SIMPLY MARVELOUS

Unrecognizable Emmy Winner Electrifies TV’s Biggest New Show

With James Spader delivering a devilishly villainous turn, “VisionQuest” proves a sturdy follow-up to “WandaVision.”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe got off to an excellent TV start with 2021’s WandaVision, but in the ensuing years, it’s had as many downs as ups. It’s fitting, then, that it rights its course with VisionQuest (Oct. 14 on Disney+), a follow-up to its initial small-screen triumph that’s all about the search for identity. Bolstered by a James Spader turn of sardonic wit and malevolence, it’s a sequel that stands on its own two feet, even as it harkens back—and operates as a companion piece—to its popular predecessor.

In present-day Edinburgh, super android Vision (Paul Bettany) is living a quiet incognito life among humans, by day working at a pub and at night retreating into his mind, where he’s constructed an English manor house that he shares with a collection of artificial intelligences: J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy), who handles security; E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), who’s all about fun and weaponry; F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), who’s in charge of tactical operations; and D.U.M.E-E (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer), the residence’s maintenance professionals.

They’re a quirky, quaint collection of A.I. personalities who get along great, and the only threat to their stability is the entity that lives in the house’s spacious loft.

That would be Ultron (Spader), the villainous robot Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) created, who went genocidal in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Vision had supposedly dealt Ultron a fatal blow at the end of that feature. Nonetheless, it turns out that he actually spared him and confined him to this digital domicile, where he now watches television, ruminates on art, and peppers his host/jailor with sarcastic barbs.

While he’s really a shiny mecha-titan, Ultron largely takes the form of pudgy, big-bearded Spader in VisionQuest, and his contentious rapport with Bettany’s Vision fuels the series, especially whenever the maniac refers to his compatriot as “my boy.”

Vision doesn’t know who he is, and he certainly doesn’t consider himself Ultron’s son, and those issues are compounded by Thomas (Ruaridh Mollica), a Scottish street kid who—according to a police interrogation video—is tortured by the idea that he might be Vision’s son Tommy. Since that child and his twin brother Billy were merely constructs of Vision’s wife Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) grief-driven sitcom-fantasyland hex in WandaVision, this seems impossible. Then again, that spell also resurrected Vision post-Endgame, although this Vision isn’t that one; instead, he’s a military-created replica with that Wanda-conjured Vision’s memories.

Because VisionQuest builds on a tangled premise, showrunner Terry Matalas occasionally has his characters explain the nuts and bolts of the story. As a result, the series can at times feel like it’s holding viewers’ hands. However, considering its inherent complications, that’s not particularly unwelcome. Fortunately, the flip-flopping between reality and Vision’s daintily constructed headspace is confident, and Matalas introduces plenty of threats to keep things brisk.

An attack at the pub shows the ex-Avenger has failed to keep a low profile, and Vision deduces that the culprit behind this would-be assassination is a bounty hunter known as Paladin (Todd Stashwick)—and, more troubling, that he found Vision through Ultron’s nefarious meddling.

In short order, Paladin targets Thomas to get to Vision, whom he’s been hired to capture by a shadowy client with immense technological resources. Simultaneously, London is being tormented by a serial killer that the press—thanks to her habit of carving wings in the floor around her victims—has dubbed Butcherbird. One glimpse of the homicidal fiend, her eyes glowing in the dark beneath her cloak’s hood, is enough to make clear that she may have as much in common with Vision and Ultron as the men and women she slays. Between these two mysterious baddies, VisionQuest has mystery to spare, and it helps enrich the overstuffed proceedings.

Less satisfying is the incessant techno-babble spewed by Vision and his AGI compatriots, which clutters a show whose primary concern is its protagonist’s mission to know himself—and, in doing so, to be capable of knowing others and forming the emotional familial connections he craves.

Virtually everyone in VisionQuest is wracked by similar personal and father-son issues, and if those themes are too often overtly addressed, they’re natural outgrowths of Bettany’s “synthezoid” character and the mess he’s found himself in courtesy of Wanda’s prior TV Land freak-out. Moreover, Bettany instills Vision with a tormented soul and moral confusion that’s anything but cartoony, and his performance keeps this saga on track no matter its convoluted twists.

But it’s Spader—who won three Emmy Awards for his more conventional work on The Practice and Boston Legal—who steals the proverbial show. His Ultron is a murderous and calculating ‘bot whose motives and allegiances are always tantalizingly unclear. Ultron isn’t to be trusted, yet his true aim remains a question that VisionQuest effectively teases for much of its eight-episode run.

With a steely look in his eyes that adds a hint of malice to his quips, the actor relishes revisiting his malignant MCU role. Despite the series’ wealth of plot strands, Matalas wisely avoids sidelining him for long stretches—meaning Ultron looms over everything that happens, including later installments that pivot around surprising new enemies.

VisionQuest’s narrative is jumbled in a faithfully comic book-y manner, and it puts minimal effort into future world-building. Given its intrinsic connections to WandaVision and multiple Avengers films, it’s going too far to call it a stand-alone affair. Still, Matalas focuses on wrapping up his narrative rather than laying the groundwork for Vision and company’s potential contributions to forthcoming adventures—a smart tack that keeps it focused through to a reasonably satisfying conclusion.

VisionQuest doesn’t boast a foundational hook as intriguing as WandaVision’s sitcom fantasy, and it rarely tries to duplicate that which worked so well for its precursor. It’s a series that’s tethered to the past and yet strives to be its own unique thing, and if it sometimes gets lost on the way to self-actualization, that’s in line with a hero who, by definition, is forever torn between two (metal and flesh) worlds.

Unity, of course, is tough to come by in a franchise as sprawling as this. With Spader as its electric engine, though, Matalas’ show proves a relatively cohesive and compelling cog in the MCU machine.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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