VisionQuest theory: the Tony Stark to Ultron family tree

Ahead of VisionQuest, which was expected sometime in 2026, I thought I had worked out what Marvel was planning for the series. My theory was that it would connect a family tree running from Billy and Tommy back to Tony Stark through several generations of artificial intelligence.

That tree ran from Tony and his father Howard to the AI assistants Tony built, which became Ultron and Vision. It then reached the way magic interfered with that technology to form Billy and Tommy, who I suggested might be in the first wave of mutants in the Mutant Saga. I thought this family tree could be what connects everything in the MCU, and here is how I laid it out at the time.

VisionQuest's AI housemates pointed to a family theme

VisionQuest was the Marvel series I was most looking forward to, with its first look shown at New York Comic Con. What intrigued me about the description of that first look was its focus on family. We were going to see human forms of the AI assistants Tony Stark made over the years, sharing a house like a family inside some kind of digital projection of their AI reality.

Paul Bettany was playing White Vision, the form built from the original Vision's body that fought Hex Vision in the final episode of WandaVision. James Spader was playing Ultron in the flesh. Dum-E and U, the two speechless lab assistants that helped Tony build his first Iron Man armor in Iron Man, were also getting actors. James D'Arcy was playing Jarvis, the first voice assistant, which Paul Bettany voiced in the earlier Marvel films. The name stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, and it also comes from Edwin Jarvis, Howard Stark's driver, whom D'Arcy played in Avengers: Endgame and before that in Agent Carter.

Orla Brady was playing Friday, the replacement AI Tony began using in Avengers: Age of Ultron when Jarvis became Vision. Emily Hampshire was playing Edith, the AI in the Stark glasses Tony left to Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Far From Home, which stands for Even Dead, I'm The Hero. T'Nia Miller was playing Jocasta, who in the comics is Ultron's wife and turns against him to join the Avengers. Jocasta is already MCU canon: when Tony pulled Friday from a drawer in Age of Ultron, another drive labeled for Jocasta sat underneath it.

The family theme also came from the trailer's final line. A bearded Ultron stands alongside Vision, looking at Vision's son Tommy, a speedster caught on CCTV. Ultron claps Vision on the back and congratulates him, telling him "it's a boy."

Tony Stark's family tree begins with Howard Stark

I started the tree with Tony Stark, born on May 29, 1970, the son of Howard Stark and Maria Stark. Howard was born on August 15, 1917, to Howard Stark Sr., a fruit seller in New York City who was described as using a belt to abuse his son. All of that came from Howard's backstory in Agent Carter. Since James D'Arcy was returning to play a form of Jarvis, I was comfortable treating it as canon.

For the purposes of the tree, I counted every robotic creation Tony engineered as one of his children. I joked that they were produced asexually, since that side of Tony's life happened upstairs, not in the workshop. That gave Tony three early offspring: Dum-E, U and Jarvis.

Why I called Ultron the father of Vision

By Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, Jarvis was powering the Iron Legion drones. To perfect that global security initiative, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner combined their intellects to create Ultron, so you could say Ultron was Tony and Bruce's baby.

Ultron then went rogue and began building his own synthezoid replacement body using the Mind Stone and vibranium infused human tissue. The Avengers took control of that body, and Bruce and Tony reprogrammed it to run on Jarvis's original operating system. The end product was Vision. So Ultron, plus what was Jarvis, plus some tinkering by their dads, is how you get Vision.

In that sense, Ultron was Vision's biological father, using the recycled soul of Jarvis, with Bruce and Tony acting as the geneticists, the obstetricians or the donors. Who knows? But since Ultron did most of the original engineering on what became Vision, I made the call: Ultron, you are the father.

Morgan Stark and more AI offspring fill out Tony's branch

Beyond Vision, Tony created other AI offspring, including Jocasta, Karen and Edith. Karen was the first AI to power Peter Parker's suit in Spider-Man: Homecoming. I also added Veronica, the drone deployer that delivered the Hulkbuster armor.

During the Blip, Tony married Pepper Potts and had a child the old fashioned way: Morgan Stark. That makes Ultron Morgan's half sibling, and Morgan, in a way, Vision's aunt.

White Vision, Hex Vision and the parentage of Billy and Tommy

The tree got more complicated with the death of the original Vision, destroyed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. Out of her grief, which is love persevering, Wanda Maximoff created Hex Vision with her chaos magic, and with him she had twin sons, Billy and Tommy. Meanwhile, S.W.O.R.D. took the original Vision's remains and, using siphoned magic from Wanda, rebuilt and repowered them into White Vision.

White Vision and Hex Vision fought, and then Hex Vision restored White Vision's memories, including flashes going back to Age of Ultron. Paul Bettany said at New York Comic Con that this Vision would have some memories of what happened inside the Westview Hex. So although Hex Vision vanished when the Hex collapsed, the memories of his existence remained stored as backups within White Vision.

We didn't know what White Vision would remember as programmed memory versus what he lived through himself. But based on that "it's a boy" line, I expected VisionQuest to explore his parentage of Billy and Tommy, so I made another call: White Vision, you are the father.

Even that is complicated. The sons began as manifestations of Wanda's chaos magic inside the Hex, and when it collapsed they sought out the bodies of boys who were dying or dead at that moment. Billy Kaplan was a kid from Eastview, New Jersey, who died in a car accident. Tommy Shepherd was a kid elsewhere who was being bullied and drowned. Technically those kids had genealogical parents entirely separate from Wanda and Vision, but their identities as we know them came from Wanda and Hex Vision's chaos magic, and the memory of their birth and childhood remained in White Vision.

Ultron as grandfather, and the Mind Stone behind it all

That meant that for Billy, as seen in Agatha All Along, and for Tommy in the new series, the paternal grandfather would be Ultron. Another way to look at it is that their paternal grandfathers, and maybe great grandfathers, are Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Fatherhood is a messy thing in the MCU, a universe of found fathers that often declares things like, "He may have been your father, but he wasn't your daddy."

So what does it mean for these boys to be grandsons of Ultron, descendants of both chaos magic and Stark code? Especially when the ultimate source of both strands was the Mind Stone. It gave Ultron's programming the divine spark that made him truly sentient, and it also enhanced Wanda's abilities to unlock her chaos magic.

I really did think VisionQuest would explore artificial super intelligence spawned from the brightest minds of humanity, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, using the cosmic power of an Infinity Stone, and how that resulted in the first two flesh and blood life forms born from that code.

Could Billy and Tommy be mutants in the MCU?

Wiccan and Speed have an uncertain mutant status in Marvel Comics, especially once the Scarlet Witch was retconned away from being Magneto's daughter. There are hints here and there, but the comics seem to largely skirt the issue. With Kamala Khan, though, Marvel Studios seemed very comfortable reestablishing young characters as mutants.

Some of the rumors going around at the time about Marvel Studios' X-Men film suggested Marvel would take the simple route and establish that it was the Snap, the cosmic radiation released by the Infinity Stones, that created mutants in the MCU. That would make them live up to the label that has been coming back in recent comics, the X-Men as the Children of the Atom. Maybe, I suggested, Children of the Atom would even be a phrase Ultron uses about Tommy and Billy in VisionQuest.

As grandsons or great grandsons of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, descended from AI, an Infinity Stone, chaos magic and maybe even an X gene, Billy and Tommy sit on a messy family tree that, in my view, ultimately bears mutant fruit.