Who is Billie's dad in Wizards Beyond Waverly Place? Season 3 finally put him on screen — behind bars
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place spent two seasons treating Billie's father as a rumor with a last name. The four-episode final season put an actual actor in the role and gave him a full backstory. Who plays him, why his introduction happens inside a wizard prison, and how his arrival reshuffles the entire Russo family.
For two seasons, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place ran a parentage mystery inside a Disney Channel sitcom. The season 2 finale confirmed the mother — Alex Russo (Selena Gomez), who then jumped through a portal and vanished. The father stayed a name without a face until the four-part final season arrived on Disney Channel on August 4, 2026, and on Disney+ the next day.
"The only way to rescue her mother is to reunite with her long-lost father," went Disney's official season 3 logline.
That long-lost father is Damien Penwulf, played by Brandon Micheal Hall (The Mayor, God Friended Me).
The family math
Damien is the son of Nicodemus Penwulf — better known to viewers as Lord Morsus (Tobias Jelinek), the series' main villain. Which means Billie's grandfather is the guy the whole franchise has been fighting. Damien was raised on dark magic, met Alex, reformed, married her, and fathered Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown), the wizard whose off-the-charts power drives the show's central prophecy. Fearing Nicodemus would come for their daughter, Alex hid Billie at the Wiz Tech boarding school and used a memory spell to bury the family connection.
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Gregg Sulkin's return as Mason Greyback settled another long-running question along the way: Mason died before the events of the series, which is how Alex's story moved on to Damien in the first place.
Why he's introduced in prison
Season 3 opens with Damien locked up in Wizcatraz, the wizard world's maximum-security prison, which is where he's been while his daughter grew up without him. The show keeps the exact charge vague — it 's more interested in the reunion than the rap sheet. Billie and Justin (David Henrie) stage a breakout in the episode "Billie Russo-Penwulf and the Prisoner of Wizcatraz."
The prison is called Wizcatraz, the episode is called "The Prisoner of Wizcatraz," and the show is fully aware of which two franchises it's winking at.
What happens once he's out
The finale, "The Last Spell," moves fast, because four episodes is all it had:
- Billie surrenders her powers — after being named the most powerful wizard in the world and watching what that title cost her family.
- Justin's machine locates Alex — and Damien and Billie open a portal that dumps her into Justin's living room.
- Nicodemus crashes the reunion — trapping the Russos in a force field until Theresa (Maria Canals-Barrera) knocks him out with a lamp.
- The family's combined magic finishes him — and Damien, Alex, and Billie leave for the wizard world together, an intact household for the first time.
Roman and Milo are also revealed to have powers of their own, which the finale leaves as an open door rather than a plot.
The casting footnote
The role was still uncast when Disney ordered the final season, and David Henrie spent months fielding questions — he teased possible candidates to Us Weekly in November 2025 while fans campaigned loudly for Jordan Fisher. Hall got the job, sharing his four episodes with a returning Gomez, who also directed the season premiere as her directorial debut. Nineteen years after Wizards of Waverly Place launched her career, she closed the franchise from behind the camera — 35 episodes of the sequel series, done.
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