaks up.) Not only that, but the house is also decked out to look exactly like a recording studio, complete with a metronome, record player, and tons of instruments. Eventually, they all realize that Alice's mother's unique take on "The Ballad of the Witches Road" can help her overcome the generational curse that afflicted her family and her mother — which, in all likelihood, is what her mother was talking about in the vision from episode 3 — and play it together with Alice on piano, only for a (really disgusting) physical manifestation of the curse to appear and, finally, burst into flames as Alice and the makeshift band reach the song's crescendo.
As if a reference to "Daisy Jones & the Six" wasn't enough, the show also slyly references the real-life singer Stevie Nicks, who, famously, has witchy vibes (both musically and sartorially, as she's often seen in flowing, witch-appropriate clothing). There's also a Fleetwood Mac poster on the "studio" wall, which makes the reference even deeper; Fleetwood Mac's infamous infighting heavily inspired the narrative of "Daisy Jones & the Six," and its lead character Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) is definitely a fictionalized version of Nicks.
Daisy Jones & the Six was a massive hit for Amazon Prime Video
Released on Amazon's streaming service in the spring of 2023, "Daisy Jones & the Six" charts the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of the titular band, which also includes lead guitarist and singer Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), keyboard player Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse), guitarist and Billy's brother Graham (Will Harrison), bass player Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse), and drummer Warren Rojas (Sebastian Chacon). (Camila Morrone plays another vital character on the series, Billy's wife Camila Alvarez, who travels with the band as their photographer.) Because Taylor Jenkins Reid's book is told as a fictional oral history of the band, the series uses a documentary framework for part of it — following up with the band members years after their split — alongside scenes set during the band's reign.
From addiction (Billy's, specifically) to infidelity to difficulties with their studio, The Six — who add Daisy Jones to their name once she joins the band — definitely invoke Fleetwood Mac, but the series manages to tell its own compelling story without simply copy-pasting the details of the romantic entanglements of Stevie Nicks and her bandmates. "Daisy Jones & the Six" also picked up a handful of Emmy nominations — including ones for Keough and Morrone and one for outstanding limited series — so it makes sense that "Agatha All Along" decided it should pay homage to this series too.
"Agatha All Along" premieres new episodes on Disney+ every Wednesday.