Agatha All Along’s Costume Designer on What Made the Maleficent Outfit So Special

Agatha All Along comes to its conclusion with a double-episode finale tonight on Disney+, but we’re still thinking about last week’s episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine.” It bid farewell to one of the best characters (RIP, Lilia) while furthering the evolution of Joe Locke’s mysterious young magic-user; he was known only as “Teen,” until the detailed reveal of his true identity and backstory in episode six.

He’s William Kaplan, but as most fans had already surmised, he’s also Billy Maximoff, resurrected son of Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch. He’s walking the Witches’ Road with Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and her hastily assembled, rapidly depleting coven, hoping it’ll provide a way to reconnect with Tommy, his long-lost twin brother. We won’t know until after the finale if there’s a family reunion in store, but it’ll be hard for any big moment to top the reveal of Billy’s transformation into Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty antagonist turned Angelina Jolie-propelled Disney antihero, during “Death’s Hand in Mine.”

As fans will recall, all the surviving witches—who’ve gotten an outfit change with each trial along the Witches’ Road—suddenly found their fashion became cinematically amplified. Agatha, for example, was the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. Billy’s look as Maleficent, however, was the most exciting, both for viewers and the show’s costume designer, Daniel Selon.

In a new interview with Variety, Selon (who was part of the Emmy-winning costume department on WandaVision) explained the careful planning and thought process that went into creating Locke’s ensemble. “It’s important in authentic queer representation to make sure that it’s done with the proper intention. And so we looked at the original Maleficent character that is played by a female presenting Evil Queen and she is in a big, voluminous dress, essentially,” he said. “So it was like, ‘OK, Joe, are we putting you in a skirt, or does this become pants?’”

It did not become pants, as it turns out, and Marvel and Disney were just fine with that. “We did ask the question. We made sure with everybody high up the chain, it was like, ‘Here we drew it, we made our illustration.’ We were like, ‘This is what we want to do. Is this cool? Making sure you all can see that’s a skirt.’ And everybody was like, ‘Absolutely yes, of course.’”

With that detail out of the way, Selon plunged forward; he told Variety the only direction he did get for the design to was to make sure Locke felt “at his most powerful” while wearing it. “[The fabric] is covered in these tiny leather … sequences that have a reflective quality, but it’s also like armored dragon skin. And so I sort of wanted to push him from the feminine into this sort of dragon which Maleficent becomes.”

Watch Agatha All Along‘s two-part finale tonight on Disney+.

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