The true identity of Joe Locke's 'Teen' has been one of the big mysteries of Agatha All Along, and as of episode 5, we've gotten our biggest clues yet that he may be exactly who we've been expecting all along.
Beware, because we can't discuss this without getting into some spoilers for Agatha All Along episode 5, so turn back now if you're trying to go in totally unspoiled.
Still with us? Here we go…
In the episode, Teen is shown using some high level magical abilities, as Agatha Harkness tells him "You're just like your mother," and we see him manifest a crown similar to the headpiece worn by Wanda Maximoff as the Scarlet Witch in WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The episode stops just short of confirming that Teen, whose true identity has been hidden by a magical sigil that prevents him from saying his name, is in fact Billy Kaplan/Maximoff, AKA Wiccan, one of the twin sons of Wanda Maximoff and Vision. And while this leaves a sliver of daylight for an unexpected twist in his identity, the evidence of Agatha All Along episode 5 is the best yet that he's exactly who fans have been theorizing.
That could have big implications for the future of the MCU, and of course for the back half of Agatha All Along, so let's get into the comic history of Billy Kaplan/Maximoff, AKA Wiccan, the son of the Scarlet Witch and Vision.
Who is Billy Kaplan/Maximoff?
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 saga 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
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
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 a mystery character, tells Agatha that Teen is not her son.
That catches things up to the current episode, in which Agatha's test goes horribly wrong, leading to a final scene in which she tells Teen "you're just like your mother," before he attacks her with advanced magical abilities, manifesting a bluish crown similar to the red headpiece worn by Wanda Maximoff as the Scarlet Witch.
This all but confirms his identity as Billy Kaplan/Maximoff, though as we said at the top there's room for a twist yet. And even if Teen is indeed Billy Kaplan, we still don't know what his specific connection is to Wanda - whether he's a reincarnation of her lost son, a variant from another reality, or a secret third thing.
We also don't know if that means his boyfriend, glimpsed in episode two, is actually Teddy Altman AKA Hulkling, or if Teen may wind up the next member of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel's burgeoning Young Avengers, which kicked off with the recruitment of Kate Bishop/Hawkeye in the post-credits stinger of The Marvels.
We'll learn more as Agatha All Along premieres new episodes every Wednesday evening on Disney Plus.
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