Agatha All Along S01E06 Review: Wiccan

Agatha All Along, Season 1, Episode 6: Familiar By Thy Side

So yeah, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the previous episode revealed that 'Teen', who I've been calling 'Not-Wiccan' throughout these reviews, is actually Wiccan, a.k.a. Billy Kaplan, a.k.a. Billy Maximoff, a.k.a. the magical son of Scarlet Witch. The question is... how? 

And this episode takes us back to the end of WandaVision through Billy Kaplan (or, well, Billy Maximoff's) point-of-view as we get the huge lore dump that ties together all of the continuity questions we've been having. And for once in phase five MCU, it's actually not handwaved aside!

And this episode's review is a bit shorter than my usual MCU/Disney+ stuff, but that's because I've actually written this review a couple of times before my laptop ate it. But honestly, 'Familiar By Thy Side' is also an episode that isn't exactly the most important for a breakdown since so much of it is just us getting to know and see the tragedy and the conflict brewing within Billy's life in the last couple of years. 

The backstory of the Maximoff twins are kind of convoluted in the comics and it's something that I find it hard to even summarize, and I thought that the streamlined version we got here was pretty neat. We open up with William Kaplan, an average teenager who is celebrating his bar mitzvah. He's got loving parents, a lot of loving friends, and he's got an entire life in front of him. We get a surprise appearance of Lilia Calderu in the past, showing up as a palm reader in Billy's magic-themed bar mitzvah, and when Lilia sees the broken lifeline, we get the revelation that she's the one that seemingly places the sigil on Billy. 

And then, just as things seem to be going nice, Billy and his family get caught up in a car accident during the fateful hours that the battle between the Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness is happening in the final episodes of WandaVision. It's some nice continuity to see the memories of Westview coming back to the civilians, and then to see the massive magic-dome looming in the distance. 

While the mechanism is not made exactly clear, William Kaplan seems to have died in that car crash, and the spirit (???) of Billy Maximoff somehow got transported to the conveniently newly-evacuated fleshy vessel. And the episode does dwell on this part quite a bit, showing just how utterly confused this brand new 'Billy' is. The 'Maximoff' memories aren't quite back yet, but he sure as hell isn't William Kaplan. The doctors explain it away as trauma-induced amnesia, and we get to see the rather heartbreaking scenes as the Kaplan parents try their best to accommodate their seemingly-amnesiac child's confusion. It doesn't help either that Billy inherited magic powers, allowing him to read his new foster parents' minds and get even more confused.

For the sake of the Kaplan parents if nothing else, Billy kind of just pretends to be their child for the couple of years between WandaVision and Agatha All Along, which is kind of heartwarming and fucked up at the same time... but it's not like Billy's got anywhere else to go. He doesn't have memories of either Billy Maximoff or William Kaplan, and he just goes around trying to research what's going on. 

The initial scenes are probably the most effective for me, seeing how hard the Kaplan parents try to accommodate what they thought was an amnesiac child, while Billy is just... utterly confused about everything that's going on. 

But then we kind of jump through the years to a short period before Agatha's first episode, where the Kaplans have a functioning relationship, and Billy's found love in his boyfriend Eddie. Billy reveals to Eddie that he's got a secret, and he's been looking for the strange memories he's been having. This leads to them meeting Ralph "Fake Quicksilver" Bohner, who spends a good amount of time recapping the events of WandaVision to Billy. I don't mind this sequence, personally, since it's been quite some time since WandaVision aired, and we get to see just how utterly screwed some people's life had became. Billy's slow realization on what's going on, no matter how crazy it sounds, is also done well. 

(Also, the other coven witches show up at various points in Billy's life; Alice is the police officer that arrived on the car crash, while Jen... uh... Billy watches Jen's skincare videos? Uh-huh. Okay.)

But even if Wanda is kind of accounted for, what happens to Tommy Maximoff's spirit, if it's still even around? To this end, Billy decides to look for Agatha, who Ralph Bohner notes is still in Westview. We then get around a 10-minute recap of the first episode of Agatha All Along... only it's from Billy's POV. It's kind of funny, although I still wonder who was the person who taught Billy the basic magic spells that he has in his little book. Again, Kathryn Hahn hamming shit up is 90% of the reason this show was made in the first place, so yeah, why not. 

The final shots of the episode snaps back to the 'present' day, where Agatha crawls back from the mud -- of course she's not dead (and while they're not seen in this episode, Jennifer and Lilia are also of course not dead). She confronts Billy, and Agatha notes that she's managed to piece the clues together basically the whole time... or so she claims. Billy reveals to Agatha that it's his brother Tommy that he is looking for at the end of the Witches' Road. The two argue a bit, with the sullen Billy revealing that all of his fanboying has been essentially an act, but Agatha also is able to call Billy's bullshit, showing that he's not able to control his powers as much as he wants Agatha to believe, and the two walk down the road uneasily. 

It's... it's a pretty neat revelation episode. I do like some of the scenes here, particularly the early scenes that highlights the tragedy of Billy Kaplan's fate. The revelation is also suitably heavy for a 'yeah, fans, it's kind of obvious that this is Wiccan from the comics' twist. I do think that the episode does get a bit recappy while jumping through some aspects that I wished they explored a bit more, but ultimately I thought it was a fine episode. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comics, thanks to magic stuff (and many, many editorial retcons), Wanda and Vision's children were actually sent back in time and reborn/reincarnated into two children born to different families, with Billy Maximoff being born to the Kaplans in the past as 'Billy Kaplan'. 
• It's a comic-book thing; different writers had different visions (heh) for the twins, and the end result is quite messy. All things considered, the MCU's take on it streamlines a lot of the events that happened.
• The events of the last two episodes of WandaVision is seen in the parts of Billy's initial flashback, and some parts of it take place in this season's premiere, but seen through Billy's POV. 
• Ralph Bohner, a.k.a. the civilian that was brainwashed by the Scarlet Witch's spell to think that he's Quicksilver, was last seen in WandaVision's first season, played by the actor that played Quicksilver in the Fox X-Men movies. 
• Billy's boyfriend is named "Eddie", which is extremely close to the alter-ego of his comic-book counterpart's boyfriend, Teddy Altman, a.k.a. Hulkling.
• The Westview incident was covered up by the government as an 'Avengers training exercise', a term that was used by Rhodey to cover up the Iron Man incidents in the first Iron Man movie.