“VisionQuest” put Paul Bettany’s Vision back on screen Tuesday night, and the two-episode premiere is really two different shows. The first hour, “No Strings,” is setup and the second, “Theseus,” is where the series finds its spine. Marvel moved the debut up a day with one day of notice when the full schedule went up on October 12th, and both episodes landed on Disney+ at 6 p.m. PT and 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, October 13th, instead of Wednesday. Den of Geek’s Joe George called the pilot “mired in exposition” and wrote that the second episode “clicks into place.”
This is the third and final chapter of the trilogy that began with “WandaVision” in 2021 and continued with “Agatha All Along” in 2024. Terry Matalas of “Star Trek: Picard” runs it, and eight episodes are planned. “Reboot” and “Malware” arrive together on October 20th, and the finale lands on November 10th. The Vision here is the white one S.W.O.R.D. rebuilt, carrying the old Vision’s memories without any of the feeling that came with them. The whole show lives in that gap. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “VisionQuest” episodes 1 and 2, including a death at the end of “Theseus.”
The Vision here is the white one S.W.O.R.D. rebuilt, carrying the old Vision’s memories without any of the feeling that came with them. The whole show lives in that gap.”
“No Strings” opens with Vision walking through his own history. Stark and Banner gave him a mind and Ultron built his body, then Thanos took him apart and S.W.O.R.D. put him back together. Now he lives in Edinburgh in human form under the name Sherwood Ellis. He works at the pub he and Wanda used to visit while they were on the run, and their initials are still carved in a heart on one of the tables. Fiona Guthrie (Polly Frame) runs the place, and when she asks about Wanda he says she was “crushed under the weight of a mountain.” It plays as a dry joke, but it is literally true after “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Fiona invites him to dinner anyway.
After closing Vision sits motionless in the pub’s freezer and goes somewhere else. Inside his head is a big retro house full of Tony Stark’s old AIs in human form. J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy) runs security while F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) coaches him on human behavior, and E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) is in charge of fun. D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer) are there too, and neither one talks. The kitchen is stocked with gags like vibranium foil and firewall roasted tomatoes, but the newspaper on the table is not a gag. Its headlines cover a killer and stolen adamantium, and one of those stories pays off before the premiere is over.
J.A.R.V.I.S. spots a data leak and Vision waves it off, since nobody is looking for him, not even the Avengers. E.D.I.T.H. crashes through the ceiling to tell him he needs to learn fun, and Vision retreats to a private theater to replay the old Vision’s life. Then D.U.M.-E and U put on footage from Westview, and Vision knows who told them to. Ultron (James Spader) lives in the attic and is in his robot body when Vision storms up, so Vision makes him switch to a human face. The two argue about Westview and about what humans are, and Ultron makes it plain that he understands them better. ComicBookMovie’s recap has him calling his plans a 50/50 split between art museums and burning civilization down. Once Vision leaves, Ultron sends a message out into the world.
That message is a leak, and it lands fast when a sniper’s bullet kills Fiona on the pub floor at closing time. Armed men come through the doors and Vision kills all of them without much effort, which is the first sign this Vision is not the one fans remember. An armored truck opens fire on the building, and he flies out in his synthezoid form. The man running the operation is a bounty hunter called Paladin (Todd Stashwick). He shoots his own soldier for killing Fiona because a dead civilian was not part of the job, and then his client hacks into his comms to tell him he failed.
Back in the house Ultron admits he leaked Vision’s location because he thinks being hunted will force Vision to have a life. He does not know who posted the bounty, but he knows the hunter’s name. Vision considers going offline for good while J.A.R.V.I.S. suggests calling Bruce Banner or Clint Barton. Vision does not delete Ultron and instead strips the attic of every screen and toy and leaves him alone in a blank room. That punishment says more about this Vision than the bloodshed does, because he cannot let go of the one being who made him.
Paladin and his handler (Diane Morgan) trace the Sherwood Ellis alias to S.W.O.R.D.’s Westview files. They read about Wanda’s twins, Billy and Tommy, and the search pings a match in London named Thomas Shepard (Ruaridh Mollica). He is running a con with his friend Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais) when a news report about Vision sets off flashes of Westview in his head. Their mark catches up with them and they run, and Paladin grabs Thomas in the confusion and leaves Lisa behind. The hour ends with an incoming transmission inside Vision’s mind in which Paladin tells him he has his son. Ultron’s reaction is “Mazel tov! It’s a boy.”
“Theseus” opens a year earlier with Thomas in police custody after kids were hurt at a swimming pool, and he cannot explain what happened. In his psych evaluation he says he was drowning when he felt “a bolt of lightning,” and suddenly someone else was living in his head with him. That is the “Agatha All Along” moment seen from the other side, when Billy sent his brother’s soul into a drowning teenager. The authorities put Thomas on a prison bus to St. Mabyn’s, a sanitarium that, Lisa tells him, no one ever leaves. Lisa sits down next to him and talks him through a panic attack. When a guard tasers him, his hands vibrate and the shock goes back into the guard. Lisa lifts the keys, Thomas shakes the back door open, and they are gone. Comic readers know this ends with Tommy growing into Speed.
