Last time on Agatha All Along,
the Third Trial began. The group was just able to outrace the Salem Seven by
flying on makeshift brooms to get to the Third Trial. Inside they were
transported to the 80s and forced to use a Ouija board to commune with the
dead. After a fake out of Agatha pretending to be Sharon, the actual Ghost
appeared. It was her mother, Evanora Harkness. The Elder Harkness chastised her
daughter for her evil ways and for the new Coven enabling her. She tells the
group to continue the walk down the Road without Agatha so she might punish her
wayward child. She attempted to possess Agatha to do so. Alice, forgetting who
she was dealing with because she wanted to help her Coven Sister out, tried to
blast Evanora away with her powers. That worked, but unfortunately Agatha was
unwilling or unable to stop herself from draining all the power out of Alice,
killing her. She’s only able to stop by Teen using the Ouija board and Nicholas
Scratch calling out to his mother from beyond the grave to stop her. Outside,
Agatha has regained a fraction of her previous power. Teen tries to yell at her
for hurting Alice, but she and the other Witches accept that this whole
exercise is about power, so there’s little more they could do. Agatha taunts
Teen a little by saying he’s just like his mother. Furious, Teen whips out some
magic of his own, using his powers to control Jen and Lilia and having them
throw Agatha onto the dirt beside the road. He then blasts them off the road
for good measure. As they sink into the swampy ground, we get a look at Teen’s
head and see him wearing a tiara like the one worn by the Scarlet Witch. Thus,
revealing him to somehow be Billy Maximoff. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.
Ep 6: Familiar By Thy Side
This episode is a brief history of
how Billy Maximoff and Billy Kaplan became the same person. We begin three
years ago during the Hex of Westview. William “Billy” Kaplan is a normal young
Jewish boy that is going through his Bar Mitzva. After the ceremony and the
during the party, he’s hugged by his parents, Jeff and Rebecca, and we’re shown
how happy and loving they are. Ya know, to really drive home that shit about to
hit the fan. He sees a palm reader stand at his party and goes to get a
reading. He meets Lilia for the first time. She does a reading for him, Billy
asking her to not read too much as he doesn’t want too many spoilers. She sees
that he’s got a long journey ahead of him, and, more disturbingly, his lifeline
is broken in two. Lilia tries to dress it up, saying that it can mean a lot of
things, and it’s not always bad. She then also announces Tower Reversed in one
of her trances. Billy tries to leave, Lilia grabs him and advices him to enjoy
the now. When alone she quickly draws the Sigil and slips it into the pocket of
the jacket that he forgot. She clearly forgets the moment the talisman is in
the pocket but hands it off to someone to return it to him. The party is then
broken up as they just got word that something is happening to the Hex in
Westview. Oh, I forgot to mention this is happening in the neighboring town of
Eastview. As the Kaplans drive home, Rebecca is distracted for a moment by the
Hex shifting and they crash after swerving to dodge an oncoming car. Billy
straight up dies in the crash, but while his parent run to get help the Hex
fades completely and Billy’s wayward soul leaps into his body. He shouts for
Tommy as he wakes up and his father comes back with Officer Alice Wu-Gulliver.
He's taken in an ambulance, but
Billy’s clearly confused about what happened. He clearly starts
hyperventilating when he sees his reflection in some glass. Later he’s
recovering in his hospital bed where we hear his parents mentioning to the
doctor that while he’s recovering, personality wise Billy is completely
different than he was before. The doctor refers them to a trauma specialist.
His parents come in to check on him, his dad making attempting to make a joke
that Billy doesn’t get. He finds that he can read minds now and tries to stave
off his parents fighting when they have one of those look arguments that
couples can do. They tell him that the brain scans are normal, and they think
the amnesia will wear off in time. Billy goes home and clearly is having weird
vibes being in this place. His dog Greg starts yapping at Billy, not
recognizing him. He keeps reading their minds and his parents mental panic
overwhelms him, he screams at them to stop worrying and then apologizes for it.
He goes to check out his room as per his mother’s thought, to see if that jogs
any memories. He seems to be a big fan of Houdini from the several posters of
him on the walls. Billy looks in a mirror and recites to himself that he’s
William Kaplan a few times, but he clearly doesn’t believe it.
