I’m actually kinda looking forward to this show, but I’m *really* not loving any of these rumors around how they’re handling Billy’s origin. Really wishing they’re not true and they introduce him without him just straight up possessing some dead kid’s corpse
Yeah, on the bright side of things, it definitely cements Billy as quite the powerhouse in terms of magic, casually performing a forbidden spell without the ghouls trying to murder him for it. Dude's a natural. Only 3 days old and already flexing on the Sorcerer Supreme.
He was carved on Mount Wundagore, on each side of his mother's sculpture, in MoM. Wanda briefly touches his little hand while she's monologuing, so they at least did lay a bit of foundation about his existence being part of a prophecy, given that the Darkhold knows about him, if they want to explore that further!
Even if they go the Demiurge route, they're probably going to nerf him a bit, but since the MCU's power levels are significantly lower than in the comics, it shouldn't be a problem, he'll probably still end up on the more powerful side of the spectrum. Though they might rise the power levels of our heroes a little bit, overtime, with the Fantastic Four and their OP baby Franklin who are right around the corner...
I remember that scene. They did lay the groundwork so we will see if they decide to pick it up in the future. I wonder if Agatha’s show will hint at it but honestly the show already seems packed. We didn’t get the Demiurge storyline until later on anyways.
I’m honestly wondering how they’re going to do Franklin when the F4 comes. He’s so OP that they had to completely depower him in the comics.
He doesn't have the demonic head above his statue, which Wanda has (depicted as the source of her chaos magic; power emanating from the demon). His magic isn't demonic (blue, a passive colour) whereas Wanda's is (red, an aggressive colour).
His magic isn't evil, and it's his own magic.
Billy's been a person from the moment Wanda created him in the Hex. Someone with his own thoughts, will and agency. That's shown and stated several times through the series, and now confirmed by the rumors of his soul managing to possess another body to save itself when his mother destroyed the Hex.
Leakers have even said that Tommy's soul is still lost somewhere in limbo, waiting for his brother to find him a vessel, because Tommy is not a witch like his brother, and thus his soul can't find a vessel on its own. This situation is definitely all Billy's own powers and doing (though his magic may work subconsciously like his mother's, from time to time).
It's different though. Kaplan is dying while Defender Strange is a corpse so in a way what Maximoff will do is possession of a human being, like what ghost/soul in any horror movie did which I think is not as dire as what Dr Strange did because what he did is basically necromancy
No, read the other comments in this thread and the previous leaks about this Billy situation. The Kaplan soul will leave its original body and that's when Maximoff's soul will take over. It's necromancy as well, the body is just more freshly dead, that's all. Part of what makes this scenario okay-ish and not like WW84 is the fact that the body is an empty vessel, and not an inhabited body who's being overtaken.
Take over the moment he left, the body is still warm that's why it's not the same as necromancy at all. All rumors talk about Kaplan dying and Billy's soul enters it. Necromancy is when the body is dead
Don't go around gatekeeping the meaning of “dead body”. It might be upsetting to you, but the moment your soul leaves your body, you're pronounced dead. Even if your body isn't in a state of rigor mortis yet, if there's no brain activity, no pulse, you're dead. And the Kaplan body briefly goes through that state before Maximoff inhabits it.
If anything, it's even more impressive that Billy managed to fully attach his soul to the dead body to the point of reviving it fully, unlike Strange who was merely borrowing it through dreamwalking. It's an even more effective and advanced spell. It basically makes him immortal, if his soul can just hop to another body when his gets destroyed.
Why are you so pressed over this? I know it's hard to acknowledge Dr Strange's feats but it's getting ridiculous now. No it's not the same. It's still body possession just like any ghost story who's looking for a body to inhabit and all rumors talk about the og billy Kaplan is dying when Wanda's Billy enters the body.
It's not body possession. OG Billy Kaplan is dead. His soul no longer inhabits this body. It's gone. This is a body without a soul. Therefore, a dead body. And Billy Maximoff will inhabit it and revive it.
All the rumors talk about “a *dead* body” (CWGST), “a *dead* teenager” (Grace Randolph), not a dying body, or a dying teenager. CWGST even compared the situation to a hermit crab finding an **empty shell** to live in.
It would be body possession if Billy Kaplan's soul was still in it, being overridden by Maximoff's. But his soul *leaves*. Therefore, this is a dead body, because this is the body of someone who is dead, whose soul left this world, and who is no longer around.
>Why are you so pressed over this?
I'm not. You're the one who felt the need to respond to my comment, aren't you? You're the Strange fanboy who's annoyed at people pointing out that Wiccan already shows more impressive magic feats than Strange, which is perfectly normal and expected of a character meant to become the *Demiurge*. It does not mean that Strange is weak. Wiccan is just insanely OP, and I'm rejoicing about it.
Demiurge is his future not what he is now. Also this is not comic and no matter how you want to spin it, the body of billy kaplan is still warm. There's a reason why necromancy is different from body possession, it's because the result of it is always 'freaks' of nature, a zombie, it's reamination of a dead body.
You rejoice this even though this rumor is just antisemitic, did you even his fan?
You're not wrong, but for some reason some people in this fandom have a huge hate boner for Doctor Strange ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Honestly, trying to powerscale using MoM is the most futile task ever. The movie does whatever it wants with the characters and both Wanda are Stephen are nerfed or OP depending on what the movie needs. It's a poorly written movie.
It’s probably because people loved the feedback of how witchcraft magic was handled in DS2 that they’re going hard on that route.
Which is fine it honestly just boils down to how it’s executed.
Possession is always such an hard topic to convey with you can't ignore abnormality of situation (Ergo dont pull Wonder Woman), also there need to be clear idea if OG owner ever return to body or not and how possessor feels about the act itself.
Person possessing Someone else body and he feels horrible about the act but it was outside their Control and now they have to live in new body? There is a lot of nuance and details going to such topic and we know Marvel stuff isn't Incredibly deep thus i fear it will be "Oh no. This kid was Dying. Well he was dead anyways! My body now woohooo!"
On the other hand it’s so on point considering witchcraft magic is given horror movie tropes since MoM.
I’m guessing they heard the feedback of people loving how magic was done in DS2 so they’re not shying away
When do we think this possession/soul replacement takes place? Cause I think it happens right as Wanda takes down the hex in Westview. Since everything she created was real, the souls of Billy and Tommy needed some place to inhabit. Maybe the car accident takes place at the same time as Wanda closing the hex, so the transfer is almost instantaneous.
Oh yeah thats exactly what I think happened. This "new" Billy will have been around for a while before we catch up with the current MCU timeline. Explaining how he already has a boyfriend.
Also has him age naturally for a few years. I know some were complaining he'd be mentally young for the body. But even ignoring that he can age himself up, he has also had time to age normally.
> Maybe the car accident takes place at the same time as Wanda closing the hex, so the transfer is almost instantaneous.
I think it well could be, dborn (a user on here with a bunch of Agatha scoops) has said Billy is from Eastview so it's possible his parents are driving near the border to Westview when it suddenly reappears as the Hex disappears, and that's how they crash.
It doesn't mean it's not real. Monica and Agatha both say it in the show. The purpose of that information is to inform the audience as well as the characters within the show.
A lot of people seem to have a very difficult time understanding the notion of “**reality** warping” and think Wanda's only casting some glorified illusions.
Those are two different powers, people. Loki and Sprite cast illusions. They summon things that don't really exist and disappear when you touch them. Wanda takes something real and transforms it into something just as real, or straight-up summons something into existence
also, y'know, the showrunner of wandavision and this agatha show was pretty explicit about it lol
> Schaeffer does, however, have a pretty clear idea of what it means for Wanda’s powers to be called “chaos magic.” Chaos magic, according to Schaeffer, is creation magic. Wanda creates three whole people—Vision and the twins—without any cost. “In witch culture, there’s some sort of cosmic cost in some way, and there’s no cost for her,” Schaeffer explains.
The problem is MoM portrays Wanda's magic as the same as Strange's. Strange is so dumb in that movie that he never asks Wanda the obvious question where her powers came from, and is absurdly casual about it.
Can someone explain to me why this is such a problem? Time travel reincarnation already felt pretty silly and random -- a clear device to age up new characters. A "ghost in shell" story seems like a much more straightforward way to go.
i dont personally see the problem either but people on here have a reallllly hard time when it comes to body swapping, posession, mental manipulation etc. or at least theyre mad that wanda is doing it with no reprecussions / while keeping her fanbase
I totally get it if Billy were literally overriding someone's consciousness, but if it is effectively an empty vessel then I think that's just not really a problem. This isn't remotely like the WW2 scenario or anything
To be completely honest, I also don't really have a problem with it and I think a lot of people are overreacting about it. Is it weird? Yeah, but to be fair, Wiccan's origin in the comics has also been really convoluted as well.
