For Agatha, Christmas triggers sadness. She yearns for freedom laced with imagination, when magical creatures were part of a game played with friends in the forest. The death of her parents after a 1978 Christmas Party still haunts Agatha. She sees similarities between her parents' unhappy marriage and her own. The Black Madonna statue from her childhood visits Agatha, escalating her anxiety and goading her towards change. The discovery of a mysterious portal offers Agatha the possibility of resolving her grief and saving her crumbling marriage.

Home and Away is set in the fictional town of Summer Bay, a coastal town in New South Wales, and follows the personal and professional lives of the people living in the area. The show initially focused on the Fletcher family, Pippa and Tom Fletcher and their five foster children Frank Morgan, Carly Morris, Steven Matheson, Lynn Davenport and Sally Keating, who would go on to become one of the show's longest-running characters. The show also originally and currently focuses on the Stewart family. During the early 2000s, the central storylines focused on the Sutherlands and later, the Hunters. Home and Away had proved popular when it premiered in 1988 and had risen to become a hit in Australia, and after only a few weeks, the show tackled its first major and disturbing storyline, the rape of Carly Morris; it was one of the first shows to feature such storylines during the early timeslot. H&A has tackled many adult-themed and controversial storylines; something rarely found in its restricted timeslot.