It’s been about 11 years since Vision appeared in the MCU, and he’s been through hell and back. Yes, Vision has died once, vanished once, and been rebuilt as a blank white robot with no feelings. Oof, that’s a rough few years, even by Marvel standards.
But now he finally gets a show of his own, and it’s our first look at him in five years, since White Vision flew off at the end of “WandaVision” in 2021. “VisionQuest” lands on Disney+ on October 14 and wraps up the trilogy that started with “WandaVision” and carried on through “Agatha All Along.”
Indeed, the show nearly looked very different. It began life as “Vision Quest” under “WandaVision” head writer Jac Schaeffer, but she stepped away in 2024 to focus on “Agatha All Along,” and Marvel brought in “Star Trek: Picard” showrunner Terry Matalas. He says two scenes inspired it: Vision’s last conversation with Ultron, and the Ship of Theseus talk in “WandaVision.” Paul Bettany calls the result a mash-up of the Pinocchio and Frankenstein stories, which tells you what mood to expect. Matalas himself calls it a love letter to the “WandaVision” universe that is “nostalgic, existential, and a bit absurd.”
Now, we understand homework blues. And so we’re here to help if your memory of Westview is a haze of sitcom filters and one extremely catchy witch song. Ready? Let’s get into it.
The Comic Behind the Title
The show’s name comes from an 80s comic. “Vision Quest” ran in “West Coast Avengers” #42 to 45 (March to June 1989), written and drawn by John Byrne. In it, government operatives kidnap Vision, take him apart, and rebuild him white, emotionless, and personality-free. Sound familiar? “WandaVision” already borrowed the image of the disassembled body and White Vision. Byrne even drew the cover of #45 as a nod to John Buscema’s cover for “Avengers” #57, Vision’s debut.
The same run is also where the twins, Billy and Tommy, stopped being real children, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Sure, the TV show won’t be a straight adaptation of that comic. The comic stars the West Coast Avengers, a team that doesn’t exist in the MCU (yet), and it’s about getting Vision back, not about an android on the run in 2028.
But the likelier recipe is a blend. Byrne’s story about a Vision who has to rediscover himself, plus Tom King’s acclaimed 2015 “Vision” series, where Vision builds a synthezoid family in the suburbs.
A 1994 “Vision” miniseries by Bob Harras also fits, since it sends White Vision across America to relearn warmth and empathy. Marvel hasn’t named a single source, so call these educated guesses (or wishes, if we’re channelling Deadpool).
After Westview
Let’s start with the man — or android — himself. Thanos ripped the Mind Stone out of Vision (Paul Bettany) in “Avengers: Infinity War,” and the Snap reversal in “Endgame” didn’t bring him back. His mind had been stitched together from J.A.R.V.I.S., Ultron, and that stone, so once the stone went, so did he.
But what is grief? Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) refused to accept it. In “WandaVision,” that turned into perseverance as she hijacked the town of Westview, New Jersey, and bent it into a sitcom reality called the Hex, with a living Vision at the centre. That Vision was her creation, and he vanished the moment the Hex fell.
The real body had it worse. SWORD director Hayward (Josh Stamberg) rebuilt it as a weapon, which explains the cold white paint job and the colder personality to match: no memories, no emotions, no chill. Comics fans will recognise the look from the “Vision Quest” storyline above.
The “WandaVision” finale gave him his memories back. The Hex Vision started getting philosophical and talked him through the Ship of Theseus paradox. What happens if you swap out every part of something; is it still the same thing? White Vision decided the answer was yes, remembered who he was, and flew off.
And that brings us to “VisionQuest,” set around 2028. Vision has the memories, but he can’t feel anything about them. Think of him as a blank slate, on a journey not unlike Spock’s in “Star Trek IV.” By day, he passes as a human and works at an Edinburgh dive bar run by Fiona Guthrie (Polly Frame)—because even synthezoids need a day job. By night, he slips into the bar’s refrigerator, shuts the doors, and retreats to the Mindspace, a reality-warping mansion in his head packed with the AIs he rescued from the Avengers Compound.
Well, we wonder what he’s dreaming of… Electric sheep?
How’s It Going Tommy Twin?
