This week’s episode of Agatha All Along is chock full of tantalizing teases and clues. Who is Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza)? Who isn’t Teen (Joe Locke)? But the show also throws out one Marvel superhero team you’ll never get to see, at least according to Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn): the Daughters of Liberty.
Spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 4, “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You,” past this point.
Toward the end of the episode, the whole coven is sitting around a fire on the Witches’ Road talking about their scars. In a rare moment of camaraderie, Agatha rolls up her sleeves and shows off a jagged scar on her arm.
“Knitting needle to the elbow,” Agatha says, and after everyone groans asks, “You ever hear of the Daughters of Liberty?”
“No,” says Jennifer Kale.
To which Agatha shoots back, “Exactly.”
So, who are the Daughters of Liberty? I’m going to give you the nerd brain answer, and then what is probably the actual answer. Because the Daughters of Liberty are both from Marvel Comics and actual historical figures.
Who Are The Daughters Of Liberty In Marvel Comics?
Created by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and artist Adam Kubert in 2019’s Captain America #7, the Daughters of Liberty is a loose confederation of heroes, a sisterhood that includes basically every major female Marvel superhero. Black Widow, Spider-Woman, Susan Storm aka The Invisible Woman, Echo, etc, etc… They’re all on the team. Peggy Carter is the de facto leader, and as revealed in the Captain America run has been for decades now.
However, the far more intriguing detail here is that before they were the Daughters of Liberty, they were called the Daughters of Light. They were trained in science by a character named Dryad, and they were trained in magic by… Agatha Harkness.
So yeah, there is an actual connection to this reference in the comics, and if Agatha is telling the truth, one of them stabbed her with a knitting needle and she obliterated them from existence — likely in the 18th century, with the Daughters were first formed in the books.
Who Are The Daughters Of Liberty In Real, Actual History?
So, more likely, though, the show is referring to the real Daughters of Liberty, a group from the 1700s that Coates borrowed the name from for his superhero team — and where that superhero team holds their origins.
A sister movement to the Sons of Liberty, the Daughters of Liberty was an all-female group formed before the American Revolution, to protest the Stamp Act. Like a lot of the laws that led to the Revolutionary War, the Stamp Act dictated that all legal documents needed to be stamped in London. The funds to pay for that were funneled directly into the British military stationed in America. So not only was it harder to get legal documents signed, but more expensive, and led to the further subjugation of America.
Enter the Daughters of Liberty, who engaged in activities like spinning bees in order to create homemade textiles to help make the colonies become self-sufficient. They also came up with American tea, called Liberty Tea (which could have been Libertea, but whatever), once the British started taxing tea. Later during the war, they helped melt down metal to make bullets.
Contrary to what Agatha says in the episode, many of the Daughters of Liberty are well-known to this day. Sarah Bradlee Fulton came up with the basic idea of the Boston Tea Party, an event that protested the British tax on tea. Sarah Franklin Bache was the daughter of Ben Franklin and helped craft American soldier’s uniforms. And you may be familiar with the name Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington, who was also a prominent member.
So whether the Daughters of Liberty reference was about the Marvel Comics superhero team, the real historical group, or both… Sorry, Agatha, they will always be famous.
Agatha All Along Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along premiered September 18 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET on Disney+. It streams weekly, 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, 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: “Through Many Miles of Tricks and Trials”
- Wednesday, October 2, 2024: Agatha All Along, Episode 4: “If I Can’t Reach You Let My Song Teach You”
- 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
Where To Watch Agatha All Along:
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