VisionQuest reveals that Tommy survived beyond Wanda’s Westview Hex, extending a story that began in WandaVision and continued in Agatha All Along. Meanwhile, White Vision is trying to understand whether another version’s memories make him the same person. The events of Agatha All Along explain how Tommy came to be in the world outside the Hex.
Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) created a family inside the Westview Hex in WandaVision. When the Hex fell apart, Billy and Tommy seemingly disappeared with it. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda tried to reach another universe so she could be with her children, showing what grief can drive someone with the power to reshape reality to do. But the boys’ story continued after Westview.
VisionQuest centers on White Vision (Paul Bettany), whom S.W.O.R.D. rebuilt as an emotionless weapon after Vision died in Avengers: Infinity War. Hex Vision, Wanda’s Westview creation, unlocked White Vision’s memories during their confrontation in WandaVision. Since then, White Vision has tried to lead a peaceful, quiet life in Edinburgh. At night, he interacts with artificial intelligences in a mindscape he made, among them J.A.R.V.I.S., F.R.I.D.A.Y., and Ultron.
When Vision calls Westview a fantasy, Ultron pushes back. “Bullshit,” he says. “It’s just a deep, scary well of emotions you can’t handle. Isn’t that the point of this mindspace?” Ultron argues that Vision is avoiding the truth. By the end of episode 1, that truth has become impossible to avoid: Tommy exists in the real world, beyond Wanda’s Hex. Paladin (Todd Stashwick), a bounty hunter pursuing Vision, quickly tracks down Vision’s son to use him as bait.
The reveal is difficult to follow without Agatha All Along, which explains how Wanda’s apparently imaginary children survived the destruction of the world that brought them into being, as well as how Tommy ended up in a new body.
How Billy and Tommy found new bodies
Taking place three years after WandaVision, Agatha All Along opens with witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and a mysterious teenager played by Joe Locke. Called only “Teen,” he helps Agatha break free from the spell Wanda placed on her at the end of WandaVision, then convinces her to form a new coven and travel the legendary Witches’ Road, which supposedly rewards any witch capable of surviving its trials.
A magical sigil keeps Teen’s identity secret: witches can’t hear him speak his name or discover information that would identify him. Years earlier, divination witch Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone) met William Kaplan at his bar mitzvah. She read his palm, saw glimpses of his fractured future, and secretly tucked the sigil into his jacket.
Agatha calls the enchantment a “redaction spell.” It conceals its subject from witches, even the one who cast it, so Lilia forgets placing it on William. The spell didn’t bring Billy back to life or move his soul into William’s body. It simply kept Billy’s identity hidden until the protection was no longer needed.
William is 13, riding home with his parents as Wanda starts bringing down the Hex nearby. Their car crashes at the exact moment Billy’s magical world disappears. William dies, and Billy’s consciousness slips into his body. When Billy wakes, he has no memories of William’s life. He hears the frightened thoughts of the people who say they’re his parents, but has no idea who they are. He later pretends to recover his memories while privately trying to work out what happened.
Years afterward, Billy puts it this way to his boyfriend: “I died that night. And when I came back, I was different. Something else. Something more.” After the sigil is destroyed, Agatha confirms what Billy suspects: he is Wanda and Vision’s son in the body William left behind. Agatha calls William an “empty vessel” and says Billy instinctively seized an opportunity to survive. In doing so, though, he violated the natural rules of life and death. Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), the literal embodiment of Death, sees him as an abomination.
Much of Agatha All Along follows Billy’s search for Tommy. He doesn’t remember their entire life together, but he remains convinced his twin survived Westview’s destruction. “He’s out there somewhere,” Billy tells Agatha. “I can sense him. I just can’t find him.” He’s right in part: Tommy’s consciousness remains, but it has no body.
As the Witches’ Road nears its end, Agatha helps Billy reach out psychically to find a dying person who could become Tommy’s vessel. Billy locates a boy being held underwater in a swimming pool after a cruel prank. The boy is terrified, and Billy initially resists choosing him because he senses that the boy has no loving family waiting for him. Billy also wonders whether taking the body would make him responsible for the stranger’s death. “Agatha, am I killing this boy, so my brother can live?” he asks.
“No, Billy,” Agatha replies. “Sometimes boys die.” Billy places Tommy’s soul in the drowning boy’s body, giving him what Agatha calls “another life.” Although Agatha All Along doesn’t clearly show Tommy waking, creator Jac Schaeffer told Entertainment Weekly that the transfer succeeded: “The intention is that, yes, he got what he was missing in that he successfully put Tommy’s soul into the body of that young man who was the victim of a teen prank,” Schaeffer said. “You know how these things go, and we’ll see in future properties if they stick to that narrative. … It was a tricky thing to shoot because Tommy was not cast at that time, and so we had to shoot it in an obscure way.”
Thomas Shatford and White Vision’s identity crisis
VisionQuest continues that plot. Paladin fails to capture Vision with a group of heavily armed mercenaries, but very quickly hacks classified S.W.O.R.D. files and uncovers the truth about Westview. He searches known databases for “Vision,” “Wanda Maximoff,” “Tommy,” and “Billy.” The search leads him to a recorded psychological evaluation from somewhere in London, which points him to Thomas Shatford (Ruaridh Mollica).
In the recording, Thomas says, “I had a family that wasn’t my family, parents that weren’t my parents,” then continues: “Mother… we called her Wanda. Father, a machine. She called him Vision.” As with William, Thomas was dying when Billy put Tommy’s mind and soul into his body. Tommy was likely trapped in some kind of limbo for years before the transfer, which could explain why he’s more disoriented than Billy was.
Years later, episode 1 shows Thomas as a young London grifter who works with a pickpocket named Lisa. Thomas says he enjoys becoming a different person every day, but Lisa pushes back: “If you don’t ever get to be the real you, you might as well be invisible.”
The remark takes on a different weight when Thomas watches news footage of White Vision’s encounter in Edinburgh. The images bring back fragments of Tommy’s former life, including memories of the original Vision and the Westview Hex. Thomas has a panic attack. Lisa tries to steady him by repeating his assumed identity: “You are Thomas Shatford.” But he’s not actually Thomas Shatford. His struggle resembles Vision’s: both are themselves and not themselves, carrying memories that don’t really belong to them.
In episode 1, Lisa makes comments about Thomas being “weirdly fast.” Tommy was a speedster like his uncle Pietro, and he likely still has those powers in this body, as Billy did in his.
The family relationships are complicated, and the distinctions are important. Thomas Shatford isn’t the son Hex Vision helped raise in Westview. White Vision never had a son, though he carries memories from both the original Vision and Hex Vision. Vision sums up the divide in the trailer: “I have his memories, but not his virtue.” Wanda’s Westview family began as something shaped by her grief, but Tommy’s continued life outside the Hex gives Vision reason to question whether everything Wanda created was only fantasy.
