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Total Film
Total Film
Entertainment
George Marston

Agatha All Along - The comic history of Wiccan AKA Billy Kaplan, the son of the Scarlet Witch

Agatha All Along.

The true identity of Joe Locke's 'Teen' was one of the big mysteries of the first half of Agatha All Along, and now that the season has come to an end, it's totally confirmed that he is indeed none other than Billy Kaplan/Maximoff AKA Wiccan, the son of the Scarlet Witch.

Beware, because we can't discuss this without getting into some spoilers for Agatha All Along, so turn back now if you're trying to go in totally unspoiled.

Still with us? Here we go…

As of the finale of Agatha All Along, Billy Kaplan has officially ascended to access his full power as Wiccan, after using his powers to resurrect his missing brother Tommy under Agatha Harkness' guidance, leaving the Witches' Road with his wish fulfilled.

But what's more, it's revealed in the two-part finale that Billy himself created the Witches' Road using the same reality-altering powers as his mother, Wanda Maximoff, based on a folk song that was actually written back in the 1700s by Agatha Harkness as a way to lure in witches whose powers she then absorbed.

So what's next for Billy now that he's become Wiccan, and how does his Agatha All Along fate tie into his comic book history as a Young Avenger? We've got all the answers right here.

Who is Billy Kaplan/Maximoff?

(Image credit: Marvel Entertainment)

If you're at all familiar with the history of the twin sons of Scarlet Witch and Vision, you know their history is just about as complex as comic book stories get, involving magic, reincarnation, hidden identities, and a whole host of supervillains. We'll try to break it down as simply as possible.

It all starts with the unlikely romance of Vision and Wanda Maximoff, which eventually led to their marriage. As with many young married couples, Wanda and Vision desire children, but due to Vision being a synthezoid who cannot genetically reproduce, they face a major obstacle. Still, they manage to surmount this thanks to the combined power of Wanda's incredibly potent magical abilities as well as her mutant power to alter reality, which she uses to summon forth a pair of twin boys who the couple name William and Thomas.

Tragically, it turns out that the twins are actually partially a manifestation of the demonic Mephisto, who surreptitiously corrupted Wanda's spell in order to manipulate her - something many megalomaniacal villains have attempted over the years. After the defeat of Mephisto and his servant Master Pandemonium, the twins sadly faded away, with the spell that created them tragically broken.

But that wasn't the end of Billy and Tommy, though it was just the start of how complicated things would eventually become for the story of the children of the Scarlet Witch. We've previously gone in depth about what happens next in their saga, but the TL:DR is that the combined trauma of being manipulated by numerous villains, losing her sons, and much more led the Scarlet Witch to kill several of her Avengers teammates in the story Avengers: Disassembled, leading the team to disband for several years. 

This in turn led Wanda to cast a spell that robbed all but around 200 mutants of their powers, before disappearing without facing any consequences.

In the absence of the Avengers, a team of teen heroes known as the Young Avengers comes together, including Billy Kaplan, a teen with an innate mutant ability to cast spells by repeating his intentions over and over.

Becoming Wiccan

(Image credit: Marvel Entertainment)

Originally known by the Thor-centric codename Asgardian, as all the Young Avengers paid homage or had some connection to the classic Avengers, Billy quickly takes on the codename Wiccan to reflect his rapidly growing magical abilities.

Though Billy doesn't initially have an outward connection to the Scarlet Witch, through the course of the Young Avengers early adventures, he meets another young hero, a speedster named Tommy Shepherd who is his spitting image - leading to the ultimate reveal that they are both the reincarnated souls of the magical twins Wanda Maximoff once created, reborn to two different families.

The exact nature of Billy and Tommy's connection to the Scarlet Witch is slightly complicated (as are all things in her family tree), and involves her original spell actually capturing two lost souls and using them as the ur-material to create her magical twins. When the infant twins faded away, they didn't totally disappear, they were at that exact moment reborn as two very real, very alive children to two separate expecting mothers.

