Who Are Salem's Seven in Agatha All Along? Explaining the Marvel Villains

Enter: Salem's Seven!

By Cameron Bonomolo

Something wicked this way comes on Agatha All Along. Wednesday's two-episode premiere — titled "Seekest Thou the Road" and "Circle Sewn with Fate Unlock Thy Hidden Gate" — saw the return of the centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), who we last saw under a Scarlet Witch-imposed spell in 2021's WandaVision series finale. Now powerless and coven-less, Agatha is accompanied by a mysterious teen (Joe Locke) and a motley crew of local witches as they journey down The Witches' Road to regain their powers.

Agatha's coven includes the apothecary witch Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), protector witch Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), the divination witch Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), and the Green Witch Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), with Agatha's bewitched Westview neighbor Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) bringing their number to seven. As the incantation goes: "The path is wild and wicked, winding through the wood. Where all that's wrong is right, and all that's bad is good. Through many miles of tricks and trials, we'll wander high and low. Follow me, my friends, to glory at the end."

Enter: Salem's Seven!

Those trials include the seven hooded figures after Agatha: Salem's Seven. Press materials identify actress Okwui Okpokwasili (The Exorcist: Believer) as their leader, Vertigo, who in the comics is the half-sibling of the magically-mutated Brutacus, Gazelle, Hydron, Reptilla, Thornn, and Vakume. The Seven are the seven children of Agatha's son, the sorcerer Nicholas Scratch, and are residents of New Salem, Colorado, a secret community of witches that Agatha founded in the 17th century.

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Centuries later, after Agatha took residence in Whisper Hill in upstate New York as the nanny of the young mutant Franklin Richards, Scratch abducted his mother and put her on trial for allegedly revealing New Salem's existence to the mortal world. Scratch sentenced Agatha to death, but Franklin's kidnapping brought the Fantastic Four to New Salem, where they fought the Seven to a standstill and rescued "auntie" Agatha. The hooded witches and wizards of New Salem then banished Scratch to the Dark Realm.

Let us join our powers together -- and together we shall destroy the witch named Agatha Harkness!

Years later, when the Four returned with Agatha to New Salem in 1979's Fantastic Four Annual #14, Salem's Seven put the New Salemites in a trance and attempted to sacrifice the Four and restore their master's spirit to their realm. With Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing incapacitated by Scratch's mind control spell, Agatha freed the Four, withdrew the Seven's powers, and sent them back to New Salem.

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Salem's Seven returned once more in 1985's The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #3 — one of the comics that influenced WandaVision — and by this time Vertigo had become priestess of the Salem's Seven coven, as willed by all 666 New Salemites. The Seven burned Agatha at the stake, and the witch cursed all of New Salem as she died. When Wanda Maximoff and the Vision came across the village of New Salem, Vertigo invited the Scarlet Witch to join the coven of Salem's Seven. 

Vertigo, as Agatha's eldest granddaughter and queen of the New Salem witches, led the Seven in their attempt to sacrifice the Scarlet Witch to a winter god. Agatha appeared as a spirit and helped her protégé channel and contain Magick energies that killed the Seven, who then pulled Wanda into the dead realm of the demon Samhain, the embodiment of All Hallows, on Halloween night.

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The slain Seven revealed that Wanda's unborn child was the key to returning to life, so the ghostly Agatha transferred  Samhain's dark forces into the undead Seven, keeping him forever fragmented in their corpses. Agatha would then continue to mentor Wanda as her spirit guide, eventually joining her on her own trek down the Witches Road — a journey that ended with Wanda's mother, the Scarlet Witch before her, saving the goddess Witchcraft and restoring Agatha to life. 

New episodes of Marvel's Agatha All Along premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.

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