A To Z Blogging Challenge 2024 - Villains! - H Is For Agatha Harkness and Justin Hammer

Today - two villains from the MCU.

 Agatha Harkness is a witch, in the MCU. In the comics she was an elderly witch who babysat the son of Sue Storm and Reed Richards, members of the Fantastic 4, and sometimes helped them, but in the Marvel series WandaVision she was a true baddie. As I have only read one comic with her in it, I’ll stick to the WandaVision version.

In WandaVision, the former Avengers member Wanda Maximoff, a powerful witch, grieving over the death of her beloved Vision, recreates him and has twin sons, Billy and Tommy. They are living in Westview, New Jersey, which is shown as a sitcom, moving through the decades. Agatha Harkness is playing the “nosy neighbour” Agnes, not unlike Gladys in Bewitched, but unlike Gladys, she is a witch, and not a nice one. There is a flashback in which her back story is shown; she has been around since the 17th century, when  was nearly executed for doing some dreadful things. 

After a number of strange happenings, and the death of  the boys’ puppy, which Agnes/Agatha admits cheerfully to having done, there is a huge fight between the two witches. Agatha has forced Wanda to relive her worst childhood memories which explain why Westview is a sitcom town. I will go into this further in “W Is For Wanda” as, yes, Wanda moves from Avenger heroine to villain herself. 

When Agatha has been defeated, Wanda pushes her back into her Nosy Neighbour form. Whether this will last, I don’t know, as Agatha is going to have her own TV show. There was a song, “Agatha All Along”, which was hugely popular. 

Justin Hammer is another MCU character, appearing first in the comics in 1979, and in the films in Iron Man 2. He is another rich arms manufacturer like Tony Stark, but with no morals. Tony scraps his weapons manufacturing arm after his capture in Afghanistan makes him see what damage he has done and how many young Americans are dying. 

Justin Hammer doesn’t care. He is happy to help costumed  criminals get on with their work, with money involved. His comics creators say that he is what Tony Stark might have become if he hadn’t changed. 

He appears in a number of MCU productions, most recently in Season 2 of What If…? The episode is “What If…Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?” In it, he has escaped from prison and invades a Stark tower Christmas party, to steal technology and a sample of Bruce Banner’s blood. Oddly enough, all the Avengers are off doing other things that night( except Thor, who turns up when the entire disaster is over),  and can’t come to the rescue, so Tony’s offsider Happy Hogan has to save the day. He turns into a purple Hulk  and sorts everything. A very funny episode! And Justin Hammer gets what he deserves.

Tomorrow we will check out Shakespeare villain Iago.