SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from the sixth episode of Marvel Studios’ Agatha All Along.
The latest episode of Agatha All Along was filled with plenty of earth-shattering revelations, but it was a throwaway joke that had audiences doing a double take.
Following episode six of the Disney+ series, showrunner Jac Schaeffer addressed the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot that suggests Kathryn Hahn‘s Agatha was also the Jolene who inspired Dolly Parton‘s hit 1973 single.
When asked if Agatha was truly the woman who tried to steal the country legend’s man, Schaeffer told The Wrap with a laugh, “In the MCU, hell yeah.”
In the flashback scene, Joe Locke‘s Teen (aka William Kaplan, aka Billy Maximoff) researches Agatha’s centuries-old origins online, finding that she survived the Salem Witch Trials and was present at the Titanic sinking in 1912 and the 1937 Hindenberg disaster.
Another news clipping shows a black-and-white screenshot of a blonde woman slapping Agatha. ‘Does This 1972 Surveillance Photo of Dolly Parton Show the Real Jolene?’ reads the headline.
In episode six of Agatha All Along, the titular witch’s surprising origin story is revealed.
Crediting writer Laura Donney, Schaeffer recalled that the ‘Jolene’ reference came after he gave the writing team a “fun assignment” to come up with “five low-level, nefarious things that Agatha has done in her deep past.”
“And it was one of, I remember being one of the most fun days in the room, was everybody coming in with their sort of low-level Agatha nasties. And that was Laura Donney,” said Schaeffer. “She was like, ‘She’s Jolene.’ And we were just like, everybody fell out. It was so funny.”
Parton has revealed that ‘Jolene’ was inspired by a red-haired bank clerk that flirted with her husband Carl Dean. Sounds like a good cover for a witch laying low.
Schaeffer previously spoke to Deadline about unpacking Billy’s origin story in the latest episode. “So the comic lore, the story that’s in the comics, is bananas. It’s very complicated, and I found it hard to parse,” he explained.
“I found it hard to make sense of, but the pieces that we were committed to were his Jewishness, [which] was very important. The idea that the Kaplans were non-superhero folk, but very good people and good parents. We were really committed to that from the very beginning,” added Schaeffer. “It was never anything other than that. We were all so excited for the Kaplans, for casting them, for seeing them on screen, for seeing a loving family without the kind of chaos of the superhero world. We were just psyched about it, and especially on the heels of WandaVision, which had a very arch portrayal of domestic life. It was a performance of, ‘This is what like a happy, normal, regular, nuclear family looks like.’ We wanted the Kaplans to actually be that. So that was really important.”
