in 1975, the wizard shazam takes a young child named thaddeus sivana to an alternate universe to make him his champion against the seven deadly sins. sivana is tempted by sin and the wizard tells him he will never be good enough. shazam then sends him back to the world to the very moment that he left. sivana panics and his father accidentally crashes his car and permanently breaks his legs. sivana's brother blames him for what happened and hates him ever since. sivana later becomes a doctor and pays for an experiment to reverse engineer what happened to him that way he could enter shazam's world and fight shazam. dr sivana then strikes a deal with the seven deadly sins to become a supervillain in exchange for power. dr. sivana then kills his father and brother. billy batson is taken in by a new family after having repeatedly run away from foster homes to try to find his mother who was accidentally separated from him at a carnival when he was a young child. billy meets his new foster brother freddie who knows everything there is to know about superheroes and who walks with a crutch. billy finds freddie annoying. he then sees two bullies beat freddie up with his crutch and does nothing until they make fun of freddie for not having a mother. billy then attacks and beats freddie's bullies. billy then runs away and gets onto a train. the wizard shazam then appears to billy and tells him that he is worthy of his power. the wizard tells him to say the name shazam and transform into a superhero with his powers. billy says shazam and transforms into an adult superhero. billy then reaches out to freddie to find out how to be a superhero and transforms back by saying shazam. billy becomes arrogant because of his power and so he chooses not to transform into his superhero form and visit freddie as his hero at the school’s next lunch like freddie had said he would. when no superhero showed up, they gave freddie a suitcase wedgie. freddie then came to billy while billy was in his superhero form during a public appearance and tells him he only cares about himself. dr. sivana then comes and attacks billy. billy tries and fails to fight dr.sivana and he transforms back into a teenager by saying shazam so that he can escape. dr. sivana attacks freddie and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t tell him where billy lives. freddie tells him. dr. sivana then kidnaps billy’s foster family to get billy to come to their rescue. billy strikes a deal with dr.sivana to give up his powers in exchange for his foster family but instead of giving dr. sivana his power he gives his powers to his family by having them say shazam. dr.sivana has six of the seven deadly sins try to fight against billy and his family but they are defeated. billy then manages to trick the sin of envy to leave dr. sivana and fight billy himself. after billy wins dr. sivana is left without power and is captured and imprisoned. billy in his superhero form then visits freddie at his cafeteria lunch and brings superman with him. in a scene after the credits a talking caterpillar visits dr. sivana in prison and tells him they can help each other.