Exclusive: Aubrey Plaza Is Death In Agatha: Coven Of Chaos

We've learned that in Agatha: Coven of Chaos, Aubrey Plaza will be playing none other than the personification of Death itself.

By Michileen Martin | Updated

aubrey plaza coven of chaos

If you thought she was reprising her Legion role in the upcoming Disney+ series, you may be disappointed, but the good news is she’s playing someone even more interesting. Our trusted and proven sources tell us Aubrey Plaza is playing Death — as in the actual personification of death itself — in Agatha: Coven of Chaos. The series spins out of the events of WandaVision and is expected to stream sometime next year.

To many Marvel Comics purists, the character Aubrey Plaza is playing may seem to be a few years late to the party. In the 1991 Infinity Gauntlet miniseries — which inspired 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War — Thanos doesn’t kill half the population of the universe to achieve balance, but to win the affection of Mistress Death. She is a mostly silent and disapproving observer to the saga’s events, and later in the 2013 prequel miniseries Thanos Rising, we learn she has been manipulating the Mad Titan for most of his life.

Thanos desperately trying to win Death’s affection in Infinity Gauntlet #1 (Marvel Comics, 1991)

While, as far as we know, Josh Brolin‘s screen version of Thanos had no contact with Death — at least not the personification Aubrey Plaza will play in Agatha: Coven of Chaos — it seems likely the events of the “blip” could play a major role in her motivations. If Death has its own personification in the MCU, then that could mean that character was overfed the moment Thanos snapped his fingers, only to be suddenly starved five years later. That’s only speculation, but you wouldn’t think such a character would be unaffected by the events of Infinity War and the 2019 follow-up Avengers: Endgame.

Death and Thanos in Thanos #12 (Marvel Comics, 2017)

In Marvel’s earliest appearances of Death — often called Mistress Death — she appeared as a cloaked and hooded woman whose face was a bare, white skull. By the time of Infinity Gauntlet, she was drawn mostly the same, except the skull was replaced with the actual live head of a woman. More recently in Thanos Rising and Thanos, she appears as a woman not completely cloaked or hooded, but garbed in mostly black, with black hair and lips, and white markings on her face.

It will be interesting to see exactly what Aubrey Plaza’s character is up to in Agatha: Coven of Chaos. Traditionally she isn’t portrayed as some kind of scheming mastermind, but rather a being of cosmic power who is beyond questions of morality. Usually when she does commit overtly evil acts, it’s to manipulate those characters she sees as her harbingers, like Thanos.

This will not be the first time Aubrey Plaza plays a powerful Marvel villain. In FX’s Legion, she plays the powerful Shadow King. In fact, news of her Agatha: Coven of Chaos casting led many fans to speculate she might reprise the role, and that it was a sign Marvel was beginning to incorporate more characters from Fox’s X-Men franchise into the MCU.

Death could turn out to be only one of the big villains Aubrey Plaza will play in the coming years. Yesterday, we learned that Plaza was the top choice to play an undisclosed villain role in next year’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3.