What does the Marvel Cinematic Universe think a witch is, exactly?

There are any number of reasons to be watching Agatha All Along. Maybe you’re here for Kathryn Hahn Hahn-ing around, or to see Aubrey Plaza goth it up, or because you’d follow Patti Lupone to hell and back. Maybe it’s just the season for witchy fall vibes! 

And if you’re like me, you’re also wondering if this’ll be the installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that actually explains what the hell magic is in this setting. 

Agatha All Along seems perfectly poised to answer questions like: What is a witch? Where does their power come from? Do they get it naturally? Do they have to learn how? What does it allow them to do? Given that a character called “The Scarlet Witch” has been in five MCU movies and had her own television show — with two Doctor Strange movies and Spider-Man: No Way Home on the side — you’d think that at least some of these questions would have been answered already. 

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has undergone this odd flip, where it began by drawing a line around the supernatural and firmly labeling it as advanced alien science. Thor understood particle physics and the Tesseract could be studied by SHIELD scientists. Even the Scarlet Witch’s powers were triggered by the Infinity Stones, not magical study. 

And as the franchise finally dipped into the mystical side of Marvel Comics, it has sort of skipped over the part where it would have to explain why the Tesseract is advanced alien technology, which gives Captain Marvel her sciency energy powers and opens up sciency wormholes to let an alien army in, but the Time Stone is a magical artifact that allows Doctor Strange to do magical time travel. Are Thor and Loki gods, not aliens? Are the Celestials aliens or magic? The Black Panther’s heart-shaped herb allows him to commune with his deceased ancestors. Is that magic? What, if anything, differentiates all this from Agatha and her coven’s witchcraft? 

It’s magic! Why does it need to be explained at all?

Well, I mean, it doesn’t need to be explained. Magic, definitionally, doesn’t have to make sense. And writers can do whatever they want. But there are real story advantages to telling your audience the rules, boundaries, and restrictions of the magic they’re watching. This is the superhero genre, after all — home of the Secret Weakness. 

Superhero magic — the magic in straight up and down Avengers vs. Bad Guy of the Week stories — needs rules in the same way that Superman needs Kryptonite, Magneto needs a helmet that makes him immune to Professor X’s psychic control, and vampires need to be averse to holy symbols. The Genie can’t magically make Jasmine want to marry Aladdin, because then the story would be over. When Jafar falls into the trap of wishing to become a genie, it’s only satisfying because we’ve already been told that genies are trapped. 

In adventure fiction, the rules of magic give the audience a sense of narrative tension, even when characters have the power to do literally anything. Marvel’s Nico Minoru can cast any magic spell she wants, but she can never use the same command phrase twice. DC’s Billy Batson can transform into a superhero, but only if he’s able to say the word “Shazam” aloud. Even comic book magic users like John Constantine or Doctor Strange, whose powers are not at all specifically enumerated, still have rules that give them the characteristic tone and tension of a John Constantine or Doctor Strange story: All magic has a cost. 

So, what does Agatha All Along think a witch is? 

Just because Agatha hasn’t said what witches are doesn’t mean it’s not showing us. In Agatha, as we’ve seen, witches tell fortunes, work the earth, and peddle dubious remedies. They craft illusions and have familiars. They have creepy things in their basements and wear spooky clothing, unless they’re wearing no clothes at all in front of their neighbors, which they don’t feel bad about. They do, you know, witchy stuff. (But they don’t consort with devils. This is Disney Plus, after all.) 

And yet, Agatha All Along hasn’t said a single specific thing about what witches are, in a setting where fifteen miraculous things happen every month. Where shapeshifters can be aliens, and talking animals can be science experiments. Teen seems to think that getting better at witchcraft allows one to blast energy out of their hands, conjure shields, and levitate — but come on, Teen, you just described Iron Man. He did that in a cave with a box of scraps.

So until further notice, I’ll be watching with the hope that the MCU’s great witch-vibe series will eventually tell me something about what it thinks witches are. And, to be fair, also because I’d follow Patti Lupone to hell and back.