Characters / MCU: Agatha Harkness

Main Character Index > Villainous Individuals and Organizations > Other Supervillains > Emil Blonsky | Ultron | Darren Cross | Helmut Zemo | Erik Stevens | Mysterio | Kevin Thompson | Agatha Harkness

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Agatha Harkness

"I take power from the undeserving. It's kind of my thing."

^{Click here to see her as "Agnes"}
"The only way Ralph would remember our anniversary is if there was a beer named June 2nd."

Known Aliases: "Agnes"

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Salem Coven (formerly)

Portrayed By: Kathryn Hahn

Appearances: WandaVision | Agatha

♫ "Who's been messing up everything?
It's been Agatha all along!
Who's been pulling every evil string?
It's been Agatha all along!
She's insidious! (Ha-ha!)
So perfidious
That you haven't even noticed
And the pity is (the pity is, pity, pity, pity, pity)
It's too late to fix anything
Now that everything has gone wrong
Thanks to Agatha (Ha!), naughty Agatha
It's been Agatha all along!" ♫

— Agatha's Evil All Along Expository Theme Tune Villain Song

The Vision family's chatty neighbor in Westview, and Wanda's closest friend since moving in. She has a tendency to pop up at times of convenience for Wanda, helping her solve her problems.

Unfortunately, this isn't out of altruism; as it turns out, "Agnes" is the alias of a 350-year-old (at least) witch by the name of Agatha Harkness who's been around since the Salem witch trials, and she's been pulling the strings to many of the problems faced by the Vision family since they arrived in Westview. She's been trying to get close to Wanda in particular for her own reasons.

