“VisionQuest,” the new Disney+ series Marvel is dubbing the third chapter of a trilogy that started with “WandaVision” — but really marks the de facto end of Marvel’s MCU TV experiment (or, at least, this era of it) — throws a lot at you from the jump.
Paul Bettany‘s minutes-long, montage-assisted monologue recaps the backstory of his titular character, Vision: a synthetic superhero powered by a pretty gem (the “mind stone”) and advanced robotics (a “flawless computer brain”). O.G. Vision was killed by Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War” before being rebuilt as a shell of his former self (called, as if to be delibertately confounding, “The Vision”) and then kinda, sorta resurrected by his witchy love Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen, who does not appear in “VisionQuest” beyond flashbacks to “WandaVision”). Her conjured version of Vision shared his memories with The Vision, and now the Vision (small “t”) in “VisionQuest” is stuck seeing double. He remembers a past he didn’t experience, but it’s a past he can’t forget.
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[deep breath]
Bookending this crushing mountain of exposition is a question and an answer. “Who am I? I am Vision,” Vision says by way of reintroducing himself. Then, when he’s done monologuing, he adds: “You see, I am Vision. And yet, I am not.”
Got it? Great. It doesn’t matter.
As baffling as it may sound, “VisionQuest” is far too simple: Narratively speaking, a sentient AI superhero goes through an existential crisis, and we’re just waiting for “him” to logic “its” way to self-actualization. Practically speaking, it’s character clarification, so if Vision pops up in “Avengers: Doomsday” or some later Marvel property, there’s no confusion over what to call him.
If that sounds like a thin premise for an eight-hour limited series, you’ll have no problem understanding why the MCU’s streaming vision, as we know it, is ending. With few exceptions, Marvel’s Disney+ era has been populated with inessential stories stretched to TV length that better resemble movies. Instantly forgotten shows like “Secret Invasion,” “Moon Knight,” and the “Hawkeye” holiday special encapsulate the studio’s struggle to expand its already labyrinthian cinematic universe to include serialized television. Some series plucked peripheral movie characters for unnecessary small-screen addendums adventures. Others relied only on star power to make audiences care about new characters from the comic books. All of them failed to capture what makes TV a uniquely powerful storytelling medium. (Marvel’s refusal to hire showrunners is quite the self-own.)
“VisionQuest,” at least, is deeply invested in its lead. Dedicating an entire limited series to one guy sorting through inherited trauma is certainly a character-first approach that didn’t click in Disney+ duds like “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” But like a lot of plainly heroic characters controlled by a studio specializing in children’s stories, Vision’s emotional journey is slight. What he needs to do is obvious from minute one, and yet its solution is put-off, like an elaborate mystery, until minute 300 or so.
With the exception of a savvy James Spader, reprising his role as Vision’s sorta-daddy Ultron, everything in between isn’t funny enough or even diverting enough to distract from the minimal growth required of our pure-of-heart, sound-of-mind, but dense-of-spirit superhero, including the rag-tag team of AI cohorts he lives with inside his mind palace (“J.A.R.V.I.S.,” “D.U.M.-E,” and “U.”) and tasks with helping him reconnect with his, you know, feelings or whatever.
And boy, is he trying to reconnect. In the outside world, Vision is back in Edinburgh working at the same bar where he and Wanda fell in love. But at the end of his shift, when he powers down for the night, he watches the memories gifted to him by his other self, hoping they’ll activate some long lost id. “He knows the facts of his old life,” one of his bots says. “Now he’s searching for the feeling of it.”
But when a bounty hunter by the name of Paladin (Todd Stashwick) comes calling, he brings news that jars Vision out of his passive jaunts down memory lane: Tommy Maximoff (Ruaridh Mollica) is alive — or someone like him is anyway. Just like his maybe-dad, Tommy doesn’t know who he is: Raised as Thomas Shepherd, an orphan who became a drifter, he now lives with the memories of Tommy Maximoff without knowing why (hint: “Agatha All Along”). Are they real? Are they his? Is he really Tommy, and does that make Vision his dad? Can robots be dads to flesh-and-blood sons?
(Maybe) Father and (maybe) son are determined to find out — so long as a slew of nefarious masked figures don’t kill them first. Yes, we’re back to this: Our heroes need to talk, but there’s a man behind the curtain who keeps rushing them from hideout to hideout, stirring up forgettable action scenes and delaying any personal breakthroughs. By now, Marvel fans should know better than to fall for these easy teases; whoever you imagine is lurking under the hoodie is always going to be better than whoever emerges (especially in Disney+ series), and each disclosure proves particularly deflating here, as does their culminating effect. (Critics were given all eight episodes for review.)
For all its bells and whistles (mainly dense exposition, shiny production design, and an action scene here and there), “VisionQuest” isn’t complicated or unique. It’s a bad-dad drama about a guy who’s reluctant to accept his own burdens. Sure, he’s grieving, and yeah, he’s a robot, but head writer Terry Matalas (and the Disney engine writ large) doesn’t want you thinking too hard about a show that stumbled into topicality. (Should we really care whether an artificial intelligence system believes its human? And if so, should we want to reach the same conclusion “VisonQuest” encourages?) The goal here is to make sure Vision — the one true Vision — is ready for anyone who expects to see all the Avengers in the next “Avengers.”
So is “VisionQuest” the sort of homework Kevin Feige wants to avoid as the MCU moves forward? Yes, except I always had a problem with that assessment of the Disney+ era’s failures. Homework tends to be important, and anyone who skipped their streaming assignments didn’t get dinged at the movies. They just saved themselves some time — and a lot of talking.
Grade: C
“VisionQuest” premieres Wednesday, October 14 with two episodes on Disney+. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale on Wednesday, November 11.