‘VisionQuest’ could have done anything, and it just did this

Like the synthezoid at its center, Marvel’s VisionQuest contains multitudes. It’s a genre-bending adventure, a reflection on flawed father-son dynamics, and an ambitious attempt to tie up the loose ends of the so-called WandaVision trilogy. But seemingly above all else, it’s a sequel to no one’s favorite Avengers movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron.

VisionQuest brings James Spader’s evil Ultron back to the MCU, and at first, I wasn’t complaining. Spader’s gleefully villainous performance is one of the sole bright spots of Age of Ultron. It holds up just as well in VisionQuest, with Spader chewing the hell out of every withering one-liner.

Then came VisionQuest‘s finale.

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Ultron tries to destroy humanity again in VisionQuest‘s finale.

Episode 7 revealed that the show’s main villain, the Client, was also played by James Spader, meaning Ultron’s human avatar is modeled after him. Turns out, the Client is Virgil Horton, grandson of Phineas Horton (Bettany), creator of the world’s first synthetic man.

Virgil was once the partner of Josephine Carrington (T’Nia Miller), whose consciousness was used to create the synthezoid Jocasta (Miller). As the two worked on their revolutionary AI tech, they coded themselves into their work, explaining why Ultron’s human avatar looks like Virgil. Now that Virgil has apprehended both Vision and Jocasta, he plans to put his mind in Vision’s body so he and Jocasta can live together forever, using their nanobot tech to rule over all of humanity.

Neither Vision nor Jocasta wants this future, so they team up with Tommy Maximoff (Ruaridh Mollica) to defeat Virgil. In the chaos, Virgil shoots Jocasta, who subsequently throws Ultron’s drive into the nanobot swarm, unleashing him in his physical form. His first move? Killing Virgil in a feat of Spader-on-Spader violence.

In one fell swoop, Ultron dispatches VisionQuest‘s Big Bad, leaving a villainous void ready to be filled. That’s a role Ultron is all too happy to step into, and so begins VisionQuest‘s endgame: Ultron’s nanobot swarm flying towards London, ready to implant itself in its citizens and kill them from the inside out.

For a series that tried to twist and bend the rules of what a Marvel show could be, this final showdown is frustratingly familiar, right down to Vision and Ultron duking it out in their synthetic forms. Yes, Ultron can dissipate into a cloud of nanobots now, but that doesn’t change the fact that this feels too much a rehash of an Avengers film that came out 11 years ago.

Under this sheen of familiarity, even the best parts of VisionQuest‘s climax feel like a drag. In a callback to WandaVision, Vision tries to use the power of sitcoms to help Ultron process his grief over losing Jocasta. Ultron hijacks the program, resulting in a 500-episode montage that comes with its fair share of clever sight gags, along with a catchy theme song. (“Don’t kill the world!”)

Yet all the montage really does is remind us of how perfectly WandaVision was able to parody sitcoms. More than that, it reminds us of the power of good episodic television, something every Marvel show has tried to capture, before almost always falling short and feeling like a truncated eight-hour movie instead. With its Age of Ultron-meets-therapy climax, VisionQuest is no exception, even if it has its fair share of highs. (Tommy’s awkward running around the table in the finale will live in my head for a while.)

What’s next for VisionQuest?

VisionQuest is the last new MCU show on Marvel’s docket until 2028’s Zodiac, and aside from Loki and Daredevil: Born Again, live-action MCU series don’t have the best track record of renewal. Still, that doesn’t stop VisionQuest from signalling to a future for its characters. Tommy connects with his long-lost twin Billy (Joe Locke) and heads back to New Jersey with him by the season’s end. Could the pair be part of a young Avengers team down the line, or will the MCU leave them by the wayside, along with other potential young Avengers like Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld)?

Tommy also asks Vision if there’s any way they could potentially bring the late Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) back, reuniting the entire WandaVision family. Meanwhile, Ultron is still out there, along with Jocasta’s hard drive. Both sequences suggest that neither women are truly gone from the MCU — if only VisionQuest gets the opportunity to explore further. In the meantime, though, its final impression is a mixed bag: a combination of some truly inventive world building, marred by the insistence on replaying a decade-old story.

VisionQuest is now streaming on Disney+.