MCU’s Agatha Harkness is a witch who has high command over dark magic. And just like Wanda, we too want to know more about her. So, let’s find out.
From the moment Agnes revealed herself as Agatha Harkness, excitement has only grown among the MCU fans. She appears to be equally concerned and interested in Wanda’s chaos magic. In fact, she is the one who tells Wanda that she is the Scarlet Witch. How does she know all this? Let’s see what we know about her.
Watch: Agatha Harkness All Power Scenes | WandaVision [EP 1-8]
Although we now know that it was “Agatha all along” who was pulling the strings, the endgame of her secret plan is still unclear. We do know that she knows about the Scarlet Witch and Chaos Magic much more than Wanda. We know that she is a very powerful witch with command over dark magic. But let’s dive a little bit more into her origins in the Marvel comics as well as her MCU counterpart.
Agatha Harkness in Marvel Comics
Agatha Harkness was introduced in Fantastic Four #94, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. She began with the role of a governess to young Franklin Richards, who was the son of Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Susan Richards (Invisible Woman).
In the comics, she is not actually a villain but leans towards the good unlike we see her in WandaVision (she killed Sparky too). The thing is her character is more complicated in WandaVision. She also has a son in the comics, Nicholas Scratch. But in the show we have Senor Scratchy, the rabbit, which seems to be an MCU-counterpart of the character.
Major Role in the House of M
Other than training Wanda to use her powers better, Agatha played a crucial role in one of the biggest storylines in Marvel comics alongside Wanda. And that is the conception and birth of Wanda’s children, Billy and Tommy. She returned is her astral form, to help Wanda give birth to her children, after she was out on trial and burned in The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #3.
She came back to life mysteriously in West Coast Avengers #51 after Billy and Tommy were acting strangely, like randomly disappearing and reappearing. This would eventually lead to Wanda’s devastating realization that her children were nothing but magical constructs made from fragments of supervillain Mephisto’s soul.
So, to protect Wanda from the trauma, Agatha wipes her memory of the children’s existence. However, Wanda eventually finds out about this in early 2000s storyline Avengers Disassembled and kills Agatha along with many others while resurrecting her children.
This ultimately leads to the House of M events that are some of the most consequential events in Marvel history. It leads to Wanda wiping off the mutants from the earth’s surface in order to make it safer for her children. House of M has a lot of influence on WandaVision though the circumstances are different.
In the 2015 mini-series The Vision, Vision creates his family of synthezoids and lives in the suburbs. The narrator of the story in revealed only in its 6th issue and it is none other than Agatha Harkness.
Considering the multiverse towards which the MCU is heading steadily, one of the most significant alternate realities is the Ultimate Comics universe of Earth-1610. Here too, Agatha Harkness plays an important role in the lives of the Fantastic Four.
Agatha Harkness in MCU’s WandaVision
Agatha was clearly waiting for the right time to reveal herself to Wanda. In her basement, Wanda finds what we now know as the Book of the Damned. She wants Wanda’s powers for the sheer strength she will gain from it. Her powers here include telekinesis, energy absorption, mental manipulation, transmutation, protection spells, energy binds, longevity and who knows if we will see more of her in the future.
While Wanda’s powers are much more than Agatha Harkness, Agatha’s sheer experience and practice make her a lot more dangerous. And although Wanda took away her powers, for now, and abandoned her in Westview, who knows when she might reappear later?
