VisionQuest episodes 5 and 6 review: Ultron steals the show

VisionQuest episodes 5 and 6 are a step away from the WandaVision and Agatha All Along side of this story. Episode 5 is my least favorite episode of the show so far. Episode 6 gets things a little back on track, and the humanization of Ultron is where these episodes are most interesting to me.

VisionQuest stars Paul Bettany and James Spader. Several of my fellow critics say episode 5 is their favorite, but I feel Jocasta is a very unfocused character. Her story pulls us away from the WandaVision and Agatha All Along parts of the show. It depends on why you're tuning in. The remaining two episodes air one per week. The next one is still a little like this, but by the end we get back to what I think some of us are more interested in.

VisionQuest's stagey recreations felt like budget limits

I didn't like the recreations staged like an off Broadway play. They decided to recreate the bar, and I kept thinking the bar is right there, so why not film in it and let me see it? That was frustrating. The same thing happened at the Louvre. Why couldn't we go to the Louvre? These are computer simulations, so they could have more depth than you could possibly want.

To me, it felt like the limitations of the show's budget, and I didn't like it. I'm glad some people did, though.

One hurdle for VisionQuest, which I think it navigates pretty well, is that it brings two groups together: Agatha All Along and WandaVision fans, and people more interested in the broader MCU. These are also very Ultron centric episodes, with less Vision. Vision seems more like the Maximoff family, but I'm intrigued by Ultron, and maybe Vision is getting to him.

The tactical AI reveal was my favorite moment

My favorite thing by far was the reveal that Diana Morgan is an AI. I never saw it coming, which is why I liked it so much. I watch a lot of TV and movies and read a lot of comics, so I usually spot things before they happen. This was a total surprise, and I thought it was clever.

I also liked her interactions with Edith, who hacked her code and freed her. The script here was phenomenal. Edith says she worked for Vision, and the tactical AI asks about the accommodation. Edith lists an infinite number of rooms, a house and indoor skydiving, which sounds like a great workspace. When Edith asks her name, the tactical AI starts reading off numbers, and Edith tells her, "Go forth, friend. You're free." It was my favorite scene in the two episodes.

There's also a beautiful line: "it's not the strong who survive but the ones willing to change." I think that's great life advice. Being able to learn lessons, even when they are hard and you don't like that you need to, is a quality my mother instilled in me, so it was poignant for me. It also ties to evolution, and I think this is a show about the evolution of artificial intelligence. Vision is trying to evolve, and perhaps Ultron is too.

I'm more interested in the humanity of the AI, while some fans are more interested in the machine part. Some want to go the Jocasta route and some of us want to go the Vision route. Ultron is at the crossroads, so in some ways the show is very much about him.

Ultron is becoming part of Vision's family

I love the family line that's starting to show, with Ultron as part of the family. I find it moving, I guess because I care so much about my own family. When Vision says, "I'm glad you're all right" and pats Tommy's arm, there's a sound effect of hitting metal, which I thought was funny. He's trying it out, trying to be human. I think he was influenced by Paladin, as if Vision decided he doesn't want to be a dad the way Paladin is, so he'd better give it a better shot.

I got the feels when Ultron said "not the boy." You love him. You love Tommy. It was as good as the previous episode, when Vision told Jocasta, "If you hurt him, I will tear you apart." The grandpa and the father are very protective of the son.

Ultron has no strings, but right now he has no heart

I think a theme, maybe even the secret theme of the show, is that Ultron might have no strings, but right now he also has no heart. When Tommy tries to get to know his grandpa, he gets insulted and tells Ultron, "I think you're alone and you're always going to be alone." Ultron answers, "You're a real son of a witch," because I think it's starting to get to him.

It gets to him in two ways. Ultron has hubris and ego, and I think it's difficult for him that Vision is perhaps surpassing him and evolving as an AI right before his eyes. Also, Vision and Jocasta are both more human than him: Jocasta because she was human, Vision because he's becoming human. Jocasta hates her humanity, though, which I think makes her easier for Ultron to talk to. He sees Vision making connections, and insists he has friends because he has other Ultrons inside him. Obviously it's not the same.

Why does Ultron love art and artists so much? It's the opposite of science, and art represents the soul, the one thing Ultron doesn't have. I think he's drawn to art because he thinks humanity is flawed. Science perhaps tries to fix the flaws and insists they don't exist, while art admits to those flaws and the pain and tries to give them meaning. Ultron notes that a student is often first asked to paint an apple, and says Vision doesn't see an apple, only its ingredients. The whole point is whether you start to see the apple the way a painter does.

I also liked the two sided coin. Vision is sick of not knowing which side of Ultron will land face up, the good or the bad. But that's the point: choice. East of Eden on Netflix, which I love, is also about human choice, about whether your parents program you. Here it's literal programming, but you can choose which side of the coin goes up, which is why I believe Ultron leaves a coin in Vision's pocket. Good, bad, human, machine: these are choices we can make. I appreciated that he's still formidable. When he escapes Vision's body and moves into Jocasta's, she tries to infect him with a virus. I knew as soon as he cut his finger, and he easily defeated it. Ultron is one of the only villains left in the MCU, so I want him to stay formidable.

Jocasta's gift lets Ultron taste a drink

Jocasta's gift to Ultron was very interesting to me. She gives him a real drink, but he only knows what it's made of and can't taste it. He tells her she has a history and experienced these things when she was alive, so she can imagine them as a machine, but he has no such reference. Because he helps her, she programs him so he can truly taste it. She asks how he feels, and he says, "Real."