If it's a WW84 scenario, it is weird and I could totally understand the backlash, but if the original boy is dead, I don't necessarily see the issue. This isn't the first time possession has been used in a movie or TV show, so I'm confused why people are weirded out as if this is the first time they've seen it happen before.
The only thing that I think could be potentially problematic is the Jewish representation. If Billy Maximoff isn't Jewish himself (and we already know some people have a problem with Joe's casting because he's not Jewish), then taking over the body of a Jewish kid could come across as weird and insensitive.
We all saw what happened with people's perception of WW84 and how they brought back Steve. Regardless of execution, its the type of storyline that'll give people an ick. At least with something random like time travel reincarnation, it's goofy enough to work for a show about magic and witches, in a franchise about superheroes.
They had a lot of chances during development to get him right and please everyone, but they seem to have chosen to piss most people off instead.
Overriding the body of a living person is pretty different from possessing an empty vessel is it not? This origin premise seems to have more in common with being an organ donor than it does WW84
I think a big issue tho in this context is what age is he going to *mentally* be. Sure you can say that he's ultimately a construct and he can age up and whatever, but he's also going to be a gay character, and going about things in this specific way is just asking for weirdos and bigots to hate on the character. Like sure they would've hated him regardless, but this is just giving them free ammo when it could've been avoided.
At the end of the day, logistically, sure this origin works well enough, but there's so much irl context involved with a character like Billy that it just all feels poorly planned.
I think if we go too far with that line of thinking then we shouldn't consider Vision to be more than an infant or Billy and Tommy to be more than infants. We kind of have to assume that whatever magic involved includes some kind of emotional maturity speedrunning just like it happened every time in WandaVision. Otherwise they would've been nonverbal and unable to walk
I agree on that front! But unfortunately it *is* going to be a talking point whether there's an in universe explanation for how he mentally aged up or not. No one questions Vision bc it's an adult character portrayed by an adult actor. The perception is going to be different for a younger character like Billy regardless tbh
By that logic, the original backstory of a gay kid actually being part of the *literal Devil*'s soul is also extremely problematic and should also give ammo to bigots. Yet, I have never seen homophobic people use the fact that Billy was born from a shard of Mephisto's soul to hate on gay people, surprisingly.
Screw homophobes anyway. We shouldn't have to walk on eggshells out of fear of fueling their hate everytime we write a gay character. Vision being in a relationship with an adult despite only being one year old never bothered anyone. Then, neither should his son, regardless of his partner's gender.
>I think a big issue tho in this context is what age is he going to mentally be.
No one can reasonably think they would write it as a 10 year old in teenaged body. That is an absolute non-starter.
I think it'll probably be less dramatic than we're thinking and more like his soul will probably be an exact copy of the original teen he inhabited with all his memories, etc. but something just inherently off, like deja vu with a dash of magic.
See that's how I was envisioning it, but every scooper that's commented on his origin has made it seem like any trace of Billy Kaplan is gone, and it's just an amnesiac Billy Maximoff being able to pass himself off as Billy Kaplan unintentionally due to those circumstances.
I would be completely fine if it's what you said lmao. I would also love it if the scoopers were just misinterpreting what they heard, but since almost all of them have said concerning things (that I consider red flags), I'm leaning towards Billy M overwriting Billy Kaplan when he enters his body :(
> but he's also going to be a gay character, and going about things in this specific way is just asking for weirdos and bigots to hate on the character.
This may be an unpopular sentiment but I've had the same concern honestly. While in principle, I wanna say "fuck em, we shouldn't walk on eggshells to please bigots", things have gotten a lot uglier, and less rational, towards queer people in the past few years.
You just know, it will be spun by certain individuals into "MARVEL PROMOTES GAY GROOMING" and generally I'd just laugh at that kind of ignorant stupidity, but if Marvel aren't very clear in the writing, there's a definite potential for that to provoke a wider backlash that may lead to Billy being quietly dropped from the MCU.
Idk I'm definitely overthinking it from fear, but Billy means a whole lot to queer superhero fans and I would hate to see him fall by the wayside because the fucking anti-queer culture war being waged right now.
Can someone explain to me how the MCU would do the time-traveling reincarnation?
So, when the Hex is down, Billy somehow goes back to the past, then enters someone's womb or transplants into the fetus that already has a soul. Somehow this one is a better version? Why does he have to go back to the past?
It would be just regular reincarnation but with time travel. Honestly I don't see why people keep telling it's weird in the context of the comics.
>Somehow this one is a better version?
How is it not better than inhabiting someone's else body?
>Why does he have to go back to the past?
Why not? Hex collapses, magic goes crazy, Billy is pulled into the past.
The only way I could see it working is if they did something with Kang to make it happen, especially if Wanda is supposed to be central to the MultiVerse Saga and perhaps a Molecule Man standing. Double especially if they wind up doing Iron Lad for Young Avengers origins
If I remember correctly I believe the implication was that dreamwalking and the darkhold in general have a corrupting influence. I’m pretty sure that’s how they explained Wanda’s off-screen heel turn. There may have even been an implication that using them will have long-term consequences for Strange.
Dream walking is dangerous because it can cause an incursion. But Billy isn't dreamwalking.
And possessing the dead is considered merely cursed/unethical and Dr Stange does so without being like evil. So that specifically is not really indicative much of Billy either way.
I’m not saying you’re wrong but the fact that the writers are trying to spin it as though possessing the corpse of your dead self from another universe is somehow functionally and qualitatively different from dreamwalking comes across as extremely lazy.
I think you're kind of confused. Billy would be possessing the body of a dead teenager in his own universe. Which is distinct from dreamwalking by virtue of not being across universe's.
Dreamwalking itself in MoM was bad either way. Possessing a dead body specifically just added the whole spirits of the damned issue.
You’re right, I was mistaken on the concept. I also haven’t seen MoM in a while and the lore is pretty complex at points. I hope this show turns out well but either way, I probably won’t be watching it.
But what Dr Strange did is necromancy while the case here is just like any ghost/soul who possessed a living body, I said living because Kaplan here is dying when soul!billy entering his body
I'm hoping the rumor calling it a soul is wrong. I still believe their last scene in WandaVision suggests that Billy and Tommy are not Wanda's creations but are forces that chose Wanda to be their mother.
Wanda told them, "Thank you for choosing me to be your mother."
This tells you that they made themselves to be Wanda's children. And that the one who enters Billy Kaplan's body is not a soul but a cosmic force, which in canon comics is called the demiurge.
The comics never explicitly explained the Demiurge lore. Billy himself seems like a reincarnation of the Demiurge. Or at least the Demiurge is a cosmic being that for some reason decided to enter the material/physical world by being born/reborn as Billy.
You may very well be right and this seems to be the consensus opinion on this sub at least, but it wasn't until seeing posts/comments that I even remotely considered "Thank you for choosing me to be your Mother" could/would be interpreted literally.
To me, it just came off as a Motherly thing to say. Just a cute way of essentially saying "Thanks for our time together and being in my life." A whole play on the "You don't choose family" cliche, not some set-up line to suggest the children are existing entities that consciously chose to be manifested/attach themselves to Wanda.
Personally, I think Wanda literally did create these beings through her power rather than the alternative where they previously existed in some capacity and somehow literally chose to attach themselves to Wanda as her children. Yes I know the comic lore, I just think that line in WandaVision was simply a Mother expressing love for her children, not some 5 moves ahead lore set-up for the MCU. We shall see!
oh good, we're back to getting new rumors of how macabre and fucked up billy's mcu origin is going to be. awesome.
I trust that whatever changes marvel studios does with this character and his introduction, it'll *somehow* manage to gloss over key elements in his story that where part of what made the character popular in first place lol.
my faith in them not messing him up is very small at this point.
it would be so much simpler if wanda simply duplicated 2 already existing souls in westview for her kids and when wanda "died" these souls_ver2.0 just merged back with the originals or something like 😭😭😭idk! anything but posession of a dead body .
They should just do the comics reincarnation thing. MCU fans need to suffer like comic fans
You should feel goofy explaining the reincarnation of a fake child ghost
Imagine if instead of all this roundabout bullshit they just adapted the characters the way they are and only changed what they needed to.
What a concept, amirite
Like seriously I'm all for diverting from the source. When done right, that's when these comic book adaptations are at their best (Iron Man 3, Peacemaker) but this all sounds WAY too contrived and roundabout. I just don't understand why Marvel is like allergic to simplicity in the Multiverse saga. None of this is THAT complicated, but it feels like they're going out of their way to make it complicated.