Flashforward three years and we see
Billy with his boyfriend Eddie. He asks Billy why he’s got that Sigil with him
all the time. Billy says he’s not sure and can’t explain why. They kiss and
while they do, Eddie thinks about telling Billy that he loves him. Billy panics
a little when he hears this and tries to explain to Eddie what happened to him.
Specifically, that he died on that night and that when he came back, he wasn’t
fully William Kaplan. They kiss some more and then Eddie asks the big question,
if he’s not Wiliam Kaplan then who is he. They head up to Billy’s room and he
shows Eddie the dossier that he’s compiled about what happened to him. We learn
that officially; the Hex was deemed an Avengers Training Exercise gone wrong.
They pull up Billy’s computer where he had been watching a Jen Kale skin care
tutorial online. He plays a video of the Hex and how they were able to see the
ruins Wanda carved into the Hex from the outside. He says that this was magic,
and that Westview people refuse to talk about it. But he found this guy on
Reddit that was there and wants to talk to him about it.
Billy and Eddie go to meet his
contact, Bohnerriffic69 aka Pietro Maximoff aka Ralph Bohner. He’s grown a
mustache since last time and is going by Randal now. He’s very skittish after
the Hex it seems, he jumps at anything and everything. He tells the teens about
the Hex and how Wanda used it to act out her sitcom. The way he describes it is
incredibly creepy, as Wanda was subconsciously puppeteering them. They couldn’t
act unless it was part of their scene with her. Billy asks if there were any
side effects that Randal had notice after the fact. He says no, but then thinks
really hard “Don’t ask about Agatha Harkness” on repeat. Billy asks and Randal
flips out, saying she’s an ancient witch that mess you up and sprays them with
Witch repellent. He tries to storm off, but Billy follows him and begs for more
info. Randal agrees, saying that his deal with Agatha was way worse than the
rest of Westview. He reveals that he was Agatha’s henchman for the whole Hex,
being the “Ralph” she called her husband and the one that did all her dirty
work, like kidnapping Monica Rambeau and killing Sparky the dog. He seems
really messed up about killing Sparky, which proves he still has a soul. He
also says he was a bad influence on Wanda and Vision’s kids. Billy asks about them
and gets info on the OG Maximoffs Twins. He reacts to hearing the name Tommy,
and Randal referring to them as the little speedster and his mind reading
brother. Randal says he ran after getting free and that he’ll never go back,
not even for his BowFlex or Blu-ray collection. Billy asks if she’s harmless
now, but Randal insist that’s not the case.
Billy heads home and pretends that
he has homework to avoid his parents and do research. While listening to
Lorna’s Ballad of the Witches Road and compiles what he knows. Vison and Wanda
are presumed dead, and their twins are missing. He looks up Agatha Harkness
online and learns what some folks have aggregated about the ancient witch. He
uses a picture of Agatha Harkness to see some of her exploits and learn about
the Witches’ Road. After that he headed over to Westview where our story began.
Before breaking into Wanda’s house,
he used his spell book to learn how to do a release spell on Agatha and how it
requires a personal item. He slips over to the house and up into the
second-floor room of Nicholas Scratch. He searches through her stuff until she
finds her broach and runs for it. Detective Agatha chases after him before he’s
taken out by Sharon and captured by Agatha. It’s very weird to see the Agatha’s
delusion from the outside. It’s clear that like one sentence in five is
breaking through to Agatha as Billy was trying to explain himself the whole
time but she just wasn’t registering it. He breaks through to her with pointing
out the picture of the dead girl is just a picture of flowers and then tries to
free her. We then fast forward through the events of the first episode,
including the moment when he introduced himself, first as William Kaplan and
then as Billy Maximoff.