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A-D

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Keeping in line with her more youthful appearance here, she's a brunette instead of having grey hair.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Agatha is usually depicted as an elderly hag, whereas here she's portrayed by the much younger and very attractive Kathryn Hahn.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Agatha Harkness in the comics was a witch who was several millennia old, having remembered the sinking of Atlantis as well as surviving the Salem witch trials, and was burned at the stake by her son Nicholas Scratch and the rest of her community of witches in New Salem, Colorado due to claims that she betrayed them by working with the Fantastic Four, but survived and went into hiding. In WandaVision, Agatha is implied to have only been around since the mid to late 1600s at least and was not tried by Puritans during the witch trials but instead by her mother and her coven for committing an unspecified dark magic-related crime which they described as her going above her station. They attempted to kill her by draining her life force via magic, but Agatha redirected the spell and killed them all, including her mother, took her mother's brooch and went into hiding.
• Adaptational Villainy: Agatha here is significantly more villainous than her comics counterpart (who was Wanda's magic teacher and an ally of the Fantastic Four, being the nanny to Reed Richards' son Franklin). Could possibly be a Composite Character with her Ultimate Marvel version, who was a villain.
• Admiring the Abomination: Agatha came to Wanda's Westview out of sheer admiration for her power, only to find Wanda was taken up in her own spells and didn't have conscious control of her environment. Agatha played along with the sitcom for a while to try to learn Wanda's secrets and, as the YoMagic commercial foreshadows, take them for herself.
• Age Lift: An interesting example. Agatha in the comics is thousands of years old and presents herself as an elderly crone, but this version of Agatha is "only" 350-ish, and appears middle-aged like her Ultimate counterpart.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After Wanda defeats her and tells her what her punishment will be (becoming trapped in her "Agnes" persona), she begs Wanda not to do it while arguing that Wanda will need her help if she wants to master her powers.
• Ambiguously Bi: Flirts with Wanda after getting locked in her Agnes persona, along with having many other flirtatious moments with her throughout the series. She's also very fond of using pet names for Wanda, whether acting as "Agnes" or as herself. She also stares at Dennis the mailman's ass in the second episode and is "married" to Ralph, although she usually only brings him up to complain about him.
• And I Must Scream: After defeating her, Wanda punishes her by forcing her to become Agnes, the role that she picked out for herself, now as a Stepford Smiler enslaved to Wanda's will who's still fully aware of her condition but unable to resist, with the only sliver of hope for her being that Wanda may wake her up when she needs her advice in the future.
• And Starring: Kathryn Hahn gets this billing, the first clue that Wanda's comic-relief gal pal is much more important than the show initially lets on.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: She casually reveals that she killed Sparky For the Evulz at the end of her Villain Song.
• Awful Wedded Life: As part of her "Agnes" facade, she makes several negative comments about Ralph, her alleged awful layabout of a husband. It's later revealed that "Ralph" is an actual person she's put under her spell, and she's taken up residence in his home to get close to Wanda.
• Badass Fingersnap: At the end of episode 8, after sarcastically applauding when finding out how Wanda created the Hex, Agatha teleports herself out of her house with a snap of her fingers, leaving behind only a cloud of purplish-black smoke.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Not only killed Wanda's dog Sparky, but casually transmutes a cicada into a bird which she then grabs and crushes to audible pain before feeding it to her rabbit.
• Best Friend: Her role to Wanda on the show (except in Episode 3, where Monica temporarily takes over the role, to Agatha's apparent discomfort). She constantly shows up to banter back and forth with her, helps her adjust to life in the suburbs, becomes an Honorary Aunt to her sons and is constantly part of Wanda's home life (even being in the opening credits sequence of Episode 6). Episode 7 reveals that she’s intentionally injected herself into Wanda's life since the beginning and has been the cause of a number of grievances and conflicts since.
• Big Bad: The end of the seventh episode reveals that she's been subtly manipulating Wanda and pulling the strings behind the problems within the Hex, trying to find out how Wanda created it and deciding to take her magic once she finds out how powerful she really is. However, this is played with in that most of what she actually did to Wanda until then amounted to small mischief in a larger scale; Wanda herself was the cause of most of the torment in Westview itself.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Episode 7 ends on a sinister tone with the reveal of her true identity and that she was never under Wanda's control within the Hex.
• Brainy Brunette:
  • As Agnes, she seems capable at whatever she does and even gives Wanda advice at who she should make connections with to make her future life in the suburbs easier.
  • As her true self, she shows herself to have an abundance of knowledge of witchcraft and spells, not to mention how she was able to manipulate events in the Hex to isolate Wanda and eventually lure her into her basement, which Agatha had already cast protection spells on to prevent Wanda from using her magic within.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In Episode 5, she seems to have slowly grown tired of the sitcom antics as she addresses Wanda by asking, "Should we take it from the top?" This startles Wanda for a moment as she looks at Agnes with confusion.
  • In the episode literally titled after this trope, Agnes breaks it a couple of times much like Wanda, Vision, and Darcy in the typical sitcom style portrayed in that episode. The end then shows a montage of her manipulating events since Episode 1 whilst interacting with the viewers, along with the reveal of her true identity as Agatha Harkness.
