Warning: this article contains SPOILERS for the first season of WandaVision.
Wiccan and Speed weren’t intended to come into the MCU….yet.
Among the major turns of WandaVision was having Wanda suddenly raising twin children who fans hoped might become the Young Avengers Wiccan and Speed.
While that didn’t happen in the series, director Matt Shakman indicates it’s possible the pair may take on their heroic mantles down the line.
Wiccan and Speed
The history of these two characters is, to be charitable, complex.
In the 1980s, Wanda and the Vision were married and surprised to discover Wanda was pregnant. Given the Vision wasn’t human, it was explained that Wanda’s powers were able to create these children. She gave birth to twin sons, Billy and Tommy.
In a controversial story by John Byrne, Wanda discovered that her twins never truly existed. They were created by pieces of magic left over from the demonic Mephisto and, whenever Wanda wasn’t thinking about them, would disappear.
In order to defeat Mephisto, Wanda had to give the power back, and thus, her boys were wiped away with Wanda trying to ignore the trauma. Eventually, the memories of the loss drove Wanda to rewrite reality in the House of M storyline.
In 2005’s Young Avengers series, William Kaplan is a teenager who gains magical powers. He helps form the team as Wiccan.
On a mission, the team meets Tommy Shepherd, who they’re shocked to find looks just like William but with white hair and possessing superspeed.
It eventually turns out the pair are Wanda’s sons, having been reborn in new bodies. They would aid their mother while continuing to fight evil.
Billy became romantically involved with fellow Avenger Hulking, with the pair recently married.
The twins
In episode 3 of WandaVision, Wanda is suddenly pregnant and gives birth to twin sons. Before she and the Vision know it, the pair are grown into ten-year-olds (played by Julian Hilliard and Jett Klyne) virtually overnight. This is just one of the many signs of how Wanda is warping this reality.
Fans were assuming that the MCU would have Billy and Tommy eventually grow into Speed and Wiccan. A Halloween-themed episode has the twins dressing up like their comic book counterparts.
While the pair aid Wanda in fighting Agatha Harkness in the season finale, they never age up to their teenage forms, which Shakman said was deliberate.
No, we wanted to keep them at that age. Wanda has obviously missed out on the first 10 years of their life [which] went by really fast, so we didn’t want to deprive her of even more time with them. And once we got to know them, we had so little screen time with 10-year-old Billy and Tommy that we wanted to take advantage of what we did have to get to know them really well as people. There’s so much innocence there. To have them age up one more time, I think, would have been unfair to those actors and those characters.”
The Twins’ future
WandaVision ended with Wanda, knowing she couldn’t live in this fake world, tearfully putting the boys to bed and then undoing the Hex to seemingly erase them from existence.
But the stinger shows Wanda, in her astral form, reading the Darkhold while the voices of her sons cry out for help, indicating that they may still be alive.
It’s possible that in the coming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda may be attempting to restore her children. That leaves the door open to them coming back now teens with powers.
The MCU is filming the Hawkeye TV series with Kate Bishop a major player. Ant-Man: Quantumania has Kathryn Newton taking on the role of Cassie Lang, who in the comics becomes the size-changing stature. Also, Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel will have her own Disney+ series and appear in Captain Marvel 2.
It thus appears the MCU is laying the groundwork for a possible Young Avengers project. Introducing the twins as kids before having them become teen heroes would be a smart move.
While Shakman is mum on details, it’s possible that Wiccan and Speed may become true heroes after all.
WandaVision season 1 now streaming on Disney+.