This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episode 6.
Let’s be 100% clear. I love Marvel. I love Marvel Comics, I love the MCU. I wouldn’t know things about Ravager 2099 or Eternals if I didn’t. But we should also be honest about the fact that, sometimes, Marvel tropes can be annoying, particularly when the MCU seems embarrassed about Marvel Comics. And few instances have been annoying as the moment where Thomas realizes that Paladin has sown a bomb into his arm that will explode if he goes to fast, and shouts, “You’ve made me into Speed.”
The joke is that Thomas is referring to the Keanu Reevesmovie, albeit with the premise inverted. The joke is also that Thomas will become a superhero called Speed in the Young Avengers, and that his name is very dumb. Where this bit of elbowing in the side the only time VisionQuest‘s sixth episode, “Deadlock,” does a Marvel bit, then it could be forgiven. But too much of “Deadlock” gets mired in Marvel mechanics, slowing the (forgive me) speed that the series had been building.
As promised in the previous episode, “Firewall,” Vision is going to Madripoor, a third-world country whose corrupt criminal justice system doesn’t enforce the few laws they bother writing. Thomas has been taken by Ultron and given to Paladin, who will use him to finally capture Vision to exchange to an agent for his mysterious client. And who is this agent, you ask? Why, it’s Raza! Remember Raza?
No? Oh… Raza was the leader of the Ten Rings! Remember them? The terrorists who captured Tony Stark in Iron Man and were led by a scary terrorist guy played by Faran Tahir and seemed like he might be the Mandarin, even after it seemed like he was killed by Obadiah Stane? That is, until Iron Man 3, the One-Shot “Hail to the King,” and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings revealed that the Mandarin was a totally different guy with a different set of rings. And even though the Ten Rings logo from Iron Man cameoed in an episode of Ms. Marvel, Raza was never seen again (See? I told you I love the MCU).
Yes, Raza is back to just… shoot at Paladin and Vision a bit. Vincenzo Natali shoots the action cleanly enough, and Todd Stashwick and Paul Bettany remain compelling screen actors. But the return of Raza feels like an unnecessary bit of MCU world-building, more distracting than edifying. The same could be said of the entire Madripoor setting, a place that—despite previously appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—still works best as a nod to Wolverine comics than it does an actual setting.
Sadly, “Deadlock” doesn’t offer much compelling stuff, even outside of Madripoor. The electric chemistry that James Spader and T’Nia Miller showed previously gets smothered as the episode puts them in a white room to drop exposition, revealing the entirety of Carrington’s backstory. She created the first AI and modeled it on her own mind (or brainwaves, to use the term from Vision’s first appearance in Avengers #57, as a Marvel-lover like me knows). But when Carrington got cancer, her colleagues sold the AI to Stark Industries to become a weapon and, eventually, J.A.R.V.I.S.. But Carrington saved her nanobots in a “nest” buried in her grave, a nest that the Butcherbird Killer has been trying to unlock by gathering keys.
This isn’t to say that the episode lacks anything interesting. When Ultron finally calls the Butcherbird Killer by her comic book name Jocasta, her observation that it is disturbing to invoke Oedipus Rex rings true. And after the two finish dumping exposition, Ultron and Jocasta promise a properly grandiose supervillain team-up with their plan to infect humanity with nanobots to control human beings. Likewise, the client’s arrival in the form of a distorted voice on a television to address Vision moves the plot forward without erasing any of his shadowy intrigue.
Best of all, “Deadlock” gives us a rare glimpse of White Vision turning evil, something largely unexplored in VisionQuest. Amidst his standoff with Paladin, White Vision’s eyes go blank and Bettany flattens his voice to describe the minute details of the assassin’s identity, specifically the name and location of the man’s daughter. In addition to further fleshing out Paladin as a character, the moment reminds us how dangerous Vision and the other AIs truly are. As he’s told us again and again, this Vision is not the hero we knew before, and we see now the capacity for cruelty that he carries. Moreover, when he identifies information about Paladin’s daughter, Vision does what the more likably AIs like F.R.I.D.A.Y. and E.D.I.T.H. have been doing all along, invading privacy and surveilling other people. VisionQuest doesn’t really want to deal with the moral issues of AI and mass surveillance, but the scene raises them nonetheless.
Does this exciting moment make-up for the fact that Diane Morgan seems to be done with the series, with her obsolete AI abandoning Paladin and the show? Absolutely not. Hopefully Morgan got a nice paycheck, but VisionQuest never paid off the promise of Cunk on Marvel. Still, the scene does lead to E.D.I.T.H. becoming an 8-bit sprite to talk with Thomas and Laura, thus confirming that Emily Hampshire has essentially been playing Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck It Ralph.
Delightful as this bits are, “Deadlock” lives up to its name. VisionQuest has become deadlocked, trapped and spinning its wheels in a plot that isn’t that captivating to begin with, caught in nods to the franchise and the comics, having characters talk about adamantium. As a Marvel fan, I understood that reference. But as a fan of good TV, it’s a bit disappointing to see VisionQuest lose its way.
New episodes of VisionQuest premiere Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+
