‘VisionQuest’ Episodes 3 and 4 Introduce a New Threat

Like last week, this week’s episodes of VisionQuest cover a lot of ground. There’s some heady, emotional stuff going on here, plus a whole new problem for Vision to deal with. It’s a lot to break down, so let’s get into it.

Back in episode one of VisionQuest , eagle-eyed viewers might have caught the headline on a newspaper Vision was reading in his Mindspace: “Tech giant murdered. ‘Butcherbird wings’ carved beneath victim baffles police.” It wasn’t just an offbeat background detail; episode three, “Reboot,” opens with Ultron , who’s gotten his televisions and painting supplies back in his attic, indifferently watching a news report about the second victim of the “Butcherbird Killer.” The police, the news report tells us, are looking for any connection between the two victims. Ultron turns away from the TV screen and continues working on his painting, which depicts, to my best guess—based solely on my nonexistent bird knowledge and a quick search for black birds with red eyes—an Asian glossy starling flying above a spooky, lonely forest road.

We cut to a very expensive-looking high-rise apartment, where a man peers anxiously through his curtains while the Butcherbird Killer news story plays on the TV in the background. He pulls out a shotgun, and not a minute too soon. His security systems shut down, and the elevator into his apartment opens, revealing a figure dressed in a black robe with red eyes. He fires off a few blasts from the shotgun at them, and even though they seem to connect, they don’t slow the figure down. They just keep heading straight for him. The show cuts to the title sequence before we see what happens, but we know this guy is done for.

“Reboot” covers a lot of plot ground, switching between various emergencies related to the physical injuries Vision sustains after taking an adamantium bullet to the gut at the end of episode two and the emotional injuries Vision inflicts on Thomas by repeatedly denying that they have a connection. Vision is crashing out, in more ways than one.

When we first see Vision in this episode, he and Thomas are in the station wagon Thomas stole at the end of episode two to escape from St. Mabyn’s. J.A.R.V.I.S.’ sacrifice bought Vision some time, but not a whole hell of a lot. He cauterizes his wound using the acid from a dead battery he sniffs out in the back of the station wagon and achieves “a state of not quite dying yet,” but he’s still not what you’d call “good.” He’s being held together by spit and a prayer.

Maybe that’s why he keeps fucking up with Thomas. He’s frazzled and can’t get it together enough to understand that no matter how many times he runs a simulation where he answers Thomas’ question about how any of this—some part of Tommy Maximoff taking up residence inside his body, Vision being his father—can be real, if his answer is always some variation of “It can’t be real, so it isn’t; you’re not Tommy Maximoff and I’m not your father,” Thomas is going to keep storming away in anger. Eventually, after running that simulation over and over and failing to come up with an answer that results in a decent outcome, what he settles for is avoidance.