Marvel’s foray into streaming wasn't supposed to start with WandaVision. Marvel Studios had commissioned a handful of shows all at once as part of a corporate-mandated mad dash to fill Disney Plus with content. Originally, Marvel planned to kick things off with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but when COVID sidelined that production, it cleared a path for Jac Schaeffer's quirky sitcom pastiche to begin the Marvel Cinematic Universe's streaming era with a loving send-up of the entire television art form.
Five years later, that era seems to be coming to a close. Marvel has significantly wound down its live-action TV show output, while leaning into (cheaper) animation instead. The studio just announced that Daredevil: Born Again will end with its upcoming third season, and in the same breath announced a new show that probably has a 50/50 shot of ever seeing the light of day, at best.
So it's fitting that, as the strategy WandaVision kicked off begins to wind down, the MCU is closing things out by returning to square one. VisionQuest picks up the many threads left dangling by WandaVision (and unspooled a bit more by Agatha All Along) and weaves together all that plot into an unexpected and mostly satisfying conclusion. While the new series from showrunner Terry Matalas (Star Trek: Picard) is definitively its own thing, it's also a clever continuation of several major moments that prove Matalas might just understand this corner of the MCU better than anyone. (Hey Kevin Feige, if you're reading this, please give Matalas a movie to direct.) Thanks to some clever, non-linear storytelling, a handful of unpredictable twists, and a slew of standout performances — Paul Bettany puts on an absolute masterclass as Vision, but everyone here is pulling their weight — Marvel's streaming era gets the sendoff that it needs, and the one fans deserve.
At the start of VisionQuest, Vision has returned to Edinburgh, where he haunts the streets he once walked with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and passes the time working at a local pub. His real life, however, takes place inside his digital mind, where Vision has constructed an elaborate mansion and filled it with every artificial intelligence Tony Stark ever created. That includes E.D.I.T.H (Schitt's Creek's Emily Hampshire), F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), and J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D'Arcy).
In an early twist that Marvel chose to reveal in the trailers, we also learn that Vision has imprisoned Ultron (James Spader) in his mind, despite seemingly killing the genocidal AI back in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Vision thinks he's got Ultron housebroken and contained. When a mysterious villain hires a ruthless bounty hunter called Paladin (Todd Stashwick) to capture Vision, it sets off a globe-trotting action-thriller that reveals the true nature of Vision, Ultron, and the origins of all AI in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Paul Bettany has always been too good for the MCU. Not to say there haven't been many great actors across the franchise's 35 movies and various streaming projects, but Bettany's always brought a level of pathos and subtlety that put everyone else to shame. The fact that he did all that while playing a robot with barely any actual emotion says a lot about his talents as an actor, and VisionQuest puts those talents on full display with a thought-provoking new narrative full of complex performances from its star.
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