Although the series ultimately ended without providing a canon answer to the question of ‘Who is the father of Agatha’s son?’, Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer has all but outright confirmed that in the view of both her and her writers, the true identity of Nicky’s ‘father’ is none other than Death herself.
As is detailed in the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe outing, long, long before she ever clashed with the Scarlet Witch, Vision, or their children, Agatha was once pregnant with a son of her own.
Unfortunately, due to complications, said pregnancy was less than healthy. As a result, Agatha soon found herself visited by her ex-girlfriend, Death, who comes back into her life seeking to fulfill her unfortunate duty of escorting the unborn child into the afterlife.
But rather than simply letting him go, Agatha instead begs the entity to let him live. Unable to fulfill this exact request, Death takes pity on her former lover and instead agrees to temporarily stay the boy’s execution, thus allowing the witch at least some amount of time with her child.
Immediately thereafter, Agatha proceeds to into labor, ultimately albeit painfully giving birth to a healthy baby boy.
Pulling the newborn into her arms in order to properly greet him, Agatha proceeds to explain to her son, “I spoke no spell, I said no incantation. You…you were made from scratch,” in doing so both seemingly confirming that he was not conceived of purely magical means and also bestowing upon him the second half of his soon-to-be name, Nicholas Scratch.
In light of this purposefully obtuse confirmation, many fans have found themselves speculating as to just who could have ‘fathered’ Agatha’s child, with the frontrunners widely being considered to be either the demonic Mephisto (his royal evilness currently rumored to being making his MCU debut in Ironheart courtesy of Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen) or the aforementioned black-cloaked embodiment of atrophy.
And according to Schaeffer, those fans who placed their bets on the latter were, for all intents and purposes, right on the money.
During a recent appearance on The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith podcast, Schaeffer was pressed by the show’s eponymous host as to whether or not there was “any credence to the concept that [Nicky] could have been born as the love child between [Agatha and Death]”, to which she recalled, “We talked about a lot of different versions of ‘Who is the father of Nicky?’ and we ultimately decided that it wasn’t relevant to the story we were trying to tell and we didn’t want to get into the weeds of if it was magical.”
“We certainly considered the idea that Rio is the father,” she continued. “I should ask the writers if they still hold that in their heart. It’s something that I certainly thought about a lot and like to contemplate.”
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“I enjoy that it is left to fan interpretation,” she added. “I also feel that I know how the MCU works, and I don’t think it serves anybody for me, as the creator, to emphatically tell you something that isn’t on screen, because it’s my hope that these stories continue. So perhaps there is a later chapter that will address this. But I will say that when we were casting, sometimes we were lie, “does that kid look like Rio [Vidal, the in-series alter-ego of Death]? Does that kid look like [Death actress] Aubrey Plaza?”
Asked for direct confirmation as to whether this reveal was “a path that was possible”, Schaeffer ultimately affirmed, “Yeah, fans and viewers, yes, they are picking up on our brain waves, for sure.”
Despite Schaeffer’s optimism, at current, Marvel has yet to announce any future plans for any of Agatha All Along‘s various super-powered (or rather magic-powered) cast members.