• Breakout Villain: Was popular enough to warrant her own Disney+ series, joining the likes of Loki and Echo as former antagonists who have their own shows.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the final episode, after Wanda defeats her by using runes to nullify Agatha's magic, Wanda traps Agatha in her "Agnes" persona, keeping her from being able to access any of her magic powers.
• Bullying a Dragon: The final episode has Agatha taunting Wanda through psychological and magical means for being too weak to embrace her destiny as the Scarlet Witch. It's needless to say that it does not end well for Agatha.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: She owns Senor Scratchy, a rabbit that she lends to Wanda in Episode 2, and she can even be seen holding it during that episode's opening credits. While revealing her true identity to Wanda in the seventh episode, she pets her rabbit in a particularly villainous way.
• Canon Character All Along: At first, she's introduced as a seemingly original character... but, as her Villain Song says, "It's been Agatha all along!" In the comics, Agatha Harkness was acquainted with a number of heroes, including Scarlet Witch, whom she mentored in sorcery.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Once she reveals herself to be Agatha Harkness, we are greeted with a Villain Song montage of all of the bizarre coincidences she was involved in, (including a few that viewers were unaware of), where it shows "Agnes" manipulating the events of the previous episodes behind the scenes with a smile on her face, culminating with her gleefully exclaiming "And I killed Sparky too!" and laughing evilly.
• Cast from Hit Points: A downplayed example, but she ages visibly during her final battle with Wanda.
• Celebrity Paradox: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was referenced in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Kathryn Hahn played Helen in the movie.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Submits Wanda to escalating forms of mental and physical punishment from making a cicada that she's mind controlled crawl over her mouth, magically slamming her against some stone pillars, and making her listen to the cries of her imprisoned children in order to get her to comply with her demands.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: Agatha's magic sports a purplish glow in contrast to Wanda's signature red.
• Composite Character:
  • She has the powers of the mainstream Agatha, but is a villain with a younger, prettier appearance like her Ultimate Marvel counterpart.
  • She also has many of the character traits of Nicholas Scratch, her son in the comics, being a power-hungry Self-Made Orphan who uses evil magic.
• Contrived Coincidence: Subverted, because there's nothing coincidental about it. Whenever Wanda needs help, she just happens to be nearby and come to the rescue. It gets absurd in Episode 5, when she offers to help Wanda with the twins but seems to have no idea what to do and gets confused by Vision's dos and don'ts. She later shows up with a kennel moments after Wanda's twins asked her if they can keep the dog they've found. This is because she's capable of powerful magic much like Wanda and has been messing with the figurative script of the Hex in whatever way suits her fancy.
  Vision: I had a hunch someone might pop over...
  "Agnes": (opens the door) Hiya, kiddos.
  Vision: With exactly the item we require.
• Covert Pervert: As she watches Dennis the mailman walk off to continue his rounds, she pauses for a moment before leaning out to see more of his butt.
• Dark Action Girl: She is an incredibly powerful witch who has dabbled in dark magic.
• The Dark Arts: Her coven tried to execute her for practicing "the darkest of magic" when she was too young to even know about it, which was a betrayal of their rules. It is implied that the Darkhold was involved somehow.
• Dark Is Evil: Her powers are dark purple, and her witch costume in the Halloween episode is mostly black. And she mostly certainly is evil.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • She gets out a lot of zingers, especially towards Dottie when she even mutters into her drink wondering how anyone can get through her meetings sober.
  • This continues even after she reveals her true identity. She snarks a lot towards Wanda while making her walk through her memories, commenting on things like the seeming inconsistency of Wanda's accent and the Maximoffs' poor decision to join the Obviously Evil organization HYDRA.
• Decomposite Character: Her comic book appearance is given to her mother, Evanora.
• Didn't Think This Through: By Episode 8, Agatha knows that Wanda has access to Chaos Magic and believes her to be the Scarlet Witch which she knows is a powerful magical being that dwarfs her magic. Yet she still thinks it's a good idea to egg her on just to get her to access her power, especially by threatening her family (fabricated as they are). This backfires royally as Wanda not only learns the true nature of her powers, but comes into her own as said fabled being. Unsurprisingly, Agatha finds herself overwhelmed and depowered by the end of their fight.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: For any audience members that play Dungeons & Dragons and/or Pathfinder, the conversations between Wanda and Agatha regarding their approach to magic can seem like a textbook example of differences between Sorcerers and Wizards, especially Agatha being both jealous of Wanda's natural ability while at the same time being condescendingly amazed at Wanda's ignorance regarding basic magic practices and rules.
• Double Entendre: Even in the stuffy 1950s, Agnes manages to slip in a few sexuality jokes. And stared at the mailman's ass. By the 1980s, she's wearing a short skirt with pink tights, swinging her own ass around, and one of her dirty jokes earns Wanda's comment on her "unusually high libido."
• Double Meaning: In Episode 5, while sipping her liquor she says that Wanda can't control her children. She appears to be sharing some common wisdom. But in fact, she is pointing out that Wanda literally can't control her children, unlike everyone else in the town, as shown previously when Wanda couldn't force them into sleep.
• Drop-In Character: More and more so as the series progresses. In the first episode, she actually bothers to knock, while by Episode 5, she's constantly walking into the house uninvited. Justified, as she literally inserted herself into Wanda's show to manipulate everything from behind the scenes the entire time.

