Marvel Studios found a clever way to welcome Dolly Parton into the MCU two years ago, and the "role" they gave her felt tailor-made for the country star. Parton passed away this past Tuesday, August 25, at 80 years old, and tributes have poured in from fans and notable admirers from across the world. Her six-decade career touched country music, film, and television alike, but the MCU was one of the more unexpected places her legacy left a mark. With so much being said about her this week, now's the perfect time to look back at the unique way the MCU chose to include her.
In Agatha All Along's Episode 6, "Familiar by Thy Side," which aired on October 16, 2024, Marvel used an Easter egg-filled research session into a perfectly suited Dolly Parton reference.
Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), still piecing together who Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) really is, starts digging through her past online. For reference, Agatha lived for approximately 350 years in the MCU before dying in Episode 8.
The trail leads him to an archived headline, "Does This 1972 Surveillance Photo of Dolly Parton Show the Real Jolene?" above a four-panel security image.
It's zoomed in step by step from 25 percent to 100 percent, of a big-haired woman winding up to slap a dark-haired woman backed against a door.
It isn't subtle about who that's supposed to be. The implication is that Agatha stole a man from Parton in 1972, caught the slap of her life for it, and inspired Parton to write "Jolene" about her the following year.
This was one of the best twists on MCU continuity that the creative team, like showrunner Jac Schaeffer, could have thought of.
It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it gag, but Schaeffer confirmed it wasn't just a fan theory. Asked point-blank by The Wrap if Agatha is the real Jolene, Schaeffer didn't hesitate: "In the MCU, hell yeah."
The interviewer then noted just how much fake history the show had piled onto Agatha over the years, tying her to both the Titanic and Jolene for laughs. Schaeffer explained that she likes to give her writers "homework": big assignments like mapping out "the engine of Episode 3," and smaller, more playful ones she calls "amuse-bouche" assignments:
"So, one of the ways that I like to work is, I really enjoy — I give my writers homework. And the way that I do that is I give them a big assignment, like 'What’s the engine of Episode 3,' huge assignment. And then I give them what I consider to be a smaller, kind of amuse-bouche, more fun assignment.
And there was a day where the assignment was, 'Give me five low-level, nefarious things that Agatha has done in her deep past.'"
When they pointed out that surviving a disaster like the Hindenburg hardly sounds minor, Schaeffer clarified that Hindenburg actually hadn't come out of that particular writers' room game, but Jolene had, "It was so funny:"
"I don’t think Hindenburg was on that one, but Jolene was. That was a Laura Donney idea. And it was one of, I remember being one of the most fun days in the room, was everybody coming in with their sort of low-level Agatha nasties. And that was Laura Donney. She was like, 'She’s Jolene.' And we were just like, everybody fell out. It was so funny."
Asked what the rest of those pitches were, including the ones that never made it to the screen, Schaeffer admitted she couldn't fully remember them.
The ones she did recall, she said, "aren't really appropriate" to repeat, describing them only as "just sort of mean-spirited stuff:"
"The ones that I remember, some of them aren’t really appropriate. I’m trying to remember some of the other ones, but it was just sort of mean-spirited stuff. I’m gonna ask our writer’s assistant and see if they can remember, because it would be fun if I could fill in another one for you."
Beyond that altered-history inclusion, Marvel has actually used Parton's real music more than once. Her song "The Johnny Carson Show" plays in the "Doorman" episode of Wonder Man.
And Whitney Houston's cover of the Parton-written "I Will Always Love You" has become a recurring Marvel needle drop: it played over the studio's logo at the start of Spider-Man: Far From Home and was used again in the announcement video for Deadpool & Wolverine. "9-5" was also ultimately used in that film as well.
Some of Marvel Studios' own extended family are already remembering her this week. Moon Knight's Ethan Hawke wrote on Instagram that he got to meet Parton once, calling her "deep, serious, playful, loving, wise… a woman of integrity. A North Star," and adding that he "left her presence lighter and charged to be better."
Zoe Saldana (Gamora) and Evangeline Lilly (Wasp) also shared tributes to their Instagram Stories following news of Parton's death.
Dolly Parton Was A Real-Life Superhero
Dolly Parton spent her career making people feel loved, hopeful, and seen, which is exactly why the outpouring since her death has felt so universal.
For MCU fans, that grief has landed somewhere unexpectedly specific: back to Agatha All Along. Users online have shared tribute posts crediting "Jolene" for introducing an entire generation to Parton's music through Agatha's lore. The utilization of music throughout the MCU has been a huge part of keeping certain artists in the everyday zeitgeist.
Though a small part of Parton's story, it's neat to see how wide-stretched her impact was on the world, even through a faceless MCU cameo, answering one of the artist's song mysteries.
