This article contains spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 6 and WandaVision.
If you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Agatha All Along yet, “Familiar by Thy Side,” and panic-clicked into this article, don’t worry, Billy Maximoff isn’t dead. But, based on this latest installment, it seems that young William Kaplan — the young man whose body Billy took over — sure seems to be.
After the hex on Westview fell in WandaVision, Billy and Tommy’s bodies were gone. Their spirits, however, remain on our plane, finding new hosts after Wanda’s dream of a normal family unit comes to an end. Moments before the hex fell, the Kaplan family ended up in a terrible car accident that killed William, allowing for Billy’s soul to hop right on in. When he wakes up in the hospital, he has none of William’s memories, just a family who loves him, some curious powers, and a concerning lack of memory of his own past.
Folks familiar with Billy’s comic book origins know that this is close enough to his (and Tommy’s) origin, but I’m quite surprised that they stuck with it for Agatha All Along. The MCU is well-known for tweaking story origins and adjusting characters to their needs, and the Maximoff twins’ tale is more complicated than I figured the average MCU viewer would have the patience for. But, while much of the episode was rehashing familiar territory, it still had plenty of twists and tricks up its sleeve.
Before we get to the tricks, please join me, IGN’s resident witch, as we take a look at the craftiest moment of the night: The Tower reversed.
What Does The Tower Reversed Mean for Billy Maximoff?
Part of the purpose of “Familiar by Thy Side” was showing that Billy (a.k.a. Wiccan in the comics) had ties with the coven all along, but none of those ties are as important as the one with Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone). He meets the witch at his bar mitzvah, where she is giving psychic readings. Calderu gives William two reads: that his life line is split in two (which fans can easily infer on their own) and the tarot card The Tower reversed.
Upright, The Tower essentially means chaos and destruction. This would be another easy read for Kaplan’s future, given that his body will soon be literally teeming with chaos magic. However, when a tarot card is reversed, it essentially has the opposite meaning. Unfortunately for William, that still doesn’t necessarily mean good news.
The Tower reversed can have a lot of meanings: you’ll narrowly avoid disaster (which is an easy read for William given that his body gets to go on living) or you’re delaying the inevitable. It can also mean that you need to meet your fate head on and, devastatingly for Billy, it can be a warning not to try to get back what you once had and to create something new instead.
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Each card in a tarot deck can mean different things for different aspects of your life as well. In a bit of morbid humor from the writers, if they meant it that way, The Tower reversed can mean that a health scare that you were worrying too much about may ultimately end up to be nothing serious. Boy died, but hey! He came back. Kinda.
Pulling The Tower in any form, or creating a “Tower event,” basically just means that you come out the other side of your inevitable future irrevocably changed but ultimately intact. So, y’know… good job Agatha All Along writers room!
As for what this means for Billy Maximoff vs. William Kaplan, it’s essentially his rebirth. Though I suspect the young hero will have plenty of other Tower events in his future.
The Return of Ralph Bohner
I don’t care if you had fun with the Bohner joke when it occurred back in WandaVision or took it as a deep offense to your fandom, Evan Peters’ Ralph Bohner returning and Agatha Harkness wearing a shirt that says “Bohner Family Reunion: Pitch a Tent” is comedy gold.
Ultimately, Bohner’s return doesn’t have any real bearing on the show moving forward. It was largely just the impetus for Billy finding Agatha and sending their makeshift coven down the road. But, there’s something clever about a Maximoff trying to find their long lost brother and, once again, stumbling upon Ralph Bohner. I’m sorry, I am pro this bit. It makes me witch-cackle every time.
Oh, and we also learned that he killed Sparky. But it was still under Agatha’s command so she still gets the blame.
Billy looking for Tommy rather than Wanda makes plenty of sense, especially given that they do seem to be sticking relatively close to the pair’s origin story. They gotta find each other before they start the hunt for mommy. This shift does, unfortunately, eliminate a lot of my hope that we’ll see Wanda in the finale. But the fact that we’ll meet an older, new version of Tommy and likely see his alter ego Speed before it’s all said and done helps take out some of the sting!
Is William Kaplan Still Alive?
I regret to inform you that William Kaplan is very much dead. Or, if we’re being generous, is basically a zombie? Billy’s soul, William’s body, bam: teen witch! (Wiccan.)
While there could be a future where the writers elect to have Billy start to hear whispers of his “former self,” it’s been three years since the accident and that change seems unlikely. It’s a more interesting story to have him start to remember clips of his life before the Westview hex fell. But Billy does tell his boyfriend Eddie (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) that he’s “not Willaim Kaplan, at least not entirely.” So there’s always some wiggle room there!