Agatha All Along and Tolkien's Warning of Dangerous Myths

Happy February Tolkien Poppers!

The middle of February is a mixed bag for all of us who live within its meteorologic hold. Some of us may love the continuation of winter with the hope for snow and the magic it brings along with it. Others of us may be shivering and swearing to ourselves through the chattering of our teeth on the way to the car for our daily commute. Wherever you stand, I hope that you are either enjoying the winter weather or the anticipation for an early spring.

Today’s post is on Agatha All Along, a show on Disney+ that is set in the MCU as a sequel to WandaVision and framed in Phase 5 of its construction. It’s hard to believe that Iron Man was 17 years ago. The MCU is vast, but worth the plunge in my opinion. With 17 years of cultural moments and global events, each arm of the MCU explores a variety of different questions through a multitude of perspectives and answers. Agatha All Along shares that quality.

I will be exploring how Agatha All Along engages mythmaking in particular and what Tolkien has to say on the subject. There will also be major spoilers for both WandaVision and Agatha All Along, so you have been warned. If you’ve watched the show, I would love to hear your take on it and any response you may have to my own take on myth and Agatha All Along. Enjoy!

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Much scholarship around fantasy as well as many writers who employ the theories that emerge from this scholarship usually begin with Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-stories, in which Tolkien argues for the validity of fantasy as an artistic genre. Largely, Tolkien’s arguments are positive and he is invoked as a positive conversation partner in the creation of fantasy to this day. However, Tolkien warns that fantasy can be used for evil ends; it is not immune to the power of corruption. He says,

“[Fantasy] can be put to evil uses…Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors’ own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice.” (OFS, 66)

And where we’re going, there be plenty of “false gods” and human sacrifice.

A prime example of where the dangers of myth and fantasy that Tolkien warns about is employed is through the work of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the villainous witch of WandaVision and anti-hero of Agatha All Along. Both Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch and Agatha experience their own delusional prisons–Wanda’s being self-imposed and Agatha’s being an external force imposed upon her. These “realities” are not fantasies, but rather the material world twisted to fit a certain desire of the one casting the spell of distortion. Where these alternate realities could be categorized as being a misplaced and dangerous secondary world, my focus will be on the myth of the enigmatic Witch’s Road.

Being embedded in the impressive secondary world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)¹, Agatha is set up to do some serious internal and external twisting of its mythos. Beginning with WandaVision, Agatha begins her time in the MCU as Wanda’s neighbor named Agnes, who occasionally looks at the screen in various ways, indicating to the audience that she really knows what’s going on with the sitcom-constructed town of Westview, which we later find out is being created and sustained by Wanda’s powers. In the WandaVision episode “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” it is revealed that Agnes is actually called Agatha and has had a direct hand in manipulating Wanda and the magic reality they both inhabit. Ultimately, we learn that Agatha desires power and attempts to trick Wanda to attack her so that she can steal Wanda’s power. Wanda outsmarts Agatha, takes her power, becomes the Scarlet Witch, and entraps Agatha into her own fictional persona Agnes within Westview.

Fast forward years later with Wanda Maximoff’s death, we are brought into the life of Agnes, who is now a small town detective rather than a nosy neighbor (an indication that Wanda’s spell is failing/glitching). During a murder case, Agnes is visited by an old friend, Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and they hang out together back at Agnes’s house. It is clear that the two have a deep history–one filled with love, hardship, and resentment. Before more can be revealed, they are interrupted by a boy breaking and entering into Agnes’s bedroom through her window. He successfully steals a pendant of hers and jumps through the window. Agnes gives chase, stops the boy, and brings him to an interrogation room. As she interrogates the boy about her current murder case, things in the room start to glitch and it snowballs into the disintegration of the hexed world and identity that Agatha has been trapped in since WandaVision.

With the illusory worldview gone, Agatha awakes in the real Westview and begins trying to put the puzzle pieces of the past together as she attempts to shake off her magic-induced amnesia. Because of her memory loss and suspicion, Agatha ties up and locks the boy who helped rescue her in a closet and Rio breaks into Agatha’s house hooded and with knives to assassinate her. Powerless, Agatha coaxes Rio into waiting to kill her when Agatha recovers her power so that she is a proper challenge to Rio. The apparent frenemy accepts the terms and leaves. Agatha frees the boy, who offers to help her and suggests that they take the Witch’s Road because it grants any witch who successfully travels down its road a wish of their choosing. At first, his plan is rejected, but Agatha comes around to it and convinces the boy to help her recruit other witches to form a coven to access the Witch’s Road.

Eventually, a coven is formed, its members being composed of a divination witch named Lilia, a protection witch named Alice (who’s mother performed a song entitled “The Ballad of the Witch’s Road, which popularized the Road’s legend) , a potions witch named Jennifer, and a green witch named Sharon also known as Mrs. Hart, each representing the four elements: air, fire, water, and earth. The coven is not only racing against the clock for Agatha’s sake, each witch has a desire of their own they wish to fulfill; there is also a group of witches called the Salem Seven, who are seeking revenge against Agatha because of her evil actions conducted against the Salem Seven’s family during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. The boy, who is still unnamed, joins the coven on their mission.

The Salem Seven begin to give chase to the coven and, in the knick of time, the coven sings The Ballad of the Witch’s Road, successfully opening a doorway to the Road in Agatha’s basement and escaping the Salem Seven. As the coven begins their journey on the Road, the other members ask Agatha questions on how to beat the Road as she has claimed to have conquered the Witch’s Road before. It is clear to the audience that by her answers and tone that Agatha has indeed not actually traversed the Road before. The witches progress on the Road and encounter challenges pertaining to each witch’s specialty. Along the way Mrs. Hart dies and is replaced by Rio of all people, who is revealed to be Death, the original green witch–as well as Agatha’s former lover, which is why Agatha has been alive for centuries.

