VisionQuest's main villain may be an android the movies never introduced
The villain VisionQuest kept out of its own marketing takes Vision apart in episode 4.
VisionQuest premiered on Disney+ on October 14 and runs eight episodes, written and directed by showrunner Terry Matalas. It closes the trilogy that began with WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along. Paul Bettany's Vision is living disguised as a human, with a head full of AI personas for company: J.A.R.V.I.S., played by James D'Arcy, F.R.I.D.A.Y., played by Orla Brady, and E.D.I.T.H., played by Emily Hampshire. Someone has put a bounty on him, and he's on the run with Tommy, played by Ruaridh Mollica, a teenager who may be his reincarnated son.
The villain everyone expected
The marketing pointed at Ultron. James Spader is back as the AI that tried to end the world in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, this time living inside Vision's mind and appearing in both robot and human form. Episode 4 gives him an opening.
When Vision loses a fight late in the episode, he accepts Ultron's offer to take control so he can survive. Ultron locks the other AIs out and leaves with Tommy.
The Butcherbird Killer
The other android arrives first as a news story. A serial killer the media calls the Butcherbird has been murdering board members of Markridge, a biotech company. At the end of episode 3, she hacks Vision's systems during his fight with the bounty hunter Paladin, played by Todd Stashwick, and warns him to stay out of her way or she'll destroy everything he loves.
In episode 4, the AIs work out who her victims are and where she'll strike next: a gala hosted by Katerina Wells, the last surviving board member. Vision and Tommy go to protect her, and Vision confronts the killer by her real name, Josephine. She is a synthezoid, built like him, and Vision assumes she was modeled on someone.
"You were based on her," Vision says. "No," she answers. "I am her."
The show doesn't call her by her comics name yet. The design gives it away: she's Jocasta, played by T'Nia Miller. By the end of the night, Katerina Wells is dead, and Vision has been beaten badly enough to hand himself to Ultron.
Who Jocasta is in the comics
Jocasta has been part of Marvel's android family since 1977, and her origin runs straight through Ultron:
- She debuted in The Avengers #162.
- Ultron built her as his bride.
- He based her mind on Janet van Dyne, the Wasp, the woman he couldn't have.
- She turned on him and ended up working alongside the Avengers.
None of that has reached the screen. Age of Ultron introduced Ultron and Vision in 2015 and left Jocasta out, and no MCU film has used her since.
Don't miss: VisionQuest episode 3 recap: every Stark AI is accounted for — so what is the Butcherbird killer?
What VisionQuest changes
The show cuts Ultron out of her story. This Jocasta's mind belongs to Dr. Josephine Carrington, a scientist who worked at Markridge, and nothing in the first four episodes ties her to Ultron. She also has something the comics never gave her: a revenge plot. She's killing the people who ran the company she came from, and Vision is in her way.
So the question of who the main villain is stays open. Ultron is the villain the show advertised. Jocasta is the one it hid. Matalas told Collider they "purposely kept her character out of a lot of the promotion," and he didn't undersell what viewers would find instead.
"T'Nia's performance is revelatory. Chilling, nuanced, and even a little heartbreaking," Matalas said.
The questions episode 4 leaves are about who stands behind whom: who hired the Paladin, what is in the bio-locked container Markridge is guarding, and whether Jocasta answers to anyone. Episodes 5 and 6 arrive on October 27, and the finale on November 11.
Previously we wrote: Is Ultron in Avengers: Doomsday? James Spader's non-answer sounds a lot like a yes