Back on the Witches’ Road, Agatha
drags herself from the muck. Billy meanwhile is standing and playing with the
Sigil before breaking it in his hands. Agatha joins him and says that was quite
a debut. He asks when she figured it out. Agatha claims to have had a feeling
right from the start, saying that he and Wanda had the same tell, magically
speaking. He asks what it is, but Agatha ignores it, saying that she wasn’t
sure-sure until he whipped out the powers. She calls him Billy for the first
time and he’s shocked to know that she can hear him now. She says she’s
impressed by his use of power, and in killing Lilia and Jen. She asks him where
he got this fresh body he’s wearing. Billy doesn’t answer, and Agatha says that
he shouldn’t feel bad about breaking the rules to survive. As that’s what makes
him a witch. Agatha starts talking about making it to the end of the Road,
Billy says he doesn’t need her anymore but when he tries to whip out the power
it doesn’t work. Agatha starts needling him, asking what Billy Maximoff wants
at the end of the Road. She reasons not his parents, but Tommy, Tommy is the
one that he wants to find. Billy says he can sense him but can’t find him.
Billy tells Agatha that he’s willing to work with her, but she’s got to know
that he doesn’t trust her now or ever. She agrees and they head out to find the
next trial. “Last one there is a nice person.” To which Billy says that he’s
not that nice.
Here’s a quick summary of the
history of the Maximoff twins 2.0 in Marvel comics. In 2005 there was a comic
event called “House of M” in which Wanda Maximoff used her immense magic Mutant
power to rewrite reality so that Mutants were the dominant species of human on
Earth under her father Magneto. As part of that, she created two twin boys to
be her children, as her husband at the time, Vision, was obviously incapable of
reproducing naturally. To do this it was eventually revealed that she stole
souls from Mephisto, one of Marvel’s biggest Devils. Eventually Wanda’s magic
was undone, with Wanda herself whispering “No More Mutants” and beginning the
era of Mutant extinction, and her boys were seemingly destroyed to push
Mephisto back. It’s later revealed that through… magic, basically, when the
universe was restored, it seemed to scoop up the fragments left over of Billy
and Tommy Maximoff and wrote them back into the script… I mean reality, as
Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepard. They had lives completely separate from each
other and seem to have existed a decade and change before Wanda’s big rewrite.
Eventually the boys discovered each other, their powers and their weird cosmic
relationship to Wanda. Tracking her down after she’d vanished post House of M.
For some reason they never seem that interested in their cosmic papa the Vision
though… I can see why the MCU decided that all of that might be a bit much for
their live action universe and went with a ghost merging with the recently
deceased.
That was a solid origin story for
this version of Billy Kaplan. I assume that they went with an actor swap
instead of just using the same one as Julian Hillard who played Billy in WandaVision
and Doctor Strange; Multiverse of Madness is barely into his teens and
Joe Locke is in his early 20s. Gotta age him up if you want him in the Young
Avengers with Hawkeye 2.0 and Ms. Marvel. Which, yeah, I can already tell that
the MCU and Disney big wigs are salivating to get started on that spin off,
only slightly less than they want to get to the X-Men refocusing. I want to
give props to Joe Locke’s acting chops in this episode. While he’s been giving
110% the whole time, he really did a great job portraying the confusion and
imposter syndrome that Billy was clearly going through as the William Kaplan
that was got mixed up with the Billy Maximoff that also was to make the new
version. It’s insanely convenient that he was able to find all this information
from a few minutes google searches but that’s TV writing for ya. It was
interesting to see how each of the New Coven featured in Billy’s story before
he knew it. Jen was obvious as he mentioned being a fan of hers when they met
but seeing that Alice was the cop that reported to the scene of his accident
and that Lilia was the one that put the Sigil on him was interesting. I don’t
think I’d have guessed that Lilia was the one, somehow a protective sign
screamed Alice. And I have to give the show props for making finding Tommy the
real goal of Billy’s walk. The twins have as tight a bond together as their
mother and uncle did, so I completely get Billy’s drive to find his twin again.
I wonder if they’ll include a cosmic reason why they can’t find each other, as
Tommy should probably manifested speedster powers by now, so you’d think
Speedster boy would be in all the news by now. But given the nature of Billy’s
reality warping powers maybe he’s just mundane until his soul twin finds him
again. So year, good origin story. Next time, we’ll see how the duo of Agatha
Harkness and Billy Maximoff plays out with all their cards on the table. See
you then.
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