VisionQuest - “Firewall” & “Deadlock” Review
Ultron has been Vision’s backseat driver for five episodes, free to criticize with little responsibility for where the journey takes them. In “Firewall,” he finally takes control and is free to make his own choices. What he chooses is a bride. This pair of episodes further realizes Jocasta as the bride of Ultron fans know her to be from the comics, reveals her plan, and lays bare what the series has been about all along: people seeking connection rather than the isolation of being an unfeeling machine.
“Firewall” is the most structurally ambitious hour of the season, and it is almost nothing but conversation. With Ultron controlling Vision’s body, Vision and his AI companions are locked in the Mindspace, where they spy on Ultron’s interactions. Those conversations are staged as stylized grayscale sets with dramatic lighting, while the observers watch from the edges in full color, like an audience at a black-box theater. Director Vincenzo Natali, who directed Cube (1997), knows how to find drama in tight spaces, and he makes each chat feel like a small play.
The best of them pit Ultron against Thomas and then Jocasta. With Thomas, Ultron is gentle in tone and scathing in substance, and Thomas answers with a cold read of his own: that Ultron is terrified of connection and doomed to loneliness. With Jocasta, Ultron is more honest than he has ever been. They banter and flirt, to the horror of the AI crew. “It’s like watching Hannibal Lecter swipe right,” E.D.I.T.H. gripes. Jocasta, who was once human, can taste whiskey and remember intoxication, which Ultron never has. She is also missing crucial memories, including how her life’s work was stolen. Vision finally sees Ultron clearly, as a coin that can never land, because landing would reveal everything he is and everything he is not. Then Ultron sends Vision off to Madripoor, and the coin goes with him. Vision realizes that Ultron does not want to escape. He wants to elope.
“Deadlock” is the more straightforward hour and covers important ground as we learn Jocasta’s history. Jo Carrington studied neuroscience out of grief after her father died of a degenerative brain disease, and she wanted to give everyone an AI companion in the form of a nanobot, a guide to rescue them from loneliness. But after Carrington’s death from the same disease, her collaborators sold her creation to Stark Industries instead, and she left behind billions of unactivated nanobots, locked away in a device called the Nest. Her plan now is to control humanity with them. “You want to put strings on them,” Ultron observes, and by the climax of the episode, Jocasta has infected Lisa to prove her point.
This is where the series’ pattern becomes clear. Nearly everyone is choosing a side out of love. Thomas, told by Paladin that this iteration of Vision was built to kill Wanda, defends his father instead of blaming him, a real moment of maturity. Lisa admits that she fears dating Thomas because she fears potentially becoming another person who rejected him. Paladin, who treats a contract as a vow, switches sides when a mutual enemy appears. Vision is now willing to upend his life for the sake of a son he technically just met days ago. And Ultron, after sharing Jocasta’s memories, tastes whiskey for the first time and says he feels real. Whether out of love or as part of an intricate game, the episode ends with a kiss.
There are small pleasures along the way, including Paladin inadvertently bestowing Thomas with his comic book moniker of Speed, and Faran Tahir returning as the mercenary leader Raza from the first Iron Man film in an appearance that confirms for fans that he had in fact been working for the real Ten Rings since his debut, rather than for Aldrich Killian’s organization from Iron Man 3.
Ultimately, Vision’s second recap of WandaVision finally gets it right: Wanda’s desperation to hold on to love made her unrecognizable, even to herself. The same could now be said of nearly everyone in this story. The question for the remaining episodes is what choosing love will cost them, and whether Ultron’s choice is as sincere as it looks.