VisionQuest's Butcher Bird Says She Is Josephine, Not an AI Based on Her

Episode 4 of VisionQuest finally tells us who the Butcher Bird says she is: Dr. Josephine Carrington. What it doesn't tell us is how she ended up in that body, or what the eyeballs, fingerprints and blood she's taking are meant to open. From the rage and the grief, I believe she means it, but whether the science backs her up is still an open question. Spoilers for episode 4 follow.

The way she goes about it is gross. She starts out with a male avatar, and then it turns out the killer is Jocasta, of all people. Imagine building a security system around the idea that nobody can steal your eyeball, and then someone, or rather a bot, harvests it to use for who knows what.

Jocasta insists she is Josephine, not a copy of her

When Vision tries to talk sense into her as an artificial intelligence based on Josephine, she pushes back: "I am not based on her. I am her." The show has told us who this killer identifies as. What we still don't know is the process that put Josephine into this body to the point where it claims to be her rather than just like her.

Was it a mind transfer? Was it something her former colleagues did to her, rather than a fate she chose for herself? We need to know, because those carry different consequences. Finding out will help identify the real motive, whether it's revenge or someone trying to recover a lost identity that was stolen from her. From the rage and the grief in how she responds to Vision, I believe she means it. It is yet to be determined whether the science behind it supports her.

Josephine's death record doesn't tell the whole story

Josephine has already been filed away as dead. Her colleagues have moved on, and her company's technology has moved on. Now she turns up demanding something back, and that tidy little death record suddenly doesn't look so solid.

I'm not saying it's fake, at least not yet. I'm saying it doesn't tell the whole story. Here's a woman who has been written out of her own life, and now she's done asking. It's time for taking.

The victims lead back to the people who built Vision's kind of mind

The victims lead us to a biotech company, the team behind the first stable synthetic consciousness. This is a connected group, not a random collection of wealthy people who happen to irritate a robot. Josephine belongs to that history too. There is one surviving target, and the research eventually reaches Stark Industries.

So this investigation is crawling backward through the foundations of the very minds doing the investigating. I see that as an interesting complication, because it means Vision gets to confront his own past. He has arrived at the moment where he can learn where he came from, and where the people in his mind came from. The technology under investigation explains everything about him, so this story is as much about Vision as it is about Jocasta.

The eyes, fingerprints and blood look like biometric keys

As we understand it, the eyes, fingerprints and blood are biometric keys. They unlock something that our angry girl with horns needs access to. So far the show hasn't told us what that something is. It could be a vault full of robot bodies, and I have to admit that would be spectacular. It could be classified information about the research into how they were created, held in a protected system. Or it could be connected to what she says was stolen, something only the people she's hunting can access.

So maybe she isn't killing them for fun or for revenge's sake. If she can't force them to give her access, she can do it the easy way and take it out of them, which is precisely what she's doing. Yes, she's angry, that's evident enough. But she has a motive and a mission to accomplish, so talking her into letting go of her rage won't be the solution. This isn't someone losing control who needs a father figure or another guy to tell her to calm down and stop killing people.

An apology that reaches her might not stop her either. I'm theorizing that the surviving target carries the final thing she needs, so asking Jocasta to forgive won't solve the problem. No amount of sorry from that woman can stop her from pursuing her mission.

The wings were a signature, and a mistake

The wings beneath the victims are, I think, her having a little fun with these killings. There's motive, but she's enjoying herself too, and that's what produced the Butcher Bird nickname, the image everyone remembers. While the police are busy looking at the wings, the real investigating has to be about what the killer takes away. She isn't removing eyes because she thinks it's the best way to torture people. She wants the world to see something, yes, but she also wants to open something.

I think that signature was one mistake she made, because it's what tells Vision and his mind friends that the killings are linked closely enough to find the next victim. The last thing she wants is Vision in her way, which is why she warns him beforehand. That's another mistake.

Fan theories have suggested for a while that the Butcher Bird is the mysterious client behind Vision's bounty, and it's interesting that the show introduced her in this episode. But after what we just saw, I don't think she's the client. She has a concrete target pattern of her own, and it doesn't include Vision.

The gala apology raises more questions than it answers

The gala comes at a very convenient time, almost too convenient if you ask me. There's a big public party celebrating tech, a speech about responsibility, and then the one woman whose anger won't stay buried walks right into the middle of it. I can already picture the event planners realizing that fancy slogans and inspirational banners won't do much to stop an angry synthezoid.