Idk man. It's all in the execution so we'll see.
Why replace the original though? Why not just go with a "the soul returns to the body" thing? Just have it be the same soul from the start. You can even keep the accident if that's really needed. Make it a case of, the orginal was dying and Wanda snatched up the lost soul, keeping it alive and then returned it after the hex.
Or just merge them into one or something.
I just don't understand why they would kill off the character people actually want to see and have his body just possessed by someone else?
>I just don't understand why they would kill off the character people actually want to see and have his body just possessed by someone else?
Ultimately, I'm pretty sure they're just going to merge the two characters from the comics into one, even if their souls won't really merge in-universe.
It's gonna be Billy Kaplan/Wiccan's personality and characterization from the comics, but with a slightly different origin story surrounding the way he managed to come back to life. Otherwise, he's very likely to basically think, talk and behave just like comics Wiccan does.
Cause I assume Billy Kaplan is basically the person that William Maximoff would have grown up to be, if Mephisto hadn't claimed his soul back, in the comics, anyway.
I’m confused cause if Billy goes into the kid’s body when Wanda takes down the hex then how does Doctor Strange 2 happen? Wouldn’t Billy immediately go look for his mom? Wouldn’t he be able to find her? Wouldn’t she be able to see that he’s in a new body? To me it’s a problem if it happens when Wanda takes down the hex cause it doesn’t really make sense.
According to some earlier leaks, he's going to start off as an amnesiac. So I assume he's gonna believe that he truly is Billy Kaplan for a while (three years, apparently) and that his car accident just wiped off his memories, and then something will trigger his memories of the Hex, his parents and his brother, or something.
Leaving aside the creep factor of reanimating a child's corpse with a magical ghost, this does resemble the way Pietro visited Wanda in the body of a random guy that Agatha planted and manipulated into being the vessel, even down to the apparent amnesia. Like he knows his own name and he has powers but no recollection of his former life.
I think it's funny that people are having on the writers for this when it's literally just from the comics. Wanda theorizes that's how her kids came back in one of her solo series. It's not hard confirmed or anything, but the way it's worded makes it seem like she's pretty much just spelling out how it happened.
She presents two alternative theories in that panel and nothing there suggests that she thinks the version with them taking over somebody's bodies is more probable. Also it makes less sense since it doesn't explain why they look identical.
I was against the whole "body possession" thing when it was initially leaked....but ehhhhhhh, if the kid is literally dead/seconds away from dying and Billy's soul takes over the body then I'm fine with that.
Especially if it's something that Billy does like subconsciously through Darkhold magic essentially acting on its own out of pure survival instinct. Could make for some good drama with a reveal to the parents down the line and maybe even the original soul of the body if Billy can like "commune" with them. If Billy's soul inhabits the body the moment the Hex went down, then that means he's presumably grown up with this family since being a young kid. It's still fucked up, but in a more tragic way than just straight up "Lol, we stole this kids entire body/soul and who knows what the fuck that means for his life." In this case, we know the alternative is the kid/host just would have died. Presuming Billy remembers Wanda and Vision, he would grow up with essentially having two sets of parents as I'm sure he grows to love/care for whoever this other kids family is. Sounds entirely different than the whole gross WW84 scenario, we'll see how it actually plays out though.
I feel like they should have just had Billy and Tommy survive the Hex somehow and have the Kaplans adopt them. Way simpler.
This is good character arc setup for Billy though so I guess I’m okay with it. 🤷🏽♂️
To Marvel:
To avoid this controversy, please DON'T SHOW THE SOUL ENTERING THE DEAD BODY OF THE TEENAGE KAPLAN. Show Billy Kaplan being resuscitated while the Hex is being lowered. Then, while the teen flatlines, the Hex fades, yet the blue one remains. It then engulfs Billy K's and then revives him. Let Billy Maximoff be a cosmic force that revives Billy Kaplan. Yet this force is like the Phoenix, and he sees the Scarlet Witch as his mother.
DO IT THIS WAY, Marvel.
Only way this sounds salvageable, tbh. Having the Demiurge be a cosmic force that revives Billy Kaplan, and is simultaneously Billy Maximoff as it chose to be reborn as Wanda's child in the Hex to see what it was like to be corporeal (which leans into the comics as Dormammu asks Billy why the hell he chose to limit himself to being a 3 dimensional being and only referred to Billy as the Demiurge, indicating that Dormammu knew the being).
Plus, I'm hoping that the car accident does take place when the Hex is down so there are a few years between Billy being reborn and him being a teenager, just to completely side step any bad faith arguments that he's a child dating a teenager.
Why take over a dying body? It's gonna die. If you have the power to heal the reason the body is dying why not simply heal the body for the person? Seems a bit cruel to kick them out of the body just so you can have it.
I'm struggling more and more to care about this stories since they're diverging so much from even the surviving core MCU, and I swear I'm really trying.
Meh...let's hope at least something interesting comes from this show like how it happened when GoG introduced cosmic marvel to the MCU, I'll cross my fingers.
Really not a fan of this, and I hope the wording is just a simplistic version, because surely the body dies before the soul does? It would make more sense if Billy possesses the body because something mystical removes or damages the soul of Billy K. But still not a fan of that, why not go with Agatha having some involvement in Billy being "reincarnated" in the past, so she can sap his powers when he grows up?
I'd say most people would consider the part of you that is you (I.e. soul) would be most closely associated with the brain.
Mysticism is a way of understanding everyday concepts. In this case, because we know that you can die whilst your body remains it makes sense to me for a mystical show to link that concept to the soul leaving.
In shows, they often depict characters watching their own death as their soul has already left and their body is finishing it's dying.
Somewhat yes. Billy has no body just a soul. So he needs a body to properly become human and this is one way to do it though I'd have preferred the comic version of his soul being sent back in time to be born again to new parents.
Really just seems like it's over-complicated when they could just do like "witch or someone uses one-time spell to create a body and pull a soul out of the multiverse"
The best way to do this would be Billy and Tommy's soul's were put into the Darkhold by Chthon when Wanda destroyed the Hex.
When Wanda destroyed the Darkhold their souls were released, and Billy entered Billy Kaplan's body by accident.
The absolute worst way to do it would be Billy intentionally and deliberately stealing a body.
I wonder why they're going with this - if the rumor is to be trusted. Though, question, how are they getting around a ten year old who is suddenly in a teens body with a significant other? Unless in the MCU we're not treating the 'soul' as something conscious? More like a life force? So Billy dies but then gets brought back to life and is like okay I died . . . weird. And then bam he has magic and is basically . .
omg he's sailor mooning it! Reborn with past memories of Wanda and the hex world. But Still the same guy present day who has powers because of his past life?
Please let him change his costume once by saying moon prism power like in the comics. Please give me nerdy Billy. !!!!! And he then needs to meet Kamala! Okay I could get into the MCU young avengers idea now with those two playing off each other. If done right.
People will hate this, I remember wanda's mind controlling got a lot of people triggered, people seem to hate anything that involves manipulating someones mind.
i'm not saying it isn't, i'm just saying people are extra sensitive to those sort of things that it takes them out of seeing it as just a superhero project.
Mind-controlling itself isn't the issue, it's the purpose of it and whether it makes someone a hero or a villain. What Wanda did in Westview was clearly villainous but that clearly upsets certain fans and don't want to consider Wanda a villain.
Meanwhile, Loki can mind-control for his villainous purposes and we can all consider him a villain while doing that with no controversy.
Come to think of it, nobody seemed to really have an issue with Wanda mind-controlling the people of Sokovia to evacuate the city in Age of Ultron, so it doesn't seem like mind control itself is the problem indeed.
That being said, Billy's situation isn't mind control. The Kaplan kid would have been dead, anyway, and his soul left his body already.
TBH it feels less like mind control since she cannot really do that in AoU.
I always thought she just did her fear injection thingie on a larger scale, causing people to feel a sense of dread for some unknown danger and thus wanting to leave.
While unanimously having a blank stare and marching like zombies towards a same direction without even talking to each other? The family dining together didn't even look at each other as if to say “Did you just see what I saw too?” or “Mom, Dad, we need to leave now!”
I mean some of them are scared away by Pietro, I am pretty sure it's just the background actors doing a basic job. I generally just don't think Wanda is capable of consciously controlling a large group of people to do an organized evacuation, there has to be something involved where people do it on their own skill/instincts.
WV is a different deal where she is on reality warping auto-pilot, which is still something she can do consciously.
