Agatha All Around continues the MCU’s weird mom stuff

(Ed. remark: This post contains ending spoilers for Agatha all the time.)

Agatha all the time ended with some big revelations – and the full backstory between Agatha and her late son, Nicky. Everyone assumed that Agatha sold her son for power, but the truth is that Death gave her six more years with a child that would die in childbirth, and the loss of her son turned Agatha from a cynical murderer. ..well, I guess just a more cynical killer, but without a child to stop her from committing more murders.

Even though the backstory itself is tearful, it doesn’t really add anything to who Agatha is, because apparently having a son hasn’t even really changed anything about Agatha as a person. And it speaks to a larger trend with the MCU’s female characters and their relationship to motherhood – namely how it feels like something like a character trait is being slapped on some of the more complex and morally gray characters to cause them anxiety or out explain why they are that way. as they are.

It’s not that motherhood can’t be a strong, defining motivation. It just keeps getting forced on characters whose stories don’t really make room for it. Agatha Harkness follows Wanda Maximoff and Natasha Romanoff as they are forcibly assigned as mothers by the MCU.

It’s even grimmer when you take into account the ratio of female to male characters. The MCU is become better at introducing more women into the selection. But because there are so few compared to the legions of men, it’s telling that three of them have taken on these wedged storylines about motherhood. The ratio just isn’t right. Don’t get me wrong; I still think some of the arcs the male characters get about parenthood are strange (Hawkeye’s secret family will always amaze me, and I still don’t know why Thor adopted a child at the end of the movie). Love and thunder). But even though Tony Stark leaves his daughter behind at the finale of Endgamethe male characters’ relationship with parenthood is not simply depicted part of their hero’s journey, but in a much more positive light than their female counterparts.

It started inside Avengers: Age of Ultronvalue An female superhero in the franchise at the time was given a Real weird thread about feeling like she’s a monster because she can’t have kids — exclusively so she can bond with Bruce Banner, who feels like a monster for being one sometimes. Natasha’s forced sterilization could be an interesting commentary on bodily autonomy and the deprivation of choice; there’s something to the idea that she was basically raised to be a living weapon (and thus had a lot of her humanity trained out of her), and joining SHIELD and the Avengers is her way of getting that back win. But the movie only focuses on the “feeling like a monster because she can’t be a mother” part so she can make big goo-goo eyes at Bruce Banner. It’s a disservice to everything about her character, reducing her trauma and struggles to an incredibly one-dimensional view of womanhood.

Granted, we’ve come a long way since 2015. But the jump from Wanda using her reality warping powers to create a pocket dimension for her and Vision WandaVision to everyone, but forgetting him while chasing the kids she’d only known for about a week is shocking. Again, there is potential in exploring Wanda’s pursuit of family and normalcy, despite all her loss. But in the context of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnessshe is treated first and foremost as a mother – and as a mother who will go to any lengths to get her children back. Her children are the reason she made the full turn into a villain. The original comic book character goes through a similar arc, but there simply isn’t enough groundwork in the MCU to dig into that side of her. Especially since most of that movie is played through the eyes of Doctor Strange.

And now Agatha gets a tearful backstory about being a mother, a story unlike any comic book (where Nick is still alive and also a supervillain). The choice doesn’t even add much to her arc within the show. She is a power-hungry witch who kills others to take their power, and when she lost her son, she lost the only excuse she had. not do that all the time. Her relationship with Nicky makes way for some emotional moments in the show, but it’s a disservice to reduce her character to Sad Mom (again!), especially since everything she has going for her could work without the child.

The toxic romantic relationship she shares with Death could work without Nicky! (Actually, I’d rather we delve into that more than the dead child.) And Billy doesn’t have to remind her of her dead son to bond with him. In fact, it hits even harder when she finds herself caring for a potential new coven member without a sob story to explain it. Nick is there to occasionally make her freeze and look sad for a split second, and that’s it.

I thought we were past this MCU era, especially with a whole new roster of female characters emerging. But Agatha’s big backstory reveal just feels like a weird relic of the past. In a vacuum, any of these stories would exist fine. But all together and in the larger context of other MCU characters, it just feels weird. Especially since it seems like no female main character has a positive experience as a mother. In the MCU, being a mother means being dead (Queen Ramonda, Maria Rambeau, Frigga), a side character outside the action (Muneeba Khan, Laura Barton), or deeply traumatized (Agatha, Wanda). The fathers rise and save the day; the mothers fall.