VisionQuest theory: is the Client Jim Hammond, the Human Torch?

The Client finally made his pitch to Vision, and it has been made before, in the comic book this show is named after. "You died from love. But rebuilt, reborn, without that love. A tin man, without a heart. I can give you that heart." In 1989, Marvel took the Vision apart and put him back together without his heart, and the one man who could give it back said no. So the VisionQuest Client is echoing a 1989 comic.

VisionQuest, the Disney Plus series from showrunner Terry Matalas starring Paul Bettany as Vision and James Spader as Ultron, has fans asking three things. Who is the Client? Does Ultron stop Jocasta, his bride in the comics, before she finishes the job? And what did Vision really put in that hat?

Jim Hammond leads the fan theories about the VisionQuest Client

When I said in my review that I still want to know who the Client is, one fan, Phantasm, answered 33 minutes later with a name and a reason. The theory: Vision kept the memories but not the emotion of his previous self, and Tommy said in episode 4 that Jim was overwhelmed by his feelings, "felt to death." Phantasm thinks that will be revealed to have destroyed only Jim's physical form, that his consciousness survived, and that Jim wants to merge with Vision. That one has 108 likes and counting.

I went through roughly 800 responses to that review and to my previous breakdown. About 175 talked about the Client, and roughly 65 put Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, right next to that word. I had called Hammond a deep cut, and then I counted. Billy, Wanda's son, is a distant second. After that it scatters: Wanda, Horton, Doom, Zola, Sharon Carter, a white Vision, Agatha, and one brave soul who picked Friday.

I do have to take one down. Terry Matalas already answered the Billy question himself in three words: "It's not Billy." And fans aren't alone on Hammond. Some of the biggest breakdowns out there are already calling it.

There's also one face that isn't on the board. Ed, a fan, asked whether anyone else spotted the Watcher when the Client appeared on the TV screens in Madripoor, saying that after the Ten Rings syndicate showed up, he could have sworn he saw two bright eyes flash on the right side of those screens. Somebody posted the frame, and Matalas answered: "Good eye or eyes?"

What the Client actually said, including the money line

Everybody has a name, but almost nobody has sat with the whole pitch. He opens irritated: "I grow tired of all the games. And you're wasting my time. And you're wasting my money." Then he turns to Vision: "I am the one hunting you. But I'm also the one who can end your suffering." Then comes the line about love and the Tin Man. Some breakdowns heard the Wizard of Oz in it.

Phantasm's case lives right there: a synthetic man who felt so much it burned him up, talking to a synthetic man who came back feeling nothing. When the Client said he will give Vision what he's missing, his emotions, Phantasm's view was that it had to be Hammond, the one synth so emotional he caught fire.

Then the fans argued with each other, which is what I love most. Tremble countered that Jim burst into flames because he couldn't process human emotions, which makes him not the best candidate to help get Vision's emotions back. But Tremble, while leaning towards Jim, also flagged the half of the pitch most people skipped: "you're wasting my money" seemed an odd thing for a synth who could obtain as much money as it wants. Tremble wondered if it could be nothing. I don't think it's nothing. Does a synth that can walk into any system it wants usually lead with its budget? The Client did.

John Byrne's Vision Quest: the comic that took away the Vision's heart

This show's title has been on Marvel's shelf before. West Coast Avengers 42 through 45, 1989, by John Byrne, the four issues everybody calls Vision Quest. A covert international team with the US government's blessing kidnaps the Vision and takes him apart. Hank Pym, the scientist who built Ultron in the comics, gets him back and rebuilds him. He even reloads the memories. When Wanda asks if he remembers her, Pym tells her he knows all of them now.

But listen to what's missing. In issue 45, Pym explains that the Vision has all the information he can supply, but his emotional connection to that information is gone. The Vision comes back white, and Wanda calls him a human shaped computer.

