VisionQuest Episodes 1 and 2 Mirror WandaVision, and Marvel TV May Rethink Its Plans

VisionQuest has arrived, and I think this show is about to turn Marvel television on its head. I finally got to see episodes 1 and 2, and to no one's surprise, it's really good.

I'll admit this isn't a show I've been chomping at the bit to see. I've been far more focused on Avengers: Doomsday. But I never had any doubt that this show would be quite good, especially with James Spader back as Ultron.

VisionQuest needs WandaVision, and I'm fine with that

To truly appreciate this show, you need to have seen WandaVision. It's also looking like it will be really important to have seen Agatha All Along. That makes sense, because VisionQuest is being marketed as the third installment of a trilogy that began with WandaVision, continued with Agatha All Along, and now arrives here.

I really do think it's fine to have WandaVision be required viewing. It's arguably the most popular and critically acclaimed television series Marvel Studios has ever produced. It was a big success for Disney Plus, it received widespread acclaim from critics and fans, and it's one of those rare Marvel shows that felt like a cultural event while it was airing.

VisionQuest isn't some loosely connected spinoff of WandaVision. It's a direct continuation of that story. So I don't really have a problem with Marvel expecting the audience to know what came before, especially when the show uses that history to tell a much more interesting story than it could have otherwise.

Vision is pulling a Wanda with his own artificial reality

One of my favorite things about VisionQuest so far is how it shows Vision basically pulling a Wanda. He's building his own artificial reality. I think he doesn't quite realize it yet, but he's also doing this to cope with grief, a grief he doesn't think he's capable of feeling. And with grief, of course, comes love. It's love persevering.

In WandaVision, Wanda was grieving the loss of Vision. Rather than confronting that grief, she created a new world where she could escape and be with him. Vision was still alive, they had a home, they could raise a family, and everything could be exactly the way she wanted. She used chaos magic to build that reality, transforming an entire town into her own personal sitcom.

Now Vision is doing the same thing, in a less invasive and less delusional way. Keep in mind he doesn't have an artificial Wanda walking around, even though he could likely very easily create an AI identical to her. Wanda created her simulation through witchcraft, and "Vision has now created one through ones and zeros."

As Thor said way back in the first Thor movie, science and magic where he comes from are kind of one and the same. I think we're slowly learning that, even with shows like Ironheart and with Doctor Doom and Doomsday. Vision has always been a great representation of this, as an android with the Mind Stone. In this universe magic exists, which means it's part of nature, and science is the study of nature and the matter of the universe. So I think it makes a lot of sense that simulations, whether built through coding or through magic, would be quite similar.

Vision's digital home is populated by Jarvis, Friday, Edith and Ultron

That's a roundabout way of saying I really love the parallel being drawn inside Vision's mind. He's constructed an artificial home populated by different artificial intelligences: Jarvis, Friday, Edith, and even Ultron. They're all living together inside this digital recreation of a home, essentially functioning as Vision's own bizarre little family.

Just like with Wanda and Westview, something is slightly off about all of it. It's a simulation of what a home, a family and a human life are supposed to look like, but none of it is quite right. That's because Vision, much like Wanda, is trying to recreate something he has lost. His simulation is far more honest, but it's still deceptive to a certain degree.

Wanda was trying to experience a future she felt robbed of, one she didn't get in her universe but did in others. We know from Multiverse of Madness that her hex magic was pulling directly from the code of the multiverse, because in every other universe, Billy and Tommy are real. They have those names and look the same. She didn't just make them up. Perhaps without knowing it, she was drawing from the multiverse.

Vision is trying to understand a past he feels he was robbed of

Where Wanda was living a future taken from her, Vision is trying to understand a past he feels he was robbed of. We see him viewing someone else's life play out in front of him: a life where he was an Avenger, where he fell in love, where he had a family, and where he ultimately died.

Granted, he doesn't like the Westview files portion of his memories. He prefers the material from before Westview, because he views all the Westview material as fake. But that opens the door to what this entire trilogy has been about, especially WandaVision and now VisionQuest: the philosophical question of what it means to be real. What does it mean to be you, or me? Is artificial intelligence really all that artificial? Vision knows that person was him, but at the same time it wasn't.

Vision and Tommy are having the same identity crisis

That brings me to what I think is the most brilliant part of these first two episodes: the direct parallel between Vision and Tommy. In Agatha All Along, Billy Maximoff returned, and his situation was a little different. Billy's consciousness entered the body of a dead kid whose soul had moved on.

Tommy has a much more complicated problem. I could be wrong on this, and I've only seen the episodes once, so maybe I missed something, but it would appear that when that kid was drowning, he was resuscitated. So the kid inhabiting the body survived and is still there, but Tommy also moved in. Now he remembers being Tommy Maximoff, son of Wanda and Vision, growing up in their sitcom reality in Westview, and he also remembers being a kid who grew up in foster homes, experienced abandonment and eventually drowned. He's got two completely different sets of memories fighting for space inside one head.

