VisionQuest – Theseus Review

If you watched WandaVision, I suspect seeing that this episode was titled “Theseus” immediately brought you back to the moment near the close of that series where White Vision (aka The Vision starring in VisionQuest) encountered the original Vision (or, at least, the memories of The Vision) and the duo had their conversation about the Ship of Theseus. To help those who might have forgotten, VisionQuest helpfully provided a refresher of that chat at the top of the episode. I suspect that theme – something that was important enough that Terry Matalas and his writing staff chose to name the second episode of the series as a callback to it – is going to be central to the emotional journey of both Vision and Thomas as the series progresses. After all, both are faced with a similar question as was posed about that rebuilt ship: If you are, for all intents and purposes, a completely different physical being than your prior self, are the memories within you enough to claim that you are that same person?

Both Vision and Thomas are different physical manifestations of memories that once existed before. White Vision holds all of The Vision’s memories and Thomas is rapidly gaining the memories of the soul Billy sent into his body at the end of Agatha All Along. Currently, both of them have a dual existence. White Vision is both the emotionless husk from SWORD and the home for everything that helped make The Vision more human than machine. Thomas is both the unloved orphan with a painful, loveless past and Tommy, the young boy who was loved so deeply by his mother Wanda that she nearly destroyed the world for him. But if those other personalities and memories end up moving in full time, does that make White Vision and Thomas into The Vision and Tommy? Do their previous states of being cease to exist? It’s a hell of a philosophical question to chew on underneath the action and adventure within the episode.*

*It’s also a question that Billy, brother to Tommy, son to Vision and Wanda, wrestled with back in Agatha All Along. Once the block that had been placed on his memories dissolved, he asked if he was William – the boy who was possessed by the spirit and memories of Wiccan – or Billy, Wanda’s son. It’s a question we never fully got an answer to, but by the close of the series, he had more or less accepted that he was now Billy, had powers, and was planning to search for his missing brother – who he had inadvertently created by guiding Tommy’s essence into that of a boy who was drowning in a pool with a bunch of other kids. You know, the origin story to Tommy we got in these two episodes. 

This episode, it became clear that we’re going to end up with a more traditional structure to the series than first appeared now that Thomas and Vision are together. This isn’t going to be a search for Thomas, or a story where Vision has to decide if he wants to get involved. Rather, this is a good old reluctant buddy action tale, where the older, wizened character is forced to team up with and protect a younger, more brash character. The odd couple learns to work together to take on the bad guys – see The Last of Us and The Mandalorian for recent examples of this same formula. And it’s a smart one to use here – Thomas is terrified but not about to back down and give up, while Vision doesn’t really fear anything (except those adamantium bullets) and is much more apt to roll over when things look dire. They balance each other out. Add to it that they are kinda sorta father and son, but not really, and you have the makings of quite the tale.

One other highlight of the episode was the reveal that Paladin isn’t just your run of the mill villain. Sure, he hasn’t gotten the jump on Vision just yet, but he’s unflinching in his actions, more than willing to kill anyone who gets in his way, and he doesn’t suffer fools. Casting Todd Stashwick, who is so good at playing sarcastic, don’t give a shit dudes, was such a great move here. He’s got just enough humor in the performance so that Paladin doesn’t come off as a complete monster, but still has the gravitas to make it clear that this isn’t someone you should mess with. He’s competent, he understands his mission, and he’s going to achieve it. It was also a brilliant move to make his IT specialist Diane Morgan, who has one of the best deadpans in comedy. When you have colorful villains, it helps make the fight scenes and the always tedious expositional conversations flow a bit better.

Of course, the emotional center of the episode belonged to James D’Arcy’s Jarvis, who, after a heck of a long run within the MCU, sacrificed himself to ensure that Vision would still have a host of AI help in the future. It’s a curious choice to have that sacrifice come so early in the series, but it’s clear Matalas wanted to highlight the role of a brother in a familiar structure. As the eldest brother, it fell to Jarvis to make a sacrifice to protect his younger siblings. Families sacrifice to protect each other, and older siblings may be annoying to their younger ones, but when push comes to shove, every good older sibling is more than willing to step in to protect their younger ones. And VisionQuest is a story about navigating one’s way through a family – learning to love and live with and without those in your family. Thomas hasn’t had a family for as long as he can remember. White Vision actively refuses to watch any episodes from Wanda’s faux television series that include the twins because he doesn’t want to experience the pull of fatherhood from The Vision’s memories within him. And Billy – who is still out there, with Agatha, searching for Tommy – walked away from his birth family on a quest to find his real family. And, when he fought for Agatha, he’s already showed that he’s willing to fight for those in his coven, his found family, so I suspect he will be more than willing to try to save his brother and dad should the need arise.

The pieces are slowly moving into place that there’s a lot more going on here than just watching Vision and Thomas try to run from Paladin (who continues to disappoint his mysterious client). Just like the first two parts of this trilogy, the story being told is really about family, love, loss, and trying to figure out just who and what makes someone who they are. That’s some heady stuff, but so far, so good.