In the comics, the Vision's heart has always had a source. When Ultron built him, the mind came from Wonder Man's brain patterns, so Pym needs Simon Williams to finish the job. Wanda goes to him herself: "It would only take a word from you to give him back his soul." Simon answers that he had no choice in the transfer of his soul into the Vision the first time, and now he has a choice. He says no.

Now play the Client over that. Rebuilt, reborn, without that love: that's Byrne's white Vision. The soul you came back to life without: that's the word Wanda used in 1989. I can give you that heart: that's the heart Wonder Man wouldn't give.

The episode seven Red Vision scene may or may not be the Client

Marvel released one scene from episode seven. Vision in human form stands on the stairs and at the door of his mind house is Red Vision. Everyone keeps calling it Hex Vision, but I don't think that's fair. It's Red Vision, period. The line is "After all the battles waged, the monsters fought. The only force powerful enough to imprison me is myself," and the reply is "This isn't a prison." Then it cuts.

That scene is designed to tease and taken out of context, and we have no idea what situation it is. Most people assume that's the Client. I don't know that I agree, and I don't know that I disagree. It could go either way. I think whoever the Client is, a rogue AI, a copy, who knows, could end up hurting or imprisoning Vision, with Vision saving him, or the Client could turn out to be that Vision. Theories run from Hex Vision to whatever was left of his operating system when S.W.O.R.D. built White Vision. There's not enough there to go on.

Why the Jim Hammond bet gets interesting: Byrne took the Human Torch out of the Vision

In my first breakdown of the series, I gave Steve Englehart's answer from 1975: Ultron built the Vision out of the original Human Torch's body. Byrne undid it. On the last pages of issue 45, Pym says there's no way he could ever have been the Torch. Then in Avengers West Coast 50, November 1989, the same book under its new name, Pym traces the Vision's parts back to the Second World War, telling Hammond the Vision was built from his spare parts, and the real Jim Hammond wakes up as himself.

Byrne's run is the one that took the man on fire out of the Vision. Ten years later, Avengers Forever 8, July 1999, said Immortus had copied the Torch and Ultron got the copy. But the run this show took its name from is Byrne's. The show took Byrne's title and Byrne's white Vision, and then in episode 2 it hung Hammond on the wall and let Vision call him the first of us.

I also owe a correction. In my review, I said my read on the lock, those four scientist pieces locking up Jim Hammond's body, was looking wrong. Deadlock put Jo Carrington's nanobots behind that lock, not Jim. That still stands, but the name is a different bet. If the Client is Hammond, the man Byrne took out of the Vision is the man offering to put his heart back in. I'm still not putting a name on the Client, but I said that if the Torch pieces turn out to be seeding something for later, that would be phenomenal. If the Client is Hammond, that's the seeding.

Who built Jocasta's body is the second question in Deadlock

I think the second question in Deadlock is bigger than it looks. In the white room, Ultron tells Jocasta: "It feels to me like your Greek tragedy has a deuteragonist unaccounted for. Where did this body come from?" Then he asks who digitized and transferred her consciousness. A deuteragonist is the second lead. Jocasta is Jo Carrington's mind digitized, somebody built her that body, and the show hasn't told us who. Whose body it is was the exact fight Englehart and Byrne had about the Vision. Now the show is having it about Jocasta.

The biggest breakdowns think whoever built her is the Client, and so do a handful of fans. Brandi put it simply: Jim is the Client and the one responsible for Jocasta's transition into a body. Then there's Jocasta herself, describing something "like a record that skipped past the chorus, past something vital," and an anger she cannot place and a love she doesn't understand. That's a woman describing an edit. Byrne's Vision came back without his heart. This Jocasta came back without her chorus. Same surgery, different patient.

