VisionQuest Is a Bittersweet Farewell to an Era of Marvel TV: Review

It’s been eight years since the character of Vision (Paul Bettany) was tragically sacrificed during the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and five years since he was (kinda sorta) resurrected by Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) during the events of WandaVision. That’s a fair bit of time passing, so it should come as no shock to reveal that the first episode of VisionQuest, the new Disney+ MCU series featuring Bettany’s return to playing the robotic creation, opens with a recap of Vision’s story that’s over two minutes long.

Once we’re up on the basics, we reconnect with the resurrected Vision, who’s living under the radar in Scotland, working at a pub and trying his best to process his past experiences. (Like that computer pun? The show’s got approximately two terabytes more waiting for you.) Vision has all these memories of being in love and having a family, you see, but can’t connect with the actual feelings he knows should be associated with them. In short: He’s trying to remember what it’s like to be human.

He’s not alone in this quest, as he’s accumulated a number of AIs running as subroutines inside his expansive mind palace, all of whom have familiar names and are anthropomorphized by an eclectic ensemble: There’s good ol’ J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy), who serves as a big brother type for Vision, wise adviser F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), servant bots D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer), and fun-loving E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire). All these programs are depicted as living together inside an expansive mansion representing Vision’s consciousness, which also includes a madman in the attic: Ultron (James Spader), the closest thing that Vision has to a father and a program that’s still pretty sure humanity needs exterminating.

Vision’s quiet existence soon gets interrupted by becoming the target of a ruthless bounty hunter named Paladin (Todd Stashwick), who’s been hired to track Vision down by a mysterious client and will stop at nothing to do so. To nab his prey, Paladin even takes aim at a British teenager named Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica), who remembers a whole second life in which Vision was his father — the aftereffects of WandaVision still reverberating throughout time. The result is a man-on-the-run narrative that expands to include a bit of a murder mystery angle, as Vision’s efforts to elude Paladin lead down a path that includes some big revelations about Vision’s actual origins.

Creator Terry Matalas has had a long and wild career on TV — his credits include the short-lived Fox time travel drama Terra Nova and the second and third seasons of Star Trek: Picard, and personally I’m quite fond of his 12 Monkeys riff that managed to last four seasons on Syfy. (Perhaps one of the most shocking things about VisionQuest is that it doesn’t involve time travel, since that’s been a mainstay of his work.)

In Matalas’s hands, VisionQuest can be a pretty talky show, as digital and human characters spend a lot of time in their digital spaces discussing big ideas and developments; the pacing sometimes drags as a result especially as a binge. However, livening things up a bit are the ways in which the show delights in playing with the unreality most of its characters dwell in, costumes and set design shifting to mimic the flow of the story. There’s also a good deal of imagination in the way sequences like a program attempting to infiltrate a secure system get dramatized, leaning hard into their metaphors with some enjoyable twists.

Plus, there aren’t many complaints to have about a cast this good. Since 2021, Bettany has played a small role in Robert Zemeckis’s Here, starred in a series adaptation of Amadeus, and done some theater — so watching him dive into a starring role like this, navigating the nuances of Vision as a character and handling all sorts of surprising shifts, serves as a valuable reminder that Bettany’s been heartily underutilized by not just the MCU, but by Hollywood in general. It really feels like the outer limits of his potential as an actor haven’t been reached — there’s so much he’s able to play with so few words.

In a similar vein, James Spader is having a grand ol’ time embodying all of Ultron’s cool ruthlessness; his signature quick wit and eternal charisma so addictive that those aforementioned talky scenes move by with relative ease. Also, those who might only know Emily Hampshire from Schitt’s Creek, and thus missed her unhinged work on 12 Monkeys (she was basically Brad Pitt’s character), are in for a lovely surprise here, as she plays E.D.I.T.H. with the gung-ho delight of a smiling nuclear warhead.

Todd Stashwick (another 12 Monkeys alum) is a little less interesting, though there’s not much to do with the lone-wolf bounty hunter tropes he embodies. It’s also a great showcase for women over the age of 40: Orla Brady and T’Nia Miller get rich roles with a lot to explore. Everyone’s more than game for both the more grounded action as well as the show’s biggest swings — the finale gets delightfully bugnuts at some points.

VisionQuest has been promoted as the third part in a trilogy of limited series that began with WandaVision, the first major MCU series. It’s a trip to remember how much of a treat WandaVision was for those who spent the 2010s squinting at the vague connections between Marvel on the big screen and the Marvel Television universe (which ranged dramatically in quality and tone, from the ultra-grim Defenders series to the bugnuts adventures of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Imagine: A story featuring established characters from the movies (including some nice surprises later in its run) that actually tied into the overall narrative. It felt like it mattered more, somehow.

Plus, as a delightful bonus, there was the brilliant touch of WandaVision functioning very much as a TV show, using its episodic weekly structure to riff on classic television tropes as the greater narrative built up in the background. Not all of the MCU shows which followed were equally successful at that — the tendency for some shows to play like six-episode movies was pervasive — but a lot of great stuff still came out of the Disney+ shows. They expanded upon the stories of Hawkeye and Loki, introduced fun new characters like Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk, and gave us the oddball delights of Wonder Man and queer-as-hell Agatha All Along (the second part in the WandaVision trilogy). Yes, there were low points, but as a fan, it was fun to see these smaller stories help create a richer narrative world.

VisionQuest is not the last MCU TV series, but it most certainly feels like the end of an era, as the scale of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on screen continues to contract. There were only four movies in “Phase Six” of the narrative, and two of them have already come out, and the remaining two are mega-event Avengers movies. TV-wise, there are some animated projects on the horizon, such as the return of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and some new Marvel Zombies installments. But with the surprise re-cancelling of Wonder Man and Daredevil: Born Again ending with the upcoming Season 3, the only major live-action project is a mysterious 2028 series known only as Zodiac, with no known connection to whatever’s going on elsewhere in this universe.

This is, to be clear, what many critics said should happen: Decrease the bloat, let new Marvel stories start feeling special again. But this does mark the end, at least for a short time, of the MCU enjoying the occasional side quest. Maybe there’s some grieving to be done for what’s now over, but as we all learned from WandaVision: What is love, if not grief persevering? It’s a message repeated more than once during VisionQuest — a fitting conclusion for these characters, and an entertaining reminder of the high points of this era.

The first two episodes of VisionQuest premiere Wednesday, October 14th on Disney+.