What exactly is a witch according to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

There are countless reasons to keep watching Agatha Always Already. Maybe you’re here to see Kathryn Hahn Hahn-ing around, or to see Aubrey Plaza goth it up, or because you’d follow Patti Lupone to hell and back. Maybe ’tis just the season for witchy fall vibes!

And if you’re like me, you’re also wondering if this will be the last installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that actually explains what magic means in this setting.

Agatha Always Already seems perfectly capable of answering questions like: What is a witch? Where does their power come from? Do they get it naturally? Do they have to learn how? What can they do with it? Considering that a character called “The Scarlet Witch” has appeared in five MCU films and had her own television show — with two Doctor Strange films and Spider-Man: No Way Home aside — you would think that at least some of these questions would have been answered by now.

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken this strange turn, where it started drawing a line around the supernatural and firmly labeling it as advanced alien science. Thor understood particle physics, and the Tesseract could be studied by SHIELD scientists. Even the Scarlet Witch’s powers were activated by the Infinity Stones, not magical study.

And when the franchise finally got into the mystical side of Marvel Comics, it skipped the part where it was supposed to explain why the Tesseract is advanced alien technology, gives Captain Marvel her scientific energy powers, and opens scientific wormholes to let in an alien army, but the Time Stone is a magical artifact that allows Doctor Strange to magically travel through time. Are Thor and Loki gods, not aliens? Are the Celestials aliens or magic? The Black Panther’s heart-shaped herb allows him to communicate with his deceased ancestors. Is That magic? What, if anything, distinguishes all this from the witchcraft of Agatha and her coven?

Well, I mean, it’s not. need explained. Magic, by definition, doesn’t have to make sense. And writers can do whatever they want. But there are real benefits to telling your audience the rules, boundaries, and limitations of the magic they’re looking at. This is, after all, the superhero genre — home of the secret weakness.

Superhero magic – the magic in straight-up Avengers vs. Bad Guy of the Week stories – needs rules, just as Superman needs Kryptonite, Magneto needs a helmet that makes him immune to Professor X’s psychic control, and vampires need to detest holy symbols. The Genie can’t magically marry Jasmine to Aladdin, or the story would be over. When Jafar falls into the trap of wishing to become a genie, it’s only satisfying because we’ve already been told that genies are trapped.

In adventure fiction, the rules of magic give the audience a sense of narrative tension, even when characters can do literally anything. Marvel’s Nico Minoru can cast any magic spell she wants, but she can never use the same command phrase twice. DC’s Billy Batson can transform into a superhero, but only if he can say the word “Shazam” out loud. Even comic book magic users like John Constantine or Doctor Strange, whose powers aren’t specifically spelled out at all, still have rules that give them the characteristic tone and tension of a John Constantine or Doctor Strange story: All magic has a price.

Just because Agatha didn’t say what witches are, doesn’t mean it doesn’t show us. In AgathaAs we’ve seen, witches tell the future, work the earth, and sell dubious remedies. They create illusions and have familiars. They have creepy things in their basements and wear creepy clothes, unless they don’t wear any clothes at all for their neighbors, which they don’t feel bad about. They do, you know, witchcraft. (But they don’t consort with devils. This is Disney Plus, after all.)

And yet, Agatha Always Already didn’t say anything specific about what witches Arein a setting where fifteen miraculous things happen every month. Where shapeshifters can be aliens and talking animals can be scientific experiments. Teen seems to think that getting better at witchcraft will allow one to shoot energy from their hands, summon shields, and levitate—but come on, Teen, you just described Iron Man. He did it in a cave with a box full of scraps.

So until further notice, I’ll be watching in the hope that the MCU’s great witch series will finally tell me something about what they think witches are. And, to be honest, because I’d follow Patti Lupone to hell and back.