[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the entire first season ofVisionQuest. Read at your own risk!]
VisionQuest has come to a close, wrapping up a mind- and reality-bending trilogy of MCU shows that also included WandaVision and Agatha All Along.
In the finale — written and directed by showrunner Terry Matalas — Ultron (James Spader) reacted quite poorly to seeing his beloved Jocasta (T’Nia Miller) killed by Virgil Horton (also played by Spader), the human who served as inspiration for him. Any steps he’d been making toward softening on humanity and what they can create seemed lost, as he not only killed Virgil, but then unleashed a horde of nanobots, intending that they kill any humans in their path.
But Vision (Paul Bettany) would trap Ultron’s mind inside an imaginary sitcom loop in order to gain enough time to convince Ultron to stop his attack — something he ultimately was successful in doing. After all he went through both physically and mentally, Vision nearly died, but was saved thanks to his sons, Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica) and Billy (Joe Locke), the latter of whom arrived in the nick of time.
This was on the heels of plenty of other big moments and big emotional breakthroughs for the characters, and Matalas spoke to us about the events of the VisionQuest finale, along with other important elements from the season and what they could mean for the future.
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Vision’s Family
For much of VisionQuest, Vision — rebuilt by the agency S.W.O.R.D. in WandaVision — didn’t want to accept that Tommy was his son, now inhabiting a different body himself, while also insisting that he wasn’t even the same being as the Vision who came before him and that he had no emotional connection to that prior life. By the penultimate episode, though, Vision finally admitted to himself that he was in fact a being who held not just the memories of the lives both the original Vision and the hex-created version Wanda Maximoff had manifested in WandaVision, but also the feelings of love and loss that came with those experiences.
For Paul Bettany, Vision’s gradual change and acceptance both of who he is and, simultaneously, who Tommy is and what he meant to him was one of his favorite aspects of the series, with Bettany telling TV Guide, “The relationship goes through a massive development that I really love. There is a really lovely moment where it becomes about acceptance of this boy’s truth.”
Because Vision had been in such denial initially, Bettany remarked, “He’s just not been hearing him, and [Tommy’s] speaking his truth. Absolutely having to accept your child’s truth is what’s a big secret of parenting.”
Of course, Vision has two sons, and in the finale, Billy Maximoff makes his big return, with Joe Locke reprising his role from Agatha All Along. Though Tommy is one of the main characters on the series, Matalas said they always knew this big reunion with Billy would also occur in VisionQuest, even as they pondered when exactly it would occur. Said Matalas, “We had conversations about ‘Do we bring him in earlier?’ or not, but every time we went down that road, it sort of would detract from the story of Vision and Tommy that we were on.”
Billy was given two big scenes in the finale, beginning with Tommy briefly managing to make contact from afar using the brothers’ abilities, allowing them to have an emotional moment on their own, even as Billy laments that he still hasn’t found his brother in person. As Matalas explained, “I got to this place of, ‘Well, let’s do the reunion early in the finale, and then sort of take it away’ in a way that hopefully, by the time it does [really happen], you’ve forgotten about it.”
Then, in the finale’s big climax, Vision is at death’s door, only for Billy to arrive, as the combined powers of he and Tommy save their father. It’s a scene with a lot of weight, as Vision is now once more with both his sons for the first time since WandaVision. As Matalas put it, “By the time that actually comes, they’re reunited when it needs to happen the most,” adding that he hoped the emotional impact felt like a proper payoff for fans.
The one key person missing from this family reunion is Wanda Maximoff, who seemingly died in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Near the finale’s conclusion, Tommy wonders if there’s any chance she too could ever return, like he, his brother, and his father have — something many fans are also always asking.
Matalas admitted he too has absolutely pondered this, but given the many moving parts of the MCU and various projects and plans they are simultaneously developing, he stressed, “All those answers are above my pay grade.” Still, when it comes to the many possibilities the future holds, he remarked, “There are lots of conversations we’ve had,” and that they included Tommy asking the question in the show because they were curious about the answer themselves.
Ultron Lives and Loves
The finale of VisionQuest temporarily putting the characters in a family sitcom scenario brings things full circle back to WandaVision, where the entire premise centered on an evolving sitcom-based world Wanda had created.
Said Matalas, “I think that all good endings need to touch upon the beginning — the WandaVision of it all. It was a big swing. We were really nervous as to whether or not we could pull it off or if the audience would think ‘OK, they have really jumped the shark in an unbelievable way.’ But you know, a great sitcom is just people in a room talking about their feelings and working through things.”
Initially, Vision and Ultron — restored to his robotic form for the first time in the series — have a physical fight, before Vision traps their minds within his “UltraVision” sitcom. Matalas said he enjoyed “the idea of that [sitcom] being the final conflict between Vision and Ultron, not the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, which we do want to make sure we give the audience [too], and we do in the scene prior. So you get the Marvel popcorn, but you get this unexpected finale.”
