Spider-Man: Far From Home, and its new era of content will not only cover movies but also television/streaming, with a long list of TV shows set to stream exclusively on Disney+.
Kicking off this new era is WandaVision, a TV show centered on Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). Set after the events of Westview, with each episode done in the style of sitcoms from different decades. Viewers soon learned that things are not what they seem in Westview, and there are a lot of secrets waiting to be uncovered, including the motivations of the villain of the show. Living next to Wanda and Vision’s place is Agnes, the “nosy neighbor” who in episode 5 gave hints of her being aware that Wanda is in some control of Westview and its residents, but it was all part of her own game.
Episode 7 of WandaVision revealed that Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness, a powerful sorceress, who in the show has been the puppet master behind “Ralph”, who hasn’t appeared in WandaVision, making way for many theories on whether he’s real or not and if he could actually be someone else, such as Mephisto (a villain used in many WandaVision theories given all the references to him throughout the show). However, the mysterious Ralph could actually be a reference to a lesser-known character from Marvel Comics, and through him, Marvel could have been subtly hinting at WandaVision’s big twist.
This character is Ralph Halley, and he’s a student and practitioner of black magic, through which he could apparently transform himself into different things. Ralph married a wealthy woman named Helen, and he then began to acquire and study various books on the occult, eventually learning a spell to transform himself. Helen feared that these practices would drive him mad and would try to kill her so he could inherit her money, a suspicion only made bigger when Helen came across a mouse she was sure was Ralph, as he knew she was deathly afraid of rodents and there were no mice in their house. Helen sought Dr. Springer for help but he didn’t believe her at first, and it wasn’t until he saw how aggressive Ralph was that he became concerned. Ralph died at his home in strange circumstances as something delivered a fatal blow to his neck and broke it, but Helen was too small to be the killer. Springer then found all his books, of which one had a spell titled “How To Change Into Animals”, and the police found a mouse-trap under Ralph’s corpse.
Among the many books Ralph owned was quite possibly the Necronomicon, a powerful book of black magic in the Marvel Universe. In the comics, Scarlet Witch considered the Necronomicon to be an abomination and believed all copies had been destroyed, but Agatha told her the book could help her with her demon problems. Agnes’ many references to her husband Ralph could be a subtle reference to Ralph Halley and even the Necronomicon, which could be the mysterious book Wanda found in Agnes’ lair. WandaVision is packed with details and Easter eggs not only from the MCU but Marvel Comics as well, and the big twist to Agnes’ identity could have always been there and the clues delivered by her in what many believed to be a running gag.