So Now We've Seen The Finale, Now We've Seen How Rio Chose To Present To First Agatha Before Everything

So now we've seen the finale, now we've seen how Rio chose to present to first Agatha before everything went wrong (coming for Nicky at his birth), and then to Nicky, while Agatha was sleeping - that gorgeous green dress, holding the green flame aloft. It's very different from the way she showed herself to Lilia.

It's also wildly different than how she chooses to appear to Agatha in the end. Rio's wild with grief. She's been pining for centuries. Agatha has just given her the most final, definitive, insulting no she could muster. There is no future here. There is no past to hold on to. There is only Agatha telling her she doesn't want her. That even in the end, she doesn't want the comfort of passing into a lover's embrace - she wants Rio masked. She wants Rio, essentially, to roleplay anonymity, strangeness, distance.

Now. Given what actually happens - and their moments of tenderness and Agatha's part in them throughout the rest of the show - I don't think we can take Agatha at face value here. But it is the first time Rio's heard Agatha's "no" when it comes to their relationship's viability.... and believed it.

To Agatha, in the moment immediately before everything went wrong, Death appeared as a beautiful woman, bedecked in green, expensive, well-made clothes. She appears the same way to Nicky. She's familiar, she's non-threatening. She tells him to come with her and he goes. She tells him no, kiss your mother, and he does. She extends her hand to him, and he takes it, and they walk together through the darkness. He knows her.

I wonder if she could ever be that version of herself again - or if it went with Nicky. I think there's a subtextual reading of what's going on in Agatha/Rio's relationship where Rio's grieving, too, but Agatha will never be able to see it, for so many reasons - where Rio's angry because she knows she'll never stop being invisible in this way. Where all she wants is for Agatha to see her.