What Agatha’s So-Called “Sacrifice” Reveals
Her final form comes straight from the comics, and hints at the character’s post-All Along future.
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Major spoilers ahead for the final two episodes of Agatha All Along.
The penultimate episode of Agatha All Along included a heck of a bait-and-switch, as Agatha, about to let her ex (Death) take Billy, instead turns about and nobly sacrifices her life instead, allowing him to live. It’s an interesting move from Agatha at that moment. It certainly reads as though it could be genuine, given what we’ve learned about Agatha and her long lost son Nicholas, but… well, there’s always a but.
We know Agatha primarily as a self-serving sort, named as a witch killer and power thief. We know that she’s spent hundreds of years staying ahead of Death; from the very first episode we’re told that’s why she had the Darkhold in the first place, to protect herself. So why sacrifice her life? And, taking a moment to recognize the series’ metatextual sensibilities, why do it in an episode that isn’t even the finale? Well, we got the last two Agatha All Along episodes as a two-parter, so we know immediately: She does it to become a ghost.
The show has already flirted with this concept; we saw Agatha’s mother as a ghost in episode five. And we know that Agatha will beg, borrow and steal any resource she can to come out ahead, including an idea—so why not her mother’s? Then again, is it really theft if you’re stealing from the comic book version of yourself?
In the comics, Agatha Harkness’s defining characteristics are essentially twofold: First, she’s a caretaker of children, having been introduced as the governess of Franklin Richards (the child of Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman, soon to be portrayed on screen for the third time by Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby) before eventually becoming a magical advisor to Wanda as well as a kind of nanny for Billy and Tommy (the twins of Wanda and Vis—oh, you know the story).
The second of Agatha’s main characteristics is that she’s a ghost. She has, in the way of comics, occasionally recovered from her bouts of death, but she also keeps contracting new cases every so often, usually at the hands of others — including both Wanda and her own son.
The majority of Agatha All Along’s final episode is devoted to the story of Agatha’s loss of that same son, who despite his name is a simple, innocent child, unlike his comics counterpart. From there, we’re finally told the truth of the Witches’ Road, and it makes it clear just how much of an opportunist Agatha really is. Consequently, when she immediately begins haunting Billy, he heads straight back to her house and attempts to banish her, whereupon we learn perhaps one of the most humanizing things about her: she can’t bear to face her son in the afterlife. She clings to power, certainly, and this is yet another loophole to keep her from fully passing into Death’s hands. But also, she’s afraid of what her centuries of ducking and weaving, what all of those dead witches, would mean when she finally sees Nicky again.
It’s a compelling bit of character depth that elevates and separates Agatha from her more traditional comics depiction, who speaks often in portentous proclamations and displays neither humor nor fear. It also invites some interesting questions. For instance, we know now that Death is part of the MCU, and we also know that the lowercase version is mostly final, ghosts and body-hopping twins aside. But if those loopholes exist, do others?
Agatha played its hand with Wanda in the first episode, giving us a body and a name, but notably not showing a face—poor Elizabeth Olsen wasn’t in the credits, and also didn’t even get a cameo. The show moved on from there, and it was clear at that point that it wasn’t really about Wanda, despite the shadow she’d cast over half of the characters involved. (It was, you might say, about Wanda all along.) But outside of Agatha’s narrative, could Wanda still make a return? Or, given his role in the comics as a warlock and father of the Salem’s Seven (more standard supervillains than the show’s revenge-obsessed witches), could young Nicholas Scratch? Might he become a villainous foil for both Billy and Agatha as they search for the reincarnated Tommy? Considering Agatha’s angst about seeing him again, it would certainly make for compelling character motivation.
The MCU’s version of Agatha Harkness mostly owes her portrayal to more recent iterations of the comics character; in the 2015 Scarlet Witch comic, she’s presented as much more dry and arch than she had been in the past, and while she’d also been generally shown as a white-haired old lady, a 2019 run of Captain America began the process of de-aging her, making her much less of a granny and much more physically capable as a human being, which seems wise, given how many times she seems to get murdered. Maybe youth will grant her some final girl status?
Either way, the show’s maneuvering here is a neat trick of narrative; first, it retains those more modern character notes, and second, it allows the character to fill the same role for Billy that she traditionally filled for Wanda in the comics. WandaVision set Agatha up as more of a contemporary foil for Wanda from the get-go, and Multiverse of Madness pretty much ensured that even if they’re eventually able to patch things up, it’s not going to be for a good long while. Setting her up to mentor Billy, on the other hand, both gives the character a needed redemption arc, and also adds another ingredient to something that’s been brewing in the MCU for years now: currently our tally of Young Avengers with MCU appearances is Kate Bishop, Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, America Chavez, Billy and Tommy, and even a small appearance by Eli Bradley in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s also worth noting that in the Young Avengers comics, a youthful analogue to Iron Man known as Iron Lad is actually a teenaged Kang the Conqueror, although it seems likely the MCU will continue its swift pivot away from that character following all those Jonathan Majors headlines. Besides, Wakanda Forever gave us Ironheart, who’s due for her own six-episode miniseries next summer, and it seems like one teenager in an armed mech suit is probably enough.
Between that miniseries and the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, the MCU’s plans for 2025 look to be putting a focus on more traditional superheroing things. Given that, and the three years we had between WandaVision and Agatha All Along, it’s hard to say when we might see Agatha and Billy again. Either way, here’s hoping the creator of both series, Jac Schaeffer, gets to bring it home one more time—she’s consistently delivered the best that Disney+ has had to offer in terms of Marvel shows. Besides, it would just fit: power of three, so mote it be.
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