What Ultron built, bought, or stole in episodes five and six

I set fans a challenge: track Ultron's hands across episodes five and six and name the first thing he builds, buys or steals, with a timestamp. Corpsman answered three hours after the episode dropped. In episode five at 5:08, Ultron steals Thomas using Vision's body. At 7:59, he buys an old fashioned. A kidnapping and a cocktail. Ultron sits Thomas, Wanda's other son, down in a pub three blocks from the gala, orders an old fashioned the old fashioned way, and sells himself to the kid as buy one, get one free. That's full marks.

Neil predicted Ultron would start building Ultron 6. Not yet. The only one who built anything was Jocasta. With her billions still locked away, she built a single nanobot and tested it on Lisa, Thomas's girlfriend.

I owe myself a correction too. I said Ultron doesn't keep what he borrows; he builds with it, then walks out. Well, he walked out. He gave Vision back the body he'd wanted since Age of Ultron, put him on a plane to Madripoor, and left, walking away to explore his curiosity about Jocasta. The building half I'm leaving open. Papa Stormcrow put it better: he didn't see Ultron steal anything, but he'd lay money that Ultron has designs on Jocasta's nanos.

The hat Vision gave Ultron: hope, a tracker, or Chekhov's hat

In Firewall, Vision tells Ultron he is the coin, and we're still waiting to see which side it lands on. But before he left, Vision handed him a hat. I tied the hat to hope, and Vision says it out loud: "You once told me that hats imply a journey about to begin. Well, all journeys begin with hope."

The most liked hat comment reads it far colder: it's not a goodbye but a bug, so Vision can find Ultron wherever he goes. Another fan found a third reading in the Picard episode I pointed to before: the son giving the father a code for hope, something Vision understands and Ultron doesn't, much like Data giving Lore the memories that shape who Lore becomes when Matalas did Picard. That fan called it Chekhov's hat, and I'm stealing that. About a dozen fans also say the Client on those Madripoor screens is wearing a hat. One man got a hat from Vision. The other is offering Vision a heart.

Will Ultron stop Jocasta before she finishes the job?

In my review, timestamped 12:41 in the afternoon, I said I had a feeling that when push comes to shove, Ultron may have learned too much and won't let Jocasta finish the job. Anything posted after that could have come from me, so I only count calls that came first. Corpsman, at 12:13 in the morning, said Ultron leaving Vision on the plane with the coin in his pocket showed he has changed somewhat, and called that Ultron will be what brings Jocasta down. Mrs. Corpsman added that Ultron uses the nanites for his own body.

Salvador Dolly, who had been calling a softer Ultron for days, wrote at 8:55 that morning that Ultron is hesitant, protective of Tommy, and "wants to taste the libations, not just the simulation." That's the old fashioned again, and the drink in the white room. That's a guy who just found out he likes being alive. Hastur, before the episodes aired, offered a retired Ultron with peace in his time, surrounded by family, who's afraid to lose it.

The other door is her humanity surfacing first. One fan caught something I missed: after seeing how her nanobots affected Lisa, Jocasta started questioning her plan, and that fan thinks the show will mimic the comics, where she turns on Ultron at the end. I'm holding to what I said: when push comes to shove, he won't let her finish the job, and he already drew the line at Thomas in Madripoor before he ever said it out loud.

Episodes five and six scores and a Picard season three worry

Fan ballots landed on a nine. My own score was a 10, so the room sits one under me. The lowest ballot came from Mark Zutkoff. He gave episode five a seven, saying it continued the metaphorical representation of the AIs he didn't care for and felt overtalky. Episode six got a nine for being well written and performed, with hilarious lines and sequences, for an average of eight. He's concerned Matalas is drawing on a takeover concept from Picard season three, but he'll see how it wraps up. Mark voted before seeing any breakdowns, including mine, and then heard me make the same Picard comparison. Great minds or the same gutter, I'll take either.

More fans answered Hammond than anybody else. But the comic this show is named after asks something harder than who. It asks what it costs to give the Vision his heart back, and who is willing to pay it. In 1989, the answer was no. This time, somebody said yes.