Agatha All Along star Kathryn Hahn carved out her place in Marvel history with her nude scene in the series’ pilot episode, currently streaming on Disney+.
The show finds Hahn reprising her role as fan-favorite witch Agatha Harkness, who is freed from the spell cast by Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) at the end of WandaVision, which had kept Agatha trapped in the television universe of a Mare of Easttown-style prestige crime drama. Her trip back to reality involves the shedding of all her WandaVision personas, but she arrives to find her clothes are now missing, as well. In shock, she runs outside in the buff to confront her confused neighbors, who struggle to alert her to her condition.
Though only Hahn’s backside is glimpsed in the scene, with her skillfully placed long hair keeping everything within PG-13 boundaries, it marks a somewhat radical first for the MCU. The films and TV shows have occasionally paraded their semi-nude male stars, largely for the sake of humor, but there’s never been even a hint of female nudity in the MCU.
“Well, I came up with it,” Hahn told Variety of the groundbreaking moment. “I thought it was good to see her as stripped down, literally, as we possibly could, which spoke into her powerlessness at the present moment,” the actor explained. “She’s been stripped of all of her power at this point in the series,” she continued. “I mean, she really had nothing at that point, and so it became about illustrating that gap between that moment and her finding her power again.”
Showrunner Jac Schaeff confirmed Hahn’s version of events, claiming the moment arose from an on-set improvisation. “Kathryn was like, ‘Would she grab the robe? I don’t feel like she would grab the robe. I feel like she would really not care about being naked in front of the neighbors,'” Schaeff said.
Hahn is no stranger to on-screen nudity, having performed far more revealing scenes throughout the years, a fact which Schaeffer felt made the moment even more powerful. “Kathryn has done so much work, and she’s done a lot of nudity and other things, and so it also felt very subversive to get Kathryn Hahn’s nudity into the MCU.”
Agatha All Along is currently streaming on Disney+.