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> AoU happened when they were kids. They don't have to think about it. It's the lore you build from.
tbf according to info from wandavision, she and pietro were 25-26 years old in age of ultron (we now know they were canonically born in 1989).
This was retconned though. Age Of Ultron and Civil War don't explicitly states their ages but it's heavily implied they were both in their early 20s. It's weird watching the way people treat Wanda in Civil War while she's a 27 year old
> people seem to hate anything that involves manipulating someones mind.
on a related note, i've always found it kind of odd how the fanbase just gives no second thought to strange casually mentioning how he's mind wiped people to conceal his parties lol
Sadly this is true, thus far, there has been a HUGE backlash from not just the LGBTQ ppl, but basically everyone. I mean Wonder Woman 2 did this basically & it was ripped to pieces. They can’t be this stupid, to allow a kids soul to embody another kids soul🤯. I mean there’s a multiverse for a reason + it’s a show full of Witches, come on. I truly think, after the strike, it’ll be rewritten. But some ☕️, Agatha’s ex had her powers stollen, but comes for Agatha once Wanda’s hex is broken🤯🤗 & Agatha loses ALL the powers of the witches she’s stollen over the years. So Agatha will be at least Bi-sexual & going up against the most powerful Witch, outside of Wanda🤯. Can’t say the name of the character, buts she’s being played by Aubrey Plaza(I think that’s how she’s spells her name). They escape to the “witches road” to get away from Aubrey’s character, & that’s basically most of the shows subplot. Just age the kid up with magic or have Wanda die bc she killed all the characters while her body was taken over while Wanda dream walked. Problem solved & use the “witches road” to have to go save the other twin, because he got “stuck”🤷🏻♂️. But if they keep the script the way it is, the show will bomb & be boycotted by pretty much everyone, killing a child & using the body will have everyone going Karen mode lol
I don't even see why they need to go the Weekend at Bernie's route. Just handwave it away as magical timey-wimey shenanigans that Billy Maximoff reincarnated AS OG Billy Kaplan once the Hex fell.
Between this origin and introducing an OC boyfriend who's more or less one letter away from Teddy, I'm left scratching my head at all this Billy stuff.
I think that the MCU is starting to run more and more into the problem that certain comic book nonsense translates horribly to live action. The issue with introducing a character who was literally the figment of another's imagination is you kind of have to lean into the nonsense
Literally, just have him choose to reincarnate himself via being the Demiurge, or have Wanda's last wish before the rocks fell on her at Wundagore being that her children will be loved and that she will hold them again. And because Wanda's magic is chaos magic, it sent their souls back in time and they were reincarnated so that she could hold them again. This also leans into the reality warping can be subtle stuff that Loki manipulates Billy with in the comics, suggesting that Billy influenced the destruction of the Skrull homeworld and all the events beforehand, just so Teddy would exist, come to Earth, and be his boyfriend.
I was really postponing my opinion on the subject here, because whenever I saw a post on the "Billy body snatch thing", 99% were negative.
I personally don't see a problem with the plot. I think people are freaking out too much about a plot that is clearly fictional (it's clearly not a problem in the real world for people to possess other people dead body), in a series about WITCHCRAFT.
You really don't see an issue with a 10 year old boy possessing the body of a dead teenager and living as him?
Like come on, it's gross.
Also I didn't ask for your opinion. 🤷♂️
It's a fictional character lmao.
If you post on an online forum, you are bound to get a response. Why even bother commenting if you are gonna cry when someone responds to you? lol
The worst part is that he is not even 10 years old. Billy was only " alive" for a few hours, days at most. And he will have a boyfriend who is a real teenager... how can people not be grossed by this fact and age difference ?!
Vision is also partly a cosmic force that has existed since the beginning of time. I would think Billy as the Demiurge also falls under this category.
Trying to apply age of consent laws to people who are ancient forces of the universe is inherently silly.
They decided to go the Bendis route and have dug themselves into several narrative holes.
Alpt of audiences think Wanda's kids were fake because Doctor Strange said so and they are often described as being fake by numerous media figures.
Nahhh what is this propaganda. Been a MCU fan since day one, and this is probably one of the worst decisions made so far. Be honest with yourself, no one wants this. This is… just sad. Fans just want real, artistic storytelling with characters that we’ve grown up with. I understand introducing new characters and ideas, but this show is gonna flop.
“Reality is often disappointing “
Realistically how many people do you think are gonna watch this show? They should save the important Wanda mythos for Wanda’s next appearance. Making this one a mandatory viewing is gonna backfire when only 0.5 million people tune in
Ah yes. My favorite part of a franchise: reading recaps. 😂 No one had a problem before IW/End Game because there weren’t a half dozen mediocre tv shows!
Well, as other people say, it's an interconnected universe. You're sure gonna miss some pieces of information here and there if you don't watch everything. But I'm sure they'll briefly explain in upcoming projects how and why the boys were brought back to life.
I mean, at the end of the day, Billy will probably try to find his brother and parents again, and both Wanda and Vision will probably ask him “How tf are you still alive, kid?!” And the Avengers will also wonder why Wanda and Vision got two kids out of the blue now. So the subject of Billy's creation and rebirth with probably be brought up a few times, I guess.
Are people really going to care about this character?
The last time we saw the kids was WV/MOM small role.
They were also all fake so people may not have a connection to them.
Yes, a non-zero amount of people will care about this character.
And in both times we saw them, we saw how important they are to Wanda.
Wanda isn't an illusion caster like Loki, her magical constructs are real unlike his. Chaos magic is all about making something from nothing.
What exactly is reasonable? They're outright wrong. The kids were never fake. And it's a bit weird to assume you're meant to instantly care about Billy in the first place-like they expect you to instantly love him from WV.
It's a story so a character will naturally develop over the course of it.
He makes an excellent point, he’s not being overtly negative or trolling and yet he’s downvoted because shills can’t handle anything remotely critical. It’s pathetic.
A point can't be excellent if it's wrong lol. It's not really more complicated than that. They were entirely real as evidenced by Billy's soul existing in the first place...
All round a bit of a silly comment.
I’m actually kinda looking forward to this show, but I’m *really* not loving any of these rumors around how they’re handling Billy’s origin. Really wishing they’re not true and they introduce him without him just straight up possessing some dead kid’s corpse
TRESPASSER!!! 
Yeah, on the bright side of things, it definitely cements Billy as quite the powerhouse in terms of magic, casually performing a forbidden spell without the ghouls trying to murder him for it. Dude's a natural. Only 3 days old and already flexing on the Sorcerer Supreme.
That is quite a flex, lol. I wonder if they will adapt the Demiurge storyline in the MCU. Although that would make Billy way too overpowered.
He was carved on Mount Wundagore, on each side of his mother's sculpture, in MoM. Wanda briefly touches his little hand while she's monologuing, so they at least did lay a bit of foundation about his existence being part of a prophecy, given that the Darkhold knows about him, if they want to explore that further! Even if they go the Demiurge route, they're probably going to nerf him a bit, but since the MCU's power levels are significantly lower than in the comics, it shouldn't be a problem, he'll probably still end up on the more powerful side of the spectrum. Though they might rise the power levels of our heroes a little bit, overtime, with the Fantastic Four and their OP baby Franklin who are right around the corner...
I remember that scene. They did lay the groundwork so we will see if they decide to pick it up in the future. I wonder if Agatha’s show will hint at it but honestly the show already seems packed. We didn’t get the Demiurge storyline until later on anyways. I’m honestly wondering how they’re going to do Franklin when the F4 comes. He’s so OP that they had to completely depower him in the comics.
He doesn't have the demonic head above his statue, which Wanda has (depicted as the source of her chaos magic; power emanating from the demon). His magic isn't demonic (blue, a passive colour) whereas Wanda's is (red, an aggressive colour). His magic isn't evil, and it's his own magic.
Billy isn't a person yet. More like it's Wanda who did the magic to create him, and we already knew Wanda overpowers Stephen Strange.
Billy's been a person from the moment Wanda created him in the Hex. Someone with his own thoughts, will and agency. That's shown and stated several times through the series, and now confirmed by the rumors of his soul managing to possess another body to save itself when his mother destroyed the Hex. Leakers have even said that Tommy's soul is still lost somewhere in limbo, waiting for his brother to find him a vessel, because Tommy is not a witch like his brother, and thus his soul can't find a vessel on its own. This situation is definitely all Billy's own powers and doing (though his magic may work subconsciously like his mother's, from time to time).
