Who was Billy talking to in VisionQuest? The showrunner admitted Marvel couldn't afford to show her

VisionQuest is the eight-episode Disney+ series that wraps up the trilogy that began with WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along. It ran from October 14 to November 10, 2026. Created by Terry Matalas, it follows Paul Bettany's White Vision, James Spader's returning Ultron, and Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica), the London teenager carrying the soul of Wanda and Vision's son Tommy. His twin, Billy (Joe Locke), was nowhere to be seen until the finale, "Forever," which Matalas wrote and directed.

Spoilers for the VisionQuest finale below.

The scene

Billy finally reaches his brother through dream-binding, the magic the show introduced in episode 7. The reunion has one practical problem: Tommy is in London, Vision is in trouble, and Billy is in New Jersey. Mid-conversation, Billy turns to his right and talks to someone who isn't there, about portals. Tommy is as confused as everyone watching at home.

The answer: Agatha Harkness

Billy is talking to the ghost of Agatha Harkness. At the end of Agatha All Along in 2024, Agatha died, came back as a ghost, and set off with Billy to find Tommy. Marvel's official timeline places Agatha All Along in the fall of 2026 and VisionQuest around 2028, so by the finale the two of them have been searching for roughly two years. In that time, Billy has clearly kept her around, and his portal skills still need work.

Matalas told Entertainment Weekly that the invisible-guest gag came from Vision himself, who spends much of the series talking to AI programs in his own head:

"Tommy had watched Vision speaking to invisible people."

It seemed "pretty clear that he would not be able to see Agatha," Matalas said. "So the idea of Billy doing that felt like a great bit."

Why Kathryn Hahn isn't in it

The other reason is simpler. Asked whether Agatha could have appeared on screen, Matalas gave Entertainment Weekly a straight answer: "We couldn't afford that." He added, "That wasn't ever really an option. I just thought that was funny."

He gave the same answer to anyone who asked. "We can't afford Kathryn Hahn!" he told ScreenRant. Collider got a slightly more polite version:

"I don't know that we could have afforded that."

That answer came with a laugh and a "So not really, no," per Collider.

Don't miss: GTA 6 isn't coming for The Hunger Games — it's coming for Avengers: Doomsday's record

Money wasn't the only argument. Matalas told ScreenRant that a visible Agatha would have taken the scene over, when "in that moment of the reunion, it needed to be about Billy." He applied the same logic to Billy and Tommy's mother: "But again, it becomes about Wanda the second that moment happens."

Will Agatha show up later?

Matalas left the door open. "Down the line, of course," he told ScreenRant, fans would want to see more of Billy and "his imaginary friend with Agatha." For now, Billy is, in Matalas's words to Entertainment Weekly, "a kid who just learned he's got witch powers." The finale counts on that. "He's got Agatha as a guide," Matalas said, but the open question is whether Billy can "get over to London from New Jersey in a few hours." Matalas was counting on viewers forgetting to ask, "so by the time he does come back, hopefully it's chills."

The finale did find room for one more witch. In the second post-credits scene, Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom lifts the rubble of Mount Wundagore off Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff and tells her, "Scarlet Witch, awaken."

Previously we wrote: Constantine's director finally said who blocked the Keanu Reeves sequel — they just got fired