In her earlier interviews, the host of the gala rejects guilt, but this time she acknowledges it, Sokovia and everything that happened. When Jocasta confronts her, she apologizes and claims she's trying to build the world Josephine wanted. What was that world in the first place? A world of peace, peace in our time. And how do you even achieve that? People will say anything to save their skin, so we can't really say whether she truly feels remorse over what she helped build. She calls those choices mistakes, and Jocasta interrupts her. What she did is certainly not excusable.

Then comes the final thing Jocasta wants: the woman's face. That wasn't for revenge, but another form of identification she needs. It leaves me asking what Josephine's choices were. Did she agree to anything? What did she understand would happen? What does she think belongs to her? For someone who seems to have been robbed of her life, maybe the people behind that deserve death after all. And Vision also has the right to intervene.

So far, the show hasn't made Jocasta the comics' Ultron's bride, at least not yet

Jocasta isn't a new character. In the comics she is Ultron's bride, created by him as a companion using Janet van Dyne, the Wasp, as the basis for her mind. Hank Pym is involved in that origin, and he's also Ultron's creator in the comics. The MCU has already changed that family history substantially. In the end, the comics Jocasta doesn't remain the obedient companion Ultron intends. She rejects his purposes and helps the Avengers instead.

So we can't call her Ultron's wife just yet. In the show she is grieving, and that's tied to her human career and human relationships. She's already pursuing her target when Ultron introduces himself, so her business exists before his interest in her. I want that to continue. It's very possible they could become allies, but so far their meeting doesn't show Ultron building her the way he does in the comics.

Ultron's offer of a separate self means something different to Jocasta

The show's other AI built on a real woman didn't have an easy life either. That woman had a life and suffering the AI didn't understand, and Ultron, of all people, offers the AI room to exist as somebody distinct from the original. I agree with him on this, which is something coming from a genocidal villain. He's being emotionally perceptive.

Where she needs someone to tell her she doesn't have to inherit every part of somebody else's life, something entirely different is happening with Jocasta. She refuses the suggestion that her life belongs to somebody else. Telling one person their code comes from a real person sounds liberating; to another it sounds like erasure from existence. If Josephine is a copy, telling her so doesn't make her memories or pain disappear. She still experiences them.

The natural death reported in 2008 doesn't settle it. There are many uncertainties here. You may be tempted to assume everyone at the company conspired to murder her, took her memory first and gave it to a bot, and that this is why she's grieving. Vision thought naming her would help, and for a moment it seems to work, only for the monster to resurface. The explanation he attaches to that name is exactly what she rejects. You can approach someone with kindness and still misunderstand the thing they most need you to understand. While Vision hesitates over his past, Jocasta insists on hers.

Vision hands Ultron control, and the target dies

Now Vision is at the place where all this started, and maybe for once he gets a chance to confront his past. Then he does the most foolish thing imaginable: he gives Ultron control. Ultron asks Vision to trust him, and that mistake is already costing him a lot. I can't blame him too much. He's damaged, frightened for Tommy, and from all indications he's losing. So when Ultron offers a way out while promising not to kill Jocasta, he takes it.

He's trying to leave room for her to be saved, but he has no better way to do it than handing the wheel to a psychopath. In the end, Ultron gets the woman they came to protect killed, and Jocasta survives and escapes. Vision and his choices can be frustrating sometimes. Technically, Ultron's promise holds. He turns Vision's compassionate condition into cover for murder.

Her death also deprives Jocasta of the remaining key, and in doing that Ultron removes the reason they keep fighting. I suspect Ultron knows something about what those keys unlock, and I think it's something he'll exploit later. He creates a problem, then offers himself as the solution. Maybe this opens the door for her to team up with Ultron.

Vision has now lost control of his own body, with Ultron locking him out. We don't know Ultron's motives from here, but he must know Vision will soon take back control, and when that happens he'll need a new host quickly. Unless, maybe, he sticks to his original plan from Age of Ultron for Vision to be the refined version of him.

I want Jocasta to confront what was taken from her herself

That leaves everything the murdered woman had to say but never got the chance to. What exactly did they do to Jocasta that she calls a mistake? What did they take? And what would getting it back give Josephine?

If that's where this is going, I want her allowed to confront it herself. Ultron has already made one decision for her. He doesn't get to tell her who she is as well.