Ultron’s viewpoint on the world starting to change and perhaps soften is reflected in the series by his unexpected romantic relationship with his fellow AI, Jocasta. Even as the two of them have ulterior motives, it becomes clear that there’s something genuine there too, underlined by his anguish at seeing her killed.
James Spader was delighted to explore this storyline, telling TV Guide, “I loved it because it was like he was so taken with her right from the start. He was just so compelled in all of the most human ways. I think he was impressed with her. He admired her. He didn’t quite trust her and didn’t quite trust the feeling, but he doesn’t give a sh– about trust. Ultimately, he’ll work through it.”
Spader added that even though the relationship was initially transactional for both of them, “And they were both willing to hook up for the sake of the transaction, along the way, they all of a sudden were just falling [for each other], and they kept falling, and they kept falling.”
Said Matalas, “I think it’s both. I think clearly there’s something about Ultron — aside from the fact that he’s sort of like a father to him — that Vision really likes and respects. I think it’s impossible to say otherwise. But do I think Vision’s going to keep his eye on Ultron 24/7? Absolutely. Do I think Ultron is going to try some shenanigans again? Absolutely.”
Ultimately, Matalas said “It seemed like a really interesting space to leave them in, which was this sort of detente. Sort of like ‘OK, be good!’ And [Ultron is] like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It was this idea from the very beginning that this is how we were going to end it — sort of [like Hannibal Lecter walking away into the crowd at the end].”
In a mid-credit scene, Ultron is last seen holding onto the drive marked “Jocasta,” indicating he hopes to bring her back. In a fun bit of MCU connective tissue, this drive is clearly the same one glimpsed in Avengers: Age of Ultron, when we saw Tony Stark with a few different potential AIs to load into his armor, before he chose F.R.I.D.A.Y. But acknowledging that history does make one ponder how exactly Tony would have that drive in the first place.
Matalas revealed, “There was some cut dialogue about [Virgil] Horton working on Project Ultron as a consultant, but we felt like we didn’t want to overwhelm the emotion in that scene. But he was in there doing some consulting work with [Bruce] Banner and Tony [Stark].”
The Adventures of Phineas and J.I.M.
VisionQuest included major reveals about the history of AI personas in the MCU, going back decades to Virgil’s grandfather, the scientist Phineas Horton, and his breakthrough creation, J.I.M., aka the Synthetic Man, who he built in the wake of the death of his son. These characters are both important parts of Vision’s history in Marvel Comics, where J.I.M. is known as Jim Hammond, the World War II-era superhero who was the original Human Torch, and where Vision’s body is actually Jim Hammond, now rebuilt and altered.
When it came to finally introducing Horton and this version of J.I.M. in the MCU, Matalas said “It’s just organic. In the comic books, Vision was made from Jim Hammond, and so the idea of it being code —of these AIs — made it a big family story. It was a story about generational trauma. It started with Phineas Horton losing his son.”
Notably, both Horton and J.I.M. are also played by Paul Bettany, keeping the actor plenty busy in the series. Matalas explained that they always knew Bettany would also play J.I.M., “And then halfway through the season, once I started to think more about Phineas Horton as Geppetto, it made a lot of sense for him to do all three.”
In Episode 7, Bettany played all three characters — Vision, Horton, and J.I.M. — in the same scene together. Said Matalas, “That could not have been more fun to direct, because Paul had such an amazing take on all three of those distinctly different characters.”
That scene is also the one where an anguished Vision truly admits that he does feel the emotional loss of his family, and Matalas added “I think the pressure was really on that breakdown, because it had been a scene that we had been discussing since the inception of the season, and we were building up to that because that’s really the key moment of his arc in the series. When we got there, we had only done about three takes of it, and everyone on the set was in tears. So we knew we had something special.”
Now that he’s introduced Horton and J.I.M. as characters integral to the 1940s MCU, Matalas noted, “If there’s a spin-off I’d love to see, it’s those two — it’s Phineas and Jim Hammond in World War II. It really feels like you can imagine that whole series in that time frame.”
J.I.M. was first briefly glimpsed, as an Easter egg, way back in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, where he was on display at the Stark Expo that Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes attend. “We definitely worked out the timeline of him, or a facsimile of him, being at the Stark Expo,” Matalas noted. Beyond that, he mentioned that they even discussed where Adam II — the second synthetic being created by Horton in the comics — might fit into MCU history.
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In the comics, Jim was also part of a World War II-era superhero team, the Invaders, which included both Captain America and Namor, and Matalas said he’d love to see “the Invaders, and Jim Hammond going up against the Nazis, and seeing him falling in love, and who did he fall in love with? It’s very tantalizing to want to tell more of that.”
One rather amazing part of comic book mythology is that it’s Jim Hammond who killed Adolf Hitler in Marvel lore. When asked if that could be the case in the MCU too, Matalas replied, “What a great question. I wouldn’t mind finding out!”
VisionQuestSeason 1 is now streaming on Disney+.