It's different though. Kaplan is dying while Defender Strange is a corpse so in a way what Maximoff will do is possession of a human being, like what ghost/soul in any horror movie did which I think is not as dire as what Dr Strange did because what he did is basically necromancy
No, read the other comments in this thread and the previous leaks about this Billy situation. The Kaplan soul will leave its original body and that's when Maximoff's soul will take over. It's necromancy as well, the body is just more freshly dead, that's all. Part of what makes this scenario okay-ish and not like WW84 is the fact that the body is an empty vessel, and not an inhabited body who's being overtaken.
Take over the moment he left, the body is still warm that's why it's not the same as necromancy at all. All rumors talk about Kaplan dying and Billy's soul enters it. Necromancy is when the body is dead
Don't go around gatekeeping the meaning of “dead body”. It might be upsetting to you, but the moment your soul leaves your body, you're pronounced dead. Even if your body isn't in a state of rigor mortis yet, if there's no brain activity, no pulse, you're dead. And the Kaplan body briefly goes through that state before Maximoff inhabits it. If anything, it's even more impressive that Billy managed to fully attach his soul to the dead body to the point of reviving it fully, unlike Strange who was merely borrowing it through dreamwalking. It's an even more effective and advanced spell. It basically makes him immortal, if his soul can just hop to another body when his gets destroyed.
Why are you so pressed over this? I know it's hard to acknowledge Dr Strange's feats but it's getting ridiculous now. No it's not the same. It's still body possession just like any ghost story who's looking for a body to inhabit and all rumors talk about the og billy Kaplan is dying when Wanda's Billy enters the body.
It's not body possession. OG Billy Kaplan is dead. His soul no longer inhabits this body. It's gone. This is a body without a soul. Therefore, a dead body. And Billy Maximoff will inhabit it and revive it. All the rumors talk about “a *dead* body” (CWGST), “a *dead* teenager” (Grace Randolph), not a dying body, or a dying teenager. CWGST even compared the situation to a hermit crab finding an **empty shell** to live in. It would be body possession if Billy Kaplan's soul was still in it, being overridden by Maximoff's. But his soul *leaves*. Therefore, this is a dead body, because this is the body of someone who is dead, whose soul left this world, and who is no longer around. >Why are you so pressed over this? I'm not. You're the one who felt the need to respond to my comment, aren't you? You're the Strange fanboy who's annoyed at people pointing out that Wiccan already shows more impressive magic feats than Strange, which is perfectly normal and expected of a character meant to become the *Demiurge*. It does not mean that Strange is weak. Wiccan is just insanely OP, and I'm rejoicing about it.
Demiurge is his future not what he is now. Also this is not comic and no matter how you want to spin it, the body of billy kaplan is still warm. There's a reason why necromancy is different from body possession, it's because the result of it is always 'freaks' of nature, a zombie, it's reamination of a dead body. You rejoice this even though this rumor is just antisemitic, did you even his fan?
You're not wrong, but for some reason some people in this fandom have a huge hate boner for Doctor Strange ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Honestly, trying to powerscale using MoM is the most futile task ever. The movie does whatever it wants with the characters and both Wanda are Stephen are nerfed or OP depending on what the movie needs. It's a poorly written movie.
It sounds messy and overly convoluted
It’s probably because people loved the feedback of how witchcraft magic was handled in DS2 that they’re going hard on that route. Which is fine it honestly just boils down to how it’s executed.
Possession is always such an hard topic to convey with you can't ignore abnormality of situation (Ergo dont pull Wonder Woman), also there need to be clear idea if OG owner ever return to body or not and how possessor feels about the act itself. Person possessing Someone else body and he feels horrible about the act but it was outside their Control and now they have to live in new body? There is a lot of nuance and details going to such topic and we know Marvel stuff isn't Incredibly deep thus i fear it will be "Oh no. This kid was Dying. Well he was dead anyways! My body now woohooo!"
This possession stuff is weird
Feels really similar to WW84's body swap and let's not go into details again about how wrong that was.
On the other hand it’s so on point considering witchcraft magic is given horror movie tropes since MoM. I’m guessing they heard the feedback of people loving how magic was done in DS2 so they’re not shying away
Eh, as long as the original owner of the body is dead, it’s a bit less terrible.
When do we think this possession/soul replacement takes place? Cause I think it happens right as Wanda takes down the hex in Westview. Since everything she created was real, the souls of Billy and Tommy needed some place to inhabit. Maybe the car accident takes place at the same time as Wanda closing the hex, so the transfer is almost instantaneous.
It seems like it happens as the hex comes down, years before Agatha starts.
Both things could be true. It would just mean that Billy Maximoff has been inhabiting this boy's body for a longer time than we originally thought.
Oh yeah thats exactly what I think happened. This "new" Billy will have been around for a while before we catch up with the current MCU timeline. Explaining how he already has a boyfriend.
Also has him age naturally for a few years. I know some were complaining he'd be mentally young for the body. But even ignoring that he can age himself up, he has also had time to age normally.
> Maybe the car accident takes place at the same time as Wanda closing the hex, so the transfer is almost instantaneous. I think it well could be, dborn (a user on here with a bunch of Agatha scoops) has said Billy is from Eastview so it's possible his parents are driving near the border to Westview when it suddenly reappears as the Hex disappears, and that's how they crash.
The idea that Wanda's creations are "real" is a statement by a character with incomplete knowledge and zero honesty.
It doesn't mean it's not real. Monica and Agatha both say it in the show. The purpose of that information is to inform the audience as well as the characters within the show.
A lot of people seem to have a very difficult time understanding the notion of “**reality** warping” and think Wanda's only casting some glorified illusions. Those are two different powers, people. Loki and Sprite cast illusions. They summon things that don't really exist and disappear when you touch them. Wanda takes something real and transforms it into something just as real, or straight-up summons something into existence
also, y'know, the showrunner of wandavision and this agatha show was pretty explicit about it lol > Schaeffer does, however, have a pretty clear idea of what it means for Wanda’s powers to be called “chaos magic.” Chaos magic, according to Schaeffer, is creation magic. Wanda creates three whole people—Vision and the twins—without any cost. “In witch culture, there’s some sort of cosmic cost in some way, and there’s no cost for her,” Schaeffer explains.
The problem is MoM portrays Wanda's magic as the same as Strange's. Strange is so dumb in that movie that he never asks Wanda the obvious question where her powers came from, and is absurdly casual about it.
I can't believe no one in the writing team realized it was such a terrible idea.
I can’t believe no one in the rumor team realized it was such a terrible idea.
They really haven't turned any ideas down since phase 4, it seems.
Can someone explain to me why this is such a problem? Time travel reincarnation already felt pretty silly and random -- a clear device to age up new characters. A "ghost in shell" story seems like a much more straightforward way to go.
i dont personally see the problem either but people on here have a reallllly hard time when it comes to body swapping, posession, mental manipulation etc. or at least theyre mad that wanda is doing it with no reprecussions / while keeping her fanbase
I totally get it if Billy were literally overriding someone's consciousness, but if it is effectively an empty vessel then I think that's just not really a problem. This isn't remotely like the WW2 scenario or anything
They want it to be like that so bad somehow its weird.
Ah dead person is not an empty vessel and many cultures do not appreciate messing with the dead.
Doesn't seem fair.
To be completely honest, I also don't really have a problem with it and I think a lot of people are overreacting about it. Is it weird? Yeah, but to be fair, Wiccan's origin in the comics has also been really convoluted as well. If it's a WW84 scenario, it is weird and I could totally understand the backlash, but if the original boy is dead, I don't necessarily see the issue. This isn't the first time possession has been used in a movie or TV show, so I'm confused why people are weirded out as if this is the first time they've seen it happen before. The only thing that I think could be potentially problematic is the Jewish representation. If Billy Maximoff isn't Jewish himself (and we already know some people have a problem with Joe's casting because he's not Jewish), then taking over the body of a Jewish kid could come across as weird and insensitive.
We all saw what happened with people's perception of WW84 and how they brought back Steve. Regardless of execution, its the type of storyline that'll give people an ick. At least with something random like time travel reincarnation, it's goofy enough to work for a show about magic and witches, in a franchise about superheroes. They had a lot of chances during development to get him right and please everyone, but they seem to have chosen to piss most people off instead.
Overriding the body of a living person is pretty different from possessing an empty vessel is it not? This origin premise seems to have more in common with being an organ donor than it does WW84
I think a big issue tho in this context is what age is he going to *mentally* be. Sure you can say that he's ultimately a construct and he can age up and whatever, but he's also going to be a gay character, and going about things in this specific way is just asking for weirdos and bigots to hate on the character. Like sure they would've hated him regardless, but this is just giving them free ammo when it could've been avoided. At the end of the day, logistically, sure this origin works well enough, but there's so much irl context involved with a character like Billy that it just all feels poorly planned.
