Who is Agatha Harkness?

Who is Agatha Harkness?

Good question. 

Agatha Harkness in the comics is one of those background characters that essentially shows up whenever magic is involved in the current shenanigans and usually explains what's going on to whoever is in charge of dealing with it. First appearing as the Fantastic Four's nanny, she's best known for training Scarlet Witch... And not much else... 

Till, of course, now...

Marvel Comics

Agatha Harkness originally appeared in the Fantastic Four comics when she was hired to watch after Franklin Richards, the kid of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman. Turns out she wanted the baby for some witchcraft crap and they ended up firing her. 

Next we saw her appear in Scarlet Witch's origin story, where she trained her powers since, despite being mutant powers, they closely resembled magic. This was repeated in the show X-Men: Evolution where Agatha also helped Nightcrawler and Rogue try to cure their petrified mother Mystique (Which ended in Rogue committing murder and Agatha peacing out). 

Throughout Agatha's multiple appearances in the comics and various video games, she had the attitude of Professor McGonagall with slightly more ambiguous morals. She showed up, explained the magic plot, then took off.*

*Note: There is some sort of recent development where she regained her youth to resemble the actress from Wandavision, but honestly I haven't been following the latest comics so whatever that was it was a thing. 

Wandavision

Most people know Agatha from the incredible series Wandavision, where she served as the dangerous antagonist, played by Kathryn Hahn. In the series, Agatha tests Wanda to see the true extent of her powers, revealing that Wanda's powers are magic, which was unlocked by the tesseract (See Avengers: Age of Ultron). Agatha is the only person inside Wanda's brainwashed TV town who knows what's really going on. Agatha wants to steal Wanda's chaos magic and mix it with the Darkhold, the magical MacGuffin which showed back up in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.  Wanda ends up thrashing the witch in a magic duel and leaves her in a mind-wiped state, which is apparently reversed in the new series. 

That and the fact that she was apparently involved in the Salem Witch trials is far more backstory and characterization than we ever got in the comics. 

Marvel's Midnight Suns

In the sadly slept-on video game Marvel's Midnight Suns Agatha shows up as an NPC with more than her usual explain-the-plot role. She is a surrogate mother to the protagonist, the Hunter, and sadly was killed before the Hunter was able to be resurrected by Nico Minoru. Here Agatha helps the player character by appearing as a ghost and guides them through the home base on various quests to unlock secrets and collectables. We eventually find out that she was killed by Scarlet Witch in an accidental experiment with dark magic, so the main character has to deal with that when they finally get Wanda to join the party. 

Here Agatha feels more like comic book Aunt May with magic than the cold witch she usually is. She's kind and sympathetic to The Hunter, and misses her former partner the Caretaker (She doesn't get a name but think magic witchy Nick Fury). Her backstory is the same as the comics but she's far more relatable and interesting here, except maybe her version in Wandavision. 

The Beauty of the MCU

Fun fact: In the 90's comics weren't doing well and Marvel was hemorrhaging money so they started selling off their properties for movie adaptations, including X-Men and Spider-Man. They tried to sell the Avengers too but nobody wanted to buy it as the characters were "just not profitable". Today Iron Man and Thor are as well known as Superman and Batman because of what Marvel did with them in the MCU. Agatha Harkness got an even harder glow-up, as it can be argued how important the Avengers were in the previous comics, Agatha was usually just there in the background. They're were few if any Agatha Harkness fans clamoring for her to show up in anything before Wandavision, and now thanks to excellent writing, an amazing actress, and a couple slight adjustments to the character, she's now a vibrant piece of superhero media. 

-JOE