E-M

• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Agatha has dark hair that's almost black, which contrasts her fairly pale complexion. This lends a particularly creepy air to her aesthetic especially after her villainous reveal.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When Billy and Tommy ask her if Wanda is going to be okay, Agatha hesitates for a moment before reassuring them that their mom can do anything... and then she gives the camera a harried glance before it cuts away.
    "Agnes": Ralph says I sugarcoat things too much... But you try telling a ten-year old his mother is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
  • She has a low opinion of HYDRA and is baffled by Wanda's decision to join it, calling them "an anti-freedom terrorist organization."
  • Even she has to briefly wipe the corner of her eye after listening to The Vision's touching observation that grief is nothing but love persevering.
  • Upon learning that Wanda's magic is Chaos Magic in Episode 8, she immediately becomes extremely hostile to the Scarlet Witch as she states that Chaos Magic is dangerous. This gets Played With in the following episode as she clearly cares more about getting Wanda's chaos magic than actually stopping Wanda.
• Evil All Along: Episode 7 reveals that Agnes, really Agatha Harkness, was manipulating Wanda from the very beginning and setting up a number of conflicts across the series. She sings about this at length in "It Was _____ All Along."
• Evil Costume Switch: As soon as she reveals her true identity, she stops wearing period appropriate clothes the sitcom world would require her to, and instead dons a dark purple witch attire.
• Evil Gloating: Her Villain Song comes down to her gleefully gloating about how she's been pulling the strings the entire time and it's too late to stop her plans.
• Evil Is Hammy: She is notably hammier after the reveal that she is the villain than in her role as Agnes. She even has her own theme song where she gleefully manipulates everything behind the scenes. Her laughing after killing Sparky seals the deal.
• Evil Laugh: Her laugh, supposedly of grief, in Episode 6 is retroactively revealed as this. Her cackle in Episode 7 about how she murdered Sparky is a more straightforward example. She also cackles evilly a couple of times during Episode 9 while attacking Wanda and leeching her powers.
• Evil Mentor: Despite her Adaptational Villainy, she still plays her comics role of mentor to Wanda, not only showing her what her powers are and how to use magic, but helping Wanda recover her repressed memories and getting Wanda to take down the Hex by making her aware of what her spell is doing to the people of Westview. She's helping Wanda for her own selfish purposes, but she does help her more than any other character in the show.
• Evil Plan: In WandaVision, it is to investigate the origin of the Hex so she can determine what power created it and then take that power for herself.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Her normal speaking voice is fairly low, especially when contrasted with the voice she uses as "Agnes."
• Familiar: Señor Scratchy the bunny appears to be Agatha's familiar as it's the only animal she seems to have a bond with and doesn't mistreat.
• Fate Worse than Death: She considers being turned into Agnes, the nosy neighbor while devoid of all her memories, to be one and she outright begs Wanda not to do this to her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Although she does act like a friendly neighbor to Wanda, it’s just to manipulate her. Even while she's forcing Wanda to relive her most traumatic memories, she still calls her by pet names like "buttercup."
• Foreshadowing: Many details throughout the series hint at her true identity.
  • The obvious one — "Agnes" is a shortened version of her real name.
  • Agnes's behavior before The Reveal is stilted and often skirts what would've been considered morally proper for that period in time. She snarkily mutters to Wanda "How could anyone do this sober?" while at the second episode's planning committee, and blatant references to stuff like alcohol during The '60s (the decade of sitcoms that the second episode was Homaging) would've been frowned upon by the Moral Guardians of the time. This also subtly indicates that she's at least semi-immune to Wanda's sorcery puppeteering everyone else in Westview.
  • She wears a distinctively round pendant in every episode, just like the one that her comic book self wears on the collar of her dress. It is immune to Westview's alterations, as it never changes to better reflect the time period.
  • In Episode 2's opening, an advertisement for "Auntie A's" cat litter (which pictures a black cat) can be spotted in the background. This is a nod to Agatha's familiar in the comics, a black cat named Ebony.
  • Out of all the "supporting characters" in Westview, she seems to be the most aware that they're living in a TV show, as exemplified when she briefly breaks character and asks to redo her line. This is because unlike the other characters, she's out of Wanda's control and is playing her role on her own accord.
  • She dresses as a witch in the Halloween Episode, and lets out an eerily witch-like cackle when she declares that all hope is lost. It's also quite suspicious that she isn't completely frozen when Vision finds her at the town's outer limits, unlike the other residents living around that area. Her jealous ranting about "magic on autopilot" seems to imply she was checking out that area herself, if for different reasons than Vision.
  • She claims that her wedding was on June 2nd, which the same day that the Salem Witch Trials commenced.
  • Billy tells her that she's "quiet on the inside", as in, he can't sense any of her inner thoughts. This implies that she's immune to both Wanda and Billy's mind powers.