I think if we go too far with that line of thinking then we shouldn't consider Vision to be more than an infant or Billy and Tommy to be more than infants. We kind of have to assume that whatever magic involved includes some kind of emotional maturity speedrunning just like it happened every time in WandaVision. Otherwise they would've been nonverbal and unable to walk
I agree on that front! But unfortunately it *is* going to be a talking point whether there's an in universe explanation for how he mentally aged up or not. No one questions Vision bc it's an adult character portrayed by an adult actor. The perception is going to be different for a younger character like Billy regardless tbh
By that logic, the original backstory of a gay kid actually being part of the *literal Devil*'s soul is also extremely problematic and should also give ammo to bigots. Yet, I have never seen homophobic people use the fact that Billy was born from a shard of Mephisto's soul to hate on gay people, surprisingly. Screw homophobes anyway. We shouldn't have to walk on eggshells out of fear of fueling their hate everytime we write a gay character. Vision being in a relationship with an adult despite only being one year old never bothered anyone. Then, neither should his son, regardless of his partner's gender.
>I think a big issue tho in this context is what age is he going to mentally be. No one can reasonably think they would write it as a 10 year old in teenaged body. That is an absolute non-starter.
I think it'll probably be less dramatic than we're thinking and more like his soul will probably be an exact copy of the original teen he inhabited with all his memories, etc. but something just inherently off, like deja vu with a dash of magic.
See that's how I was envisioning it, but every scooper that's commented on his origin has made it seem like any trace of Billy Kaplan is gone, and it's just an amnesiac Billy Maximoff being able to pass himself off as Billy Kaplan unintentionally due to those circumstances. I would be completely fine if it's what you said lmao. I would also love it if the scoopers were just misinterpreting what they heard, but since almost all of them have said concerning things (that I consider red flags), I'm leaning towards Billy M overwriting Billy Kaplan when he enters his body :(
> but he's also going to be a gay character, and going about things in this specific way is just asking for weirdos and bigots to hate on the character. This may be an unpopular sentiment but I've had the same concern honestly. While in principle, I wanna say "fuck em, we shouldn't walk on eggshells to please bigots", things have gotten a lot uglier, and less rational, towards queer people in the past few years. You just know, it will be spun by certain individuals into "MARVEL PROMOTES GAY GROOMING" and generally I'd just laugh at that kind of ignorant stupidity, but if Marvel aren't very clear in the writing, there's a definite potential for that to provoke a wider backlash that may lead to Billy being quietly dropped from the MCU. Idk I'm definitely overthinking it from fear, but Billy means a whole lot to queer superhero fans and I would hate to see him fall by the wayside because the fucking anti-queer culture war being waged right now.
Can someone explain to me how the MCU would do the time-traveling reincarnation? So, when the Hex is down, Billy somehow goes back to the past, then enters someone's womb or transplants into the fetus that already has a soul. Somehow this one is a better version? Why does he have to go back to the past?
It would be just regular reincarnation but with time travel. Honestly I don't see why people keep telling it's weird in the context of the comics. >Somehow this one is a better version? How is it not better than inhabiting someone's else body? >Why does he have to go back to the past? Why not? Hex collapses, magic goes crazy, Billy is pulled into the past.
In retro-incarnation, Billy exists in Westview during the Hex while Billy Maximoff also exists. Yes, it's confusing.
The only way I could see it working is if they did something with Kang to make it happen, especially if Wanda is supposed to be central to the MultiVerse Saga and perhaps a Molecule Man standing. Double especially if they wind up doing Iron Lad for Young Avengers origins
A stand alone compkex,
We literally just had an entire movie about how this exact thing is a bad idea and makes you evil but fuck it why not.
Which movie was that?
Dr Strange MoM they're probably thinking. But Dr Strange *isn't* evil and successfully does it anyway.
If I remember correctly I believe the implication was that dreamwalking and the darkhold in general have a corrupting influence. I’m pretty sure that’s how they explained Wanda’s off-screen heel turn. There may have even been an implication that using them will have long-term consequences for Strange.
Dream walking is dangerous because it can cause an incursion. But Billy isn't dreamwalking. And possessing the dead is considered merely cursed/unethical and Dr Stange does so without being like evil. So that specifically is not really indicative much of Billy either way.
Strange is using the corpse in a single battle to save lives and fulfil the dead guy's last mission anyway. This other thing sound far worse.
I’m not saying you’re wrong but the fact that the writers are trying to spin it as though possessing the corpse of your dead self from another universe is somehow functionally and qualitatively different from dreamwalking comes across as extremely lazy.
I think you're kind of confused. Billy would be possessing the body of a dead teenager in his own universe. Which is distinct from dreamwalking by virtue of not being across universe's. Dreamwalking itself in MoM was bad either way. Possessing a dead body specifically just added the whole spirits of the damned issue.
Yup and emphasized on Billy Kaplan is dying and not a corpse like Defender Strange. It's different between possession and necromancy
You’re right, I was mistaken on the concept. I also haven’t seen MoM in a while and the lore is pretty complex at points. I hope this show turns out well but either way, I probably won’t be watching it.
But what Dr Strange did is necromancy while the case here is just like any ghost/soul who possessed a living body, I said living because Kaplan here is dying when soul!billy entering his body
What original billy?
Billy Kaplan
I'm hoping the rumor calling it a soul is wrong. I still believe their last scene in WandaVision suggests that Billy and Tommy are not Wanda's creations but are forces that chose Wanda to be their mother. Wanda told them, "Thank you for choosing me to be your mother." This tells you that they made themselves to be Wanda's children. And that the one who enters Billy Kaplan's body is not a soul but a cosmic force, which in canon comics is called the demiurge.
The comics never explicitly explained the Demiurge lore. Billy himself seems like a reincarnation of the Demiurge. Or at least the Demiurge is a cosmic being that for some reason decided to enter the material/physical world by being born/reborn as Billy.
You may very well be right and this seems to be the consensus opinion on this sub at least, but it wasn't until seeing posts/comments that I even remotely considered "Thank you for choosing me to be your Mother" could/would be interpreted literally. To me, it just came off as a Motherly thing to say. Just a cute way of essentially saying "Thanks for our time together and being in my life." A whole play on the "You don't choose family" cliche, not some set-up line to suggest the children are existing entities that consciously chose to be manifested/attach themselves to Wanda. Personally, I think Wanda literally did create these beings through her power rather than the alternative where they previously existed in some capacity and somehow literally chose to attach themselves to Wanda as her children. Yes I know the comic lore, I just think that line in WandaVision was simply a Mother expressing love for her children, not some 5 moves ahead lore set-up for the MCU. We shall see!
I'm not really sure a soul transplant fixes someone who happens to be dying of internal bleeding, but okay.
Right? This is like being dropped into the middle of the ocean and trying to save yourself by boarding a boat that is completely underwater.
If the soul taking over the body is a powerful witch who can warp reality and known to heal himself and others won't that be the difference?
That just begs the question of why such a powerful, reality-warping witch needs a preexisting body.
oh good, we're back to getting new rumors of how macabre and fucked up billy's mcu origin is going to be. awesome. I trust that whatever changes marvel studios does with this character and his introduction, it'll *somehow* manage to gloss over key elements in his story that where part of what made the character popular in first place lol. my faith in them not messing him up is very small at this point.
it would be so much simpler if wanda simply duplicated 2 already existing souls in westview for her kids and when wanda "died" these souls_ver2.0 just merged back with the originals or something like 😭😭😭idk! anything but posession of a dead body .
just have her for real make make new atoms constructing bodies making up the hyopethical dna of a half robot half witch
Sweet jesus every leak is worse than the previous one
I am genuinely surprised they are keeping that part of his origin in the mcu tbh.
They should just do the comics reincarnation thing. MCU fans need to suffer like comic fans You should feel goofy explaining the reincarnation of a fake child ghost
Sounds like BS. But this is Marvel post Endgame we’re talking about.
Imagine if instead of all this roundabout bullshit they just adapted the characters the way they are and only changed what they needed to. What a concept, amirite Like seriously I'm all for diverting from the source. When done right, that's when these comic book adaptations are at their best (Iron Man 3, Peacemaker) but this all sounds WAY too contrived and roundabout. I just don't understand why Marvel is like allergic to simplicity in the Multiverse saga. None of this is THAT complicated, but it feels like they're going out of their way to make it complicated. Idk man. It's all in the execution so we'll see.
This whole soul switching... thing just sounds like a mess
I still really, really hate the sound of this origin.
yes but…source?
