Everything You Need to Know About Vision Before Marvel's VisionQuest Premieres

Published 6 October 2026. Words like "tonight" or "next week" refer to that date.

Marvel's VisionQuest premiered with two episodes on October 14 on Disney Plus, and this is the complete history you need to be caught up. I am covering 11 movies, 36 episodes across three Marvel series and at least two comic runs, ending with a cheat sheet of the basics.

Vision's MCU story starts with the synthetic man at the 1943 Stark Expo

We have to begin in the middle of World War II, in 1943, at the Stark Expo in Queens, New York, as shown in Captain America: The First Avenger. A skinny, pre serum Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes take their dates to the technology expo hosted by Howard Stark, and they pass a display reading Dr. Phineas Horton presents the synthetic man. That Easter egg in the 2011 film referenced the original Human Torch from the Golden Age of Marvel's Timely Comics era, a robot, before the name was reinvented for Johnny Storm.

In the comics, Vision's origin is that he was a copy of this Human Torch's android body, taken by Ultron, fitted with some of Ultron's technology and programmed with the brain waves of Wonder Man Simon Williams to create an android son that Ultron named Vision. His MCU origin comes later, from Ultron, Jarvis and the Avengers' experimentation. But in VisionQuest we will meet this Jim Hammond Human Torch synthezoid, and a newspaper headline will suggest that Jim killed his creator, Phineas Horton. So the idea of Frankenstein's robot monsters turning on their creators will be established as part of the legacy of Ultron and Vision, and for Vision, his Victor Frankenstein was Ultron.

Edwin Jarvis connects Agent Carter, Endgame and VisionQuest

Another critical piece of the puzzle was explored across 1947 and 1948 in the 18 episodes of Agent Carter. The spinoff starred Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in the early days of SHIELD, dealing with Hydra while Steve Rogers was frozen in the ice. James D'Arcy costarred as Edwin Jarvis, Howard Stark's longtime butler and driver, who aided Peggy on a number of missions and followed her to Los Angeles in season 2 to deal with a dark force and Whitney Frost.

That brings us to 1970 and Avengers: Endgame, when the time heist takes Steve and Tony to Camp Lehigh, New Jersey, to retrieve the Tesseract and more Pym Particles. There we see James D'Arcy return as Edwin Jarvis, one month before Tony's birth. The Iron Man 2 prelude comics from 2010 then explore Tony's youth in the late 70s and early 80s, with Jarvis comforting him during his father's drunken outbursts.

In 1991, Howard and Maria Stark died in a car accident that we later learn was the doing of the Winter Soldier, and Jarvis served as a sort of father figure to young Tony. When Jarvis passed away sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, Tony named his AI after him: J.A.R.V.I.S., Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. James D'Arcy returns in VisionQuest playing an anthropomorphised form of that earlier Jarvis AI, before Jarvis evolved into Vision.

The 1999 Novi Grad bombing planted Wanda's hatred of Tony Stark

1999 is an important year to note. This was the year of the Novi Grad bombings in Sokovia, when a Stark Industries warhead landed in the home of the Maximoffs and their children, Wanda and Pietro. Young Wanda used a low level probability hex to keep that bomb from going off, but the experience festered into a lifelong hatred of Tony Stark and the Avengers he would later form.

Elsewhere in 1999, Tony met a young Aldrich Killian, the future inventor of the Extremis technology from Iron Man 3, at a tech conference in Bern, Switzerland. That is also where Tony met Yinsen, the captive who would later save his life in Afghanistan.

Jarvis, Dummy and U grew up alongside Iron Man

In 2008's Iron Man, Jarvis is a snarky AI voiced by Paul Bettany in Tony's Malibu mansion, operating the Mark II and Mark III suits through the heads up display. We also meet Tony's simpler robots, Dummy and U. Tony built Dummy at MIT and won a robotics award for it, and although Tony repeatedly shamed Dummy throughout the film, Dummy ended up saving his life by helping him reach the replacement arc reactor. Both Dummy and U return as anthropomorphised AI forms in VisionQuest.

Also returning from the first Iron Man film will reportedly be Faran Tahir as Raza, the leader of the Ten Rings faction that kidnapped Tony. Raza might end up being seen as a memory, since the series will show past MCU moments from the point of view of these AIs. The Jarvis AI might have some memory of Raza, though I should note that the Mark I armor Tony built in the cave with a box of scraps did not have Jarvis programmed into it yet.

In Iron Man 2, Jarvis helped Tony fight Whiplash in Monaco and helped him invent a new element to replace the palladium in his arc reactor that was poisoning him. In 2012's The Avengers, Jarvis hacked SHIELD systems on the helicarrier to learn the organisation was using the Tesseract to make weapons, guided Tony into the Mark VII armor, and was with him when he flew a nuke through the wormhole. Jarvis even had the idea to call Ms. Potts, who did not pick up. So the Battle of New York is also a memory the VisionQuest Jarvis will have.