  • She also notes in one of her confessions during the aforementioned episode that she's bitten children before. Witches being cannibals is a common trait in many fairy tales, such as the Wicked Witch from "Hansel and Gretel".
  • The "Yo Magic" commercial, silly as it is, is a case of it with the kid representing her and the shark representing Wanda who she sees as being "undeserving" of said magic. Likewise, the kid can't get the lid to the yogurt open and starves to death mirroring how Agatha is trying to get to Wanda's magic but can't without ultimately confronting her lest she stay trapped in the Hex herself trying to figure it out.
• Freudian Excuse: Back in Salem during the Witch Trials, she apparently crossed some kind of line that resulted in her mother and coven trying to execute her, despite her begging and pleading them to stop. She then killed most of them in self-defense, but tries to spare her mother, who tells her she can't be good, which leads to a fatal fight. However, as Wanda comments, she sucked them dry of magic and life on purpose, implying she may have been bad even before her coven's attempted execution of her.
• The Gadfly: By Episode 5 she's proverbially stinging Vision, setting up situations that challenge the status quo.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: WandaVision ends with Agatha being turned into the kooky sitcom neighbor "Agnes" for the foreseeable future.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Agatha is clearly driven by her ambition for greater magical power and was drawn to Westview after sensing the immense magic power Wanda emitted in creating the Hex. When she mocks Wanda for wasting her untapped chaos magic on comforting, delusional fantasies, it's with the venom of a woman who betrayed her mother and sacrificed her entire coven to gain even a tiny fraction of that ability.
  Agatha: You have no idea how dangerous you are. You're supposed to be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation, and here you are, using it to make breakfast for dinner.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Agatha is clearly resentful of Wanda's Unskilled, but Strong feats of magic. She spent years studying in order to create even small convincing illusions, whereas Wanda has absolutely no training at all, and yet she created something as large and complex as the Hex, composed of multiple layers of spells with no conscious effort.
• Hiding in Plain Sight: Her fake alias, "Agnes", is blatantly an abbreviation of her real name, Agatha Harkness.
• The Heavy: Subtler than most examples, but since she's responsible for many of the plot points in the series and is revealed to be the show’s Big Bad, she fills the role of most important villain neatly.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Closes out Episode 7 with opening credits for Agatha All Along — Starring Agatha Harkness.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard:
  • She told Wanda about runes that prevents Wanda from using witch powers in Agatha's lair in Episode 8. In the following episode, Wanda uses this knowledge to her advantage as she placed runes inside the Hex herself in order to prevent Agatha from using magic.
  • More subtly, her entire strategy throughout the series brings about her own defeat. She has to force Wanda to recall her past and consider her current situation in order to bring out Wanda’s power to steal it — in another series, the painful but necessary process Wanda goes through in episode 8 might be guided by a friendly psychiatrist — but by doing so, she completes Wanda’s transformation into the powerful Scarlet Witch, who can defeat Agatha.
• Hot Witch: Remember when we said she was played by Kathryn Hahn, and how she's a witch? She's barely aged two decades physically in centuries; she's remained an attractive woman for longer than the country she's in has been around.
• Hypocrite: Oh boy, where do we start?
  • She begs her coven and mother not to kill her by stealing her life and magic, and it is implied that she planned on doing the same thing to them. She does the same magically-attack-me-and-I-will-steal-your-magic thing to Wanda.
  • She claims at the end of Episode 9 that Wanda doesn't know what she's unleashed by becoming the Scarlet Witch. This is coming from the person who awakened Wanda to the full potential of her powers in trying to steal them.
  • She calls Wanda cruel for giving her the punishment of permanently staying in her sitcom persona after she's defeated. Yet she was more then willing to force Wanda through her painful memories just so she herself could learn how Wanda accessed her magic before attempting to take it for herself. And trying to harm her sons as well just to twist the knife. Sure said sons aren't real, but that's still a low move on Agatha's part.
• Hypocritical Humor: Agatha scoffs at Wanda’s decision to turn Westview into a sitcom-based paradise for herself and Vision in Episode 8, thinking it's utterly ridiculous. Now who was the one responsible for the above Hostile Show Takeover and sang her own Villain Song again?
• Iconic Item: She is never seen without her mother's brooch on. It is noticeably immune to the Hex's rewriting as it never changes according to the time period. It even stays with her when Wanda reverts her back into "Agnes" at the end of Episode 9.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Agatha has piercing blue eyes that start looking especially sinister after she reveals her true identity.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • During the Planning Committee meeting, she chooses to compensate for her miserable mood with vodka slipped into her drink. Being around Dottie will do that to a person.
