VisionQuest episode 7: is Vision really the original Human Torch?

VisionQuest episode 7, Immolation, settles a 37-year-old comics fight, and it picks a side. There's a man on fire in the middle of a library wearing Vision's face, except Vision's the one who borrowed it. That man is Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch from Marvel Comics number one in 1939. With the exchange "You wear my face. No, you wear mine," the show answers a question that comics never fully answered. I came out of this hour hyped, and I'm giving it a 9.5 out of 10.

Immolation is episode 7 of 8. A second-to-last episode has two jobs it can do. It can be the climax and let the finale be the long walk down the other side, the aftermath. Or it can build you right up to the edge of the climax and stop there. This one builds. There's no climax here. It's all setup. The biggest reason I came out excited is a face and a fight that are older than the show.

Vision's descent plays like Inception

Most of this hour happens inside Vision's head, and the way it's cut is the first thing that got me. The episode keeps intercutting, and it looks almost like jump cuts. I don't do jump cuts, but here there's a point to it. Vision is starting to experience things, and the edit stutters the way he does. The deeper he goes into his own psyche, the less smooth it gets.

It had an Inception quality for me, and I mean the idea of going deeper into your own mind, level by level. The Doctor Strange approach, buildings folding over buildings, is a whole different movie. Vision keeps coming out of the same elevator again and again, and the episode keeps showing you clocks. All I kept thinking was whether time is moving faster or slower the deeper he goes. In Inception, every level down, time slows, and the dream inside the dream runs longer than the one above it. Look at those clocks again with that in mind.

The house does the same thing to you. Vision's own house turns into a maze, and he follows Red Vision through rooms he built himself, a mini labyrinth of his own memory. Then Red Vision stops and lays out the basics: Vision has held him up on a pedestal because he doesn't want to go through the effort of the climb. I sat there stunned by that whole answer.

Paul Bettany plays five faces, and Terry Matalas says that's deliberate

All of it is Paul Bettany. He's Phineas Horton in 1939, he's Jim, he's White Vision, he's Red Vision, and he's Vision himself. Every one of those faces feels like a different man.

Terry Matalas told Polygon that's on purpose. People assume the human faces are a budget decision, and he said it's not. It's a James Spader thing, and he wants to see both Spader and Bettany. Everything looked sharp and purposeful. Nothing in this hour is filler.

The Englehart versus Byrne fight over the Human Torch's body

None of that is the part comic readers are going to lose their minds over. The face is, because the face is the fight. In 1975, Steve Englehart said the Vision is the original Human Torch's body. In 1989, John Byrne said there's no way he was ever the Torch, and the real Jim Hammond wakes up as himself. Ten years later, Avengers Forever number 8 said both: Ultron got a copy, the original stayed himself, and everybody's happy. That's how comics settle a fight. They split the difference.

The show didn't split anything. The one who gives Vision back himself is the burning man in the library. Wonder Man is nowhere in it. It's the body. Jim Hammond wore the face first, and Phineas Horton wore it before him. When Vision comes back up, he comes back in his classic colors, red and green, with the cape. For the record, the Young Avengers Vision is a different character entirely, with a different design. This is the original walking out of the fire.

Earlier, I said the man Byrne took out would come back to hand the Vision the one thing Byrne's Vision never got back. I said it about the client. It turned out to be the burning man in the library, but it's the same handoff. VisionQuest picked Englehart.

The predictions I made about Red Vision and Jim Hammond

Before this episode aired, I said the released clip was regular Vision reconnecting with something underneath him. I even said the line out loud before it aired: "The only force powerful enough to imprison me is myself." That's the original Vision in stored memory.

That's exactly the moment where I said the face was Jim Hammond or a younger Phineas, and that the Vision on fire in the trailer wasn't really Vision. I said it plainly: it's Red Vision.

Vision tells Tommy he's his father and that he loves him

Then came the part that got me right in the chest. Vision finally understands that he is Vision. He was broken, and he has to carry all of it, Wanda most of all. The original Vision calls him out for running away out of cowardice and tells him he's Tommy and Billy's father.

Vision records a message for Tommy on an iPad-looking device. He calls him his son. He tells him, "I remember." And he tells him he loves him.

