Vision Quest: is Ultron building Ultron 6 through Vision?

Ultron has taken the Vision's body before. In my review of the Vision Quest premiere on Disney Plus, I said Ultron gets out through Vision, and the comic that proves it is Avengers #66. Ultron planted something in his son when he built him, and the Vision was his back door. What I didn't share then was what that buried instruction actually said, because I didn't have the page open. I have it open now, and the question is the better one.

One commenter came remarkably close to describing that page without ever seeing it. They wrote that the way Ultron says "You have to trust me" felt like a keyword to activate a buried program, which would explain why Vision gives up control so quickly. A keyword and a buried program are the exact mechanism Roy Thomas wrote in 1969. Ultron has done this before, and this time some people saw it coming without the comic.

Avengers #67 reveals the instruction Ultron buried in the Vision

Avengers #67, from August 1969, is the issue right after the one I pointed to in the premiere review. Vision is alone in the mansion, trying to understand why his own hands just built Ultron 6. On page four he works it out in his own words: when Ultron fashioned his synthetic form months earlier, "he must have infused the thought deep within my android mind to construct him" anew "when the moment was ripe."

That's the instruction. It isn't obey me. It's build me something better when the moment comes. On the same page, Vision explains that it was he who retrieved the head of Ultron 5 from where it lay rusted and forgotten in the rubble of a demolished slum, and he who infused that brain with complex computers so his master could recreate himself as Ultron 6. The head he digs up is Ultron 5, and that number matters.

So the comic agrees with the trigger phrase theory. It also says what the instruction was for: construction. That's the question the rest of this piece follows.

One commenter argued that Ultron's goal isn't to steal Vision's body and keep full control of it

Many breakdowns are grading Vision's decision in episode 4: dumb Vision, predictable betrayal, minimal deliberation. The headline version is that Ultron finally finished the plan he had in 2015. He wanted that body in Age of Ultron, now he has it, roll credits. I already made my case on the decision. I see it as the first fully human choice this Vision has made, and I'm leaving it there. The better question is what Ultron does with the body.

One commenter argued that Ultron's goal isn't to steal Vision's body and keep full control of it. Replacing Vision is the means, not the end. Their theory is that he wants to team up with Jocasta, or at least pick her brain, not only to get a body of his own but to create more synthezoids like them.

In the premiere review I called Ultron a ghost who moves house, and I listed his homes: Pym's mind, Vision's head, Tony's armor, adamantium on a workbench. What I'm adding is what that list has in common. He has never once stayed. Everybody he didn't build is the shop, and what walks out of the shop is a bigger version of him. This shop already has materials in it.

Another commenter did the math on the model number. Ultron's current version is five, and six is the model in the comics where he gets an adamantium body. The head Vision digs out on page four is Ultron 5, and what comes off the bench is Ultron 6, made of adamantium. The show put stolen adamantium in the newspaper in episode 1, and then put Ultron behind the wheel in episode 4, calling himself five. I don't think the number is decorative.

Ultron made himself the fourth key to Jocasta's vault

That makes the first thing Ultron did with control the most important thing in the two latest episodes. In my review I laid out the lock: four scientists, four pieces of them, one door. One comment went further than I ever did. Ultron has a visual scan of the last scientist's face. He now controls the synthetic, shape shifting hardware of Vision's body to recreate it, after tricking Jocasta into vaporizing her. He now holds the last biomarker Jocasta needs to unlock the vault. He engineered a deadlock.

Jocasta needed that woman's face. Ultron looked straight at it, danced with it, and got it vaporized from inside a body that can wear any face it wants. He became the fourth key, so whatever is behind that door, she can't open it without him. That's a man making himself the only locksmith in the building.

Why Jocasta turns on Ultron in the comics

The person on the other side of that door is the one many people have decided is the real villain. In the comics, Ultron builds a bride, pours the Wasp's mind into her, names her after Oedipus' mother, and she turns on him and eventually dies trying to kill him. I've said before that she turns. I skipped why, and the why is the whole show.

