Agatha Harkness Fact — November 2, 2026

Today's Fact

The kindest spell Agatha Harkness ever cast may also be the cruelest one — and it was aimed at the woman she taught.

AGATHA ERASED WANDA'S MEMORIES OF HER OWN CHILDREN — TO SPARE HER STUDENT A GRIEF NO MIND COULD HOLD!

The Featured Fact

By Avengers West Coast #51–52 (1989), John Byrne's unravelling of the Scarlet Witch's family reached its bleakest reveal: Wanda's twin sons, Billy and Tommy, were not ordinary children at all but fragments of the demon Mephisto's shattered soul, temporarily given life through her hex power and the manipulations of Master Pandemonium.

When Mephisto reclaimed his fragments, the twins simply ceased to be — and Agatha, Wanda's own teacher in witchcraft, made the decision no one else in the room would make. Rather than leave her student to grieve children who had been un-existed, Agatha wiped the boys clean out of Wanda's memory, sealing the loss behind a spell so Wanda would not even know there was something to mourn.

The mercy held for years of publication time, but it was a dam, not a cure. When the buried memory eventually resurfaced — a careless mention by the Wasp in the run-up to Avengers #503 (2004) — everything Agatha had tried to spare Wanda arrived at once, and the fallout reshaped the Avengers for a generation.

Why It's Obscure

Teachers protect their students from monsters; Agatha tried to protect hers from a memory, and the memory won on points.

1989

Byrne's demolition job — The twins' truth lands at the end of a run that had already dismantled the Vision's identity; Agatha's mind-wipe was the last panel of a systematic teardown of Wanda's whole domestic life.

Mephisto

Children made of a devil — Because the twins were soul-fragments rather than true children, no rescue, resurrection or bargain was on the table — which is precisely the hopelessness Agatha chose to edit out of Wanda's head.

Master Pandemonium

The man who wore the evidence — The villain had carried the twins transformed as his own arms, so by the time Agatha acted, Wanda had already watched her sons be worn as somebody else's limbs.

The Undoing

A dam with a crack date — Later writers quietly let Wanda remember again, but the official reckoning waited until 2004, when the returning memory became the fuse for Avengers Disassembled.

Gallery

Comic art of Agatha Harkness with the student whose memories she once edited.

Agatha Harkness looming beside the Scarlet Witch, hex energy crackling above Wanda's hands — **Teacher and student**A rejuvenated Agatha looms beside Wanda Maximoff — the mentor who once decided which memories her student was allowed to keep.

Agatha Harkness and the Scarlet Witch casting side by side beneath a rose window — **Two witches, one craft**Agatha and Wanda work magic shoulder to shoulder — the partnership that makes the 1989 mind-wipe read as betrayal and rescue at the same time.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Agatha Harkness Played a Role in Avengers Disassembled — CBRCBR's tracing of Avengers West Coast #52: the twins as Mephisto fragments, Agatha's choice to wipe Wanda's memory, and how its failure fed into Disassembled.
Did Scarlet Witch Just Forget That She Had Kids? — CBRCBR's issue-by-issue history of the memory wipe in Avengers West Coast #52, its quiet abandonment by later writers, and its explosive return in Avengers #503.