The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is pretty famously a mostly sexless place. Sure, there’s plenty of violence and fighting. But in most movies and TV shows, there are barely kisses, let alone intimations of intimacy. And certainly rarely, if ever, any nudity. That is until now, as Kathryn Hahn’s butt in Agatha All Along has made history as the first female nudity on any Marvel TV show or movie, ever.
And not only has that nude scene made history — it also evens the playing field for the male butt scenes the MCU has employed before.
Spoilers for Agatha All Along past this point.
In the first episode of the series, “Seekest Thou The Road,” Agatha Harkness (Hahn) is released from the spell Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) trapped her in, way back in the finale of WandaVision. While in the spell, she’s told by Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) that she needs to “claw your way out,” which involves stripping the layers of her costume off, one by one, moving backward through the outfits she wore in episodes of WandaVision. Once she reaches her black and white outfit from that series’s premiere, she pulls it off, there’s a flash of light, and she finds herself in her own home. She’s free of the spell, for the first time in three years. She’s also completely nude.
Granted, the nudity at that point is hidden and played for laughs. Agatha storms out of her house and across the street to confront Westview resident Herb (David Payton) to find out what happened to her. Turns out while everyone else has been moving on with their lives post-Wanda, Agatha has been wandering around for three years babbling TV nonsense. The whole time, Herb is enormously uncomfortable, trying to avert his eyes while Agatha’s hair conveniently covers her breasts, Lady Godiva-style.
The rest of the neighborhood sees Agatha wandering around nude, too. Dottie (Emma Caulfield Ford) hides her children’s eyes, while her husband Jones (David Lengel) tries to sneak a peek. Dennis the Mailman (Amos Glick) runs the other way.
Ultimately, Agatha, incensed about what Wanda put her through, turns around and storms back to her house, and that’s when Kathryn Hahn’s butt is revealed. And honestly, it’s a great joke. Spending an extended sequence thinking they’re teasing but never showing nudity and ultimately revealing it in the most casual way possible is very funny. Hahn owns the scene, and it’s meant to be hilarious — not sexual.
Kathryn Hahn’s Butt In Agatha All Along Breaks A Double Standard For The MCU — And TV
Her butt is also breaking a bit of a double standard, though, and laudably so. As mentioned the examples of nudity in the MCU have been few, and far between. Not only that but (sorry) they’ve almost always been male butt nudity. And they’ve almost always been used for laughs.
There have been serious examples of nudity in Marvel properties, though few and far between. Marvel’s Netflix shows would often show a side-boob or a half-glimpsed butt. They certainly had sex scenes, but rarely was anything shown. In fact, the only example of outright nudity was Ben Barnes’s butt in the fifth episode of The Punisher. But that was it. And on the MCU end, we’ve gotten one “serious” sex scene in Eternals. However, that was filmed from the shoulders up in close-up, and the two characters involved might as well have been lying on top of each other without moving for all we know. It was, without a doubt, one of the least sexy sex scenes of all time.
Weirdly it’s been the Thor franchise that has gotten away with nudity the most. Thor featured the title character getting injected in the butt. Thor: The Dark World featured a pixelated, nude Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) running around Stonehenge. Then in Thor: Ragnarok, we were treated to CGI Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) butt as he walked around his room on Sakaar. In Thor: Love and Thunder, they upped the ante with Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) nude butt after Zeus (Russell Crowe) ripped the thunder god’s clothes off.
Giving Kathryn Hahn the same sort of comedy butt nudity scene evens the playing field, particularly in a world where female nudity is almost always treated as entirely taboo on screen. Instead, here, it’s casual and commonplace. We all have bodies, after all, and we all have butts. Is Hahn showing her butt in Agatha All Along any different, really, than the examples above? It’s not, and that seems to be what the show is telling us. It’s a punchline to a joke — and a good one, at that. And for a show with a nearly entirely female cast that’s all about female empowerment, it’s a great note to start on. Or end, I guess.
Where To Watch Agatha All Along:
Agatha All Along Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along premiere September 18 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET on Disney+. It will stream weekly episodes after that, leading up to the two-episode finale on October 30. There are nine episodes, in total.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Agatha All Along Season 4, with premiere dates:
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 1: “Seekest Thou The Road”
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 2: “Circle Sewn With Fate Unlock They Hidden Gate”
- Wednesday, September 25, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 3
- Wednesday, October 2, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 4
- Wednesday, October 9, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 5
- Wednesday, October 16, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 6
- Wednesday, October 23, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 7
- Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 8
- Wednesday, October 30, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 9