Agatha All Along Episode 5 “Darkest Hour / Wake Thy Power” ended with the big twist(?) reveal that “Teen” (Joe Locke) is Billy Maximoff (aka “Wiccan” in the comics), the son of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch. However, the episode also had a sneaky name-drop to another mystical son: “Nicholas Scratch,” the son of Agatha Harkness!
The latest stop along the Witches Road saw Agatha and Co. pulled into a 1980s horror-slasher film reality, where the trial saw Agatha having to face literal ghosts of her past after a Ouija board summons the spirit of her mother Evanora. The spirit of Evanora is wrathful toward Agatha for murdering her coven and possesses her daughter’s body to kill her new coven. After Alice (Ali Ahn) exorcised Evanora from Agatha’s body, Agatha goes magic-vampire and drains Alice of her powers and life force. As Agatha is feeding, “Teen” notices the Ouija board spelling out the name “Nicholas Scratch,” signaling that another spirit has entered the room. Calling out the name stops Agatha in her tracks – with good reason.
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Who Is Marvel’s Nicholas Scratch?
We did a full deep-dive breakdown of Nicholas Scratch’s Marvel history when Agatha All Along first premiered, but just to recap:
“In the comics, Nicholas Scratch is from New Salem, a secret area in Colorado where witches and warlocks escaped from the Salem Witch Trials. Nobody actually knows who his father is, and there are fan theories that range from demons to Mephisto to the idea that, like Wanda, Agatha simply conjured him into being. After The Scarlet Witch abandoned New Salem, Nicholas Scratch took over as its leader, and felt betrayed by his mother’s decision to leave the cloistered little magical world. Scratch dispatched a batch of New Salem witches out into the world to retrieve Agatha, so that she could return to New Salem, stand trial, and be executed for treason.”
Scratch’s obsession with vengeance eventually got him banished to the Dark Realm, but he would escape eventually, possessing various other Marvel characters (like Fantastic Four’s Franklin Richards); taking over places like the tow of Centerville and causing epic conflicts with the Avengers and other Marvel teams and characters – eventually even landing in hell, and working for Mephisto.
Obviously, there’s any amount of that comic book lore for Agatha All Along to play with. The show has been building clear themes about power and the daming compromises made for it – and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) seems to have a lot of bad karma to answer for. Having Billy Maximoff and Nicholas Scratch in the same story arc also makes this an interesting generational story, as both Wanda and Agatha’s time with the Darkhold have created magical offspring and legacies that will live beyond them.
Agatha All Along streams new episodes Wednesday nights on Disney+