The Vision we knew through the Infinity Saga was killed by Thanos in Infinity War. His body was recovered by SWORD, dismantled, rebuilt and reactivated as White Vision, a new blank consciousness inhabiting the body of someone who had already lived an entire life. In the WandaVision finale, the hex Vision didn't just share his memories with White Vision. He unlocked the original Vision's memories still stored as data in that body.

Suddenly White Vision had access to a life he had never personally experienced. He remembers fighting alongside the Avengers, falling in love with Wanda and dying at the hand of Thanos, but those memories feel different and kind of foreign. That's the same thing Tommy is going through. Both are trying to reconcile two identities in one body, struggling with the same question: if I remember being somebody else, does that make me that person, or am I somebody entirely new? I think we're going to see Vision and Tommy try to help each other, and in the process wind up helping themselves. It all brings us back to that brilliant ship of Theseus conversation from the WandaVision finale between hex Vision and White Vision, which Ultron addresses once again in VisionQuest.

James Spader's Ultron is now a father figure to Vision

Speaking of Ultron, I just love James Spader, and I love the character, who is now far more mature in this show and like a father to Vision. That makes perfect sense when you remember Ultron originally created Vision's body. He intended it to become his next form, a superior vessel that would let him evolve beyond his original programming. But the Avengers stole it, Tony and Bruce uploaded Jarvis, and Vision was born. In a sense, Ultron really is one of Vision's fathers.

I love that Ultron is in Vision's head serving as a mentor, offering unsolicited advice Vision isn't sure he should listen to. What makes that interesting is that Ultron's advice isn't always wrong. His philosophy in Age of Ultron was that humanity needed to evolve, even if that meant destroying what came before. While all of that is awful, what he's encouraging Vision to do is stop obsessing over which version of himself he used to be or is supposed to be, and start embracing who he is. That's not bad advice.

I do feel Ultron is genuinely trying to help Vision. "Is he manipulating him? Is there some larger plan at work? Maybe. Probably. We shall see." I don't want Ultron to become a good guy superhero; I want him to remain at least very morally gray. But I hope we'll see good guy Ultron in service of Vision, not humanity, doing something good for his son and for his grandson Tommy. Ultron was close with Wanda as well, so there's a whole family tree happening here. Seeing Age of Ultron, then WandaVision, Agatha All Along and VisionQuest could make for a fun arc for the MCU.

Billy may be following Tommy, plus a Jim Hammond reference

There are some fun Easter eggs too. The big one is that Billy might be following Tommy. Agatha All Along ended with Billy and Agatha going to find his brother, and in some shots of Tommy walking through the city, you can see what looks like Billy in the background. So maybe that's a thing.

There was also a reference to Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, who we saw in the first Captain America movie as a nod to Chris Evans having played Johnny Storm's Human Torch. This Human Torch wasn't part of the Fantastic Four. He was an android who first appeared in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939, really Marvel's first AI character, a machine who wanted to find his place among humanity. Bringing him into a series about Vision, and Tommy as well, trying to do the same thing is a cool nod, I think.

Then there's the villain Paladin, and an actress I know from Ricky Gervais's show After Life. She's brilliant in that show, and I think she's totally playing an AI here as well, but we'll see.

VisionQuest may push Marvel TV back toward its original approach

This show was greenlit in a very different era of Marvel TV, one that was being phased out. With the show being so well received and other things changing at Marvel TV, that era might soon be phased back in. The original idea behind the Disney Plus shows was that they'd function as extensions of the movies, with characters like Wanda and Vision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and Hawkeye getting stories there might not be room for on the big screen, all treated as just as connected and crucial as the films.

In theory that was a fine idea. WandaVision and Loki are arguably two of the best projects of the Multiverse Saga. The problem was Marvel started making too many shows, and they began to feel like homework. To understand the movies, you suddenly needed hours and hours of television, which created a barrier for more casual fans used to just keeping up with what was in theaters.

So Marvel has been rethinking its approach, moving away from continuing movie characters' stories on Disney Plus and focusing on shows that could stand on their own. It was once said VisionQuest would be the end of the era of movie heroes starring in shows. But with VisionQuest being a hit, and Marvel television seemingly abandoning its plan B of centering live action TV on Daredevil and the Netflix era Defenders characters, Marvel may be reconsidering again. I'm hoping for a hybrid of the two plans: "Not MCU shows that feel like director's cuts of movies chopped into eight pieces," but also not completely separate shows that ignore the overarching MCU. I'm excited for the rest of the season.

What did you think of VisionQuest, and what do you think it will do for the state of Marvel TV?