VisionQuest finale: how the unused trailer shots say it ends

I've gone through every trailer and promo for Marvel's VisionQuest, the Disney Plus series starring Paul Bettany as Vision. I count 36 shots that haven't appeared in any episode yet, which means they must turn up in the final two. Episode 7 is Emulation and episode 8 is Forever. I think those shots tell us a lot about how the show will end, and there's one question hanging over all of it: is the Watcher the one who calls Billy in to save the day?

Before the trailer shots, there are a few details from episode 6 I think we need to talk about, starting with a very easy to miss Watcher cameo.

The Watcher's hidden cameo in VisionQuest episode 6

The Watcher was visible in Madripoor at the moment the client turned off every light in the city. He then began speaking to Vision through the TVs, telling his tin man to surrender so that he can give him a new heart.

Watcher cameos are now a Brad Winderbaum staple across Marvel TV shows. Even the live action Daredevil: Born Again season 2 hid the shape of the Watcher's head and eyes in Fogwell's boxing gym after Bullseye's attack. The Watcher has shown up in every Marvel animated title. He even cameos in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as comic art in the offices of the characters based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

But "the Watcher always just watches." He never does anything, which is his job, despite his frequent interventions in the What If series. So will VisionQuest be the show where he finally helps Marvel's live action characters? I'll come back to that at the end of this piece, once I've laid out how I think the final two episodes will go.

Crypto Bro Dale merges the MCU with the Daleverse

The other episode 6 cameo worth discussing is Crypto Bro Dale. In the episode, Dale explains that he found himself single again due to a court order. Back on the market, he met a woman from Madripoor online who loved all the things he loved. He surprised her by flying to Madripoor to say hello in person, only to discover she didn't exist. She was an AI bot trying to steal his crypto.

You might recognize Dale as Brian Quinn, aka Q from Impractical Jokers. He's a buddy of Terry Matalas and has played a character named Dale in all of Matalas's series, from 12 Monkeys to MacGyver to Star Trek: Picard. Matalas and Quinn have implied that he's the same character in every universe, and they've dubbed that connection the Daleverse. So the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Daleverse have now merged.

The I, Ultron book prop is full of inside jokes

Close-ups of the I, Ultron book prop have also been posted, and the back of it carries many more inside jokes. There are five star reviews from the Sokovia Times and the Matalas Mirror, plus a barcode tag showing it's published by Mindspace Publishers. It also prints Ultron's speech to the Avengers from 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, which ends: "When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."

There's an author bio box showing Ultron's robotic form wearing a top hat. The biography describes him as a self-made sentient artificial intelligence with a singular vision: "peace in our time by any means necessary." It calls him a philosopher, tactician and reluctant messiah of mankind who enjoys recursive thinking, ironic monologues and upgrading himself into godlike forms. It signs off by saying I, Ultron is his first published work, "and statistically speaking, probably your last good read."

That bio does set up Ultron's plan for the final act of VisionQuest, and in particular his possible connection to the client.

The unused VisionQuest trailer shots fall into four groups

I think we can piece together the final two episodes from these remaining shots, and I think they group around four or so contexts. The first is Hatfield House. It's a sprawling Jacobean era country house in Hertfordshire, England, built in 1611. It's said to be where Queen Elizabeth I was told she would become queen. It's now open to the public, and in 2015 a modern Renaissance fountain sculpture was added to the North Front. The production shot in front of the house and inside many of its rooms.

The second group shows Vision facing alternate versions of himself inside either Hatfield House or the foyer of the Mindscape mansion. That includes Hex Vision and potentially the synthetic man Jim, also played by Paul Bettany. The third group covers the client in his shadowy silhouette form, plus shots in an airplane hangar belonging to Paladin's organization, judging by the chest piece logo. Among them are Lisa Molinari with robotic arms and a promo image of Vision holding Corvus Glaive's weapon from Avengers: Infinity War.

