Marvel’s Agatha All Along Reveals The Identity Of Joe Locke’s Teen

This post contains spoilers for “Agatha All Along” and Marvel’s comic books.

When Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) is introduced spiraling in the role of a no-nonsense noir detective in the first episode of “Agatha All Along,” it is Teen (Joe Locke) who helps her realize that something is amiss. The presence of this adolescent, whose identity has been framed as a mystery since his first appearance in Westview, leads to some intriguing adjustments to Agatha’s outlook as she embarks upon the Witches’ Road with a hastily assembled coven. Yes, Agatha is still capable of manipulating events in her favor and instinctively seeks power like a drug (often at the cost of others), but Teen’s presence brings out a warmer, more maternal edge to her as the journey on the Road becomes increasingly perilous.

However, old habits die hard, and people are often molded by their painful pasts and seek out the same cycles of destruction that shaped them, which is a sentiment that runs through episode 5, aptly titled “Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power.” A lot happens here, with Agatha finally getting the powers she desperately craved at a horrible cost, incurring the wrath of a pissed-off Teen, whose identity is revealed with a musical cue that is the opposite of subtle, but perfect nonetheless. His hands spark with electrical energy as he takes over the minds of Jen (Sasheer Zamata) and Lilia (Patti Lupone), who submerge a shocked Agatha into quicksand-like mud, before meeting the same fate themselves. As the camera reveals Teen’s face, he is seen wearing a crown, one that is very, very similar to that of someone who once wielded immense power: the Scarlet Witch.

Those acquainted with Marvel Comics won’t be surprised by the reveal that Joe Locke’s Teen is none other than Billy Kaplan/Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff’s son. Also known as Wiccan, Billy seems to have broken the sigil placed on him, either triggered by his rightful anger over Alice’s (Ali Ahn) death or Agatha’s taunt that he is just like his mother. But who exactly is Billy Kaplan according to the comics, and what could his presence mean for the show?

You might remember Wanda and Vision’s twin sons Billy and Tommy from “WandaVision,” and how the death of these kids in Westview’s chaos-magic-fueled reality directly influenced the events of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” The twins are not real in the traditional sense of the term, but they exist due to Wanda’s power of reality-alteration — a truth that Agatha realizes in 1989’s “Avengers West Coast #51,” where she notices how the twins vanish whenever Wanda doesn’t actively think about them. Sometime after in the Marvel Comics timeline, the twins are kidnapped and taken to Hell by Master Pandemonium, a servant of — wait for it — Mephisto, who claimed that the soul fragments used to create the twins originated from him, prompting him to (allegedly) wipe the twins from existence.

There are clashing versions of what happened next, with “Avengers Disassembled” and “Avengers: The Children’s Crusade” offering different explanations for the twins’ existence in the first place, but one aspect is clear: Billy’s (named William in the comics) soul is reborn in the form of Billy Kaplan, while Tommy (Thomas in the comics) is reincarnated as Tommy Shepherd. Somehow, the twins managed to persevere due to the convoluted nature of Wanda’s magic, allowing the lost sons of Vision and Wanda Maximoff to chart their own trajectory when it comes to proving their worth as superheroes for a new generation.

Billy, or Wiccan, boasts a string of impressive powers, his primary ability being reality manipulation (just like Wanda), which earned him the moniker of “chaos-bringer.” He’s also adept at elemental manipulation, manifesting chiefly as electrokinetic powers, which “Agatha All Along” episode 5 references when he performs mind control and blasts the other witches. Over the course of his comic book appearances, Billy/Wiccan has been seen using ice and fire generation, hydrokinesis, and light-focused powers, while he also has mastery over flight, healing, astral projection, and power manipulation (which he uses in the episode to influence and control others). In terms of raw power scaling, Wiccan’s abilities are considered S-tier, shaping his valuable (and often reality-altering) contributions to the Young Avengers and eventually, the New Avengers.

“Darkest Hour, Wake Thy Power” raises the stakes quite unexpectedly, as the narrative pattern of one trial per episode is abruptly broken with a shocking death and character reveal. The trial — Agatha’s trial — still takes place, where the goal is to establish that Teen is not Nicholas Scratch, Agatha’s son, and underline that the titular witch’s hunger for power stems from her mother’s outlook, which shaped her need to use ruthlessness as a defense mechanism. Agatha is still an antagonistic figure who has brought about the deaths of innocents with her inherent selfishness, but the episode helps us understand why she is wired that way. “You were born evil,” her dead mother declares, and it is no surprise that Agatha imbibed that belief and embodied it, seeking refuge in cruelty and the addictive thrill of taking what’s not hers.

Once Agatha inadvertently causes Alice’s death and realizes that Teen cannot be her son (as Nicholas calls out during her power trip, begging her to stop), it is not hard for her to piece together Teen’s identity. Teen is devastated by Alice’s death and repulsed by Agatha’s nonchalance, which is exacerbated when Lilia and Jen also treat the tragedy as a side-effect of walking the path of witchcraft. By revealing his true identity, Billy distinguishes himself from them, punishing all three for their callousness, which adds an intriguing tint to his motivations.

Is it possible that Billy placed a sigil on himself to hide his true motivations or was it someone else? What could his end goal be in terms of the Witches’ Road, and does he secretly harbor ill intentions towards Agatha because of her history with Wanda? The episode’s title could be a hint as to why Billy chose this moment to reveal his identity: the death of the most protective coven member, which is received with apathy by her own coven, broke something in Billy, in turn shattering the sigil and awakening his true abilities. Or he could’ve been playing all of them for fools all along.

New episodes of “Agatha All Along” premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.