VisionQuest Eps. 3 & 4 Review

You know, as I was watching VisionQuest a few days after the next pair of episodes dropped, a thought occurred to me: it’s been eleven years since Age of Ultron came out. And back in 2015, I don’t think any of us imagined we’d be dealing with AI in everyday life within a few years. But here we are, and people have very real concerns that we could end up creating Skynet or AM. But do you know who would be just as bad? Ultron. We saw just how dangerous Ultron was in Age of Ultron, and I shuddered at the reveal that Vision kept him alive in his head all these years. Because can you imagine what would happen if the dawg was let off his leash?

We don’t need to imagine it anymore. Ultron just conned Vision.

Vision Almost Dies. AGAIN!

So, despite Vision managing to initially survive his gunshot wounds at the hands of Paladin thanks to JARVIS’ sacrifice, he is still dying. His remaining AI companions are scrambling to keep him online, and Ultron is now free to roam about his mind. Which is something that I can’t help but note is severely overlooked by the others, but can be excused by the fact that they are trying to save Vision from dying. Again! And he starts acting all wonky because of it.

It didn’t occur to me until this series, but I really missed Paul Bettany’s acting in the MCU. He was there at the start almost twenty years ago, but he only got to appear onscreen for a small portion of that time. And getting to see Paul and James Spader verbally spar as Vision and Ultron argue over almost everything made for such an amusing dynamic. Well, amusing if it weren’t for the fact that Ultron is the devil on Vision’s shoulder, praising him when he does things like withholding the truth from Thomas about who he’s got in his head.

Speaking of Thomas, I’m a little on the fence about him as a character. I can accept that he is both his own person and the reincarnation of Tommy Maximoff. Whether or not he and Vision work as a father-son team, though, remains up in the air. To his credit, Vision is starting to come around to the idea that he technically might be Thomas’ father. He’s making efforts to open up to him. And Thomas’ speed abilities seem to be partially mimicking Vision’s phasing powers, so there is that.

However, Vision makes a mistake by not telling his son about Ultron being in his head. And that has grave consequences.

So, I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’t really like Paladin. I think that he’s the weakest aspect of this series, and I didn’t really care about what he goes through in these episodes. I cared even less when he screws up so badly that he loses the contract to capture Vision. The only real reason I think that it’s relevant is the flashbacks we get about his biological dad being slain by his predecessor, who became the father he needed. And that’s only because it ties into the show’s themes about family and how complicated it can be. What I was more interested in was the new synth on the block that’s killing people.

Jocasta is here?

Throughout these two episodes, there is a serial killer the press is calling the “Butcherbird” going around killing people at random. And when Vision somehow gets involved, she threatens Thomas to make him stay out of her way. Naturally, that leads Vision and his think-tank of AI to go snooping around, and they discover that all the victims are connected to this company that worked on AI. They created the first AI capable of expressing emotion, the template of which they sold to Stark, which he then used to create JARVIS and, eventually, Ultron and Vision. It’s a nice wrinkle to add to the history of the MCU, even if it makes you realize that Tony never created the AI from scratch. However, it also brings up the notion that they are all based on actual people, something that EDITH grapples with as she questions her own existence. That’s not the worst part, though.

It isn’t until the climax of the fourth episode when Vision confronts the Butcherbird that we learn that she is the MCU’s version of Jocasta. In the comics, she was a synthezoid Ultron created as his metalic bride, but she turned on him because of how evil he was. And we get a nice little nod to that when Ultron sees her for the first time, and is clearly into her. But Jocasta isn’t just a synthezoid. She’s something far darker than just a copy of someone else. We don’t know how it happened, but it seems that the people Jocasta was killing had trapped one of their own in an artificial body, then lied to everyone by claiming she was dead.

Oh no…Ultron has no strings on him

It’s been speculated by some people that the future of humanity will see us slowly become cyborgs before eventually placing our minds into synthetic bodies altogether. I don’t know if that will happen, but from the way Dr. Josephine Carrington describes it, it must seem like hell. She’s alive and stronger than a normal human, but she can’t eat, drink, or enjoy any of the pleasures of life whatsoever. That’s a face worse than death! And it’s a fate that she is seemingly condemned to for good when Ultron tricks her into killing the last of her former colleagues, keeping her from obtaining her biomarker (her face.)

As soon as we learned that Ultron was still alive, I think we all knew that this show wouldn’t end without him making a play to take over Vision’s body. And he is able to convince Vision to give him the wheel to fight Jocasta, only for him to immediately lock him and the others out of his mind. And James Spader hasn’t lost a step while doing so, spouting Ultron’s infamous line of “there are no strings on me” like the sociopathic Pinnochio he is. And then, he just walks off with Thomas, ready to have a talk with his “grandson.”

And just like that, one of the most dangerous villains in the MCU is back in the game. I guess that the fan theories that Ultron will be joining Dr. Doom might be right after all. As for me, I’m locked in and ready to see what happens next. For all we know, Jocasta may have inspired Ultron to forcibly convert humanity into synthezoids.

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