  • In the fifth episode, she volunteers to help with the twins. She then immediately walks to the liquor cabinet to grab the dark liquor. "Oh, it's not for me! It's for the twins! What kind of babysitter do you think I am?"
• It's All About Me: She didn't really care if the people of Westview were suffering or not, she just wanted to steal Wanda's power for herself.
• The Juggernaut: Played with. Agatha is capable of going toe-to-toe with Wanda and even easily disarms the SWORD military unit Hayward sent in to try and take Wanda out, but she also remarks that she isn't nearly as powerful as Wanda (the mythical Scarlet Witch who is even more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme). Still, even with all that strength, Wanda can't do anything to touch Agatha due to the dark witch's extensive knowledge of magic, her willingness to play psychological warfare, and her Power Parasite ability. In the end, Wanda only triumphs by outsmarting Agatha instead of overpowering her.
• Kick the Dog: Almost literally; to prove how "naughty" she is, her Evil All Along turn in Episode 7 ends with her gleefully revealing that, as part of her ongoing acts to create more emotional pain for Wanda, she personally killed Wanda's family dog Sparky.
• Lady Drunk: Is constantly seen drinking or desiring alcohol. In Episode 2, she brings a flask of wine to Dottie's planning committee meeting, and in Episode 5, she asks where Wanda and Vision keep their alcohol (though she says it's not for her but for the twin babies).
• Lady of Black Magic: Downplayed. Personality-wise, she's more extroverted, hammy, and openly mocking in opposite to normal examples. But magically speaking, though she's overshadowed by Wanda, or even the Sorcerer Supreme, Agatha is a powerful sorceress with extensive knowledge who was able to destroy her coven and even her mother on her own. In addition, her powers' color is dark purple.
• Large Ham: After her Evil All Along reveal, she turns up the hamminess, showing her own over-the-top Villain Song intro sequence that ends with her declaring that she was also the one who killed Sparky and then letting out a pitch-perfect witchy cackle. She even has her rabbit with her to stroke malevolently while revealing her true identity!
• Laughably Evil: Even after her villainous reveal, she continues to be comedic, albeit in a dark way. This is best demonstrated in the Agatha All Along segment.
  Agatha: And I killed Sparky, too! [evil cackling]
• Laughing Mad: As Vision finds her at the edge of Ellis Avenue in her running car and brings her mind back, she starts panicking and asking Vision if the Avengers were here to save them. When she realizes that wasn't likely to happen and that Vision still doesn't know what's going on, she starts breaking down into hysterical laughter as she says everything is lost. This turns out to have been invoked on her part, though she has a pretty good Evil Laugh of her own.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: She calls Wanda "the star of the show" when she greets her in Episode 2. By Episode 5, it looks like she's getting a little tired of the whole thing and interrupts scenes to ask if Wanda wants to "take it from the top" when things don't go sitcom perfect. Turns out this is because she was aware of everything from the get-go and has been pulling a number of strings ever since.
• Makeup Is Evil: When Agnes's true identity is revealed and she openly presents herself as a witch, she suddenly starts wearing a lot of make-up which screams "I'm evil" and would not be out of place in a Disney animated film. When Wanda turns her into Agnes again, the excessive make-up is gone and she looks more natural.
• Master Actor: Agatha's performance as the "real" Agnes, complete with Broken Tears, helpless terror, and clear evidence of psychological trauma, is so indistinguishable from the real breakdowns that Westview residents have been going through that it's able to completely fool Vision (albeit a Vision who's shown to be much weaker than normal). Lampshaded in the "______ All Along" montage, which features her checking out her hair and makeup while Vision's distracted, before resuming her pained expression and turning back in time to face him.
• Matricide: She killed her own mother (who was also a witch) during the Salem Witch Trials along with the rest of her coven when they attempted to execute her for going above her station and using dark magic.
• Meaningful Name: Her alias "Agnes" is a combination of the first and last syllables of her actual name, Agatha Harkness.
• Mind Probe: Conjures a doorway to Wanda's mind so she can determine the true nature of her magic.
• Mind Rape: Wanda brainwashes her into the Nosy Neighbor character Agnes was after defeating her.
• Mirror Character: To Monica Rambeau. Both of them are strangers to Westview who are attempting to understand the intricacies of the Hex while simultaneously trying to be the "best friend" to Wanda in her sitcom reality. However, while Agatha only pretends to care about Wanda's Reality Warper abilities for the sake of taking them for herself, Monica is trying to assist Wanda out of pure altruism and concern for her as a human being. They also both lost their mothers when they were young women, but while Monica took care her cancer-stricken mother until she was blipped, Agatha killed her mother (though it was somewhat in self-defense).
• Motor Mouth: She's very talkative and stands in contrast to the more reserved Wanda.
• Ms. Exposition: She fills Wanda in on the workings of the neighborhood, and their conversations clue Wanda plus the audience in that something is amiss about Westview and its newest residents.
• Mythology Gag: The advertisement for Auntie A's cat litter (shown in Episode 2) is a reference to Agatha's feline familiar, Ebony. "Aunt Agatha" is also how Wanda would refer to the character in the comics.