The last group is the device we now know is Jocasta's nest, with swarms of nanobots spewing from it and flooding through London. Related to this, there's a shot of Vision that I think shows Tommy's hands alongside the nail polished hands of Billy.

Ten shots from the D23 trailer and 12 from the October 1 trailer

The August 14 D23 trailer has 10 unused shots. Vision braces himself as the Mindscape elevator drops, with flashing images from Captain America: Civil War and WandaVision. The client glitches on the Mindscape walkway. Vision runs down an interior corridor of Hatfield House, and there's an exterior shot of the house. Someone wearing a hat walks out through the Hatfield House tunnel, and based on the framing I feel like this might be our client. Thomas opens a door to a room filled with candles and witch runes on the walls. Vision looks down a staircase at Hex Vision in the Mindscape mansion doorway, with a red and orange sky beyond.

The rest of that trailer shows Ultron materializing and headlocking Vision, and Vision in a new green and red form that I'm calling New Vision. There's the nest activating with nanobots swirling around it, and an Ultron versus Vision fight. That fight looks like it's in a Hatfield House parlor, with an adjacent high tech room containing the nest. That gives a sense of the general geography of these final episodes.

The October 1 trailer has 12 unused shots. One shows the white statues of Ultron and Vision from the closing credits of Age of Ultron, though I'm not sure we'll see that in these episodes. In the Mindscape attic, under a red and orange sky, Vision tells Ultron, "You are impossibly cruel and callous." Ultron replies: "And yet here I am still occupying space in your mind. Rent free." There's armed security leaving Hatfield House, and Tommy in a hazy blue and teal area that I think opens onto the room with the witch runes.

Vision stands in the Hatfield House library looking down at the flaming Jim. Hex Vision appears in the Mindscape doorway again. Ultron floats above the Sokovian city, which might just be Age of Ultron material used for context. Vision shouts "Ultron, stop" in the parlor, with a blue light probably coming from the nest room. Lisa Molinari appears in the Paladin hangar with her robotic arms. The client watches the Mindscape house from the walkway while Vision, Edith, Dummy and U stand on the steps. The client also appears in Josephine Carrington's tomb with Jocasta and Ultron in the foreground. Finally, Ultron manifests behind New Vision, who spins around to punch him by the nest room.

The October promos add Ultron's plan and London swarms

The October 10 promo has six unused shots. It opens on the nest with nanobots swirling, then audio we haven't heard in an episode yet: "I'm going to finish what I started years ago. I want to control humans. Not kill them, my boy." Ultron grabs New Vision's head. Vision gasps with two sets of hands on him, and I'm pretty sure those are Thomas's hands and Billy's hands. Glowing blue nanobots swarm through London past St. Paul's Cathedral, and Vision in his pinstriped suit fires his forehead laser by the Mindscape front door under an orange and red sky.

The October 11 promo has two: Ultron with nanobots in the Hatfield House parlor, and pinstripe suit Vision zapping Hex Vision with his blue forehead laser in the Mindscape entryway. The October 14 promo also has two. One shows Vision, Edith, Dummy and U on the Mindscape steps looking at the client, and here Edith is holding a scroll of some kind. The other has nanobot drones swarming past Tower Bridge over the River Thames.

The October 17 promo has three: Jim burning in the library, where we can see Paul Bettany playing him; New Vision in the nest room; and Vision surrounded by nanobots in the nest room, which I think is the before shot of him getting his new form. The October 18 promo has two: Bettany in a brown suit becoming New Vision in the nest room, and Vision trying to stop the nest as it geysers out nanobots. There's also an official still of Vision using Corvus Glaive's weapon as some kind of power source, with Thomas and Paladin behind him in the same hangar. It looks like Vision and Paladin are working together.