Without rehashing the entirety of the plot, it is revealed that the boy who saved Agatha is Billy Maximoff, the son of Wanda Maximoff, who was created in WandaVision. Additionally, because he inherited his mother’s power, it is discovered that Billy constructed the Witch’s Road, which is explained by Agatha to have been completely made up by her. Agatha gains her power by taking it from other witches that attack her with their powers and she made up the legend of the Witch’s Road, so she could gather a multitude of covens to eventually trick them into attacking her after they discover the Road is fake. This reality explains both how Agatha became so powerful and why Agatha was so shocked that the Witch’s Road existed, requiring her to lie about her past experience in a way outside her normal deceptions. At the end of the Road, all the witches except Jennifer, Agatha, and Rio aka Death have been killed, leaving Agatha at the mercy of Rio’s power without any defense. Billy, having recently discovered his full identity and power, gives Agatha some of his own. At first, Agatha and Billy tag team Rio, but to no avail. No one can beat Death at her own game. However, in an uncharacteristic moment, Agatha decides to sacrifice herself to save Billy, losing her life and satiating Rio’s hunger for Agatha’s death. Billy brings Agatha back from the dead as a ghost for a future team up.

Where Tolkienian fantasy usually focuses on traditional heroes, Agatha embodies the current cultural admiration of anti-heroes. As alluded to before, this post will be exploring Agatha All Along’s implication for dangerous myths rather than an analysis of the anti-hero or the transformative nature of the Witch’s Road on Agatha as a self-sacrificial hero.

The Witch’s Road is a myth that was internalized in the witch community within the MCU. Over the centuries, multiple covens pursue the Witch’s Road to fulfill their wishes. Songs are written and there are cult followings of artists that sing about the Road. However, this myth turns out to be a total fiction, a tool created and utilized by Agatha to extract the power from other witches, killing them to become the most powerful witch until Wanda becomes the Scarlet Witch. The Road does not become real until Billy Maximoff unconsciously makes it real, instilling it with all the qualities of the legend developed over time. This leads to the giving of power to one of the witches, but the taking of power and life from the other witches, only to give power to Billy and Agatha, who, although different, are similar in their desire to acquire as much power as possible to fulfill their own ends. And although Agatha gives her life for Billy’s and Billy wishes to use his newly discovered powers to find his twin brother Tommy, power is the main commodity under their avarice of ambition, making the end of the Road and the beginning of Agatha and Billy’s partnership domineering and absorptionary.

Tolkien makes a distinction between the types of magic employed within the secondary world of whatever fantasy is created along with the use of the magic of creating fantasy, an approach to art Tolkien termed sub-creation. The divide between good and bad magic is Enchantment and Magic:

“Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of other senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.” (OFS, 64)

Agatha’s mythmaking is Magic in the Tolkienian sense, where it pretends to alternate the primary world through the legend of the Witch’s Road. Further, once she steals the magic from others, her magic falls into the “machine” category. Elsewhere, in a letter, Tolkien explains the evil mechanization of Magic that Sauron employs:

“The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for ‘machinery’ - with destructive and evil effects - because ‘magicians’, who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so (do do so). The basic motive for magia - quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work - is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect.” (Letters, 155)

Rather than work to develop her magic like other witches, Agatha aims to speed up her endeavor for power by destroying other witches and stealing their powers. Like Sauron, she relies on others for her power, but exerts control over and manipulates and dominates them for her own purposes.

Tolkien puts forth an argument for the proper approach and execution of fantasy and myth, but acknowledges that even if fantasy is sub-created in a way that’s consistent as an extension of his understanding of anthropology and holds an “inner consistency of reality” it can be misused for the most evil of human intentions. The MCU’s exploration of this in WandaVision and then in Agatha All Along demonstrates narrative examples of this putting fantasy to evil uses. To a certain extent, “secondary worlds” that are formed in WandaVision and Agatha All Along remain morally neutral in their presentation. Yes, we recognize the absurdity of the constructed Westview that eventually drives Wanda to her power hungry fate and the Witch’s Road as an evil falsity to prey upon others, but ultimately, Billy, a product of Wanda’s hexed reality, and Agatha the megalomaniac come together to carve out a path rooted in their twistedly incarnated pasts.

Nothing in this world is value neutral. Everything is instilled with meaning and the way that people interact with things contribute to the quality of their lived reality. Although understandable, Wanda, Agatha, and Billy’s fantasies are not ones sub-created in a way that fosters the fullness of human experience, even if their acts are rooted in a desire for wholeness. When concentrated and individualized power becomes the method and goal of one’s actions, for Tolkien, the Magic of mechanization has been employed to the detriment of oneself and others. Let this transitory phase of the MCU become a fun, playful, and critical place for us to truly think about what the purpose of myths really are and how we can not just sub-create or accept a sub-created reality, but co-create with others in mutually transformative power for the growth of our collective wellbeing. Let us find/construct a shared story that points not to those individuals with the most power, but to us as individuals in relationship to others–because that’s where the true power of myth and fantasy lie.

1. Holdier, A.G. (2018) "On Superhero Stories: The Marvel Cinematic Universe as Tolkienesque Fantasy," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 36 : No. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol36/iss2/6. Holdier argues that the MCU is a Tolkienesque fantasy, but with the rise of anti-heroes like Deadpool and Agatha, the elements of the heroic that did resonate with Tolkien’s themes seem to be being renegotiated within the MCU.