N-Y

• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Despite her ulterior motives, she inadvertently contributes in helping Wanda work through her trauma and come to a better understanding of her magic, which in turn helps save the people of Westview from the spell Wanda accidentally put them in.
• Nightmare of Normality: On top of having her powers nullified by the runes surrounding Westview, Agatha ends up losing both her personality and all memory of her magic when Wanda forces her into the Agnes persona full-time, trapping her in an inescapable delusion of being the bubbly sitcom neighbor.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: In Episode 2 where Wanda suggests at the meeting that instead of taking Agnes's advice she could just "be herself". Agnes pauses for a long moment before laughing and continuing their walk.
• Nosy Neighbor: Downplayed, but she often tries to overstay her welcome and always seems interested in what Wanda's doing or how she can assist her. In her first appearance, she even invites herself into Wanda's home after giving her a housewarming gift and quickly starts giving her tips on how to seduce Vision. In the finale, Wanda lampshaded that was her character within "the show", and she ended up turning her into exactly that.
• No-Sell: She repulses any and all attempts from Billy and Wanda to read her thoughts. Later on, Agatha even repels Wanda's powers outright, though it's more because she's literally eating Wanda's magic rather than her simply taking blows.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She claims that she wants to take down Wanda because it's her job to "take power from the unworthy", for supposedly being an Apocalypse Maiden and to put the people of Westview out of their misery, but it is very obvious that she is only doing what she does so that she can suck out all of her magic for herself.
• Occult Blue Eyes: She's a witch with blue eyes.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When she drops her usual bubbly and happy-go-lucky attitude, especially when it's about something strange going on in the town, you know something really bad is happening. This makes it even creepier when she returns to her cheerful mood at the drop of a hat to avoid further conversation.
• One-Woman Army: Agatha can use her magic to effortlessly take out multiple adversaries at once.
• Only One Name: Everyone else in Westview, in character or out of character, has an identity with a full name attached. Agnes alone remains without a surname in the show and without a real, discovered identity outside of it. This is likely because, as revealed by her real name, she's a powerful witch who is much more than she appears to be.
• Perpetual Smiler: Fittingly for her role as comic relief, Agnes is almost always seen smiling, laughing or cracking jokes... until she's not.
• Phrase Catcher: It only occurs within the sitcom narrative, but Wanda often says a variation of "Agnes, you're a lifesaver" when she comes to help out.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: She had nothing to do with creating the Hex, or the grief that drove Wanda to create it. She subtly unraveled Wanda's fantasy world, but Vision was already questioning what his job was before she did anything, so at most she accelerated the inevitable. She wasn't even involved in Hayward's illegal plan to turn Vision's corpse into a sentient weapon. The real villain, at least as far as the people of Westview were concerned, was Wanda herself, because Wanda was the one that Mind Raped all of them. However, in her own mind, she is not at all irrelevant but definitely a villain. After all, she was "pulling every evil string" all along.
• Plucky Comic Relief: For the first few episodes, she's mainly there to relieve the tension in the room and gets a lot of jokes in. Even revealing her true identity comes with a darkly humorous montage of all the problems she's caused since Episode 1.
• Power Floats: Episode 7 ends with showing she actually floated out of the air and onto the sidewalk in front of Wanda's house when she first showed up in Episode 1, to further illustrate just what a powerful magic user she is. She also spends a lot of Episode 9 floating in the air while attacking Wanda or absorbing her magic.
• Power Parasite: She's shown to be able to absorb the magic of others and reflect it if necessary. It’s strongly hinted that this is a major and long-standing part of her modus operandi. As she puts it, "I take power from the unworthy; it's kinda my thing."
• Pragmatic Villainy: The entire reason for Fake Pietro's existence is a cost/benefit analysis. Agatha mentions that she would've resurrected the real Pietro if given the chance, but his corpse was unreachable due to being on an entirely different continent (Agatha maybe doesn't have a passport) and was riddled with bullet holes,^note Not to mention that after 8 years being dead, Pietro's corpse is probably more skeleton than anything forcing her to resort to using a replacement instead.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Several times toward Wanda to try to prove points to her. Pretty much part of her hammy delivery.
  Agatha: "Vision was gone, but you... wanted... him.... back."
• Purple Is Powerful: Her spellcasting appears as purple wisps of smoke and Monica finds glowing purple roots along the walls of the basement in Agatha's house. She is indeed a powerful witch, since she sucked the life and magic out of her entire coven at once.
• Red Right Hand: After discarding her "Agnes" disguise, the tips of Agatha's fingers appear soot black.
• Right-Hand Cat: A variation during the climax of Episode 7, where she walks in stroking her pet rabbit when she reveals her true identity and villainous intentions.
• The Reveal: Episode 7 drops the bombshell that not only is her real name Agatha Harkness, but she's been the cause of a number of mishaps and troubles Wanda and Vision have faced the entire series.
• Running Gag: Agnes constantly brings up her miserable union with a perpetually-offscreen husband named Ralph. It is later revealed that "Ralph" is Fake Pietro, Agatha having been squatting in his house to spy on Wanda and to use him as a prop.
• Sanity Slippage: The constant stress of living in Westview, aware of what's going on but so controlled by Wanda that usually she's unable to even think for herself, appears to have a serious negative impact on Agnes's mental state over the course of the series; in Episode 6, she's revealed to be idling in her car at the very edge of town, robotically mumbling that she "took a wrong turn" with tears in her eyes, with the strong implication that she was trying to escape but couldn't. When Vision restores her to her "true" self, she begs him for help before realizing he's supposed to be dead and is as helpless as any of them — at which point she bitterly mutters "All is lost" and begins to cackle in anguish. Then it turns out she was faking this all along.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Essentially what Wanda does to her at the end of the first season of WandaVision, trapping her true self in the persona she created while the Hex was active. It's a fitting punishment since it means she'll be "normal" and cut off from the knowledge of her powers until she's reawakened. If Wanda needs her for magic advice or whatever, then she will know where to find her.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Her magic manifests as purplish-black wisps of smoke, and her outfit for The New '10s era of Wanda's sitcom reality (which she continues to wear after her Evil All Along reveal through the majority of episode 8) as well as her outfit in her 1693 flashback and her witch outfit are all largely purple, contrasting Wanda's signature red.
• Self-Made Orphan: She killed her mother, at least. WandaVision doesn't state what happened to her father.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • Greed is her primary vice, specifically that for magical knowledge and power. It served as the impetus for her studying Black Magic in her backstory and being cut off from (and almost killed by) her old coven, and in the present drives her quest to understand how Wanda created the Hex and steal the means to use similar magic herself.
