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Once again, we find an expensive, expansive, superhero TV series understandably pumping slightly on the action breaks after spectacularly blowing the budget on an incident-heavy episode. It’s hardly a new experience for us these days as all series that tend to push the boat out with a sizable amount of visual effects tend to have a “cooling down” installment after giving the CGI guys a workout. However, while VisionQuest is no different in that respects, the fact that it’s been continuously one of the most visually witty shows of the year means that even though we’re heading into the talkiest episode to date (by far), director Vincenzo (Cube, Splice) Natali has been enlisted to add some stylish sparkle to an episode that literally involves people sitting around chatting. Can the director ensure that such a stationary offering can contain the same amount of thrills and spills as an episode that saw robots brawling and Mary McDonnell atomised before our very eyes? All it takes is a little directorial vision…
Vision and his fellow AIs have found themselves in something of a bind. Again. Not only have they discovered that the Butcherbird Killer is a rival AI who has been made in the image as late Markridge Biotech co-founder, Jo “Jocasta” Carrington, but in an effort to defeat her, an outmatched Vision allowed Ultron to take the wheel only to discover it was the worst decision he could have made. Locked within Ultron’s attic within his own mindspace, Vision and the Als can only watch as Ultron uses this bout of grand theft synthezoid to murder Jocasta’s final victim and waltz off with his son, Tommy. Understandably worried about what an untethered, genocidal robot would do to his child, Vision marshals F.R.I.D.A.Y. to try and discover what’s happening by hacking into various security cameras to piece together what happened next.
What we find is that not only have the AI’s lost twenty hours, but Ultron’s behavior has been far less destructive that they initially thought. But while Ultron may not be interested in dismantling the human race (yet), he does something of a number on the budding relationship of Vision and Tommy by giving the youth some brutally hard truths. Contacting Paladin and palming off Tommy onto the bounty hunter, Vision discovers his son has been taken to the crime city of Madripoor as bait. Meanwhile Ultron has managed to contact Jocasta and have a discussion that sits somewhere between a parley and a date. But while the two murderous AIs negotiate their way into some sort of partnership, Vision realises that to undo his mistake, he’s going to have to make a potentially greater one. The only way he and the other AIs can escape their prison is to switch off the system firewall – but if they do that, there’s nothing to stop Ultron leaving Vision’s body completely and escaping into the Internet. How far will Vision go to ensure Tommy will be safe?
Anyone who has seen Cube will know that Vincenzo Natali has a knack for taking static premises – like being trapped within a booby-trapped death-cube – and giving them a sense that they’re much bigger than they actually are. This talent is employed within “Firewall” to something of an impressive effect. Effectively taking the form of the part of a spy film where tech boffins frantically scour cctv to discover where their target has gotten to, we find Vision and his family of artificial intelligence doing the same as they try to get a bead on their malevolent captor. However, if the idea of watching Paul Bettany and the gang stare at TV screens while delivering exposition may sound like the worst way to follow up CGI robot fights ever, Natali employs a swathe of visual tricks to keep arming the season with that quirky style the show has made one of its most endearing features. Because we’re in the digital word, reality is allowed to go and take an early break, as Natali stages conversations caught on security cameras and blows them up into two-handed dialogue scenes that feel more like theatre than a very expensive MCU show. Better yet, to maintain that trademark sense of surrealism, Vision is rendered in colour while the past events he’s witnessing are shaded in the greys of cctv which gives everything an intriguing, two-tone look.
Another thing that makes the episode pop is the fact that the format essentially means we get a bunch of scenes that just has James Spader verbally jousting with a trio of very different opponents, which basically is worth the price of admission alone. First up, we see him with Ruaridh Mollica’s Tommy as he picks apart the last vestiges of the faith he has in his parent; then he moves on to a e-mail conversation he has with Paladin where he adds a few more wrinkles to his plan that has the dialogue typed up on screen as they go.
However, the last conversation is reserved for T’Nia Miller’s Jocasta, and it’s here that the episode really digs it’s heels in. We all know from the comics that Ultron and Jocasta are destined to have something of a warped, digital romance, but watching the two verbally circle each other as they barter and woo proves to be every bit as exciting, gripping and fascinating as watching big budgeted robot brawls.
However, despite the fact that indulging in numerous scenes of James Spader doing his stuff would be more than enough, the episode does find room for a few other things. For a start, we’re prepping for a return to the city of Madripoor which has popped up a few times in the MCU since first being introduced in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and we also lose another member of Vision’s entourage when F.R.I.D.A.Y., outraged by Vision’s decision to drop the Firewall and give Ultron the escape route he’s been waiting for, follows the villain into the data stream despite the fact she’s plainly going to be unable to bring down both Ultron and Jocasta alone.
However, great as “Firewall” is, it’s plainly a pallette cleanser to bridge the action of the last episode to the international intrigue that’s bound to follow next. But this just proves how good the show is when this much care and attention is spent on an exposition episode. We could have just seen these moments shot as average, normal, standard dialogue sequences; but VisionQuest’s insistence on trying to ensure every scene has to be embued with some sort of witty play on technology means that it’s continuing to more than hold its own against the likes of the visual playfulness of WandaVision and Agatha All Along.
The season may be taking a breath when it comes to taking stock of the plot and it’s characters, but “Firewall” turns what could have been a rather bland affair into yet another kooky, visual feast. And yet, despite the fact that we get robot romances, synthetic sacrifices and a vehement Vision, there’s still the feeling that even whackier things lay ahead.
