Although each episode takes on the tone and setting of a different classic sitcom, one thing has remained constant throughout the Disney+ series WandaVision: Kathryn Hahn’s show-stealing performance as Agnes, the nosey neighbor. In every new incarnation of domestic farce experienced by the Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her husband Vision (Paul Bettany), Agnes has burst in as a chaotic, but ultimately good-hearted, force. 

That is, until the end of episode seven. Realizing that her twin sons are missing, Wanda goes to investigate Agnes’s house, where she follows strange purple energy in the basement and finds an arcane tableau of candles and books. Only then does Agnes reveal her true identity. Unlike Wanda and Vision’s other neighbors, she is not a townsperson magically changed into a broad character in a sitcom alternate reality. She isn’t even called Agnes. “The names Agatha Harkness,” Agnes declares, her eyes shimmering with purple light; “Lovely to finally meet you, my dear.”

The reveal caught even longtime Marvel Comics readers like me by surprise. After all, with the exception of a witch Halloween costume she wore in episode six, Agnes has had nothing in common with comic book portrayals of Agatha. In the pages of Fantastic Four and Avengers, Agatha Harkness was a spindly, elderly woman, dressed in a blue dress and purple shawl, and never seen without her familiar, a shapeshifting black cat called Ebony. And where Agnes has been nothing but a goofy delight, Agatha declared in her initial adventure, “Humor has never been my forte.” 

More importantly, Agatha Harkness, for all her interest in the dark arts, has always been an ally to superheroes, especially to Wanda Maximoff aka the Scarlett Witch. The Agatha of WandaVision, as a wonderful montage set to a peppy Munsters-esque number put it, has been behind all the trouble in the series. 

The Witch’s Witch

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Agatha Harkness first appeared in 1970’s Fantastic Four #94, where she was hired by Reed and Sue Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman) as a nanny for their toddler Franklin. Despite her seemingly frail appearance, Agatha quickly revealed her magical powers when taking down supervillain team the Frightful Four. Over the next few years, Agatha served as a consistent supporting character for the Fantastic Four, providing magical aid whenever the team’s usual scientific approach fell short, and even embroiling the heroes in adventures in her extra-dimensional hometown of New Salem. 

While Agatha’s backstory has never been fully told, writers over the years have offered compelling hints. We learn not only that she fled the original Salem witch trials in 17th century Massachusetts, but that she was also a member of the Daughters of the Revolution, fighting British soldiers with her magical abilities. Other stories have hinted that her history goes back much further, suggesting that she existed at least 500 years before the fall of Atlantis. 

Agatha’s most enduring role has been as tutor to the Scarlet Witch. Sensing in Wanda both great power and an inability to understand her magical abilities, Agatha began teaching the hero in 1974’s Avengers #128. Written by Steve Englehart, one of the creators credited with infusing Marvel Comics with hippy psychedelia, and illustrated by Sal Buscema and Joe Stanton, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Dead!” set the model for most of Agatha’s subsequent appearances. Gone is the maternal calm and reluctance to use magic she showed in her Fantastic Four adventures. Instead, Englehart writes Agatha as a cryptic trickster, one who hurls Wanda into mind-bending situations to test her. 

Agatha Harkness and the Avengers, Disassembled

It’s through the Scarlet Witch that Agatha made her greatest contribution to the Marvel Universe, a contribution made with her death. Anyone familiar with the history of Vision and the Scarlet Witch knows how strange it is that an android (okay, a synthezoid) could impregnate a human. The answer, of course, is magic. Specifically, Agatha’s magic, which she passed to Wanda after she was burned at the stake in 1985’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #2. The issue ends with Wanda suddenly pregnant. Soon, she gave birth to twin sons Thomas and William.

Although a happy occasion, the birth of Thomas and William is the beginning of the end for the Scarlet Witch, a fall in which Agatha plays a major role. After learning that Wanda’s sons disappear whenever she leaves them, Agatha arrives (alive, without explanation) with crushing news: Thomas and William never existed. Wanda conjured them with the “chaos magick” she gained after Agatha’s apparent death. Not only that, but Wanda made them from fragments of the soul of the satanic Mephisto, who now wants them back. (Also, a demonic villain called Master Pandemonium shows up, with arms made out of the Scarlet Witch’s babies.)

At the end of 1989’s West Coast Avengers #51, written and drawn by John Byrne, Thomas and William were gone and Agatha wiped their memory from Wanda’s consciousness. 

Agatha came back into play in 2004’s Avengers Disassembled storyline, written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by David Finch and Dani Miki. When a series of horrific attacks destroy the Avengers, killing Vision and Hawkeye, Doctor Strange arrives to reveal Scarlet Witch as the source of the trouble. Realizing that Wanda has gone mad after recovering memories of Thomas and William, the Avengers seek help from Agatha. But when they visit her mansion, they find not the powerful witch they knew, but a Mrs. Bates-like corpse. Wanda had killed Agatha for her role in the mind-wipe plot. 

The Death and Afterlife of Agatha Harkness

But as anyone who has ever read a comic knows, death is rarely permeant, especially for a witch. The ghost of Agatha Harkness makes many more appearances in the Marvel Universe, most prominently in the Scarlet Witch’s 2017 solo series. As part of her redemptive search for her mother, a powerful witch herself, Wanda is guided by the ghostly Agatha. In issue #14, written by James Robinson and illustrated by Shawn Crystal, Agatha and Wanda join with Wanda’s mother to form the Witches Three: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Together, they undo chaos with order, a victory that restores Agatha to life in a younger, more trendy body. The resurrection also seems to have given Agatha a sense of humor, as she makes immediate plans to visit a nude beach. 

These days, Agatha can be found doing what she does best: training superheroes in the mystic arts. She’s recently popped up in Ta-Nahasi Coates’s Captain America run as a member of the female spy team the Daughters of Liberty. She also serves as Professor Emeritus in the titular magic school of the series Strange Academy. 

How will Agatha’s history play into to her role in WandaVision? We’ll know more soon, but no one should be surprised if all is not what it seems. As we’ve seen time and again, Agatha Harkness loves to use illusions to test her subjects, and the mischief made by her television counterpart might be a ruse to bring out the best in Wanda. But no matter how she presents herself at the end of that show, Marvel fans know that there’s always much more than meets the eye to the witch Agatha Harkness.