  • There is also a fair amount of Envy in her dealings with Wanda, particularly during "Previously On". Though she tries to hide it, it's quite obvious that Agatha resents Wanda for being able to create incredible works of magic like the Hex completely on instinct, while Agatha herself has spent centuries studying magic to achieve even a fraction of that power.
  • Finally, Pride is what ultimately causes her downfall. She spends much of the Final Battle firmly convinced that her superior magical knowledge will allow her to triumph over Wanda's leg up in magical power, only to spend so much time gloating in the apparent success of her plans that she notices too late Wanda's set up a way to defeat her — using the same magic runes Agatha rendered her powerless with previously, no less.
• Shadow Archetype: Serves as one to Wanda. Both are powerful witches who lost family. But, while what Wanda does through WandaVision is ultimately selfish, it was mostly from grief and out of love for the family she wanted but was denied thanks to Thanos. Plus, ultimately the Hex was unintentional on her part as she didn't even know how she did it and was trying to avoid hurting people (the mind control not withstanding, for, as shown in episode 9, she assumed that the townspeople were at peace while under said mind control and is horrified to learn how much they were all actually suffering). Agatha however gleefully admits she's selfish, killed her coven to gain more power, including her mother, and manipulated Wanda just so could get even more power, being more than willing to hurt her and her family just to get it. Even more-so after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where Wanda became a Mirror Character of Agatha thanks to the Darkhold's corruption, and showcased Agatha is basically Wanda if the latter didn't have a Heel Realization at the end.
• Significant Reference Date: Agnes states that her wedding date is June 2nd. June 2, 1692, was when the Salem witch trials started. In the comics, Agatha was a survivor of said trials, and in WandaVision, she is shown to be a survivor of a magical witch trial around the same time period.
• Single Tear: Wipes away one after watching Wanda grieve over her brother's death. It appears to be the only time she's sincere in her entire trip through memory lane.
• Superhero Movie Villains Die: Averted. Wanda spares her life after their final battle, and instead reverts her back into her harmless "Agnes" persona, stripping her of her powers and suppressing her true personality.
• Supervillain Lair: When Wanda goes into Agatha's basement to find Billy and Tommy, she finds that the basement leads to Agatha's witchy lair, complete with spooky Gothic architecture, creepy vines, animal skulls, dim lighting, and a mysterious glowing book (later revealed to be a copy of the Darkhold).
• Technician Versus Performer: She has this dynamic with Wanda, being the Technician to Wanda's Performer: Agatha has spent hundreds of years learning magic and has quite a bit of academic knowledge of the topic, while Wanda was able to create and maintain the Hex and the actions of everyone in it (which Agatha notes requires a great deal of power as well as micromanagement) without even really knowing how she did it; everything happened in a burst of emotional pain and unconscious creativity. It's also implied that this has sparked a case of envy in Agatha, since her motivation behind manipulating Wanda was to learn how she accomplished this and presumably recreate it herself.
• Terms of Endangerment: She seems to be fond of using these. As "Agnes," she was fond of using a few pet names for Wanda — "dear," for instance — but even after revealing her true identity, she still addresses Wanda with terms like "dear," "toots," "angel," and "buttercup," albeit in a much more sneering and condescending way.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Her conversation with her mother before being forced to kill her in self-defense implies this is the case with her. It is, however, implied that the event was at least a little premediated. When recreating the event as an illusion, Wanda states that, "you did this on purpose".
  Agatha: Mother, please. I can be good.
  Evanora: No, you cannot.
• Troll: As revealed in Agatha All Along, she's been deliberately messing things up to isolate Wanda.
• Unequal Rites: Part of Agatha's resentment of Wanda is their different magic. Because of her chaos magic, Wanda was able to perform spells that Agatha studied for years to master on a much smaller and limited scale, but on an exponentially grander scale, without study or training, and requiring no conscious effort to maintain, and without incantations or a coven.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By revealing to Wanda her destiny as the Scarlet Witch, not to mention introducing her to the Darkhold, would result in Wanda's subsequent corruption upon reading the eldritch tome, becoming a Multiverse-level threat.
• Villain Has a Point: She has a point that Wanda is so afraid of the future that she would rather create a fake paradise to avoid all the pain. As she states, Wanda has to embrace the past and not deny it. She also points out that Wanda's actions are practically villainous, especially when she is hurting the Westviewers.
  Agatha: Heroes don't torture people.
• Villainous Valour: Agatha is purely out for herself, seeking to steal Wanda’s magic, but to accomplish this she goes up against a being of unknown and possibly limitless power, both messing with her head and fighting her directly. She could have walked away at any time at no cost to herself, but she holds her nerve until the very end, only cracking when the nature of the punishment that Wanda has decided for her becomes clear.
• Villain Respect: Agatha has a great deal of respect for the Sorcerer Supreme, even stating Wanda has the potential to surpass him. It's heavily implied she is referring to Doctor Strange; even though Wong is the current holder of the title, Strange's power level and reputation in the hero community would lead her to believe that he is. In any case, Agatha knows better than to cross him.
• Villain Song: She gets her own Theme Song at the end of the seventh episode, entitled "Agatha All Along", which emphasizes that she'd been behind many of the strange happenings in Westview that Wanda wasn't responsible for, as well as serves as Evil Gloating that she's been the mastermind and she's already won.
• Vocal Evolution: When in her "Agnes" persona, Agatha's voice is fairly high pitched, emphasizing the nosy neighbor's goofy and harmless nature, but when she drops the persona and shows her true, dangerous self, her voice is overall notably deeper.
• Walking Spoiler: It gets really difficult to discuss Agnes's character without spoiling everything that leads to the seventh episode as she reveals to Wanda she's the powerful witch, Agatha Harkness.
• Weak, but Skilled: Downplayed. Agatha certainly isn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination, but she admits that her hexes and spells take considerable time to maintain and understand, in contrast to Wanda’s emotion-based usage of her powers. That being said, her magical mastery allows her to wrap the much more powerful Wanda around her finger with little effort, simply because she was savvy enough to cast a system of runes ahead of time that cancels out Wanda's powers.
• Wham Line:
  • She gives one to Vision, although it's an Internal Reveal:
    "Agnes": (gasping) Am I dead?
    Vision: No, no! Why would you think that?
    "Agnes": Because you are.
  • Then she gives a big one at the end of Episode 7:
    "Agnes": The name’s Agatha Harkness. Lovely to finally meet you, dear!
  • And then finally at the end of Episode 8:
    Agatha: This is chaos magic, Wanda. And that makes you the Scarlet Witch!
• Wicked Witch: Parodied, with both her Halloween costume and "Agatha All Along", of course. One could say she is the Wicked Witch of Westview.
• Wizards Live Longer: Agatha has been alive since at least the 1600s and has only visibly aged a few decades.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Or more specifically... bite. She confesses on camera that she did bite a kid once.
  • She holds Billy and Tommy prisoner with magical loops around their necks which she pulls on in a way that clearly hurts them.
• You Are Too Late: Part of her Villain Song theme is this exactly.
  Theme Song: It's too late to fix anything, now that everything has gone wrong!

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And I killed Sparky, too! Ha ha ha ha ha!