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After the last episode of VisionQuest took a moment from breathless action sequences to focus on similarly breathless dialogue scenes, it’s time to once again pull the show out of its mindscape and indulge in some good old, MCU globehopping. However, once again I can help but find myself taking a step back and marvelling (pun not intended) at just how busy literally every single episode has been.
Now, notice that I didn’t say “cluttered”, because despite having many irons in the fire at the same time, VisionQuest is managing to keep it’s multiple threads as tidy as a well maintained computer desktop. But once again, even though the show is throwing such stuff at us like Vision and Tommy’s constantly changing relationship, Ultron’s dalliance with Jocasta, the return of Paladin and various action sequences and deep-cut MCU callbacks constantly, it’s remarkable how centred and controlled this increasingly chaotic show is. And it’s only getting wilder…
Welcome to Madripoor, the crime-based, city-state located in maritime south east Asia, and it’s where we find ourselves as Vision and Lisa race to save Tommy from Paladin. After being handed over to the bounty hunter by Ultron in an attempt to keep his synthezoid spawn busy as he enters the freedom of cyberspace, Paladin still wants to bring Vision in for the mysterious Client, despite the contract being rescinded. However, after a tense standoff that sees Paladin hold all the cards thanks to a motion sensitive bomb sewn into Tommy’s arm, matters soon grow noticably chaotic when an old face from the MCUs past, Raza, shows up to collect the bounty.
Meanwhile, after locating Jocasta’s mindspace and entering it, Ultron continues the conversation they had earlier. But as both vent their feelings and plans, we learn some important things. Jocasta is pissed at the world for selling her groundbreaking AI (which eventually became J.A.R.V.I.S.) to Stark Industries while her human version was dying, and those biomarkers her robot self was hunting for unlocks a vault containing a special kind of nanobot that can subjugate the human mind. Seeing that Jocasta wishes to enslave mankind into something that represents order is exactly up Ultron’s street, and the two forms of human-hating artificial intelligence bond in a way that suspiciously looks like love.
Meanwhile, there’s the small matter of Madripoor to take care of, and after getting jumped by Raza, both Vision and Paladin decide to team up to take out this mutual foe. However, in the fracas, we discover that Paladin’s woman in the chair is actually also an AI, the Client is pissed, and Tommy still has some uncomfortable facts to learn about his origin and how it connects to the WandaVision event. But most alarming of all is the fact that Jocasta and Ultron have decided to test out their nanobot scheme on Lisa, which turns her into a red-eyed killing machine.
Getting back into what I was talking about earlier; at times I’m not exactly sure why VisionQuest works as well as it does. Literally every episode has been a roaring cascade of superhero shenanigans, MCU callbacks, goofy jokes, computer puns and visually witty vistas of surreal, manufactured, digital worlds, and on paper it should be just obnoxious noise. After all, how can a show go from the Bondian intrigue of Paladin one minute, to the father/son drama of Tommy and Vision the next, all the while stirring up nefarious villainy with loved-up CGI robots and dropping in the cartoonist antics of the ever-peppy E.D.I.T.H. and not be a complete mess? Pulling double-duty from last the episode, we find a returning Vincenzo Natali proving that not only can he handle the slower episodes, he can handle the chaotic ones too.
The kitchen sink ethos of “Deadlock” is probably the most VisionQuest, VisionQuest has ever been to date, as it gives us virtually everything you’d expect from a pumped-up Marvel show and then some. Obviously the main emotional points here involve Tommy and Vision (obviously), but adding to it is the growing romance between murder-bots as Jocasta and Ultron strengthen their bond through discussions of past lives, emotions and the genuine experience of drinking real spirits. But an interesting extra bond is formed between both Vision and Paladin as their stand-off changes to them having each other’s back thanks to a real deep cut. While he doesn’t add much to the actual story, seeing Faran Tahir return as Raza al-Wazar for the first time since the original Iron Man, continues the show’s habit of plumbing the depths of the MCU’s history, which feels especially pointed as Avengers: Doomsday seems to be promising an end to all things.
Still, it’s still a thrill to experience the rapid-fire payoffs that every episode continues to bring as it props up the weekly family drama. Watching E.D.I.T.H. hint that her first boss was a high school student (hello Peter Parker), convince Paladin’s AI to quit her job (does that mean Diane Morgan’s avatar is based on Philomena Cunk?), and commandeer one of the drones from Spider-Man: Far From Home to strafe Raza’s Ten Ring goons, is genuinely satisfying the way the best MCU callbacks usually are. Of course, now that we’ll be dropping from two episodes a week to one, we’ll have to wait a little longer before we get to the crux of things. But with a possessed Lisa, the identity of the Client, Ultron and Jocasta’s plot, and the riddle of J.I.M. still on the table to be unraveled, are two episodes actually going to be enough to do all this and round off the rocky path of Tommy and Vision’s relationship?
It certainly seems that the next episode has its work work cut out for it, but with the spectre of the events of WandaVision about to be broached to let Tommy know that his origin is even more messed up than he even thought, a certain amount of space is going to be needed to handle it right. Additionally, the building romance between Ultron and Jocasta feels nice and organic as it effortlessly weaves in Jo Carrington’s tragic arc before she scanned her brain waves, and while it suggests that Tony Stark is once again at least partially responsible for the creation of yet another world threat (dammit, Tony), the final shot of the two villains in their true forms sharing a synthetic smooch is undeniably perfect. Luckily, VisionQuest has seemingly mastered the art of doing all of its more tender moments while on the move in order to preserve both the drama and that whip-fast pace the show sets.
With only two episodes left, you can only assume that VisionQuest is somehow going to turn the pace up even faster as it hurtles towards it’s climax, but the curious thing is that there’s potentially so many things that could still happen. Despite all the business about Tommy and his past, does that mean that there’s going to be room for brother Billy to show up? What about Ultron; is the influx of humanity in his programming gearing him up for a final act change of heart (I hope not) – or will he be bequeathed his own part of Doctor Doom’s Secret Wars kingdom if seventh Avengers movie follows the comics? And what about the AIs? Are they to be ultimately doomed to the same as J.A.R.V.I.S.? The fact that I have no idea what could be coming next just means that the chaotic choir of VisionQuest is still hitting all the right notes.