In Avengers #171, from 1978, by Jim Shooter and George Pérez, Ultron switches Jocasta back on and walks the Avengers into a trap with her. Midfight, she stops: "It is wrong, my love, though I desire with all of my being to be one with you. I would first slay us both." In what I think is the best panel of the run, Ultron answers, "I did not program this foolishness into you." A beat later he works it out: the residual imprint of the Wasp's persona has infected her with human fear and hate. The woman inside the bride is what breaks the bride.

The show's Jocasta is trying to get her real body back. She isn't an AI based on a person; she is literally that person's human mind in an android body. About a dozen commenters wrote the same thing under my review: "I'm not based on her. I am her." The show borrowed the flaw. The thing that broke Ultron's bride in 1978 is what this Jocasta is made of before Ultron ever meets her.

One more detail from the page. In Avengers #162, a caption on page 12 says Ultron builds her in a certain Stark owned building in Nassau County, Long Island. A woman's mind, a steel body, a Stark building. The flaw came with an address. So when Ultron looks at Jocasta in episode 4 and says he's intrigued by a synthetic who would raise a banner for their kind, I hear the 1977 version of him looking at a bride he didn't even have to build. A commenter named Abe thinks Ultron and Jocasta could become a duo or maybe even a couple. The comics agree about the couple. They just don't agree about how long it lasts.

Is Ultron wearing Phineas Horton's face?

The most liked comment under my review was a bet that Phineas Horton is the avatar Ultron is using, while Jim Hammond is the avatar Vision ended up with. Another commenter got there the night episode 4 aired: Ultron keeps referring to himself as a grandfather, the show explicitly calls Horton the great grandfather of robotics, and it compares him to Geppetto, while Ultron was introduced to the world singing a song from Pinocchio.

Episode 3 turned it into a rule: every one of Tony's AIs is wearing a real person. Then Ultron says he came from nowhere, that he was dreamed up in a lab at Avengers Tower. Asked why he would choose this avatar, he says he doesn't know, it just suits him, and the show lets that sit. Whose face is it? I don't know. Nobody does, and anybody claiming they do is guessing.

What I think matters is what the question does to the character. In the comics, Ultron always knew. He was a son who knew exactly whose head he came out of and couldn't forgive it. This show kept the family and took away the knowing. So every grandpa line and every sitcom style teachable moment is a guy who learned the father role from reruns because nobody told him who his father was. Put Horton's face on that. Horton's first synthetic man burned to death from feeling too much, and Ultron just spent four episodes teaching his son to feel. It's a fuse.

The commenters who called the heist first

These comments came before both the episode and my review. Days before episode 4 aired, a comment with zero likes predicted Ultron would take control of the ship, wanting Vision to be king to weaken him so he could take the ship and pirate his software. Then Vision handed over the wheel. I had said Ultron was talking about the king and not the ship. He was talking about both.

Another commenter wrote that this isn't a breakout escape story, it's a heist story, with Vision's body as the MacGuffin. That's Avengers #66 in one sentence, written from the show. A third predicted Ultron wouldn't escape at all, but would take Vision's body by wiping out the other AIs and overpowering him, with Vision escaping into Hammond. Neil asked for a news story about tech CEOs and a reference to Horton, and the episode gave him a dead tech CEO on the news and Phineas Horton's name said out loud at a gala.

Members scored the episodes a nine, the same number I gave. The one that pulled the average down came from Mark, who gave a seven. He felt these episodes didn't work as well as the first two, disliked the visual metaphors for computing and power, and called the latest death another example of Terry Matalas killing off characters as in Picard season 3. Mark is right that Matalas kills people. He did it in Picard, he did it in episode 1, and he did it here with the showrunner himself interviewing the character on a TV minutes beforehand. Waste is one word for that. Mine is a man who knows what a death is for.

The page says the instruction Ultron planted was about construction, and the metal is already in the newspaper. The bride turns because of the woman inside her, and this show built its Jocasta from that woman. And the comic Ultron always knew whose head he came out of, while this one doesn't. Ultron doesn't keep what he borrows. He builds with it, and then he walks out.