Marvel Just Hid a Huge Fantastic Four Connection in Plain Sight
There’s nothing Marvel loves more than an alliterative super squad.
Agatha Harkness is back and better than ever — except for the fact she doesn’t have any powers. After being trapped under Wanda’s control for three years longer than the rest of Westview, she’s now back to herself and has a new sidekick, the lovably goth Teen. But while they’re starting a trek down the Witches’ Road with a coven full of misfits, there’s an ominous threat hot on their tail.
This group of villains has a colorful comic book past, including a surprising run-in with a team soon to enter the MCU. Is this just a coincidence, or is it foreshadowing something big?
At the end of Episode 1 of Agatha All Along, Agatha discusses her newfound freedom with Rio Vidal. Rio mentions she’ll “be sure to tell them where to find” Agatha, and when Agatha asks who she’s referring to, Rio has a cryptic answer. “The worst of them. The Salem Seven,” she says. “I expect you'll see them at sundown. After all these centuries, Agatha Harkness will finally meet her end.”
The Salem Seven are far more mysterious in Agatha All Along than in the comics.
Sure enough, right around sundown in Episode 2, as Agatha and her hesitant allies sing to open the door to the Road, Teen finds himself face to face with seven hooded figures who appear on Agatha’s suburban street in full view of Westview residents. Teen manages to escape, but it doesn’t feel like the Seven are going away.
The Seven look a lot different in the comics. In The Fantastic Four #186, Agatha Harkness’s son, Nicholas Scratch, abducts young Franklin Richards, the son of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. He takes him to the isolated city of New Salem, Colorado, where the Fantastic Four must defeat both Scratch and his children, a group known as Salem’s Seven.
The members of Salem’s Seven: Brutacus, Hydron, Vakume, Gazelle, Vertigo, Thornn, and Reptilla.
The villainous group, led by the dizziness-inducing Vertigo, popped up occasionally in comics over the years. They attacked Vision and Scarlet Witch in 1985, became allies of the Fantastic Four in 2006, and even appeared in 2014 as the protectors of a new version of New Salem.
It’s unclear how the Salem Seven will be involved in Agatha All Along, but it could be the start of a much larger storyline. Like Agatha Harkness, they first appeared in Fantastic Four comics. When Agatha was added to the MCU, a Fantastic Four Marvel movie had just been announced but still didn’t feel like a sure thing given the team’s on-screen track record. Now, however, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is officially in production and slated for a 2025 release.
With that movie coming soon, Agatha All Along could very well be foreshadowing its storyline. Even though it looks like The Fantastic Four will take place in a different timeline, the Salem Seven are magic users who can apparently apparate. A little interdimensional travel is probably nothing to them, which would make them the perfect overlap between the two worlds and bring the Witches’ Road to the retrofuturistic world of Marvel’s First Family. Maybe they’ll be a major threat, or maybe they’ll just be referenced as an Easter egg. Either way, the timing seems too coincidental to ignore.
