Showrunner of ‘Agatha All Along’ confirms that Agatha is Dolly Parton’s Jolene

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details of the sixth episode of Marvel Studios’ Agatha all the time.

The latest episode of Agatha all the time was filled with plenty of earth-shattering revelations, but it was a throwaway joke that made the audience do a double take.

After episode six of the Disney+ series, showrunner Jac Schaeffer talked about the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot that suggests Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha was also the Jolene who inspired Dolly Parton’s 1973 hit single.

When asked if Agatha was really the woman who tried to steal the country legend’s husband, Schaeffer told The Wrap with a laugh, “In the MCU, yes.”

In the flashback scene, Joe Locke’s Teen (aka William Kaplan, aka Billy Maximoff) researches Agatha’s ancient lineage online, discovering that she survived the Salem Witch Trials and was present at the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the Hindenberg disaster in 1937.

Another news clip 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.

Schaeffer, who credited writer Laura Donney, recalled that the “Jolene” reference came after he gave the writing team a “fun assignment” to come up with “five low-grade, nefarious things that Agatha has done in her deep past.”

“And it was one of, I remember it was one of the nicest days in the room, when everyone came in with their kind of low-level Agatha candies. And that was Laura Donney,” Schaeffer said. “She said, ‘She’s Jolene.’ And we were like, everyone fell out. It was so funny.”

Parton has revealed that ‘Jolene’ was inspired by a red-haired bank teller who flirted with her husband Carl Dean. Sounds like good cover for a witch in hiding.

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 difficult to parse,” he explained.

“I had a hard time making sense of it, but the pieces we were pushing for were his Jewishness, (which) was very important. The idea that the Kaplans weren’t superheroes, but very good people and good parents. We really committed ourselves to that from the start,” says Schaeffer. “It’s never been 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 excited about it, and especially on the heels of it WandaVisionwhich had a very arcuate portrayal of domestic life. It was a representation of, ‘This is what a happy, normal, regular, nuclear family looks like.’ We wanted the Kaplans to actually be that. So that was very important.”