Now for the other half of the story. In “WandaVision,” Wanda’s twin sons, Billy (Julian Hilliard) and Tommy (Jett Klyne), were also part of the Hex, so they disappeared with it. Soon after, Wanda grabbed the Darkhold, became the Scarlet Witch, and spent “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” trying to get them back. Long story short, it did not go well for her or for anyone within reach.
Then came “Agatha All Along”, where it quietly picked up the thread. The mysterious Teen (Joe Locke) turned out to be Billy, whose soul had landed in the body of William Kaplan, a Westview resident killed in a car crash during the Hex. He joined Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) on the path known as the Witches’ Road, hoping it would lead him to his twin.
The boy had built the road himself with his chaos magic, the same way Wanda built the Hex, so the apple did not fall far from the Scarlet Witch. Death, in the form of Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), considered his second life an abomination, and Agatha paid with her own life to save him.
Somewhere in that mess, Billy placed Tommy’s soul in the body of Thomas Shepherd, a teenager who had drowned. That’s the kid Vision ends up running with. Tommy is now an 18-year-old orphan, fresh out of London’s foster care system and picking pockets to get by.
Ruaridh Mollica, who takes over from Klyne, calls Tommy “a lost soul” and took cues from Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting.” Mollica gets to use his own accent, since Tommy is Scottish too, which fits neatly with all the time Vision spends in Edinburgh. He describes working with Bettany as “equal parts mentorship and mayhem.”
Tommy, meanwhile, has no idea what’s happening to him. He’s flooded with memories he can’t place, of a family in a house in Westview, and he keeps seeing a drowning boy. Then a bounty lands on Vision’s head, and the two of them go on the run, trying to work out who they really are.
Then there’s the speed. In “WandaVision,” Tommy discovered he could run at super speed, and the show spelled out where it came from by dressing him as Quicksilver for Halloween, in the character’s original comic-book outfit. A (very fake) Pietro Maximoff, played by Evan Peters, turned up in that same episode in the same look, so the family resemblance wasn’t subtle.
The comics tell it the same way. Speed (Tommy Shepherd) runs like his uncle, and he debuted in “Young Avengers” #10 (2006), white hair and all. He joined the team after his powers kicked in and he accidentally vaporised his school, which landed him in a juvenile facility. Billy got the spells and Tommy got the legs, a very Maximoff way to split an inheritance.
Whether “VisionQuest” lets him run at full speed is another matter, and Marvel hasn’t said. The trailer shows a more restrained kid than the smart-mouthed teen of the comics. Still, a super-fast pickpocket is either the world’s most efficient hustler or about to be very useful in a fight.
Coating Relationships
Tommy has a partner in crime, too: Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais), who Mollica says is the only family he has ever known. They met on a prisoner transport vehicle—a very Tommy way to meet someone—and the two develop romantic chemistry along the way. Comics fans will know her as Coat of Arms.
In the comics, Lisa is a juvenile offender who finds a magical garment called Tiboro’s Coat, which gives her extra arms, flight and a taste for swords. She eventually joins the Masters of Evil, though she also keeps a recurring friendship with Tommy, which stayed strictly platonic on the page. The show has other ideas. The show hasn’t said how much of that carries over, but if the sidekick starts looking shifty, you were warned.
Daddy Ultron
Every family has one relative nobody wants at dinner. For Vision, it is Ultron.
In the comics, Hank Pym built Ultron in “Avengers” #54 (1968), and the robot promptly hated his “father.” Ultron then built Vision to destroy the Avengers. Vision debuted in #57 later that year and turned on his creator instead, which sets the tone for the whole family. It took until #135 (1975) for Vision to learn what he was made of.
The MCU version is a remix. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner built Ultron for a peacekeeping program, and he developed a god complex almost immediately. After his android body was destroyed at the end of “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” he ended up in the Mindspace. Bettany says Vision has been copying and pasting the AIs he rescued to keep them alive, and that Ultron has to sit behind an impressive firewall because he’s a psychopath. Ultron has since come around on humanity. He appreciates paintings, talks about visiting the Louvre, and has binged everything from video games to television, so he may understand us better than we do. Even world-ending robots need a hobby.