Ultron leaves a piece of himself in Vision

Ultron is in there with him too, in a scene where Ultron is dealing with all of his own parts and pieces, placed right next to Vision. After the first two episodes I said Ultron gets out and leaves a piece of himself in Vision, and many of you said it with me. A part of Ultron is always going to be part of Vision now.

The only reason Ultron is in there at all is mercy. Matalas told Empire the show is retconning the end of Age of Ultron so that Vision showed mercy. This is what mercy costs: you carry the guy you spared.

The client has James Spader's face, but he isn't Ultron

The show held one card back. The client finally shows his face, and it's Ultron's face, James Spader. You're going to look at that and say Ultron is the client. He's not. He's not the guy who built Ultron either. He's the former lover and partner of the woman Jocasta was copied from, the man who had that face first. He lives in Phineas Horton's old house, and he can rewrite Vision's source code. He tells Jocasta, "I'm your past and your future."

Many of us said Ultron's face was Phineas Horton. I said it. This guy had it first. He's the man who knew Jocasta when she was still human. Earlier I said somebody built Jocasta that body and the show hadn't told us who. Now we've seen his face. Most likely, he's the one who put her in it.

The Hank Pym family tree, rebuilt

The real kicker is that you already met this family in the premiere. Ultron is Hank Pym's mind in a machine, and he built himself a bride out of Hank Pym's wife, Janet van Dyne. The show just built the same family again: a man whose face Ultron wears, and the woman Jocasta was copied from, whom he loved. In this universe, Pym is already Michael Douglas, so the father got James Spader's face. Same family, new clothes.

Then there's Horton's partner. Phineas Horton didn't build the first synthetic man alone. In the comics, he had a partner, Dr. James Bradley, who walked away when Horton wouldn't fix the flaw that made the Torch burst into flames. That's Invaders Volume 2, Number 3: a partner who left, and a body left behind. Jo Carrington's team had a sixth partner nobody told us about. That's the comics right there.

My theory on how Vision got Ultron's face

Everybody is going to ask about the voice. Tony built everything on the back of the AI they got from Jo's team, which we learned in episode 6, so the voice can come from that line. But I think the face doesn't stick until Vision pulls Ultron into his head. The moment Vision traps Ultron's code in his mind, that's when the face gets printed on him, the same way Jo's face got printed on Jocasta. Everyone in the show is based on somebody.

I still haven't figured out how the voice fits, and I think that's coming back to mean something. Is the client Phineas Horton's grandson or great-grandson? It could be, and there are a lot of James Spaders floating around now. I'm not calling that one yes or no.

Jocasta's sixth key and the house where Ultron was imprisoned

What kept me in my chair was the keys. Jocasta is putting them in. Ultron was the fourth key, the face he took back in episode 5. Jocasta herself is the fifth, with the poem. I thought that was it, and then there's a sixth key. I was so mad.

Then she gets to the house, and it's the same place Vision used to imprison Ultron. That's the hook. I was annoyed and I still couldn't look away. That's how you hold a card: you give us enough to say we saw it, and you keep enough back that we're still arguing about it. That's good writing from Terry Matalas and his room, and it's the job of a second-to-last episode.

Friday is the loose end

There's a catch, and her name is Friday. She's the one dangling piece in this hour, and she does feel like a MacGuffin. I'm fine with it, but look at what Ultron spent this episode doing: covering for her. He'd been covering for Friday the whole time.

So when he throws her off that balcony, I think he expelled her to protect her. She didn't smash into a million pieces. She turns into a ball of her own code, and to me it looked like she went through the floor. That's a getaway.

Verdict: Immolation earns a 9.5 out of 10

Immolation took the first job, the build, and did it better than any second-to-last episode I've seen in a very long time. It paid off what has been seeded since the premiere, the face and the Torch, and it kept one card back. A descent that plays like Inception, Bettany in five faces, a client with Ultron's face who isn't Ultron, a father telling his son he loves him, and one loose thread I'll happily let slide. I'm going into the finale pumped, because I have no reason to doubt they're going to stick the landing. The comics kept both answers. VisionQuest walked into the fire and came out with one.