Just as predicted in Arlyn Murphy’s Episode 5 Primer, this week we got our first real glimpse of the twins, Tommy and Billy, along with a few hints on how their immediate future might unfold. Given how big of a deal they are bound to become in the MCU as instrumental parts of the Young Avengers roster, their introduction, the questions it raised, and the few answers we might have gotten are certainly attention-worthy.
One of the first relevant quotes regarding them was when Jimmy Woo asked if anyone had managed to identify both kids, as they had done with most of the people Wanda interacted with inside the Hex. Monica then said:
Oh, Wanda’s twins are hers. Everything might look fake on the TV, but everything in there is real.
This means that, unlike everybody else trapped inside Westview, the kids didn’t exist in the outside world before the Hex was set up. So being, when/if the Hex is destroyed, and everybody returns to their regular lives (as the kids appear to be, in Monica’s words, “real”), they won’t just disappear but also their minds won’t just go “back to normal”, as there won’t be any normal to go back to. They’ll still be Wanda and Vision’s kids, even in the real world, with everything that entails.
Coming from Wanda and being outside of the initial group being mind-controlled by her probably means that whatever powers they might be displaying inside the Hex are theirs alone and that they aren’t serving as Wanda’s proxies. We start to understand just how much autonomy they exhibit when both disappear from the crib and appear as 5-year-olds much to Wanda and Vision’s surprise. Then later, when they manage to age-up, against Wanda’s wishes, so they could keep Sparky as their pet. When they plan on aging up once again to get away from the pain felt by Sparky’s death, Wanda feels the need to talk them out of it, again making it seem like they are outside of her control. But the biggest hint on just how much Tommy and Billy are in control of their own actions is given us by Agnes, right after they turn themselves into five-year-olds:
Kids. You can’t control ’em.
This feels like foreshadowing, as the kids should become increasingly more autonomous and going against Wanda’s wishes. Even though they are a huge part of the model family Wanda created for herself inside the Hex, the twins (and Vision) are beginning to display certain traits that are bound to collide with that dream scenario. Wanda cannot be truly happy if she has to control the ones she loves, as she needs to feel that they are with her not because they have to, but because they want to. If the twins begin to question their situation too much (as they did when asking Wanda why she wouldn’t bring back Sparky from the dead), throwing wrenches right in the gears of Wanda’s creation, that might just be the catalyst to Wanda’s future loss of control over the entire situation. Her search for perfection will be the reason for her downfall.
And this leads to life after the Hex, after WandaVision. If the twins are kept away from their mother in order to keep safe from someone, by then, so disgruntled with life, that might just be what leads Wanda into the dark path we are sure to follow her on in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Their absence might be presented to both her and the audience as “They couldn’t survive outside the Hex”, but they’ll be sure to come back later on, to rediscover their real connection to the Scarlet Witch.