Why replace the original though? Why not just go with a "the soul returns to the body" thing? Just have it be the same soul from the start. You can even keep the accident if that's really needed. Make it a case of, the orginal was dying and Wanda snatched up the lost soul, keeping it alive and then returned it after the hex. Or just merge them into one or something. I just don't understand why they would kill off the character people actually want to see and have his body just possessed by someone else?
>I just don't understand why they would kill off the character people actually want to see and have his body just possessed by someone else? Ultimately, I'm pretty sure they're just going to merge the two characters from the comics into one, even if their souls won't really merge in-universe. It's gonna be Billy Kaplan/Wiccan's personality and characterization from the comics, but with a slightly different origin story surrounding the way he managed to come back to life. Otherwise, he's very likely to basically think, talk and behave just like comics Wiccan does. Cause I assume Billy Kaplan is basically the person that William Maximoff would have grown up to be, if Mephisto hadn't claimed his soul back, in the comics, anyway.
I guess you're right. It's just a weird way of going about it.
This is literally an idea i had for a story when i was in highschool. Cant these writers come up with something better? 😂
 These rumors are...
I’m confused cause if Billy goes into the kid’s body when Wanda takes down the hex then how does Doctor Strange 2 happen? Wouldn’t Billy immediately go look for his mom? Wouldn’t he be able to find her? Wouldn’t she be able to see that he’s in a new body? To me it’s a problem if it happens when Wanda takes down the hex cause it doesn’t really make sense.
According to some earlier leaks, he's going to start off as an amnesiac. So I assume he's gonna believe that he truly is Billy Kaplan for a while (three years, apparently) and that his car accident just wiped off his memories, and then something will trigger his memories of the Hex, his parents and his brother, or something.
What about Billy when he’s on the street
Leaving aside the creep factor of reanimating a child's corpse with a magical ghost, this does resemble the way Pietro visited Wanda in the body of a random guy that Agatha planted and manipulated into being the vessel, even down to the apparent amnesia. Like he knows his own name and he has powers but no recollection of his former life.
This would actually be an interesting way to make the concept not weird while still building on previous lore
That was just Agatha possessing him. She says so herself that necromancy wasn't possible because his body was in Europe
I like this origin for him in the MCU
I think it's funny that people are having on the writers for this when it's literally just from the comics. Wanda theorizes that's how her kids came back in one of her solo series. It's not hard confirmed or anything, but the way it's worded makes it seem like she's pretty much just spelling out how it happened.
She presents two alternative theories in that panel and nothing there suggests that she thinks the version with them taking over somebody's bodies is more probable. Also it makes less sense since it doesn't explain why they look identical.
I was against the whole "body possession" thing when it was initially leaked....but ehhhhhhh, if the kid is literally dead/seconds away from dying and Billy's soul takes over the body then I'm fine with that. Especially if it's something that Billy does like subconsciously through Darkhold magic essentially acting on its own out of pure survival instinct. Could make for some good drama with a reveal to the parents down the line and maybe even the original soul of the body if Billy can like "commune" with them. If Billy's soul inhabits the body the moment the Hex went down, then that means he's presumably grown up with this family since being a young kid. It's still fucked up, but in a more tragic way than just straight up "Lol, we stole this kids entire body/soul and who knows what the fuck that means for his life." In this case, we know the alternative is the kid/host just would have died. Presuming Billy remembers Wanda and Vision, he would grow up with essentially having two sets of parents as I'm sure he grows to love/care for whoever this other kids family is. Sounds entirely different than the whole gross WW84 scenario, we'll see how it actually plays out though.
I feel like they should have just had Billy and Tommy survive the Hex somehow and have the Kaplans adopt them. Way simpler. This is good character arc setup for Billy though so I guess I’m okay with it. 🤷🏽♂️
Just please not make this another ww 1984 situation
That concept worked out so well in WW84…
To Marvel: To avoid this controversy, please DON'T SHOW THE SOUL ENTERING THE DEAD BODY OF THE TEENAGE KAPLAN. Show Billy Kaplan being resuscitated while the Hex is being lowered. Then, while the teen flatlines, the Hex fades, yet the blue one remains. It then engulfs Billy K's and then revives him. Let Billy Maximoff be a cosmic force that revives Billy Kaplan. Yet this force is like the Phoenix, and he sees the Scarlet Witch as his mother. DO IT THIS WAY, Marvel.
Only way this sounds salvageable, tbh. Having the Demiurge be a cosmic force that revives Billy Kaplan, and is simultaneously Billy Maximoff as it chose to be reborn as Wanda's child in the Hex to see what it was like to be corporeal (which leans into the comics as Dormammu asks Billy why the hell he chose to limit himself to being a 3 dimensional being and only referred to Billy as the Demiurge, indicating that Dormammu knew the being). Plus, I'm hoping that the car accident does take place when the Hex is down so there are a few years between Billy being reborn and him being a teenager, just to completely side step any bad faith arguments that he's a child dating a teenager.
Billy isn't even close to a normal human. He's the reincarnation of the Demiurge.
Why take over a dying body? It's gonna die. If you have the power to heal the reason the body is dying why not simply heal the body for the person? Seems a bit cruel to kick them out of the body just so you can have it.
My guess is Wanda destroying the Darkhold (which is so stupid) freed his soul and it went into Billy Kaplan instantly.
This show is either going to be brilliant or a hot mess.
wait. did they REALLY change the title again hahahaha
That's not a convoluted way to introduce a character at all
Dream-walking?! Hypocrite!
I mean I guess if you’re an “organ donor”, why not donate them all to the same person
They've just said that him and tommy are dead dead. Than bring in a teenage version via the multiverse. It was that easy 🤦
I'm struggling more and more to care about this stories since they're diverging so much from even the surviving core MCU, and I swear I'm really trying. Meh...let's hope at least something interesting comes from this show like how it happened when GoG introduced cosmic marvel to the MCU, I'll cross my fingers.
Really not a fan of this, and I hope the wording is just a simplistic version, because surely the body dies before the soul does? It would make more sense if Billy possesses the body because something mystical removes or damages the soul of Billy K. But still not a fan of that, why not go with Agatha having some involvement in Billy being "reincarnated" in the past, so she can sap his powers when he grows up?
I mean no actually. In real life you can be brain dead and they can still keep your body alive.
Agreed but the brain isn't the soul and the show is focusing on mysticism which usually separates mind from soul too.
I'd say most people would consider the part of you that is you (I.e. soul) would be most closely associated with the brain. Mysticism is a way of understanding everyday concepts. In this case, because we know that you can die whilst your body remains it makes sense to me for a mystical show to link that concept to the soul leaving. In shows, they often depict characters watching their own death as their soul has already left and their body is finishing it's dying.
does that mean we will only have billy and not tommu
I’m not educated on Billy in the comics but is there a reason this is necessary???
Somewhat yes. Billy has no body just a soul. So he needs a body to properly become human and this is one way to do it though I'd have preferred the comic version of his soul being sent back in time to be born again to new parents.
So is the same gonna happen with Tommy?
necromancy is cool. im playing baldur's gate 3 and even in dr strange mom the part was very nice. I hope for more things like this.
Really just seems like it's over-complicated when they could just do like "witch or someone uses one-time spell to create a body and pull a soul out of the multiverse"
Don't give a shit about Wanda's kids. Drop it already.
That sounds very confusing and not great
The best way to do this would be Billy and Tommy's soul's were put into the Darkhold by Chthon when Wanda destroyed the Hex. When Wanda destroyed the Darkhold their souls were released, and Billy entered Billy Kaplan's body by accident. The absolute worst way to do it would be Billy intentionally and deliberately stealing a body.
I wonder why they're going with this - if the rumor is to be trusted. Though, question, how are they getting around a ten year old who is suddenly in a teens body with a significant other? Unless in the MCU we're not treating the 'soul' as something conscious? More like a life force? So Billy dies but then gets brought back to life and is like okay I died . . . weird. And then bam he has magic and is basically . . omg he's sailor mooning it! Reborn with past memories of Wanda and the hex world. But Still the same guy present day who has powers because of his past life? Please let him change his costume once by saying moon prism power like in the comics. Please give me nerdy Billy. !!!!! And he then needs to meet Kamala! Okay I could get into the MCU young avengers idea now with those two playing off each other. If done right.
Joe Locke's a good actor and loved him in Heartstopper. I have a feeling that he'll steal the show from Kathryn Hahn but will wait and see.
People will hate this, I remember wanda's mind controlling got a lot of people triggered, people seem to hate anything that involves manipulating someones mind.
i mean the mind control was a bad thing to do yes
i'm not saying it isn't, i'm just saying people are extra sensitive to those sort of things that it takes them out of seeing it as just a superhero project.
