The grand Marvel Cinematic Universe-Disney+ experiment may be coming to an inauspicious end, but not without final visit to the strain that actually totally worked.
VisionQuest follows Agatha All Along in hashing out the aftermath of WandaVision, the very first streaming series from the massively successful interconnected film franchise. And this installment sees a rebooted Vision (Paul Bettany) clawing his way back to consciousness in the wake of being killed during Avengers: Infinity War.
There’s a whole lot more to it (from the transfer consciousness of an imagination baby to the resurrected memory of James Spader’s Ultron), and it’s that web of complication that has tripped up some critics just looking for a TV show to watch.
“When VisionQuest does let itself come up for air, it can be quite touching, anchored by a Paul Bettany performance that mines new layers from a character he’s inhabited for over a decade, and a James Spader one that’s a better use of his smarmy appeal than his introduction in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron,” writes Angie Han in The Hollywood Reporter. “But even as the characters reflect at length on the virtue of putting themselves out there, their series too often retreats within itself instead.”
Across review of VisionQuest, which are generally positive — it holds an 85% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 63 on Metacritic — much of the praise is reserved for the two performances at its center.
“Bettany walks more of a tight rope than ever before with this rebooted Vision. He needs to be cold, but thawing. Overly literal, but with flourishes of personality,” writes Hunter Ingram for The Wrap. “Despite Vision’s insistence that emotions aren’t part of his programming, an electric Bettany brings a warmth to the role to which his AI has to rise.”
“Here, Ultron looks not like a menacing CGI robot but the 66-year-old Spader himself: a schlubby guy with a flowing beard and a trenchcoat whose menacing, purple-prosed monologues (‘It feels to me like your Greek tragedy has a deuteragonist’) are undercut by his appearance,” writes Alison Herman in Variety. “To the show’s credit, this Ultron is a highly entertaining creation, allowing Spader to layer some of his signature sardonic air to a character who’s still cynical, but much humbled from his supervillain days. Without access to the real world, Ultron has to settle for being the devil on Vision’s shoulder rather than an actor in his own right.”
For all of its lore confusion and MCU-ness, VisionQuest does seem to stick the landing for the most part, with the occasional detour into silliness.
“With its delightfully retro world-building, layered banter, and performances that paint rich character arcs filled with yearning for greater meaning in a universe that questions their value, VisionQuest may lean too hard into its poetics. Perhaps?” writes Sherin Nicole at RogerEbert.com. “The storytelling operates in the slipstream of lines like ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?’ Yet, in its earnestness, VisionQuest is charmingly enthralling with just enough interplay between light and darkness to make us feel it — even if it’s a little goofy at times.”
