Who Is Wiccan in Marvel Comics?

Throughout the development and promotion of the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe series Agatha All Along, the identity of actor Joe Locke’s character has been a conspicuous mystery. This has been emphasized comically in recent weeks, with Locke revealing that the character is actually referred to simply as “Teen” for a portion of the series as a running joke and a recent promo showing his voice and mouth being magically censored when he tries to introduce himself to Kathryn Hahn’s titular character, the witch Agatha Harkness. But fans of Marvel Comics are convinced they already know who “Teen” really is. The assumption is that the character will eventually be revealed to be a version of William “Billy” Kaplan, also known as Wiccan, a superhero and member of the Young Avengers from the comics who is also the son of Agatha’s MCU nemesis, Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).

Wiccan Has Complicated Ties to the Scarlet Witch

Created by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung, Billy first appeared in Young Avengers #1 in 2005. After Wanda’s lover, the android Avenger known as The Vision, was destroyed during the events of Avengers Disassembled, a protocol he created to recruit young superhumans with ties to the Avengers was activated. Billy was one of the youngsters subsequently recruited by Iron Lad (a young, heroic iteration of Nathaniel Richards/Kang the Conqueror) to form a new superhero team in the wake of the Avengers’ disbanding. Billy discovered he had mystical powers similar to Wanda’s after the witch healed him following a fight with a group of bullies. Despite this, he initially used the code name “Asgardian” while fighting crime, as he was also a fan of Thor and was able to use his magic to control lightning, much like the Asgardian hero.

While serving on the team, Billy soon changed his code name to “Wiccan” and began developing a romantic relationship with teammate Teddy Altman, a shapeshifter known as Hulkling, eventually revealed to be of Skrull and Kree descent. Eventually, the team encounters Thomas “Tommy” Shepherd, a boy with superspeed who takes the fitting code name “Speed” and is identical in age and appearance to Billy, other than having different colored hair. Given that they bore resemblances to and the respective powers of Wanda and her brother, Pietro/Quicksilver, suspicion quickly grew about how the Young Avengers were connected to the older heroic siblings.

While married to Vision in a 1980s miniseries, Wanda used magic to grant her own wish for children, subsequently giving birth to twin boys that she and Vision named Thomas and William Maximoff. The twins were later abducted by the devilish villain Mephisto and his operative Master Pandemonium. Mephisto claimed that, after a previous defeat, his essence was separated into multiple pieces and scattered, with Wanda inadvertently using two of the pieces to create her children. Mephisto subsequently reabsorbed the boys’ energy into himself, seemingly wiping them from existence, although later stories would establish retcons that cast doubt on the boys’ true nature and whether they were actually connected to Mephisto.

When the Young Avengers later encounter Master Pandemonium, he suggests that the Maximoff twins’ souls were reborn in Billy and Tommy, hence their similar appearances and shared powers with Wanda and Pietro, even though the younger boys were biologically born to different respective families. After the team, Pietro, and his and Wanda’s father, Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, found an amnesiac Wanda and helped her regain her memories, she confirmed this to be true and has since acted as a motherly figure to both boys.

‘Agatha All Along’ Could Bring Billy Maximoff Back to the MCU

Billy and Tommy Maximoff were introduced to the MCU in the Disney+ series WandaVision, which also featured the debut of Hahn’s Agatha. Wanda spontaneously becomes pregnant while living with an apparition of Vision (Paul Bettany) — who in reality is dead — in the town of Westview, New Jersey, which she subconsciously enchanted with a hex that caused its environment to shift to reflect the spirit and style of American sitcoms from different decades. After being born, the twins used their own influence over the sitcom scenario to instantaneously increase their ages by multiple years twice, before settling as 10-year-olds, in which they are played by Julian Hilliard and Jett Klyne, respectively. But when Wanda accepts Vision’s death and realizes that the Hex is telepathically enslaving the real townspeople of Westview, she takes it down, despite knowing that this means her family will no longer exist.

The subsequent film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness reveals that variants of the boys naturally exist in most other universes in the multiverse, but not in the MCU’s main 616 universe. Given this, assuming Teen does wind up as a version of Billy, there will need to be a somewhat thorough explanation for how he ends up in the main universe where Agatha, or at least most of it, will presumably take place. This might understandably lead some to assume the character is someone with a simpler backstory, but there’s already a decent amount of evidence that he is in fact Billy. Promotional material for the series has shown that, whether she actually appears or not, Wanda influences Agatha’s story.

Although most fans don’t actually believe Wanda died in her tragic final scene in Multiverse of Madness, trailers for Agatha suggest that the incident in which she was presumed dead allows Agatha to break free of the spell Wanda put her under at the end of WandaVision, which caused Agatha to continue living in her faux sitcom persona as nosy neighbor Agnes. Furthermore, Teen’s self-described obsession with witches and related mythology shown in the trailers makes sense as a substitute for Billy’s superhero fandom from the comics, given the series’ own focus on witch lore. These continuity ties, along with the fact that Billy is arguably Marvel Comics’ most prominent adolescent gay male character and that Teen is also confirmed to be gay, make the former the most intuitive choice for the latter’s identity.

Wiccan Could Have a Bright Future in the MCU’s Young Avengers

Introducing an older version of Billy, who can potentially take up the Wiccan identity, could also connect Agatha to other ongoing and future storylines in the MCU, in addition to the title character and the Maximoff family’s arcs. The final scene in the film The Marvelsshows teenage superhero Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) introducing herself to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), the second Hawkeye. In an amusing reference to Samuel L. Jackson’s first MCU appearance as Nick Fury in Iron Man, Kamala asks Kate, “Did you think you were the only kid superhero in the world?” to which Kate notes that she’s actually 22 years old. The scene concludes with Kamala asking Kate to join a team of young heroes, which most fans assume will be the franchise’s version of the Young Avengers, given that several other members of the comic team have recently been introduced to the franchise, in addition to Kate, Billy, and Tommy.

Given this, it would make sense for either Kamala and/or Kate to appear in Agatha to recruit Teen if he does indeed wind up being Billy. Sacha Baron Cohen is rumored to be playing Mephisto in another upcoming series, Ironheart, which could allow the demonic villain to encounter Billy and/or one of the other Maximoffs onscreen in the future. But ultimately, viewers will have to follow Agatha All Along to learn once and for all whether Locke is really bringing Wiccan into the MCU.

Agatha All Along is streaming on Disney+ in the U.S.

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