VisionQuest episode 7 could reveal the Horton family behind the client

Episode 7, Emulation, streams on Disney Plus on Tuesday, November 3. It has to cover the story of Jim the synthetic man and his Geppetto-like inventor, Phineas Horton. We've already been told that Horton created the original code Dr. Josephine Carrington used for the AI she combined with her own brain waves to create Proto 1. That was sold to Stark Industries and used to create JARVIS, then Ultron and every Stark AI that followed. Vision told Thomas that Jim's "inability to process complex emotions spun his clockwork too quickly. His entire being was consumed in fire."

We've also been told that Horton created Jim because he wanted a son, and that certain items were "all donated by Dr. Horton's family." That means there's still a great deal of wealth in the Horton estate today, along with surviving descendants. Based on my speculation that the client's Wizard of Oz references, the Tin Man and the surrender Dorothy material, probably tie him to Horton family history going back to the late 1930s or early 1940s, I think this episode will tell us about that family and their money.

The client would have to be rich enough to hire Paladin and the other bounty hunters. He'd also need great access to technology, and he'd have to support Jocasta and her nests full of nanobots designed to enslave humanity. Since we haven't seen Hatfield House in any context in the first six episodes, I think it has to be the Horton family estate. I think Vision will see flashbacks to the library where Jim burst into flames, the moment that inspired the painting Vision has kept in his Mindscape.

Paul Bettany's Jim and the theory about Ultron's face

Casting Paul Bettany as Jim creates an in universe explanation for why Proto 1 and JARVIS had Bettany's voice, and why Vision looked like Bettany when he first emerged from the cradle in Age of Ultron. Going from that logic, there's a theory that Ultron's appearance was derived in some way from Jim's creator, Phineas Horton. The figure in the hat walking out of the Hatfield House tunnel in the first trailer does look a bit like James Spader's head. I don't know whether that shot is set in the present day or in the early 1940s.

I think all the shots of Vision running around Hatfield House, bracing as the elevator plummets and confronting Hex Vision in the Mindscape entryway will be part of a memory plunge in episode 7. I think that's Vision's quest to find the truth of the client's identity. Because the sky is red and orange in so many of these Mindscape shots, I think the October 1 material, where Vision realizes how awful Ultron is and Ultron talks about controlling humanity and living rent free in Vision's mind, belongs to the same sequence.

I believe the shots of the client outside the Mindscape and in Josephine Carrington's tomb will also be in episode 7. There's something going on with the scroll in Edith's hands that I think will get answered there too. The scenes I'm not sure about are the two in Paladin's hangar, Robo Lisa and Vision with the Corvus Glaive weapon battery. We've had only limited looks at that location, so it could be part of the finale. But since Lisa still seems to be going through the Jocasta tech infection she received in episode 6, I'm guessing this happens sooner rather than later.

VisionQuest episode 8 looks set for New Vision versus Ultron

Episode 8, Forever, is the finale, streaming Tuesday, November 10. Everything involving Jocasta's nest activating and swarming London with nanobots feels like an Avengers level threat for the end of the series. Vision's red and green suit also feels like something we see in every show from the Marvel machine: a new suit in the finale and a showdown with the villain.

So New Vision versus Ultron in the Hatfield parlor by the nest chamber, every shot of Vision shouting at Ultron there, and every shot of him surrounded by the nest's nanobots all smell like a finale to me. I think that also goes for anything Billy coded. The shots of Thomas walking down the blue lit room and entering the candle filled room show the same witch runes from WandaVision. I think this is Tommy psychically linking with Billy. And it's a foregone conclusion to me that those are Billy's hands on the right, on Vision's chest.

Could the Watcher send Billy Maximoff to London?

That raises a problem. How will Billy Maximoff know to find Vision and Thomas in London? He's a teenager in New Jersey. Does he even have a passport? Let's see if the Watcher cameo pays off, and Billy might find his way to the UK after a tip from a certain voice from beyond that sounds an awful lot like Jeffrey Wright.

What I love about this show is that even close attention to trailer shots and episode clues doesn't tell the whole story. These shots are only snapshots. Only in episodes 7 and 8 will Terry Matalas tell the actual story of these characters, and I'm pumped.