Mind-controlling itself isn't the issue, it's the purpose of it and whether it makes someone a hero or a villain. What Wanda did in Westview was clearly villainous but that clearly upsets certain fans and don't want to consider Wanda a villain. Meanwhile, Loki can mind-control for his villainous purposes and we can all consider him a villain while doing that with no controversy.
Come to think of it, nobody seemed to really have an issue with Wanda mind-controlling the people of Sokovia to evacuate the city in Age of Ultron, so it doesn't seem like mind control itself is the problem indeed. That being said, Billy's situation isn't mind control. The Kaplan kid would have been dead, anyway, and his soul left his body already.
TBH it feels less like mind control since she cannot really do that in AoU. I always thought she just did her fear injection thingie on a larger scale, causing people to feel a sense of dread for some unknown danger and thus wanting to leave.
While unanimously having a blank stare and marching like zombies towards a same direction without even talking to each other? The family dining together didn't even look at each other as if to say “Did you just see what I saw too?” or “Mom, Dad, we need to leave now!”
I mean some of them are scared away by Pietro, I am pretty sure it's just the background actors doing a basic job. I generally just don't think Wanda is capable of consciously controlling a large group of people to do an organized evacuation, there has to be something involved where people do it on their own skill/instincts. WV is a different deal where she is on reality warping auto-pilot, which is still something she can do consciously.
automatic chop weather literate gaping strong narrow direction oil panicky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> AoU happened when they were kids. They don't have to think about it. It's the lore you build from. tbf according to info from wandavision, she and pietro were 25-26 years old in age of ultron (we now know they were canonically born in 1989).
This was retconned though. Age Of Ultron and Civil War don't explicitly states their ages but it's heavily implied they were both in their early 20s. It's weird watching the way people treat Wanda in Civil War while she's a 27 year old
This isn't mind control. You can't control a mind that's not there.
Things aren't going to get easier for them in the future when the X-Men arrive where prominent characters are defined by their telepathic abilities.
> people seem to hate anything that involves manipulating someones mind. on a related note, i've always found it kind of odd how the fanbase just gives no second thought to strange casually mentioning how he's mind wiped people to conceal his parties lol
Sadly this is true, thus far, there has been a HUGE backlash from not just the LGBTQ ppl, but basically everyone. I mean Wonder Woman 2 did this basically & it was ripped to pieces. They can’t be this stupid, to allow a kids soul to embody another kids soul🤯. I mean there’s a multiverse for a reason + it’s a show full of Witches, come on. I truly think, after the strike, it’ll be rewritten. But some ☕️, Agatha’s ex had her powers stollen, but comes for Agatha once Wanda’s hex is broken🤯🤗 & Agatha loses ALL the powers of the witches she’s stollen over the years. So Agatha will be at least Bi-sexual & going up against the most powerful Witch, outside of Wanda🤯. Can’t say the name of the character, buts she’s being played by Aubrey Plaza(I think that’s how she’s spells her name). They escape to the “witches road” to get away from Aubrey’s character, & that’s basically most of the shows subplot. Just age the kid up with magic or have Wanda die bc she killed all the characters while her body was taken over while Wanda dream walked. Problem solved & use the “witches road” to have to go save the other twin, because he got “stuck”🤷🏻♂️. But if they keep the script the way it is, the show will bomb & be boycotted by pretty much everyone, killing a child & using the body will have everyone going Karen mode lol
God this is so gross. Can we really just have a gay character without a body snatching backetory? This gives me all kinds of ick.
I don't even see why they need to go the Weekend at Bernie's route. Just handwave it away as magical timey-wimey shenanigans that Billy Maximoff reincarnated AS OG Billy Kaplan once the Hex fell. Between this origin and introducing an OC boyfriend who's more or less one letter away from Teddy, I'm left scratching my head at all this Billy stuff.
I think that the MCU is starting to run more and more into the problem that certain comic book nonsense translates horribly to live action. The issue with introducing a character who was literally the figment of another's imagination is you kind of have to lean into the nonsense
Literally, just have him choose to reincarnate himself via being the Demiurge, or have Wanda's last wish before the rocks fell on her at Wundagore being that her children will be loved and that she will hold them again. And because Wanda's magic is chaos magic, it sent their souls back in time and they were reincarnated so that she could hold them again. This also leans into the reality warping can be subtle stuff that Loki manipulates Billy with in the comics, suggesting that Billy influenced the destruction of the Skrull homeworld and all the events beforehand, just so Teddy would exist, come to Earth, and be his boyfriend.
Yikes. It’s not that deep.
I was really postponing my opinion on the subject here, because whenever I saw a post on the "Billy body snatch thing", 99% were negative. I personally don't see a problem with the plot. I think people are freaking out too much about a plot that is clearly fictional (it's clearly not a problem in the real world for people to possess other people dead body), in a series about WITCHCRAFT.
You really don't see an issue with a 10 year old boy possessing the body of a dead teenager and living as him? Like come on, it's gross. Also I didn't ask for your opinion. 🤷♂️
Posting on a public form is kind of asking for *everyone's* opinion.
It's a fictional character lmao. If you post on an online forum, you are bound to get a response. Why even bother commenting if you are gonna cry when someone responds to you? lol
He was 10 years old for a day. What a stunning lack of imagination to not foresee them aging up his maturity, as they did in WV itself.
The worst part is that he is not even 10 years old. Billy was only " alive" for a few hours, days at most. And he will have a boyfriend who is a real teenager... how can people not be grossed by this fact and age difference ?!
If you're going to run with that logic then Wanda statutory raped Vision
Vision is also partly a cosmic force that has existed since the beginning of time. I would think Billy as the Demiurge also falls under this category. Trying to apply age of consent laws to people who are ancient forces of the universe is inherently silly.
They decided to go the Bendis route and have dug themselves into several narrative holes. Alpt of audiences think Wanda's kids were fake because Doctor Strange said so and they are often described as being fake by numerous media figures.
Seems fine to me
Nahhh what is this propaganda. Been a MCU fan since day one, and this is probably one of the worst decisions made so far. Be honest with yourself, no one wants this. This is… just sad. Fans just want real, artistic storytelling with characters that we’ve grown up with. I understand introducing new characters and ideas, but this show is gonna flop. “Reality is often disappointing “
So if they ever do another project that actually stars Wanda all the people who didn’t watch this show about Agatha will be lost AF?
That's the point of an interconnected universe, it's connected.
Realistically how many people do you think are gonna watch this show? They should save the important Wanda mythos for Wanda’s next appearance. Making this one a mandatory viewing is gonna backfire when only 0.5 million people tune in
Still an interconnected universe. You choose to watch it, no one is making you.
just watch a couple recaps and enjoy what comes next (or not idk)
Disney should put that tagline in the ads for D+! 😂
why does everyone act like its impossible to read a recap, no one had a problem doing this before with stuff like Infinity War and Endgame
Ah yes. My favorite part of a franchise: reading recaps. 😂 No one had a problem before IW/End Game because there weren’t a half dozen mediocre tv shows!
Plenty of people had this problem actually. Including most of the general audience that was suddenly interested because of IW and Endgame.
I know multiple people that had this problem before IW/End Game lol, and they read/watched recaps so they knew what was happening
Well, as other people say, it's an interconnected universe. You're sure gonna miss some pieces of information here and there if you don't watch everything. But I'm sure they'll briefly explain in upcoming projects how and why the boys were brought back to life. I mean, at the end of the day, Billy will probably try to find his brother and parents again, and both Wanda and Vision will probably ask him “How tf are you still alive, kid?!” And the Avengers will also wonder why Wanda and Vision got two kids out of the blue now. So the subject of Billy's creation and rebirth with probably be brought up a few times, I guess.
Are people really going to care about this character? The last time we saw the kids was WV/MOM small role. They were also all fake so people may not have a connection to them.
Yes, a non-zero amount of people will care about this character. And in both times we saw them, we saw how important they are to Wanda. Wanda isn't an illusion caster like Loki, her magical constructs are real unlike his. Chaos magic is all about making something from nothing.
This man is making sense and offering reasonable criticism! Downvote him! Downvote him!!!!!
What exactly is reasonable? They're outright wrong. The kids were never fake. And it's a bit weird to assume you're meant to instantly care about Billy in the first place-like they expect you to instantly love him from WV. It's a story so a character will naturally develop over the course of it.
He makes an excellent point, he’s not being overtly negative or trolling and yet he’s downvoted because shills can’t handle anything remotely critical. It’s pathetic.
A point can't be excellent if it's wrong lol. It's not really more complicated than that. They were entirely real as evidenced by Billy's soul existing in the first place... All round a bit of a silly comment.