VISIONQUEST Showrunner Reveals Vision Knows Wanda Is Dead: “He’s Watched All the Movies”
Apparently, Vision has been keeping up with the MCU just like the rest of us.
Terry Matalas, showrunner of Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series VisionQuest, has confirmed that Vision knows what happened to Wanda Maximoff following the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. His explanation for how Vision got caught up on everything is pretty interesting.
"He's watched all the movies," Matalas joked. That answer might sound like Matalas having some fun, but VisionQuest may actually take the idea somewhat literally.
The trailer features Vision sitting in a home theater watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, which raises the amusing possibility that the synthezoid has been studying MCU history through the movies themselves.
The Vision we're following here also isn't exactly the same Vision who shared a life with Wanda. This is White Vision, the version introduced in WandaVision.
He possesses Vision's memories, but he's a newly constructed version of the character who disappeared after his confrontation with Wanda's Vision in the series finale.
Since we haven't seen him since then, there was a legitimate question about whether he even knew what became of Wanda. As far as Vision is concerned, she's dead.
Wanda seemingly sacrificed herself when Mount Wundagore collapsed at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Marvel left enough ambiguity around the scene to keep Scarlet Witch fans arguing about it, especially since we never actually saw Wanda's body. Marvel will eventually bring her back, though.
For now, though, the characters within the MCU appear to believe Wanda is gone, and Vision is among them.
With Wanda absent from VisionQuest, Matalas needed another character capable of challenging Vision in a meaningful way. That led him straight back to Ultron and James Spader.
"My first thought was, 'Well, we don't have Wanda, and we need someone really strong for Vision to play off of. Within a millisecond, I was like, 'It's [James] Spader.' Then everything else started to fall into place."
Ultron's return is easily one of the coolest parts of the series. After being defeated in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the murderous AI is back, but he's taking human form this time around.
It also turns out Ultron has spent the years since his defeat doing something considerably less apocalyptic. He's been consuming information and making art.
"He's had access to the internet, television, history, and he's just been consuming... and he's been painting," Spader revealed. "[Ultron and Vision] have a sort of father-son-therapist-psychopath relationship."
Paul Bettany offered another amusing detail about what Ultron's existence now looks like, saying: "He lives in this kind of fantastic prison loft and I go to him for advice. He's just been imprisoned for... by now it would be 14 years or something."
Vision visiting an imprisoned, human-looking Ultron for advice has the potential to get very weird very quickly. The father-son dynamic was already baked into their history, but adding "therapist-psychopath" to the equation makes their reunion a lot more interesting.
It also sounds like VisionQuest will have some fun exploring what happens when artificial beings spend years absorbing human culture, history, entertainment, and the internet. Especailly with Vision apparently watching Marvel movies while Ultron has been painting in his prison loft.
The question hanging over all of this is Wanda. Vision may believe she's dead, but in the MCU, believing someone is dead and that person actually staying dead are two very different things.
VisionQuest premieres on Disney+ on October 13.