Are cinematic universes too much homework these days? That’s often the knock on Marvel movies, but the box office grosses sometimes say otherwise — if you really needed to see them all in order to enjoy the next one, they’d all make the same amount of money. There’s an entire list of movies you’re meant to watch before Avengers: Doomsday, and one of them is the rerelease of Avengers Endgame with bonus footage. Yet it can be easy to overstate the importance of such — obviously, Black Panther was a phenomenon on its own two feet, but if you had seen Captain America: Civil War, you got a bit more of T’Challa’s history. Was it essential? No. Is it fun? Yes.
TV is a little different, in that it’s inherently more serialized, and especially in the streaming era, it’s easier to forget plot points that may have seemed super-important while you were watching. Fortunately for the upcoming VisionQuest, the homework, such as it is, consists of two scenes. In an interview with Polygon, VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas mentions the two scenes that were the basis for the series, and they’re both philosophical ones. The first, which he says the show is very much inspired by, is the final scene between Vision and the last Ultron drone in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
In this moment, Vision and Ultron discuss the degree to which both of them are creations who are disappointments: Ultron to Tony Stark, and Vision to Ultron. Vision makes the case that humanity is beautiful in its grace despite its failings. Ultron says humanity is doomed, and Vision says there’s beauty in things that don’t last. Ultron calls him naive, and then comes the very Joss Whedon quip, “Well, I was born yesterday.” Ultron tries to kill Vision, and Vision obliterates him.
The other scene is the “Ship of Theseus” scene in WandaVision. In it, two versions of Vision, shorthandedly referred to as Red Vision and White Vision, argue about which one is true. If a ship in a museum has every part replaced with a replica gradually, over the years, is it the same ship? Conversely, if all the replaced parts are then reassembled somewhere else, is that the same ship too? Considering the way most cells in an organic body die and are replaced, it’s a question that applies to humans as well.
Given that James Spader is clearly playing a human form of Ultron in VisionQuest, we can surmise that the show will deal with comparable notions of artificial intelligence and humanity. But it should also go without saying that since this is a direct sequel to WandaVision, it wouldn’t hurt to watch that whole series again, if you’re into doing rewatches.
As for WandaVision‘s other sequel series, Agatha All Along, Matalas added, “There are definitely elements of Agatha that are touched upon, but you can easily grasp what’s going on if you don’t have time.”
VisionQuest premieres on Wednesday, October 14, on Disney+.