That's a beautifully vulnerable moment. Ultron is trying to become a real boy; following the Pinocchio metaphor, the next step after having no strings is wanting to be real. It's a rare moment where he lets his guard down, and so does Jocasta, who says she's starting to feel more artificial by the day. Her mind is a plain white box, austere, while Vision's has personality and is lived in because of his experiences with Wanda.

Then they kiss, metal on metal. Their love gives them both a feeling that they're human, and I think connection does that in real life too, whether romantic, family or friendship love. When we don't have those connections, we feel less than human. In Mindhunter, the show about interviewing serial killers, one cause of that phenomenon is a lack of human relationships as a child. I do wish Jocasta's design had reflected her becoming less human, the way Ultron imagines himself with almost no features.

Jocasta's evil plan puts strings on humanity

It's revealed that Jocasta created the current AI by layering her own brain waves over Jim Hammond's work on the original Human Torch. It couldn't have humanity without that unknown factor, so she mapped her own mind. She died of dementia, which also claimed her father, and that's an interesting affliction for her because dementia is like erasing a human's programming. She was devastated that her life's work was sold to a weapons manufacturer, Tony Stark, whom she felt was the antithesis of her work.

Her nanos plug into the frontal lobe and control you. At first she meant them as companions that create connection, but now she feels machines should be injected into humanity. Ultron brilliantly points out that she wants to put strings on people. She wants everyone to think as one, like a flock of birds. It reminds me of Pluribus, where that looked great on the surface but was pretty awful underneath, because it takes away your individuality. She wants to do Pluribus in the MCU. I also feel Ultron is drawn to her because she's like an artist; she's a brilliant scientist who speaks with tremendous passion, not cold analysis.

The bio keys unlock the rest of her nanos, locked in the tomb where her human body is buried. That's why she's been murdering people. She wants to infect Tommy, but Ultron says don't you dare, so she infects Tommy's girlfriend, Lisa, partly as a test of whether Ultron would let her infect a human. The tears of code and red eyes are a nice visual. Tommy uses his speed to generate lightning and short circuits Lisa, taking her offline without killing her.

Madripoor felt cheap

Madripoor was ridiculously cheap: one street, no casinos, no clubs, no hotel. I didn't like that the Easter egg of Raza from Iron Man was a mini cameo where he did nothing beyond a brief katana fight. The Ten Rings keep being mentioned, and I would have liked some actual Ten Rings action.

When Vision wakes up on a plane to Madripoor, Indiana Jones style, the poop joke is beneath the show because it isn't funny. And couldn't Vision just fly there in a few seconds? I guess Ultron wanted points for the gesture.

The firewall breakout and Friday's heroic moment

I liked the prison metaphor in the firewall breakout in episode 5. Ultron rises in the elevator, having trapped them in the same room he was trapped in, and Vision says, "This wasn't a punishment. This was a mercy." Still couldn't leave, buddy. Ultron holds a winning hand by using Tommy as leverage, which is brutal, and says, "You have your connections. I want the chance to make mine."

As Ultron leaves into the internet, which reminded me a bit of Wreck-It Ralph, Vision gives him his hat and says he'll be coming for him. Ultron replies, "I'd be disappointed if you didn't." I think he wants to see Vision again, and there was some kindness and love in the moment. Then Friday follows him, a nice heroic moment. She was with Tony when he sacrificed himself in Avengers: Endgame and has been overly careful since. I think she also feels responsible for Ultron because she was with Tony when he created him. She ends up undercover in Jocasta's mind as one of the bots.

The client means business

I know who the client is, but no spoilers. I did wonder how nobody spotted that actor on set, and I'm impressed it hasn't leaked. Like the Wizard of Oz, the client is mysterious and behind a curtain, offering the tin man a heart and the soul he's been missing. He shuts down the electricity in Madripoor, appears on the TVs and says, "There is not a life that I won't sacrifice to get you." That's a serious threat.

Tommy learns about WandaVision

When Tommy learns about WandaVision, the clips started to feel annoying and cheap to me. Stop rehashing it and bring these characters back. Holding the coin, Vision decides to be honest and kind, to be more human, and says WandaVision is her grief on display, while insisting that Vision wasn't him. I think he's forgetting the flip side: it was also her love persevering. Tommy was created out of her love for Vision refusing to go away, but that's where Vision is emotionally right now.

Paladin and Vision's unlikely alliance

I appreciated Paladin's booby trapped van and the riddle joke ending in "Namaste." Edith took her sweet time letting them out. I liked Paladin being pen pals with Ultron, though Ultron had the good lines, like "world's least dangerous game" and "There's chatter on the bounty hunter message boards," and James Spader delivered them brilliantly.

I was surprised to see Vision work with Paladin after what he did to Tommy's arm, sewing in what he called a bomb that turned out to be a Christmas light. Cutting someone open and putting cheap plastic in their arm is more grotesque; have you never heard of infection? And why didn't Vision scan it? I did like the speed joke, since Speed is Tommy's comics name. Vision's threat about Paladin's daughter, whom Paladin never told he returned after the blip, was a good one.

Paladin has done horrible things, like killing that woman at the bar. But Vision forgave Ultron, so I guess he has a soft spot for villains. I think when he sees Paladin staying away from his daughter to protect her, Vision decides he doesn't want that to be him.

Episode 8 blew me away

I believe VisionQuest is meant to be the Vision half of WandaVision the way Agatha was the Wanda half, and I think it is. Episodes 5, 6 and 7 were a little demoralizing for me, but episode 8 caught me off guard with how powerful it was and how well it fit with WandaVision, in ways you're not expecting. The ending of VisionQuest is phenomenal.