Agatha All Along: Billy’s Comic-Accurate Backstory, Revealed

Agatha All Along is ramping things up in some major ways, fleshing out the magical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the process. In addition to continuing the story of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the show has folded in Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed with great fanfare in the final moments of Episode 5. The majority of the series’ sixth episode consists of a flashback to the origin of Billy’s current status quo — and it was actually surprisingly accurate to the pages of Marvel Comics. Major spoilers for Episode 6 of Agatha All Along below! Only look if you want to know!

Initially, Locke’s version of Billy is introduced as Billy Kaplan, a Jewish teenager having his bar mitzvah in the town of Eastview. While at the party, Billy has his palm read by Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone), who warns him that his life is about to be split in two, and appears to place a mysterious sigil on him. The party is then cut short by news of the Westview anomaly, which sends Billy and his parents driving home in a hurry — so much so that they crash into a nearby tree. Billy dies in the car accident, just as the souls of Billy and Tommy Maximoff appear to be erased by the destruction of the Westview hex.

In reality, the soul of Billy Maximoff is reborn into Billy Kaplan’s body, and he awakens and gets acclimated to his new-old life. Three years later, Billy begins to personally investigate the circumstances that led to his rebirth, researching aspects of the Westview anomaly on various web forums. Through this research, and a clandestine meeting with Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters), Billy eventually begins to discover his true identity — and the role that Agatha Harkness could have in helping him reach his goal to find Tommy.

While this story arc might seem slightly convoluted on paper, it is actually surprisingly reminiscent of how Billy Kaplan is introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics — albeit, without the WandaVision tropes like the hex. In the comics, Billy and Tommy Maximoff were originally introduced as Wanda and Vision’s children in the 1980s, only to have their lives ended prematurely by the dark lord Mephisto. The villain wiped both Billy and Tommy from existence and absorbed their energy into himself, later gaslighting Wanda to believe that the children were really figments of her imagination all along.

Eventually, this is revealed to not be the case at all — in actuality, Billy and Tommy were believed to have been reborn in the bodies of two ordinary teenagers, Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd. In Billy’s case, in the pages of Young Avengers, he is an ordinary Jewish teenager who accidentally activates his powers while fighting school bullies. There have been debates in the years since over whether or not that reincarnation was real, much less what happened to the actual Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd when the soul transfers happened. But the majority of Marvel characters recognize these versions of Billy and Tommy to be Wanda’s children — and now, it appears the MCU is doing the same.

New episodes of Agatha All Along debut Wednesdays at 9/8c on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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