The following contains spoilers for WandaVision episode seven.
For six episodes, fans speculated about just whether or not there was more to Agnes the neighbor in WandaVision than meets the eye. The seventh episode answered that question, revealing “Agnes” to be her sitcom role. Agnes introduced herself to Wanda as Agatha Harkness in the final moments of the episode, proclaiming herself a “magical girl” as well.
In the comics, Agatha Harkness is never a hero or a villain. Her magical powers are typically used in neutral ways, or to teach other magical beings to use their own abilities. This version of Agatha very well may be the real villain of the show, but her reveal isn’t the only interesting thing that happened in her basement in episode seven. In Agatha’s basement are a variety of items and symbols. One of those items is a glowing book. Some fans speculate that book is the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of a comic book tome known as the Darkhold.
The Darkhold is absolutely one of the most infamous magical texts in Marvel Comics. It made its first comic book appearance in 1972 and does have ties to Scarlet Witch’s original story.
Created by a god named Chthon, the Darkhold included all of the spells he knew. Originally, it wasn’t a book, but written on skin before it was transferred and bound by someone else. That someone else was Morgan Le Fay, a powerful sorceress inspired by Arthurian legend. Just about any magical being in the comics would love to get their hands on the book. Chthon, after all, originally created it as a way to make a portal between dimensions. The idea isn’t dissimilar to the Nexus of All Realities as a meeting point between different dimensions.
Doctor Doom used pages from the book to access the dimension Limbo in the comics. Morgan Le Fay pursued the book multiple times. In Scarlet Witch’s original story, her magic was said to be of Chthon, though that has since been retconned. Magic and portals between dimensions would certainly make the book a good jumping off point for the next phase of the MCU. The trouble is that the Darkhold – multiple versions of it, in fact – already exists in the MCU.
The fourth season of Agents of SHIELD saw producers and writers play with the format of the show a little bit. Broken into three pods, the season focused on Ghost Rider, Life Model Decoys, and the Framework, a hyper-realistic virtual reality. The through-line connecting those pods, however, was the Darkhold.
Scientists at Momentum Labs found and used the book in experiments. While Daisy Johnson was working outside of SHIELD, she crossed paths with Ghost Rider, who was drawn to the work those scientists were doing. They used the Darkhold to create a way to cross into another dimension. The book eventually came into SHIELD’s possession while working a case, and Life Model Decoy AIDA read it in order to bring stuck SHIELD agents back from another dimension. The book corrupted her, allowing her to become the villain for the rest of the season until Ghost Rider helped to stop her.
When Ghost Rider left at the end of the fourth season, he took the book with him through a portal and into another dimension. He hasn’t been seen since, but the book has resurfaced.
The third season of Marvel’s Runaways also featured the Darkhold, though the series used it differently. Instead of scientific experiments, sorceress Morgan Le Fay used it to augment her magic. Specifically, Morgan used the magic of the book to find a way to siphon energy from those who purchased the phones she designed. Nico Minoru, the show’s main magic user, ended up using a spell from the book that her father sent to her to go up against Morgan herself.
The book in Runaways has a slightly different appearance than the book in Agents Of SHIELD. That lends credence to the possibility that more than one copy of the book exists in the MCU. It is, however, not entirely clear if Runaways and Agents Of SHIELD even take place in the same timeline. Multiple seasons of the latter involve time travel.
If the series take place in the same timeline as WandaVision, the audience might have to wonder just why so many copies of the same powerful magical book exist in the first place. There are plenty of other magical books in the comics that WandaVision could use as inspiration instead.
Throughout Marvel comics, there are dozens of books that are considered magical. Quite a few of them aren’t just used for spells. Much like the Darkhold, they have ties to other realities. Most often, they even have ties to entities across the multiverse.
The Iron-Bound Books Of Shuma-Gorath, for example, would certainly make for an interesting (and potentially monstrous) possibility. They have only appeared in a handful of comic books, but their history is ancient. In the comics, the books are used to summon a monstrous entity named Shuma-Gorath. He is essentially a giant eyeball with many tentacles. In recent years, it’s actually Agatha Harkness’ son who summoned the entity. Like the Darkhold, it has cross-dimensional magic.
There is also the Tome Of Zhered-Na. That book could actually support the fan theory that Agatha Harkness isn’t the final villain of the show. An ancient sorceress created the book, but a follower cursed a demon and bound it to the pages. It’s not until it’s opened and used by someone else that the malevolent entity was able to escape and possess them. Doctor Strange has even been called on to defeat the demon, known as Hellphyr. The potential for Agatha to be possessed exists.
Of course, there’s also another book entirely that actually has ties to Scarlet Witch and Vision in the comics. Captain America, in an ’80s series featuring the couple, gave an ancient Druid book to Wanda Maximoff to translate. That book, like the Tome of Zhered-Na, featured a being bound in its pages. When the book released Samhain, Agatha Harkness helped Wanda fight him.
It’s entirely possible that fans won’t get a formal name for the glowing book in Agatha’s possession. That might be a let down for some fans since the camera panned and focused on the glowing tome in WandaVision.
Whether the book turns out to be the Darkhold, one of the aforementioned comic book possibilities, or an amalgam of some of them will surely be revealed before the end of the season. It will make for an interesting way to bring magic to the forefront of the MCU. It’s also likely that Agatha’s book will lead to a connection to Doctor Strange 2. After all, the first movie noted books missing from the occult library and Elizabeth Olsen is already slated to reprise her role as Wanda for the sequel.
WandaVision is currently streaming on Disney+.
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