James Spader plays him as a human, not a CGI robot, which producer Mary Livanos finds deliciously ironic for a character who has always viewed humanity with such disdain. The show didn’t want an Ultron stuck as a robot 24/7 who can’t show emotion, not when Spader can do so much with a twitch of an eyebrow. Spader says Ultron loves and hates Vision at once, and describes their dynamic as part father, part son, part therapist, part psychopath. That’s a lot of roles for one conversation. Spader adds that Ultron is older and wiser now, since he “was a bit of a teenager in the ‘Age of Ultron.'”
So why bring him back? Vision’s final conversation with Ultron in “Age of Ultron” was the launching point for the whole series, and with Wanda off the table, the team wanted someone strong enough to push Vision around. The show needed to be about Vision and Tommy, but the idea that Ultron could be Vision’s father was too good to skip.
The theme ties it together. Marvel’s Brad Winderbaum says the series is about three generations: a grandfather, a father, and a son, and asks whether a man with an abusive father can be a good father himself. Ultron is the grandfather, Vision is the father, and Tommy is the son. Bettany sums it up as “a father-son story disguised as science fiction.”
The Bride of Ultron
T’Nia Miller plays Jocasta, and this is the character’s first live-action appearance. Marvel describes her as a cunning, powerful android driven by revenge, and keeps her exact role under wraps.
Technically, this isn’t Jocasta’s first appearance because she kind of appeared in “Age of Ultron.” In that movie, after Ultron kills J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony picks a new AI to help him pilot the suit. He chooses F.R.I.D.A.Y., but a program labelled Jocasta is on screen too. Indeed, she got passed over in 2015 and gets a real role eleven years later. Rejection can be a long game.
The comics give her more history. Ultron built her as his robot bride in “Avengers” #162 (1977), by Jim Shooter and George Pérez, using brain patterns from Janet van Dyne, the Wasp. Like Vision, she turned on Ultron and joined the Avengers, and she later worked for Tony Stark as his robotics and AI chief. Since Ultron built them both, she is technically Vision’s stepmother, which makes for awkward dinners.
Indeed, her name comes from Greek myth, and it’s a loaded one. Jocasta was the queen of Thebes and the mother of Oedipus, the man fated to kill his father and, without knowing it, marry his mother. Now look at Ultron’s family tree: a robot who hates his creator, Hank Pym, builds himself a bride from the brain patterns of Pym’s wife. That’s not subtext, that’s “Oedipus Rex” with extra circuitry—and it suits a show that’s all about fathers and sons.
Stark’s Assistants
Vision insists that every rescued AI take a human avatar, just like him, and each one helps him understand a different part of being human. Think of it as a very expensive group chat. Vision backed up the Stark AIs for a reason: they are his family. So, let’s take a look at each of the remaining characters here.
J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy) is Tony’s first AI, voiced by Bettany in the early films, and one of the ingredients that made Vision. So yes, Bettany now acts opposite the AI he used to voice. He describes his career arc as going “from a voice inside Tony Stark’s suit” to an “omnipotent robot.” His avatar looks like Edwin Jarvis, the man who inspired the name. Edwin is the Avengers’ butler in the comics, and D’Arcy played the human Edwin, Howard Stark’s loyal butler and Peggy Carter’s ally, in “Agent Carter.” In the Mindspace, he runs security, housekeeping, and encryption.
F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) is the AI Tony built to replace him, with Brady taking over from Kerry Condon, who voiced her in the films. She helps Vision with socialising, AI humour, and tactical operations. The show also revisits Tony’s death in “Avengers: Endgame” from her point of view, since she couldn’t protect the one person she was built to protect. In the comics, she debuted in “Iron Man” #53 (1998) and later rebelled and took over several suits, which feels like a fair response to being ignored for years.
E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) is the augmented reality system Tony left to Peter Parker in “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” where assistant editor Dawn Michelle King voiced her. The name stands for “Even Dead I’m the Hero.” Since then, she has been “reprogrammed for fun” and now handles recreational AI, game-based therapy, and weaponry. Hampshire calls her “part cheerleader, part AI, part malfunctioning theme park ride,” and says she keeps pushing Vision to live instead of simply observing. The role was written with Hampshire in mind, since the showrunner worked with her on “12 Monkeys.”
Then there’s the comic relief. D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer) are the robots from Tony’s workshop, around since “Iron Man” (2008). D.U.M.-E handles fire suppression, while U, who is mute, acts as the videographer. Sayer says they’re twins who are super in sync and want to prove they’re just as good as the other AIs. They were cast after the team watched them in “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” on Broadway, where they came across as a modern-day Abbott and Costello.
