VisionQuest review: "Never reaches the inspired heights of WandaVision, but successfully closes the loop on the MCU's most unusual trilogy"

Marvel’s most offbeat trilogy comes to a conclusion in VisionQuest. The follow-up to 2021 MCU TV pioneer WandaVision and 2024’s occult follow-up Agatha All Along, VisionQuest puts Paul Bettany’s sentient synthezoid in the spotlight for a story of fathers, sons, unlikely love, and the very origins of artificial general intelligence in the MCU.

Like its predecessors, VisionQuest is a mystery box series with a decidedly off-kilter sensibility. Several years after overriding his programming and flying away from Westview, White Vision is now working in a Scottish pub by day and living in a utopia of his own creation by night. The virtual architectural marvel that Vision calls home is a haven for orphaned Stark AIs J.A.R.V.I.S. (Hugh D'Arcy), F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and even former Avengers villain, Ultron (James Spader). Per Vision’s house rules (and the limits of CGI budgets), all roam the oblique-angled halls as human avatars.

Vision’s relatively peaceful existence is upended when the bounty hunter Paladin (Todd Stashwick) puts Vision in his crosshairs for a mysterious Client, and unearths the existence of Vision's son, Tommy Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica) – one of the twin boys born of Wanda’s Westview Hex who winds up in the body of a London pickpocket. Vision’s quest: save Tommy, evade Paladin, and reveal the identity of The Client. Oh, and did we mention there’s an avian serial killer known as Butcherbird bumping off prominent AI specialists across the globe?

Paranoid androids

VisionQuest, then, is a dense show. It packs an awful lot into 8 episodes, with most clocking in at close to, or over, an hour each. While WandaVision concerned itself with an exploration of the Scarlet Witch's grief (via the medium of TV sitcoms), VisionQuest has more existential questions front of mind as White Vision reckons with his relationship to his former self, sort of dad Ultron, magical son Tommy, and the legacy of how he came to be; let's say it isn't just Tony Stark and Bruce Banner who have fingerprints in Vision's source code.

It can be surprisingly heady at points – like WandaVision's Ship of Theseus exchange extrapolated over 8 hours – but it also has a lot of heart, particularly when it comes to the show's more human-than-human AIs. J.A.R.V.I.S., F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H., and security/maintenance men D.U.M.-E. and U. are a delightful bunch of oddballs for Vision to bounce off and find kinship with. And it even finds time to humanise mercenary assassin, Paladin.

As greater threats emerge, Bettany dials up the danger in his performance – one of many shades here that the long-serving Marvel star has never had the chance to play previously in the MCU. It's a far more complete, well, vision of the character than we've seen before. But the show's best work is reserved for genocidal AI Ultron, who's transformed into a lovable, megalomaniac grandpa who hangs out in Vision's attic. Spader's capricious murder bot steals every scene he's in.

Showrunner Terry Matalas previously created the well-received 12 Monkeys TV show and Picard season 3, so is no stranger to brain-bending, high-concept sci-fi shows. Sometimes, VisionQuest is too complicated for its own good; it can be hard to keep track of whether something is happening in the virtual world or tangible reality at points, and there's intentional obfuscation going on when it comes to the show's underpinning mysteries that only adds to the sense of confusion. This should lend itself to WandaVision-level theorizing week-to-week – a shame then that Marvel is releasing the show in two-episode batches, rather than letting each episode breathe.

Pleasingly, the answers we do get are satisfying and come at a regular enough clip that you're never left in the dark for too long, before the show swiftly moves onto the next mystery. T'Nia Miller's Jocasta has featured little in pre-release promotional materials, but becomes one of the show's more compelling central figures as the series progresses. And in the same way that Agatha All Along was a vehicle to introduce Joe Locke's Wiccan into the MCU proper, VisionQuest does the same for Raurdih's Mollica's Speed, taking him on a full emotional journey here. If anything, Tommy is better served by VisionQuest not concealing his identity or powers.

Like father, like son

WandaVision's ingenious sitcoms-through-the-ages structure is a tough act to follow, and there's a sense that VisionQuest is constantly striving to match its predecessor's audacious creativity. It's a show that has an awful lot of fourth-wall-breaking fun with the MCU, though, with winking references to Wanda's ignominious fate in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thanos' scrotum-like chin and more. The fact that James D'Arcy reprises his Agent Carter role as Edwin Jarvis isn't even addressed, and for long-serving MCU fans, it ties up the existence of Jim Hammond – glimpsed briefly in sculpture form in Captain America: The First Avenger – in a way that brings MCU synthezoids full circle.

VisionQuest does have a less contentious relationship with traditional superhero action than WandaVision – a show which infamously dropped the ball in its finale by prioritizing empty spectacle over a carefully mounting mystery. When Vision goes full phasing, laser-shooting synthezoid, easily dispatching a room full of armed heavies in the blink of an eye, it's thrilling. But, maddeningly, as he was in Infinity War, Vision is again critically compromised early in the series thanks to the sudden development of vibranium bullets (you'd think MCU bad guys would have thought to use them before now). As a way to put Vision on the back foot, it's a frustrating decision.

Like Vision himself, then, VisionQuest is a flawed creation: often brilliant, but riddled with imperfections and contradictions. As the final MCU project to hit screens before Marvel mega-event Avengers: Doomsday, it's also a little surprising how disconnected from the wider MCU story VisionQuest feels, with no sense that any of this will one day feed into the bigger picture. Instead, it serves as the end for a certain era of MCU TV, and it that sense it's a worthy final chapter.

VisionQuest streams on Disney Plus from October 13. Never miss an episode with our VisionQuest release schedule, or look ahead to the future of the MCU with our guide to all the upcoming Marvel shows.