Marvel Needs to Stop Using Motherhood as Shorthand for Female Character Development

Marvel has come a long way from the Avengers days where Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow was the only female superhero in sight. Projects like WandaVision and Agatha All Along have given us complicated women as main characters, and it’s a huge step forward.

And yet, it’s hard not to notice that both of these women’s stories have some noticeable gaps in character development. Gaps that, it seems, are being papered over by pretending that motherhood is the primary explanation for everything a woman is and does.

Take Wanda’s dramatic change of heart between the end of WandaVision and her villain turn in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. We are given little explanation for why Wanda, who felt remorse for hurting the people of Westview with the Hex, is suddenly on a murderous rampage. What she did between her story and her role in Doctor Strange’s is, apparently, irrelevant.

This erases Wanda’s self-sacrifice entirely. Wanting to make up for her mistakes is a huge part of the Wanda we’ve come to know. So, how did she go from giving up her family to save Westview to chasing down her children at any cost? We didn’t get to see this character development. Wanda’s motherhood, her desire to see her children again, is all we get. That, plus the hand-waving “Darkhold equals corruption” excuse, are meant to be enough.

I went into Agatha All Along hoping to see some of these wrongs righted. If not a cameo from the Scarlet Witch herself, at least some hints for how she got here. Something other than “she’s a mom who got her hands on the Darkhold” to explain who she became – to let us know her story. Instead, I found another powerful witch with similar character development issues.

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Agatha is a villain, and she’s fine with that. For all that Agatha All Along tries to humanize her, they don’t try to erase her badness. I’m all for it, and yet, I wanted to understand her a bit more by the end. As we approached the season finale, many fans had questions about what led her to murder so many witches (not to mention how she and Death fell in love).

Alas, if we thought the final episode would take us to Agatha’s past for answers, we were sorely mistaken. Instead, we spend an extended sequence watching Agatha as a mother. Of course, loving and losing her son is a huge part of who Agatha is. But it doesn’t explain her entire person.

And yet, the show’s attempt to tell her history begins and ends with Nicky. We see Agatha and Nicky luring witches to their deaths together but don’t get any real indication of why. These scenes give us Agatha as a mother, but at the cost of learning about Agatha as a person. Was she killing witches before Nicky? How is it that she calls Death “my love” when she comes to claim him in childbirth?

The Marvel show seems uninterested in giving us answers. Knowing Agatha was both a loving mother and a witch killer is, apparently, meant to be enough. Who she was before Nicky doesn’t matter, and what she becomes afterward needs no explanation except that she she lost him.

Of course, motherhood is a massive part of many women’s lives, and it’s great to see that acknowledged in the MCU. I love that Wanda and Agatha get to have amazing powers and show their nurturing, loving sides. But women are also people, and they remain their own complicated and nuanced selves even after they make their children by magic or by scratch.

Motherhood is a big part of some women’s stories, but even for those who do choose to have children, being a parent isn’t all that they are. To truly do their stories justice, Marvel needs to stop treating motherhood as a shortcut for character development and start letting women be their full selves.

Agatha All Along and WandaVision are streaming now on Disney+.