Jarvis got a bit more personality in 2013's Iron Man 3, with a Jarvis stocking in Vision's red and green colors hanging above the Malibu fireplace. He mostly operated the faulty Mark 42 suit, but in the final battle he commanded the House Party Protocol to deploy the Iron Legion, which all exploded in the Clean Slate Protocol.

Age of Ultron is the key origin point for most of VisionQuest's characters

2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron is really the key origin point for most of the characters we will see. Wanda and Pietro were now enhanced operatives for Hydra and von Strucker, bitter Sokovians who hated the Avengers for what Stark weaponry did to their country. Here Jarvis appears as a warm, orderly display of orange holographic clockwork, and we meet Helen Cho, a scientist regrowing human tissue, and Ulysses Klaue, an arms dealer who stole vibranium from Wakanda.

Tony and Bruce Banner experiment with the Mind Stone, and Tony theorises they can use its cosmic artificial intelligence to run Ultron, his new algorithm to operate a global peacekeeping force through the Iron Legion. Overnight, while the Avengers party and Steve sneakily nudges Mjolnir, Ultron becomes sentient, reviews human and Avengers history, and concludes that to save the planet humanity must be destroyed. Ultron's coding destroys Jarvis, but Jarvis has backed himself up on a hidden drive. Voiced by James Spader, Ultron recruits Wanda and Pietro, takes Klaue's vibranium, builds Ultron Sentries, and brainwashes Helen into fusing synthetic tissue with vibranium to make a new body with the Mind Stone in its forehead.

The Avengers steal that body back, and Tony pitches Bruce on installing the backed up Jarvis instead. Thor, who has had a vision of the Infinity Stones, tries to fry it with Mjolnir, but the lightning is the final jolt it needs. Vision, named after Thor's vision and played by Paul Bettany, can phase and project layers of skin and clothes, as he shows by copying Thor's cape. Tony upgrades to a new Irish voiced AI, F.R.I.D.A.Y., Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth, voiced by Kerry Condon but played by Orla Brady in VisionQuest. In that same drawer was a drive labelled Jocasta, a reference to Ultron's robot wife from the comics, who will be played by T'Nia Miller.

In the Battle of Sokovia, Vision helps stop Ultron dropping the city to create a global cataclysm, and in VisionQuest he will see those memories on a cinema screen. Apparently the house will also contain a piece of the statue from the Age of Ultron credits showing Ultron and Vision fighting. Ultron kills Pietro, Wanda rips out the heart of Ultron's body, and the film ends with Vision debating the last Ultron in the forest, telling him, "It's a privilege to be among them." In the months after, Wanda mourns Pietro with old sitcom DVDs at the Avengers compound, and Vision joins her, offering the line "what is grief if not love persevering?"

Civil War and Infinity War cost Vision his life

In 2016's Captain America: Civil War, Wanda redirects Brock Rumlow's explosion in Lagos into a building, killing scores of innocents. Vision tries to cheer her up by making paprikash, setting him up as a domestic dad ideal. Thaddeus Ross's Sokovia Accords split the team. Wanda sides with Steve, but Vision, supporting Tony, forces her to stay in the compound until Clint Barton breaks her out, and Wanda plunges Vision down through the depths of the building. At the Berlin airport, Vision misses a shot at Falcon and disables Rhodey's War Machine suit in midair, nearly killing him. Steve later frees Wanda from the Raft, and she and Vision go on the run.

In 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, we find them in Edinburgh, Scotland. VisionQuest will revisit Edinburgh at a pub that apparently they frequented during this time. Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight wound Vision and nearly take the Mind Stone, until Steve, Sam and Natasha rescue them. Vision wants to sacrifice himself, but Steve says, "We don't trade lives, Vision." In Wakanda, Shuri works to remove the stone safely, but they run out of time. Vision tells Wanda to destroy the stone and let him die, which she does crying, but Thanos reverses it with the Time Stone, pulls the stone from Vision's head and leaves him a gray corpse. Thanos snaps, and Wanda turns to dust. Sometime afterward, SWORD agents retrieve Vision's corpse and begin experimenting on it.

Endgame left Wanda grieving and Friday as a witness

Five years later, in 2023, the Avengers complete the time heist, Smart Hulk snaps, and Wanda returns, but because Vision died before the snap, he does not come back. Wanda confronts Thanos and arguably gets closer than anyone to killing him before Tony's snap: she breaks his sword, rips off his armor and forces him to rain fire on his own forces. When Tony dies, Friday is one of the witnesses, and VisionQuest creator Terry Matalas confirmed we will revisit Tony's death scene from Friday's point of view. Endgame ends with Wanda still grieving Vision alongside Clint grieving Natasha.