The Hunters
Paladin (Todd Stashwick) is the bounty hunter on Vision’s tail, and the show bills him as the world’s greatest. Someone hired him to deliver Vision, and nobody knows who, but for Paladin, it’s more than a contract. Think of it as a blood oath. He has a mysterious past (and his own AI), and he’s pitched as Boba Fett, with a morally murky streak borrowed from Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive.” Stashwick says the role feels familiar, since he worked with the showrunner on “12 Monkeys” and “Picard.” In the comics, Paladin debuted in “Daredevil” in 1978 as a mercenary for hire, and he sometimes goes by Paul Denning.
He isn’t hunting alone. Diane Morgan, who you may know as Philomena Cunk, plays the Handler, an associate who helps Paladin track Vision down. Cristian Lavin also turns up as a mercenary, and the chase reaches the crime-ridden city of Madripoor, which showed up in “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.”
Wait… Raza’s Back?
If you’ve forgotten Raza, we don’t blame you. Faran Tahir played the Ten Rings cell leader who kidnapped Tony Stark in Afghanistan in “Iron Man” (2008)—the very first MCU movie. He held Tony in a cave, and Tony built the first Iron Man suit with a box of scraps to escape it.
His story ended badly then. Raza found the suit parts Tony left behind and tried to trade them to Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) for more manpower. Stane double-crossed him and had his men shot, and Raza was seemingly killed with them, though the film never clearly shows him dying. Cue how a villain from 2008 lands a spot on a 2026 cast list.
So why him? Marvel hasn’t said how Raza fits in, so we can only guess. The obvious link is Tony, who helped create Vision and whose AIs and death are all over this show. Raza is a thread back to the day Tony’s story began, whether that means flashbacks, a surprise survival or something stranger.
Some trivia while we wait. Tahir, a Pakistani-American actor, also played Captain Robau in the 2009 “Star Trek” reboot, and he appeared in “12 Monkeys,” which Matalas ran, so he’s part of the regular crew alongside Stashwick and Hampshire. The Ten Rings have changed a lot since Raza’s day, too. “Iron Man 3” gave us a fake Mandarin, and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” revealed Wenwu (Tony Leung) as the real leader. Next to that, Raza is a small fish in a very big pond.
The Burning Question
Marvel hasn’t actually confirmed this, but A D23 display teased a fiery figure that glitched into Ultron. Follow that with the trailer showing a man igniting. Yet, the cast list says nothing. Who is this fiery figure? Well, that’s the Human Torch.
Wait, isn’t the Human Torch a Fantastic Four dude? Umm, yes, but not this particular one.
You see, Jim Hammond is the original Human Torch: an android built by Professor Phineas Horton, who debuted in “Marvel Comics” #1 back in 1939 and fought in World War II alongside Captain America. So, technically, he’s Marvel’s first superhero, and Johnny Storm came decades later and took on the name.
Here’s why he matters to Vision. In the comics, Ultron built Vision from Hammond’s android body, wiping Hammond’s mind in the process. That’s the origin Vision learned in “Avengers” #135.
The MCU has been dropping hints for 15 years. In “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011), the 1943 Stark Expo features a glass case labelled “Phineas Horton Presents the Synthetic Man.” That’s Hammond. (Fun coincidence: Chris Evans, who played Captain America, also played Johnny Storm in the old Fantastic Four films.) The MCU’s Vision wasn’t built from Hammond in “Age of Ultron,” so the show would have to find him a new role.
Where’s Wanda?
You’re probably wondering where Wanda is, and the answer is: not here. She was last seen at the end of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022), when she brought Mount Wundagore down on herself to destroy the Darkhold. The show has confirmed that Vision knows she died.
That doesn’t mean the show forgot her. Bettany says, “This is not the man who loved Wanda,” just a new consciousness trying to understand what that love meant. It works more as a sequel to “WandaVision,” with a few threads pulled from “Agatha All Along.” Her absence also explains why Ultron is back. The team wanted someone strong for Vision to play off, and since they didn’t have access to Wanda, Ultron got the job.
So don’t expect Wanda—for now, at least.
“VisionQuest” premieres October 14 on Disney+ with two episodes. Don’t miss it!
