VisionQuest Review: Marvel Spin-Off Struggles to Find Its Creative Spark

Watching “VisionQuest” may leave the Marvel writer who penned “What is grief if not love persevering?” feeling rather like Robert Oppenheimer after the atomic bomb: horrified by what the idea has become. The second spin-off from the 2021 series “WandaVision” stretches that earlier show’s central insight across eight episodes, returning to it from nearly every possible direction. Vision, played by Paul Bettany, must relearn emotions such as grief after being rebooted, while his son Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica) struggles to make sense of a childhood spent with parents in Westview.

The power of the original “WandaVision” line came from its simplicity, and the quote is repeated often enough here to underline the problem. Those seven words already expressed what “VisionQuest” spends hours attempting to explain. Instead of extending the earlier Marvel series with a distinct emotional or creative identity, this new show feels like a calculated attempt to reproduce a previous success.

After his resurrection in “WandaVision,” Vision’s human-looking form returns to Edinburgh and takes a job at the pub he once visited with Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), who appears to have declined a cameo. His memories remain, but the feelings attached to them are gone. To rebuild his connection with humanity, he withdraws into a “Sherlock”-style Mind Palace populated by AI avatars modeled on people from Tony Stark’s past. There, he talks through his experiences with the digital figures. In another conspicuous link to “WandaVision,” the Mindspace resembles an old-fashioned sitcom, even though Vision himself never shared Wanda’s love of the form.

Vision’s isolated routine ends when the bounty hunter Paladin (Todd Stashwick) arrives with orders to kill him. He soon discovers that Tommy, Vision’s estranged son who was magically brought to life, is also being hunted. The contract comes from Ultron (James Spader), the rogue AI now concealed inside a remote corner of Vision’s mind, much like a character hiding within another reality in “Inception.” Forced onto the run, Vision tries to protect Tommy, who barely understands his connection to his father. Once they reunite, Ultron repeatedly appears to taunt him, becoming less a terrifying threat than the most irritating imaginary companion imaginable. Spader’s performance is so overextended that less Ultron would have been a welcome improvement.

Showrunner Terry Matalas clearly recognizes the opportunity in bringing Ultron back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe more than a decade after his last appearance, which also marked Spader’s most recent film role. With generative AI advancing rapidly and technology leaders warning that its abilities may already be moving beyond human control, the character’s return could have felt remarkably timely. A villain who seemed like broad speculative science fiction in 2015 now has a direct connection to contemporary fears about artificial intelligence.

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The trouble is that “VisionQuest” treats that timely premise with surprisingly old-fashioned optimism. Ultron is the only AI presented as dangerous, despite having the ability to rewrite his own programming, while Vision and the other digital beings around him are largely benevolent machines eager to study and assist humanity. Vision’s journey to recover human feeling remains the show’s main emotional engine, but the broader implications of its technology are mostly left unexplored.

Five years after “WandaVision,” the idea of an AI forming a loving bond with humans carries far more unsettling implications than it once did. It could have offered the series a rich way to examine manipulation, dependence and the darker uses of emerging technology. Instead, “VisionQuest” barely engages with those possibilities. Ultron himself is written less like a frightening superintelligence than a smug online provocateur, too childish to command much fear even while threatening mass murder.

The series ultimately presents AI as a fundamentally helpful force, with Vision and Stark Industries’ various programs seeking to understand people and improve their lives while Ultron stands apart as the murderous exception. Many of the other bots are so limited that they can be fooled by basic questions, leading to jokes about CAPTCHA tests and security checks that rank among the show’s rare flashes of originality. Diane Morgan also adds some welcome humor as Paladin’s remote assistant, although much of the comedy comes from her delivery rather than the material itself. Her performance resembles a sharper, slightly more capable version of her “Philomena Cunk” persona.

“VisionQuest” feels particularly dated when it tackles questions that science fiction explored more boldly years ago. Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” already offered a far more searching examination of whether machines can develop genuine human emotion, and this series brings little new to the debate. Its familiar ideas never evolve into a fresh standalone sci-fi story, while its treatment of grief simply repeats the themes that “WandaVision” handled with considerably more precision.

Matalas has compared Vision to Spock, another highly literal character who struggles to interpret human behavior and has become important representation for generations of autistic fans. That comparison is difficult to justify here because this version of Vision is not developed with enough depth. His simulations of awkward social encounters, which eventually become television programs modeled on Wanda’s methods, feel like early drafts of an idea that might have carried genuine emotional weight.

The central weakness is that “VisionQuest” copies “WandaVision” instead of building meaningfully on it. By repeating the earlier series’ emotional structure without adding urgency or insight, the show struggles to find its own momentum. It is not the most disastrous entry in the MCU television lineup, but it may be the least inspired.

“VisionQuest” premieres with its first two episodes on Disney+ on October 14.