I wonder how long Barry had intended to leave Agatha’s locket on for? We know that he put it on her initially because he thought that Klaus was working with Lucrezia, and it would be dangerous for her to be known as the Heterodyne, and that Adam and Lilith kept it on her because it wasn’t safe for her to be a female Spark without powerful protection, and they didn’t trust Klaus either.
I’m not excusing what either of them did – giving Agatha the locket in the first place was a shitty thing to do, and so was keeping it on when they knew what it was doing to her. But at the same time I can sort of see why they thought it would be necessary for a short period of time, at least at first, since she’s having a bad enough time of people wanting to use/kill/kidnap her now, and she’s a) now pretty much an adult, and b) Klaus doesn’t actually work for Lu (let’s ignore the wasping for now). If evil!Klaus or anyone had got their hands on kiddie Agatha after she broke through for the first time, it would have been catastrophic.
But surely he hadn’t intended to leave it on indefinitely? There was no way of him knowing for sure that it would work forever (you can tell that Agatha’s spark is easily strong enough now to not be kept in check by the locket, Barry had no way of knowing that wouldn’t happen even if she’d kept wearing it). And surely she’d have taken it off eventually? No matter how much she’d been told to wear it, there’s no guarantee that she would. Barry disappeared when Agatha was nine, right? Eleven years ago. But he was planning to come back.
Maybe he’d gone to track down some more of Lu’s machines? The only thing we know is that it had nothing to do with Klaus, because he didn’t know Barry had come back in the first place. I don’t know, I’m just hoping that he’d gone to try and make Europa safe enough for Agatha to take her locket off and be the Heterodyne. Looking at how sad he was at having to give her it in the first place, I can’t imagine he intended it to be a permanent solution.
I agree with you that it was probably a temporary solution meant to protect her when she was young. He had to leave her and the Clays for some reason, but he intended to return earlier. At some point I hope we’ll find out what happened to him? I think Punch and Judy let it on simply because they had no idea what to do once Agatha broke through. And when you consider what happened once she did break through, well… I kind of understand. Even if it was painful, life didn’t really get any easier once she knew she was a spark.
I think with all the set up we’ve had regarding Barry (him suspecting Klaus, Klaus apparently knowing why he would be suspicious, the mystery of why he went missing (I wonder if it has anything to do with the Muse of Time? Everything has to do with the Muse of Time) and Lunevka and Luzola being absolutely terrified of him) we’re probably going to meet him, or at least find out what happened to him.
And yeah, I doubt the Clays would know what to do with Agatha if she went into breakthrough. They were built by Bill and Barry post-breakthrough, so it’s not like they’ve got experience with managing it, and from what we know about breakthrough survival rates… Not to mention they were probably waiting for Barry to come back and help/tell them what to do. When Agatha loses her locket, doesn’t Judy say something about “Confound him, we’re not equipped to deal with this!” (can’t remember the exact quote)? If they’re not equipped to deal with it at 18, I doubt they could deal with it as a child.
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