Unrecognizable Emmy Winner Electrifies TV’s Biggest New Show

Disney+ The Marvel Cinematic Universe got off to an excellent TV start with 2021’s WandaVision , but in the ensuing years, it’s had as many downs as ups.

It’s fitting, then, that it rights its course with VisionQuest (Oct.

14 on Disney+), a follow-up to its initial small-screen triumph that’s all about the search for identity.

Bolstered by a James Spader turn of sardonic wit and malevolence, it’s a sequel that stands on its own two feet, even as it harkens back—and operates as a companion piece—to its popular predecessor.

In present-day Edinburgh, super android Vision (Paul Bettany) is living a quiet incognito life among humans, by day working at a pub and at night retreating into his mind, where he’s constructed an English manor house that he shares with a collection of artificial intelligences: J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy), who handles security; E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), who’s all about fun and weaponry; F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), who’s in charge of tactical operations; and D.U.M.E-E (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer), the residence’s maintenance professionals.

They’re a quirky, quaint collection of A.I. personalities who get along great, and the only threat to their stability is the entity that lives in the house’s spacious loft.

That would be Ultron (Spader), the villainous robot Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) created, who went genocidal in Avengers: Age of Ultron .

Vision had supposedly dealt Ultron a fatal blow at the end of that feature.

Nonetheless, it turns out that he actually spared him and confined him to this digital domicile, where he now watches television, ruminates on art, and peppers his host/jailor with sarcastic barbs.

While he’s really a shiny mecha-titan, Ultron largely takes the form of pudgy, big-bearded Spader in VisionQuest , and his contentious rapport with Bettany’s Vision fuels the series, especially whenever the maniac refers to his compatriot as “my boy.” Vision doesn’t know who he is, and he certainly doesn’t consider himself Ultron’s son, and those issues are compounded by Thomas (Ruaridh Mollica), a Scottish street kid who—according to a police interrogation video—is tortured by the idea that he might be Vision’s son Tommy.

Since that child and his twin brother Billy were merely constructs of Vision’s wife Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) grief-driven sitcom-fantasyland hex in WandaVision , this seems impossible.

Then again, that spell also resurrected Vision post- Endgame , although this Vision isn’t that one; instead, he’s a military-created replica with that Wanda-conjured Vision’s memories.

Because VisionQuest builds on a tangled premise, showrunner Terry Matalas occasionally has his characters explain the nuts and bolts of the story.

As a result, the series can at times feel like it’s holding viewers’ hands.