We all thought it was Wanda running the WandaVision sitcom in WandaVision but it was really Agatha all along, as we learn in the new sitcom, Agatha All Along. She disrupted Westview, she hypnotized her neighbor, she lured Tommy and Billy into her basement lair, she summoned Pietro, and she killed Sparky!
Who is Agatha Harkness? In Marvel Comics, she’s a witch/sorceress. She’s not a superhero in the sense that the Avengers are, but she’s heroic and can be counted on to assist. She claims to be an original witch from the Salem trials. Her familiar is Ebony, who appears as a black cat. She lives in a creepy mansion in Whisper Hill, somewhere in New England.
Agatha has been around in Marvel since the early ‘70s as Franklin Richards’s governess in the Fantastic Four, watching him while his parents were away in battle. Technically, Franklin doesn’t need protection, since he’s one of the most powerful mutants on Earth (his powers are sometimes suppressed since he doesn’t have the maturity to handle them), but he’s still a little kid who would need his normal needs tended to. Agatha got involved with the Scarlet Witch in Avengers comics in the ‘70s. Wanda was experiencing disruptions in her powers and asked Agatha to help control them.
Agatha founded a community of witches in New Salem, Colorado. Her son, the evil sorcerer Nicholas Scratch, later took over this colony with the help of his children, the magical villains, Salem’s Seven. Nicholas was banished but years later in the Vision and the Scarlet Witch maxiseries, Salem’s Seven burned Agatha at the stake. Agatha reappeared with no explanation in Avengers West Coast in 1989, revealing that Billy and Tommy were magical constructs and not real children. It was Agatha who wiped Wanda’s memory of her children, a kindness that later backfired. Agatha popped up now and then to advise the Scarlet Witch before another apparent death, later appearing as a ghost.
In the comics, Agatha appears as a stereotypical creepy old witch lady, a subversion of her true heroic nature. On WandaVision, this is reversed, with her young, attractive appearance belying her villainy.
But is it really Agatha behind all this? She was heroic in the comics so this would be Marvel’s most significant switch from the comics. It seems like it would be too easy and clichéd to blame it on the witch. There’s a lot of talk about Mephisto, Marvel’s more obviously evil devil figure, being behind all this. It could also be Nightmare, a Doctor Strange villain since the ‘60s, which would tie into the upcoming Multiverse of Madness movie. I think these are plausible string-pullers but there’s probably a limit to how many reveals this show can do before they lose people.
Anyway, this week, Wanda says she’s having a “me day” to relax at home, speaking to the camera in the confessional style of sitcoms like Modern Family and The Office. (Since these are so recent, are these the last of the sitcoms on WandaVision? There’s really nothing after that would fit.) But Wanda is clearly very depressed. She doesn’t get dressed, doesn’t care where the Vision is, and tells her young kids essentially that life is meaningless. Her powers are going haywire, with objects losing their permanence and devolving to earlier versions of themselves. Agatha has done quite a number on her to break her down.
While Wanda plays Claire Dunphy’s neuroticism in the striped Modern Family easy chair, the Vision apes Jim Halpert’s Office snark in his address to the camera. The references aren’t too blatant but when a construction crew and a school bus block the path of Darcy’s truck, it’s an Office-esque farcical moment.
Monica appears to be the only person to get through to Wanda, trying to build a connection through their shared trauma. Monica is also clearly developing superpowers. Her eyes glow an unnatural shade of blue, she can see the energy patterns of the Hex, and her outfit is very close to the black-and-white costume she wore in the comics.
What does the commercial for Nexus antidepressants mean? One thing I remembered when I saw it is that in the comics, the Scarlet Witch is a nexus being. These nexus beings have the ability to affect probabilities and there is one per reality. Wanda therefore is the one being who has an analogue in every alternate reality. The children of nexus beings have the potential for incredible powers and in the late-‘90s Avengers Forever series, it was revealed that the time traveler Immortus manipulated the Scarlet Witch and Vision into splitting up so they would not have any all-powerful children. I don’t know if this is still operative or has been retconned.
Two more episodes and so many questions. Chief among them: If Agatha is really manipulating Wanda, what is her endgame?
No comments:
Post a Comment