VisionQuest - “Reboot” & “Malware” Review
Ultron is perhaps the most entertaining thing in VisionQuest, and by the end of “Malware” he is behind the wheel of Vision’s body, singing “I’ve Got No Strings” while turning the ship’s wheel at the helm of Vision’s mind. It is as concerning as it was predictable. This week’s pair of episodes give us a series that has reached its halfway point and begun connecting the comic-book pieces it has been alluding to since the premiere.
The Butcherbird killer, who has been murdering tech moguls and carving wings around their bodies, turns out to be a synthezoid, visibly recognizable to comic book fans as Jocasta, a character created by Ultron in the comics, here an Ultron-like metal bot wearing the face of Dr. Jo Carrington, a member of the team that created the original architecture for stable AI consciousness. “I am not based on her,” she snarls at Vision. “I am her.” The victims were her colleagues, and she has been collecting their biometric keys. Her last target, Katerina Wells, is now CEO of Markridge Biotech, and meets her end at a transhumanist gala after confessing her guilt over the AI that was part of what led to Ultron and the Sokovia attack.
Then there is the painting of a blazing figure that Vision called “the first of us.” It is J.I.M., the Synthetic Man first glimpsed at the 1943 Stark Expo in Captain America: The First Avenger, an android also known in the comics as Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch. We learn that his source code inspired Markridge’s work and that his clockwork body caught fire while trying to run fast enough to process his emotions. He “felt to death,” as Thomas puts it. The original Vision escaped that fate because the Mind Stone, according to him, helped him navigate the complexities of the mind and the heart. But the stone is gone now, and it would seem to be a problem awaiting every synthetic being that never touched it. Lisa Molinari, meanwhile, steals gala passes with a nifty piece of wardrobe that suggests her comic-book nickname, the Coat of Arms.
Ultron and Vision infiltrating Interpol’s servers make a pleasing mismatched buddy-cop pair. Then the later heist, in which Vision and Thomas stage a screaming fight in Italian to cover Lisa’s pickpocketing, is gloriously silly. But the depth shows up in the quieter beats, as when Thomas, stung by Lisa’s doubts about his new father figure, lashes out at her cruelly. It is a human moment the show earns.
The best idea remains Ultron’s role as Vision’s foil. He is confident where Vision is unsure and manipulative where the other AIs are sincere. That Vision treated him as a bristly colleague rather than a threat makes his takeover feel both inevitable and chilling. Whether he has changed for the better at all, as his gentleness toward E.D.I.T.H. might suggest, is the season’s most interesting question now that he’s finally taken control leading into the second half of the season.