In the present the AIs dig into Paladin and find that the name is a title held by the latest in a line of hunters who live by a strict code. He takes Thomas to St. Mabyn’s, runs into the guard from the bus, and kills him on the spot. Inside his head Vision studies the psych tape as Thomas describes a man with a demon’s face and kind eyes, and a mother with sad eyes. Then he says “grief is just love persevering.” The original Vision said that to Wanda when they were alone, so nobody else could know it and the memories have to be real.
Vision meets Paladin at the pub anyway. He has already run the conversation in simulation over and over, and he tells Paladin the boy means nothing to him. Paladin lays out his theory that when the hex fell, Wanda’s magic threw Tommy’s soul across the ocean into a troubled London kid. Paladin also makes his threat that unless Vision surrenders, St. Mabyn’s will do lasting damage to Thomas’s brain. Den of Geek has Vision telling Paladin he has the Avenger’s face “but not his virtue.” He grabs Paladin, throws him down and walks out. Reviewers split on Stashwick. Den of Geek found him “so much more brutal and direct” than his usual heavies, and IGN saw “plenty of campy energy.”
The turn comes from the attic. Vision tells Ultron he cannot live up to the old Vision, and Ultron throws the Ship of Theseus back at him. That is the puzzle the two Visions argued over in the “WandaVision” finale. Ultron’s point is that the question is a dodge. Theseus was a king who set out on his ship to save children. When someone takes your son, Ultron says, stop worrying about being the ship and “be the goddamn king.” Spader gets the best line of the premiere, and he sells it. Before Vision leaves, J.A.R.V.I.S. warns him to keep his emotions in check. He does it in front of a painting of a burning figure Vision calls “the first of us.” ComicBookMovie and The TV Cave both read it as Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch.
Vision walks into St. Mabyn’s and announces that he is “here for the trap.” The staff are Paladin’s soldiers, and he cuts through them on the way to Thomas’s cell. Thomas is sure Vision is another hallucination until Vision calms him down. Then the cell turns out to be the real trap. It shuts Vision’s systems down, his mindscape starts to break apart, and the elevator to Ultron’s attic opens on its own. Thomas uses his powers on the door, and they break out together. Paladin is waiting with adamantium rounds, and they tear through Vision’s vibranium. Adamantium came into the MCU in “Captain America: Brave New World.” That stolen-metal headline in the first hour was a warning. Vision gets one hit in on Paladin, and they make it outside before he collapses.
Vision tells Thomas to run, and Thomas refuses at first and calls Vision his “something” before he goes. Inside the house the power is failing and there is not enough left to run everyone. Ultron says it is the moment for a noble self-sacrifice, and J.A.R.V.I.S. takes it. He deletes his own code to keep the others alive, and his last words are “family is forever, and it’s worth the fight.” LaughingPlace notes that Ultron tells Vision afterward that J.A.R.V.I.S. was not his first choice. Thomas comes back in a stolen car and drags Vision inside. “He didn’t listen,” Vision says. Ultron answers, “Like father, like son.”
Killing J.A.R.V.I.S. is the boldest move in the premiere, and it works on continuity. Bettany voiced J.A.R.V.I.S. from “Iron Man” in 2008 until “Avengers: Age of Ultron” folded that AI into the body that became Vision. D’Arcy played Edwin Jarvis, the Stark family butler the AI was named for, in “Agent Carter” and “Avengers: Endgame.” So an AI that has been in the MCU since its very first film dies wearing the face of the man who inspired it. Bettany told TheWrap, “It was so nice to get to work with him again, and then he was gone too soon.” Not everyone bought it, and the A.V. Club’s Sam Barsanti called it “a waste of James D’Arcy” to kill him so early. Cinelinx went further: “JARVIS’ sacrifice, for example, did nothing for me.”
The episode-level reviews are mixed. Den of Geek gave the premiere 3 out of 5, and IGN scored the two episodes a 7. IGN called Spader’s Ultron “the real highlight of the series in Episodes 1 and 2,” and it is hard to argue. The full-season reviews split even wider. Polygon wrote that “Marvel’s streaming era gets the sendoff that it needs.” Variety’s headline says the show, like its hero, “Struggles to Connect Emotionally.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han wanted Vision to “touch some non-digital grass,” and Slant said the series “can’t overcome its pervasive inconsequentiality.” The premiere answers the emotional charge better than the season reviews suggest. A Vision who cannot feel spends two hours losing Fiona and J.A.R.V.I.S. anyway, and he still goes back for a kid he says is not his.
The open threads are clear. Nobody knows who hired Paladin, though F.R.I.D.A.Y. thinks S.W.O.R.D. wants its weapon back. The killer from the headlines has not shown up yet, and Ultron is out of the attic and roaming the house. Thomas has powers he cannot control and a father he does not trust. “No Strings” is a slow start, and the AI house still plays flat whenever Ultron is not in the room. “Theseus” fixes most of that by the end. It gives Vision a reason to move, and it shows the show is willing to kill a legacy character to make the point.
What Do You Think? Is S.W.O.R.D. really the client behind Paladin, or is that too obvious a suspect for a show this fond of misdirection? Was James D’Arcy the right face for J.A.R.V.I.S.’s death, or should Bettany have voiced that goodbye himself? With Ultron loose inside Vision’s head, how long before he stops helping?
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