Though it might seem cute (if not wholly original) to plant sorcerers and witches in comic book superhero stories, in truth they both share a strange and intertwined history. Agatha herself is a Marvel character, dating back to 1969. DC Comics had Enchantress, introduced in 1966. Sabrina Spellman – aka, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch – sprang from the Archie comics. Even Scrooge McDuck had the longstanding nemesis, the Italian sorceress Magica de Spell, first introduced in 1961.

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Such characters either leaned into traditional mythology or were drawn from American colonial history. Circle, an example of the former, was plucked from Homer’s Odyssey, where she famously imprisoned Odysseus, to appear in DC Comics in 1949 as a nemesis for Wonder Woman. Harkness was drawn in particular from the 17th-century Salem witch trials.

When we met her in the finale of WandaVision, Agatha Harkness was a droll, sarcastic creature, who bounced between malevolence and vulnerability, often in the same scene. In Kathryn Hahn’s hands, it is a real fusion of writing and performance, the result being a brilliant, capricious villainess who is also, depending on your perspective, the show’s heroine.

But whether she turns out to be a bad baddie or a good baddie – like DC’s Catwoman, whose unpredictable nature has seen her lean across both sides of the line – is hard to say. What is certain is that Agatha All Along has shed WandaVision’s sitcom skin to become a much darker and intriguing series. With a perfectly timed,sly wink.