VisionQuest – No Strings Review

Welcome to our weekly reviews of VisionQuest, the final piece in the Wanda-Vision trilogy of MCU shows and what appears to be the last television outing for the MCU for the foreseeable future as Disney looks to focus back on film for their superheroes moving forward. Where WandaVision put the focus on Wanda Maximoff and the fictional world she created out of her grief over the loss of The Vision in Infinity War, and the second installment, Agatha All Along, told the story of the pair’s son, Billy – who is now a very real boy – this final piece of the puzzle brings the focus to White Vision and their other son, Tommy, who is also somehow a real boy, despite being a wholly fictional creation in WandaVision.* But I suspect we’ll be learning more about Tommy in the episodes to come. For now, let’s delve into what we learned this week.

*If you haven’t seen both WandaVision or Agatha All Along, I suspect you’re going to be lost as VisionQuest gets further into its story. Everything about this installment of Vision is laid out in WandaVision – and even though we got that quick recap at the outset, you need to watch the whole show to really grasp just how different this Vision is from the one you might know from the films. And if you skipped Agatha All Along (and especially if you skipped it because you didn’t want to watch a show full of women and queer characters), well, you missed the reason why both Billy and Tommy are currently real boys walking the Earth and not merely figments of Wanda’s imagination. Also, these are easily two of the best television shows the MCU churned out – and Agatha has one of the best television episodes, if not the best television episode, created in the entire MCU television run. So, watch them. They’re excellent.

Since Vision flew away from Westview, he’s been busy retracing the steps his counterpart took alongside Wanda, settling down at the pub the pair would frequent in Edinburgh when they were on the run years earlier. However, he’s still not able to master the emotional complexity of his counterpart (which that Vision had thanks to the Mind Stone), and he continues to feel empty and without a purpose around humans. It’s in his mind palace – where he has versions of every AI Tony Stark created* – where he truly thrives. He’s among his peers who can talk to him on the same level, who don’t wonder about his lack of emotional depth, and who don’t ask him hard questions about just what happened to Wanda.** Of course, the choice to include Ultron backfires almost immediately – something that Jarvis and FRIDAY warned him would happen – but still, it’s fun to see the remnants of Tony Stark’s genius all living together in technicolor.

*While I don’t quite recall DUM-E or U, the series has brought back both James D’Arcy to play Jarvis and James Spader as Ultron. Stepping into FRIDAY is one of showrunner Terry Matalas’ go-to’s Orla Brady (Star Trek: Picard), while Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek) steps into the role of EDITH.

**Much like in Agatha All Along, there’s no definitive answer as to whether or not Wanda died on that mountain in Multiverse of Madness. Where Agatha wouldn’t give a straight answer to Billy (“Yes. No. Maybe.”), Vision simply says she was buried under a mountain – while saying it was complicated. So, with both Jac Schaeffer (who showran both WandaVision and Agatha and is an executive producer here) and Matalas clearly being told by the powers that be to keep the fate of Wanda vague, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of Wanda in the MCU. Perhaps she has a date with Doctor Doom looming?

Outside of our introduction to Vision’s merry band of AI, there’s a lot of table setting at work – typical for all pilot episodes. We learn that Ultron has a desire to, once again, break his strings and become a real boy out in the world (after all, you don’t hire Spader back just to have him sit in a room and snark at Paul Bettany). We learn that while everyone appears to have forgotten about Vision, there was a bounty placed on his head recently – and not by Ultron. (I’m inclined to believe him here, since he’s more than willing to admit his role in hiring Paladin (the great Todd Stashwick – another Matalas mainstay) to hunt Vision down.) And we learn that Tommy is a real boy himself, complete with fractured memories of the fake Tommy from Wanda’s simulation. And he’s wondering where Wanda, Billy, and Vision are – and if they know he’s out there.

Now, I suspect the father-son reunion is going to happen sooner rather than later, but will we see a reunion with Billy and Wanda? At the end of Agatha, Billy and Agatha went off in search of Tommy, who Billy heard out in the world with his newly manifested powers. It looks like Tommy’s speed is coming online, so I could see a finale that has the brothers reunited with their father – especially if they have some sort of role to play in either Doomsday or Secret Wars. But in order to get there, Vision will have to keep Ultron in check (easier said than done) and defeat Paladin to get Tommy back. (Oh, and figure out who placed that bounty on his head. Could it be Doom?) Considering this version of Vision refuses to acknowledge the birth of his sons – whether because he cannot bear to not feel the emotions involved in such a memory or because he knows that if he does, he will start to become more human than machine – how will he deal with coming face-to-face with one of them? It’s an interesting proposition. WandaVision was built upon the searing emotional heft of grief. Agatha All Along was about belonging – whether in a coven or in a family – and what happens when you lose that sense of family. VisionQuest appears to be, at least thus far, about what it means to be human and how emotions inform that identity. I’m intrigued enough out of the gate to see where this will take us. And if it’s anything like the first two installments, we’re in for a truly great ride.