Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 5.
Episode 5 of Agatha All Along has come and gone, and the stakes just cranked up pretty significantly, insofar as “stakes” can be used to characterize the nuances of Agatha Harkness’ venture down the Witches’ Road.
Indeed, Billy Kaplan has very loudly entered the arena, having used his Maximoff blood to single-handedly dispatch the coven as he desires so that he may use the Road to find his dead mother Wanda (who, like Alice, is only presumed to be dead).
He’s the latest major player to put their foot down in Agatha All Along, and a certain Aubrey Plaza-shaped plot thread promises he won’t be the last. Indeed, we’ve got Billy, we got a Mephisto name drop, and now we’re just waiting for Rio to take her gloves off.
All of them, however, would pale in comparison to a juggernaut so powerful that Agatha All Along could have only ever mentioned him with an indirect Easter egg.
Indeed, when the gang whipped out that Ouija board for the first time, hearts stopped for just a moment. Was Agatha All Along truly about to unleash Mr. Shart into this franchise? Are they not already aware of the horrors of “power creep” following that response to G’iah in Secret Invasion? Thankfully, it was just a Mrs. Hart red herring, but the simple fact of that Mr. Shart-adjacency is a fire Marvel was quite bold to play with.
First debuting in Tubular Avengers #2, Mr. Shart is the alter ego of Dean F. Cation, a productivity influencer who posed as a janitor for the sake of getting hired by Tony Stark, which would subsequently give him access to Stark Tower. During this time, he unsuccessfully endeavored to romance Moondragon.
But Dean didn’t join the Stark Industries roster to get closer to one of the hardest-working Avengers in history, oh no. Dean wanted power. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in Agatha All Along, power is often joined at the hip with despair.
Indeed, no sooner had Dean foolishly agreed to taste-test Dr. Bruce Banner’s gamma-enhanced gummy bears did panic flare through every orifice in Dean’s body, and those toilets he had spent all that time cleaning (and repairing, as Ultron’s latest attack on Stark Tower had come from hijacking bathroom utilities in hopes of poisoning the Avengers War of the Worlds-style) were about to be the site of a truly terrible metamorphosis.
No Thanos snap, Nidavellir forge, nor Beyonder interference could compare to the eldritch hell that those gummy bears wreaked upon Dean’s intestines. Everything that was inside was now out, the very cones in Dean’s eyes were forever ruptured, and when the dookie-tinged dust finally settled, fear had a brand new name; a name that harbored a deep, envious hatred of those who could stomach gamma radiation and the science they championed, a name that will have its revenge at the behest of its bastardized stomach acid. A name, dear readers, that is Mr. Shart.
After Dean evacuated the site of ground zero, the residuals were later seized by Nick Fury for the purpose of weaponization. Shortly after being contained, eight new designations were added to the periodic table.
Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday until the two-episode finale on Oct. 30. And if you believe any of the above, then you’re about as full of s*** as old Dean himself.
