Spoilers below for the final two episodes of Agatha All Along, so be warned if you haven’t yet streamed the conclusion with a Disney+ subscription.
While only nine episodes in length, Agatha All Along is nonetheless among the upper echelon of TV shows with extremely valuable rewatches, such is the dense writing and reflective storytelling mechanics from showrunner Jac Schaeffer’s creative team. Even if certain elements like Nicholas Scratch’s backstory confused me and I was underwhelmed by the Salem Seven’s efforts, it’ll likely go down as my favorite TV experience from the 2024 TV schedule, and I won’t stop thinking about it anytime soon.
Already, I know I’m in good company with plenty of other viewers wondering what Agatha’s finale means for Joe Locke’s Billy, and where we’ll see him and Kathryn Hahn’s now-ghostly witch seeking out his brother Tommy in the future. But there’s a pretty big logistical question regarding the twins’ current situations that doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as deserved, even for a show that works largely in magic and non-realism.
Do Billy And Tommy's Spirits Fully Heal The Bodies They Inhabit?
Agatha All Along made it easy enough to buy into the idea that Wanda Maximoff's twins were so real that their spirits lived on beyond the Westview Hex's dissolution, and it was exciting as hell to watch the Billy/William origin story play out in Episode 6. (Obviously enhanced by Ralph Bohner's surprisingly emotional return.) Indeed, watching Billy's spirit jump into William Kaplan's post-mitzvah body was quite emotional when coupled with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany's WandaVision audio.
So the general idea of bodies rising from the dead with new souls intact isn't the issue. Rather, I'm more interested in learning what kind of physical impact the spirits have on these bodies that suffered fatally traumatic circumstances. To put it more simply: is Billy suffering from any of the same extended health issues that William Kaplan likely would have faced had he survived the car crash? Or did Billy's spirit quasi-retcon the otherwise lethal injuries in full?
The fact that we did see the resurrected Billy in the hospital early on temporarily washed those concerns away (even if it raised other questions), but they rose up anew following the drowning sequence in Episode 8. Billy is guided by Agatha to find Tommy's soul and direct it to the bullied teen's body, and audiences are left with the notion that this is who Wiccan and his ghostly guide will be searching for in a future adventure. But the same question persists here...
It's not clear what William Kaplan's specific cause of death would have been, but it does already seem confirmed that Tommy's host body died from a lack of oxygen to the brain. So hypothetically, Tommy's spirit would need to completely reverse that brain damage to experience life outside of a comatose state. (Not to mention other internal injuries.)
On the flip side, perhaps Marvel is setting audiences up for yet another speedster-related tragedy — okay, Ralph Bohner's WV appearance wasn't tragic, per se — in the sense that Billy and Agatha will successfully track Tommy Maximoff down, only to realize he's been mentally incapacitated since the day the pool prank occurred.
I don't actually see Kevin Feige signing off on anything quite so dark, and I can't imagine the MCU will dangle the carrot of Tommy "Speed" Maximoff only to pull the rug out in such a sorrowful manner. But if that isn't the way things go, then I will 100% need for one of these projects to fully confirm that Billy and Tommy's spirits are capable of healing bodies as they enter them.
Unfortunately, it's unclear what the next project might be that would even address this plotline in passing, much less explain things at length. Will it be a Young Avengers movie headed up by Joe Locke? Or will that play into an arc for the upcoming Vision series? Somebody bring Lilia back so she can tell us the future, stat!
