Is Rio Vidal actually there in Agatha All Along?

Episode 6 of Agatha All Along gave audiences a lot of new information—including who Billy is hoping to find at the end of the Road—but it also launched a question in the fanbase. Billy interacted with every member of the coven in the lead-up to meeting Agatha... except Rio, who is suspiciously absent.

While some fans have claimed that this was due to Aubrey Plaza's scheduling availability, it seems like an important thing to leave out. It wouldn't have been hard to film a short appearance while filming the house scenes for Episode 1, so it prompts the question: Was this intentional?

Agatha and Rio clearly have a lot of history, so it's hard to know for sure if Rio was actually there or if she was a manifestation of Agatha's subconscious. Here, we examine the evidence to determine if Rio is actually present or was just a hallucination of Agatha's all along.

Signs that Rio was never actually there

Rio first appears while Agatha is hallucinating her detective mystery, which puts everything she saw in doubt. She even understands this herself, noting that if Teen is "real and not a figment of my imprisoned mind," then Rio must also be. But that's not necessarily true. As audiences saw in the alternate version of the interrogation scene, some aspects can be the same while others are vastly different.

Within the spell, Rio was a federal agent joining the homicide investigation. She is the one who brought Agatha the file of crime scene pictures/flowers, and she continues to appear whenever Agatha needs someone to talk to. When Agatha was overwhelmed by seeing Nicholas's room, Rio came to the door. When she captured Teen, Rio was supposedly at the station with her. And when Agatha went to the morgue, Rio appeared yet again.

In each instance, Rio appeared when Agatha was emotional, which certainly could be a hallucination. After all, Billy sees Agatha telling her TikTok joke, but he doesn't see Rio. Why would that shot explicitly not include her, when they could have filmed it at the same time as the rest of Agatha and Rio's living room conversation? Furthermore, Agatha sees Rio behind the glass while interrogating Teen, but even she eventually realizes that's just a painting.

Although there are distinct patterns to Rio's appearances, she seems to disappear without any fanfare. When Agatha chases after Teen, when she starts breaking from the spell while talking to him, and then when she strips out of Agnes' persona, Rio is nowhere to be seen. Nobody else (except Billy in the closet) was at the house once Agatha breaks out.

There are a few other odd moments from the first episode that suggest what we see is not what was happening. While Rio and Agatha were discussing the case, Agatha brings up a car accident in Eastview, which is presumably when Billy took over William Kaplan's body. But there was no way that she could know about that while under Wanda's spell. Could there have been another conversation between Billy and Agatha that still haven't seen?

Later, when Rio breaks into the house to fight Agatha, she deals two main blows. There is a cut on Agatha's chest and one on her hand. The hand wound is closed by Rio licking it, and the chest wound is simply never shown again. But both were seemingly erased, right after the fight.

Finally, a text between Billy and his boyfriend shows that the black heart on Lilia's list was meant for Billy, not Rio. It was a code name being used, since the sigil wouldn't allow her to put down either of Billy's actual names. Given that Rio wasn't supposed to be a part of the coven, it's questionable if she was really there at all.

Moments that prove Rio was real

Despite a lot of evidence suggesting that something was going on that audiences didn't get to see, there's just as much evidence that Rio is real, and it's pretty hard to refute. When Rio came to Agatha's house for the fight, she blew Agatha's door in. In the second episode, it's absolutely still gone, as noted by Agatha and Alice. It's also shown to be gone when Billy tries to barricade the coven in from the Salem Seven.

Furthermore, Rio is the one who tells Agatha that the Salem Seven are coming. While this could have been Agatha's subconscious warning her, Teen does comment on "these people who are coming tonight." That suggests that he heard or was told about them, which lines up with him being able to watch the fight.

While he doesn't specifically mention the fight or Rio for the next two episodes, he does mention to Agatha that "the dangerous but charismatic lady is back" in episode 4. That seems like a pretty clear indication that Rio exists outside of Agatha's mind.

From that point on, Rio's existence is hard to doubt. Everyone else in the coven interacts with her at some point, whether that's questioning whether she will be good for the team, listening to her confession about Agatha and Nicholas, or debating with her during Agatha's trial.

If everybody else sees her, then it's pretty much case closed. Unless everybody is a figment of Agatha's imagination, then Rio is actually there. Or is she?

Is there an in-between possibility?

I would argue that the most likely situation here is that some of Rio's appearances are real, while some of them are not. She seems pretty corporeal on the Road, staying grounded with the others in every scene except when Agatha and Billy have their confrontation at the end of episode 5. Her disappearance when he manifests his power (and just after Alice died) is suspicious, but it doesn't mean she isn't real.

Likewise, there seems to be some good evidence that Rio was really there when she and Agatha fought. Despite the disappearing wounds, the house remained damaged, her warning about the Salem Seven turns out to be true, and Teen seems to have both seen and heard her.

But what about those first four appearances, before Agatha broke the spell? She was introduced by Phil Jones/Harold Proctor in a scene that didn't actually happen. She showed up at Agatha's house, but was not seen by Billy and didn't get involved in the search or chase. She was then present at the interrogation, but in a way that even Agatha couldn't see once the spell started breaking. Finally, she helped Agatha remember who she was, but wasn't there anymore when the spell finally shattered.

I don't think any of that was real. After Wanda's death, the spell started fragmenting, and Rio was the character Agatha's mind used to help her remember. This is evidence of how close they once were, but none of those scenes actually took place. Only when both Billy and Agatha were present did she arrive. From then on, Rio is real, although there's still the possibility that she was summoned or made real by Billy's reality warping powers co-opting Agatha's memories.

There are still three more episodes of Agatha All Along to come, and showrunner Jac Schaeffer has confirmed that Rio will be coming back. We can only hope that those episodes help to prove for good whether Rio Vidal is actively traveling the Road or if she has a more symbolic role to play.

New episodes of Agatha All Along stream on Disney Plus on Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET.