Agatha Harkness? More like A-GAY-tha Harkness

The Agatha All Along train continues to chug along, with the fourth episode seeing Ali Ahn’s Alice Wu-Gulliver overcoming her (literal) demons so that she and the rest of Agatha’s posse can continue down the Witches’ Road.

But let’s be honest; all eyes were on Rio Vidal this episode. From the moment she popped up from the dirt, to her ominous conversation with Agatha regarding the ultimate fate of the coven, all the way to the pair of scenes that will soon become the subject of our investigation, it was Rio all along.

Is Agatha Harkness gay in Agatha All Along?

I mean, she’s probably gay outside of Agatha All Along, too…

Jokes aside, yes, of course Agatha Harkness is a queer character. Whether she’s sapphic, bi, pan, lesbian, or some other WLW-inclusive state of being is another question entirely, but Agatha is definitely attracted to women.

And where there’s queer women, there is, of course, heartbreak and pining. Consider Rio’s story about the unnamed woman who left a scar on her heart, delivered with all the subtlety of a Thanos snap. Consider the way Agatha and Rio held one another in private after Rio dropped that aforementioned bomb on the rest of the group. Consider the way they almost kissed, but then didn’t, probably at the behest of a Disney suit.

And herein lies the problem. Agatha Harkness may be queer, but having your character be canonically queer is very different from writing a character as queer, and given that Marvel is beholden to the Disney machine, the odds of Agatha All Along‘s story leaning into Agatha’s queerness can’t be counted as great.

Even worse, Agatha All Along presents the perfect opportunity to lean in unapologetically, but that potential will probably go unrealized. Agatha is a character defined by loss; she lost a child and broke someone’s heart, and so she has a multi-faceted relationship with grief, which we understand is the result of love that doesn’t have any tangible place to go. Queer love, of course, is defined by its lack of convention, and has roots in familial love just as much as it has roots in romantic love, and Agatha could act as a dynamic centerpiece for both in Agatha All Along.

But Agatha’s potential will probably be buried by a typical fixation on her diegetic queerness, i.e. some plot-point sexuality reveal, which just by itself has about as much storytelling value as a Billy Kaplan reveal will (will, not would). Indeed, if Marvel is going to hit the same way as it once did, it needs to stop being so pleased with itself first.

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday until the two-episode season finale on Oct. 30.