Sinful Sunday: "Agatha All Along"and the Queering of the Redemption Narrative
Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness remains a troubling and contradictory and utterly compelling villain right up until the end, and we love her for it.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness in the new series Agatha All Along as in some ways the perfect queer villain. If you haven’t been watching this show, then you definitely should, because in addition to featuring some truly outstanding performances–there’s not a weak member of this cast–it’s also a fascinating rumination on the power of grief and how even a notoriously evil character like Harkness can be complicated without losing her essential villainy. Now that Agatha’s story has, for the moment, come to a conclusion, I thought it only fitting to offer some concluding thoughts on her story and her status as a queer villain. While I stand by the claims I made earlier, the rest of the series has added some important context that enriches and deepens our appreciation for what Hahn and series creator Jac Schaeffer have accomplished.
As the second half of the series has gone on, it’s become clear that there are far more sides to Agatha than we ever thought possible. Yes, she is hungry for power and ruthless when it comes to getting it–as we’ve seen time and again, she will steal from any witch that crosses her path–but she’s not totally devoid of emotion or feeling. Her bond with Teen/Billy Maximoff has only grown deeper and more pronounced with each episode (often despite all of Agatha’s efforts to shrug off those feelings), and in some ways it’s only matched by her obvious feelings for Rio/Lady Death.
As I wrote before, it’s really remarkable just how much chemistry there is between Aubrey Plaza and Kathryn Hahn. Any time the two are on screen together–even when they’re trying to kill each other–the sparks fly and you can see how complicated and messy their relationship is. This is true right up til the end, when it seems as if Agatha might actually betray Billy and hold onto her own (rejuvenated) body and power, only for her to do the unthinkable and kiss Death of her own free will. I particularly enjoyed this long-awaited embrace, which so deftly intertwines the threads of death and desire that has so long been a key undercurrent to the relationship between these two characters. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and melancholy, particularly since we know that it could never have been otherwise. The fact that Death even goes so far as to erect a natural shrine of sorts to her fallen lover just twists the knife.
I must admit that I’m a little torn about the fact that Agatha gets a redemption arc, because for all of her protests it’s quite clear that she gave her life for Billy’s. On the one hand, it really is fantastic to see this character get the richness and texture that was only hinted at in WandaVision. On the other hand, I’m of the opinion that sometimes it really is better to just let villains be bad people and do bad things without trying to humanize them. I’m even more on the fence when it comes to the fact that she’s now little more than a ghostly sidekick for Billy as he sets out on his own adventure to find his brother. (though I do realize that she is a ghost in many of the comics, too).
That being said, I do think that the two-part finale is a masterpiece of television storytelling. Everything that happens–from the revelation that Billy is the one who created the Witches’ Road rather than it existing at all to the equally startling reveal that Agatha essentially bargained with Death so that her son Nicky could have a few more years of life–was expertly executed. The episode also highlights the many contradictory aspects of Agatha’s character. In one moment she’s mourning the death of her son (like WandaVision, Agatha All Along excels at showing how grief works and how it can distort our sense of self) and in the next she’s using the song that she composed with Nicky to trick credulous witches into giving her power. Who doesn’t love a sorcerous serial killer with a marvelous sense of style?
Now that I think about it, though, I’m not entirely convinced that ghost-Agatha is going to ever leave her villainy behind. This is a woman, after all, who has shown time and again just how adept she is at shapeshifting and seeming to change, only to reveal that it’s another con. While I’ve no doubt that her affection for Tommy/Wiccan is genuine, I think that she has a longer game in mind, perhaps a desire to regain a corporeal form. The thing about Agatha Harkness is that you never quite know what she’s up to, and I give Hahn a lot of credit for allowing her character to remain so inscrutable and also, when you get down to it, quite monstrous. Perhaps, after all, Agatha All Along is playing a deeper game than any of us realized at the jump, queering the redemption narrative even as it makes us of it.
It’s also worth noting that there are more than a few similarities between Agatha and Wanda. Both women have suffered enormous loss and grief, and both have gone to extraordinary lengths to get what they want. The difference, of course, is that up until Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness we were asked to see Wanda as a victim, whereas we’re never quite asked to see Agatha in quite that way. We can sympathize with her for her loss of Nicky but, given that she never abandoned her witch-draining ways even while he was alive, we’re always conscious that Agatha isn’t capable of changing or willing to do so, even for the son that she loves so much (though whether she would have had her lived is an open question).
Like many others, I find myself wondering just what’s in store for Agatha in terms of the broader MCU. While Agatha All Along refreshingly tells a story that stands on its own, it’s clearly also part of a larger trajectory, much of which will be focused on Billy Maximoff/Wicca. While I understand that this is just part and parcel of the whole MCU schtick, if ever there was a character that truly deserves her own story that is largely independent of the IP behemoth, it would be Agatha Harkness, and I am a little disappointed that her role going forward may well be as a ghostly sidekick for him as he seeks out his brother. Hopefully the powers-that-be at Marvel don’t do her dirty.
Kathryn Hahn has given us one of the most remarkable characters to have graced the small screen. Agatha is a badass lesbian with a killer fashion sense, a ruthless attitude, and a keen eye for her own advantage. Jac Schaeffer and the creators behind Agatha All Along wisely chose not to sand off all of her rough edges–not even at the very end, when she’s a ghost–and we can only hope that those who take her story forward will keep those aspects of her that make her so beloved.
We queers deserve our villainous Agatha, and we shall have her.