After discovering their true heritage as the reincarnated children of Wanda Maximoff, Billy and Tommy set out to find her in the story Avengers: The Children's Crusade, finding her under the control of Doctor Doom, who is attempting to manipulate her for her reality altering power, as so many other villains have. 

Through a perilous battle, they eventually free Wanda from Doom's control, with Wanda acknowledging that they are in fact her children, reincarnated. They in turn acknowledge her as their mother (though they also still have biological mothers), and the three eventually form a bond.

In the years since, Billy's powers have grown to the point that he was even once considered a candidate for Sorcerer Supreme (a position he has held in alt-future stories). It's also been revealed that he is fated to become a being known as the Demiurge, a physical embodiment of magic itself that is also something of an office held by different magic users at different times similar to Sorcerer Supreme.

Most recently, Billy has become the Court Mage and Royal Consort of his husband Teddy Altman, AKA Hulkling of the Young Avengers who is himself now the Emperor of the Kree/Skrull Empire (they've recently combined in comics).

Billy Kaplan/Maximoff in the MCU

(Image credit: Marvel Entertainment)

Billy, along with his twin Tommy, appeared in WandaVision, even manifesting a version of his innate magical abilities. But as in comics, the twins are constructs of Wanda Maximoff's magic, fading away when her spell is broken. This leads to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which Wanda attempts to use the power of the book of dark magic known as the Darkhold to get her twins back by kidnapping them from another reality where they are flesh-and-blood.

In the end, Wanda dies, leading to the events of Agatha All Along in which Agatha Harkness awakens from the spell put on her by Wanda and attempts to walk the Witches' Road to regain her full power.

She's accompanied by a whole coven, including Joe Locke's 'Teen,' who is initially implied to possibly be Agatha's son Nicholas Scratch before Aubrey Plaza's Rio Vidal, herself initially a mystery character who is eventually revealed as Death, tells Agatha that Teen is not her son.

Then, at the end of episode 5, he uses his mind-control powers to send Agatha, Jen, and Lilia flying into the mud, revealing his status as Wanda Maximoff's son. In the following episode, we learn that once, he was simply William Kaplan, a 13-year-old boy from Eastview whose Bar Mitzvah happened to fall on the same day Wanda's Westview anomaly dissipated. This causes a car accident in which William dies, but is inhabited by the spirit of Billy Maximoff, effectively resurrecting him.

Once he learns this, Billy sets off to find Agatha and the Witches' Road. In the finale, we learn that Agatha invented the concept of the Witches' Road as a way to trick other witches into blasting her and allowing her to kill them and take their power. When Billy asks, she sees an opportunity to regain some of her power from Billy and the rest of the coven, but Billy's powers actually create the road based on his own imagination and the popular idea of what the road is.

Ultimately, under Agatha's tutelage, Billy uses his resurrection powers to put Tommy's wandering spirit into the body of a dying boy, bringing him back to life. Billy is immediately teleported off the road, his powers unlocked and his desire fulfilled. Still, at the end, he and Agatha are confronted by Death/Rio, who wants Billy to surrender himself because she sees his resurrection powers as an abomination.

Agatha finally sacrifices herself to save Billy, who Death allows to leave. But that's not the end of Agatha's story, as she returns as a ghost. She and Billy decide to stick together with Agatha as his magical tutor, and they both set out to find the resurrected Tommy.

It's interesting that Agatha is now Billy's tutor, as this reflects her comic book history as the teacher of the Scarlet Witch, even after her death. In the original comic story of the Witches' Road, Wanda winds up resurrecting Agatha at the end, so there's a bit of a twist in the MCU version.

What's next for Billy Kaplan/Wiccan? We're guessing something to do with the Young Avengers, as the team has already begun to form in the MCU with Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel recruiting Kate Bishop/Hawkeye in one of the stinger scenes of The Marvels

And of course, there's still the question of whether he could also somehow resurrect Wanda Maximoff, who is currently presumed dead after the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.


For everything coming to the big and small screen, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2024 and beyond, or, skip right to the good stuff with our comprehensive list of movie release dates

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