Who is Ultron based on in VisionQuest? In the comics, it was Hank Pym — the show picks someone else

VisionQuest premiered on Disney+ on October 14, 2026, an eight-episode series run by Terry Matalas. Paul Bettany plays Vision, the rebuilt version that flew off at the end of WandaVision, now on the run with a bounty on his head. James Spader is back as Ultron, whose code survived inside Vision's mind, where he spends most of the series in human form: long hair, a beard and, at one point, a top hat. Episode 7, "Immolation," released November 3, finally explains whose face that is.

The comics answer: Hank Pym

Roy Thomas and John Buscema created Ultron for The Avengers in 1968, and they made him a family affair. Hank Pym built the robot and based its mind on his own brain patterns. Ultron promptly turned on his "father" and kept going in the same direction:

• Vision — built by Ultron as a weapon against the Avengers, with Wonder Man's brain patterns.
• Jocasta — built by Ultron in 1977 as his bride, with the brain patterns of Janet van Dyne, the Wasp, Pym's wife.

In other words, everybody in Ultron's comic book family tree is a copy of a real person, and his two "parents" are Hank and Jan.

The MCU's first answer: Stark and Banner

Avengers: Age of Ultron skipped Pym entirely. In 2015, the MCU's Hank Pym hadn't appeared yet; Michael Douglas would show up in Ant-Man that summer. Instead, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner build Ultron from code found inside the Mind Stone, meant as Tony's "suit of armor around the world." Spader played him through voice and motion capture, as a nine-foot robot with Tony's sense of humor and none of his restraint.

That's the version VisionQuest inherits. Ultron has been sitting in Vision's head since Age of Ultron, and in the new show he mostly looks like a man. Before the premiere, Matalas told Den of Geek:

"There's a story reason for Vision and Ultron to look like people," Matalas said.

Spader told The Direct the scruffy human version is deliberate: "this is who he aspires to be."

The show's answer

Episode 7 explains Vision's face first. A 1939 flashback shows Dr. Phineas Horton building J.I.M., a synthetic man made to replace his dead son, and J.I.M. wears Paul Bettany's face. In the comics, Horton built the original Human Torch, Jim Hammond, so the show keeps that part close to the page.

Don't miss: VisionQuest finale: release time, and the three questions episode 8 has to answer about Ultron

Ultron's face comes from somewhere new. Jocasta (T'Nia Miller) digs into memories she'd lost and finds out who she used to be: Dr. Josephine "Jo" Carrington, a neuroscientist who developed the foundational AI technology with a human colleague, who was also her romantic partner. That technology was later sold to Stark Industries. The colleague is played by James Spader, and he's the template Ultron was built on.

The episode makes the retcon explicit. "His knowledge of Vision's code somehow predates Stark and Banner," Dum-E says. Tony and Bruce didn't come up with Ultron in that lab in 2015. They finished a project someone else had started. When F.R.I.D.A.Y. gets too close to the truth, Ultron goes after her.

The comics are still in there

Look at who the show picked. In the comics, Ultron carries Hank Pym's mind and Jocasta carries Janet van Dyne's: the robots are rebuilt versions of a couple. In VisionQuest, Jocasta is Jo Carrington and Ultron is modeled on the man she loved.

The show swapped out Hank and Jan and kept the couple.

What it hasn't done is give the man a name. The Client, the figure who put the bounty on Vision, steps into the light at the end of episode 7 with Spader's face, shorter hair and a small mustache, while Ultron is still very much active inside Vision's mind. Whether the Client is Carrington's partner or someone else wearing that face is what the finale is for. Matalas wrote and directed it, and it arrives on Disney+ on November 10.

Previously we wrote: FRIDAY's death in VisionQuest: is she really gone, or will the November 10 finale bring her back?