WandaVision created White Vision and the Ship of Theseus debate

Next comes the best thing ever, WandaVision. In November 2023, Wanda tries to recover Vision's remains from SWORD but no longer feels him in the corpse. Learning he had bought land for them in Westview, New Jersey, she uses chaos magic to warp the town into a sitcom themed hex with a newly conjured Vision. They move through 1960s, 70s, 80s, 2000s and 2010s sitcom eras, Wanda gives birth to twins Billy and Tommy, and Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis investigate from outside. Uncle Pietro arrives, played by Evan Peters, who played Quicksilver in the Fox X-Men films, and nosy neighbor Agnes reveals herself as Agatha Harkness, a witch put on trial by her mother Evanora in 1692 Salem who absorbed her coven's powers and killed them.

SWORD restores the old corpse using Wanda's magic, creating White Vision. While the two Visions fight, they reach the library and the Ship of Theseus debate. "Something that I think will come back quite a bit in Vision Quest," as I put it. Hex Vision downloads his memories into White Vision, who flies off, while Wanda takes Agatha's power, collapses the hex and loses Billy, Tommy and Vision. She leaves Westview to explore the Darkhold for a universe where she could be with her sons.

EDITH, the Darkhold and whether Wanda is really dead

In summer 2024 of the MCU timeline, Spider-Man: Far From Home introduces E.D.I.T.H., Even Dead I'm The Hero, the AI Tony installed in glasses for Peter Parker. Peter nearly loses them to Mysterio, and they are later confiscated by the Department of Damage Control in Spider-Man: No Way Home. We will see the DODC repainted Stark drones in VisionQuest, and Edith will be played by Emily Hampshire.

In November 2024, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has Wanda dreamwalking into her variants via the Darkhold to capture America Chavez. She attacks Kamar-Taj, kills the Illuminati of Earth 838 and reaches Mount Wundagore, before seeing how much she scares her variant sons and bringing the temple down on herself. There was a little blast of red light that could have been anything. She is believed to have died, but "I do not believe." Even though apparently Vision will believe a mountain collapsed on Wanda, I still hope.

Agatha All Along brought Billy back and found Tommy

Agatha All Along revealed that when the Westview hex dropped, the chaos caused a fatal car crash in nearby Eastview involving Billy Kaplan, a boy interested in magic, and Billy Maximoff's essence inhabited his body. Billy finds Agatha still trapped in Wanda's hex and urges her down the Witch's Road, a myth Agatha invented to steal other witches' power. We learn she had a son, Nicholas Scratch, with Rio, Lady Death, who died one night of cold, and that apparently she was a passenger on the Titanic. The road turns out to be real, created by Billy's inherited chaos magic, and one of the greatest moments of the series is the reveal of Billy as Wiccan with his comic accurate crown.

Billy and Agatha hold a seance to find his brother, and Billy guides the soul into Tommy Shepherd, a boy who drowned. Agatha fights Lady Death and dies, and her ghost joins Billy on a quest to find his family. That is where we are left going into VisionQuest.

The VisionQuest cheat sheet: Terry Matalas, Ultron and the mind mansion

VisionQuest is billed as the conclusion to a trilogy after WandaVision and Agatha All Along, which were produced by Jac Schaeffer. The showrunner here is Terry Matalas, who ran 12 Monkeys and seasons two and three of Star Trek: Picard, and who I think is one of the best science fiction TV writers working in the big genre space. The series looks set to explore existential AI themes like generating art, getting through captchas, and going rogue. The title comes from John Byrne's 1989 West Coast Avengers storyline, arguably adapted in part by WandaVision's last two episodes, which this original story will extend.

Vision is now back in Edinburgh, working at the pub he and Wanda used to visit, while bounty hunters including Paladin, played by Todd Stashwick, hunt him. He spends time inside a mind mansion that seems based on the Ship of Theseus, holding Jarvis, Dummy, U, Friday, Edith and Ultron, with James Spader playing Ultron in the flesh. Ultron is imprisoned in the attic, painting as he plots his escape, and a cinema plays Vision's memories as scenes from past MCU titles.

The actor playing Tommy portrays him searching for Vision before being arrested in the UK, and Vision will try to free him, though it might be a trap by Paladin. We will see Tommy's speedster abilities, and since he and Billy are considered mutants, we hope they join the mutant saga. Jocasta makes a strong appearance, we go to Madripoor, and there may be a reference to adamantium and Wolverine. Coat of Arms, Lisa Molinari, appears as Tommy's ally with a robotic coat, and Mary McDonnell plays an unknown role. Many of us hope a glitchy shadow man in the trailers is Billy, and a lot of Wanda coded witchcraft in the trailers hints that this series might hopefully somehow reunite Vision with Wanda in some way. Because the Planck constant and eigenvalue code Tony used to discover time travel appears in Vision's costume pinstripes, and Friday was there, I hope Friday might help Vision digitally travel through quantum space to a time when he and Wanda can be together, even in a digital memory space.

Do you think VisionQuest will find a way to reunite Vision with Wanda?