Vision Fact — November 3, 2026

Today's Fact

A synthezoid cannot father children — so the magic that made Thomas and William had borrowed its raw material from Hell.

THE VISION'S TWIN SONS WERE BUILT FROM PIECES OF MEPHISTO'S SHATTERED SOUL!

The Featured Fact

The Vision and Wanda Maximoff welcomed twin sons, Thomas and William, in The Vision and the Scarlet Witch Vol. 2 #12 (1986) — a miracle nobody could explain, since a synthezoid has no biology to pass on. Wanda had willed the children into being with her hex power and her training in real magic, and for three years the family simply accepted the gift.

The bill arrived in Avengers West Coast Vol. 2 #51–#52 (1989). The energy Wanda had unknowingly drawn on included fragments of Mephisto's soul, scattered when Franklin Richards had shattered the demon lord. Two of those fragments had served as the twins' souls — and Mephisto, whole again, reclaimed what was his, absorbing the boys out of existence in front of their parents.

His agent Master Pandemonium had hunted the fragments for years believing them pieces of his own sold soul, at one point wearing the twins as living hands. Afterwards Agatha Harkness mercifully wiped Wanda's memory of her sons — a buried grief that would detonate years later. The twins' spirits eventually resurfaced in two unrelated teenagers, Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd, the Young Avengers called Wiccan and Speed.

Why It's Obscure

Every happy family portrait from those three years has a demon lord standing just outside the frame, waiting to collect his property.

1986

The impossible birth — The Vision and the Scarlet Witch Vol. 2 #12 delivers twins to a mother of flesh and a father of circuits, and the Avengers celebrate first and ask questions never.

Franklin

The scattering — when young Franklin Richards destroyed Mephisto, the demon's soul broke into fragments that drifted loose in the world's magic — building material for anyone casting the right spell.

#52

The reclamation — Avengers West Coast #52 (1989): Mephisto takes his fragments back, the twins vanish, and the white, emotionless Vision cannot even grieve beside Wanda.

Reborn

The second childhood — the boys' spirits later turn up as Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd, strangers to each other who grow into Wiccan and Speed of the Young Avengers.

Gallery

Comic art of the Vision, of Wanda Maximoff, and of Billy Kaplan — Wiccan, one of the twins reborn.

Vision phasing in green and red on Avengers negative space variant cover — **The father of circuits**The Vision on John Tyler Christopher's negative-space Avengers #1 cover, half-phased out of the world — the synthezoid whose children were made of borrowed souls.

Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff in red with hex energy comic art — **The mother who willed them**Wanda Maximoff wreathed in hex light — her desire for a family reached deeper into the world's magic than she ever knew.

Wiccan Billy Kaplan flying with lightning magic comic art — **The son, returned**Billy Kaplan as Wiccan, lightning in both hands — the reborn spirit of William Maximoff, raised by strangers and drawn back to his mother's world.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Tommy Maximoff's Story Is Even Weirder in the Comics — Den of GeekRecounts Avengers West Coast #52: Wanda unknowingly built the twins from fragments of Mephisto, who reabsorbed them, and Agatha's merciful memory wipe.
Thomas & William Maximoff — Marvel AppendixDetailed profile: the twins born in Vision & the Scarlet Witch Vol. 2 #12, the soul fragments traced to Mephisto's shattering, and Master Pandemonium's hunt.