VISIONQUEST (Ep1 & Ep2) — The Heart of a Machine

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac, an MCU after show. This is your host Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, back with you for episode 251. Yes, we are climbing a mountain of Marvel and we just found a peak. I'm gonna catch myself talking like James Spader this episode. The very first show we covered on Marvel Maniac was WandaVision, and I decided to make that podcast in the blink of a moment. So here we are, five plus years later, and. And we are continuing the story of WandaVision. Also to Agatha All Along, which is the middle of this trilogy. And yes, it is officially being called the trilogy— WandaVision, Agatha All Along, and concluding with Vision Quest. They all connect. If you haven't seen any of those shows, there's a great chance you may or may not be spoiled by little pieces of information in this first episode of the coverage of this series and all throughout. If you're listening at a later date, and I would recommend going back and watching those shows. I mean, you could still probably enjoy this show if you hadn't, but you certainly will get a lot more out of it if you watch WandaVision, in my opinion. Then watch Multiverse of Madness. Then come back and watch Agatha All Along, and come back here to Vision Quest. That is my watching order. Even though this this is a trilogy, the story of Wanda in, uh, Multiverse of Madness is completely necessary to this entire thing. So I wouldn't count that out, and I wouldn't even not call this trilogy because of the movie. I'd say it's a trilogy with a movie attached. How about that? When I started this show, if you would have told me I'd be here 5+ years later talking about the continuation of it on a show called Vision Quest, I would have laughed and said, that's awesome. Do we have a trillion listeners yet? And yet we have much fewer than that. But however, having you here and having all the listeners that do listen, it makes my day and my world complete. Thank you for listening to this show. So I'm gonna go off the cuff here because that's kind of how I did WandaVision at first, and I kind of wanted to simplify things instead of taking notes and going word for word throughout the entire 2 episodes. I was going to come after one episode and do a reaction, then come back and do another. I figured The whole story is what we got tonight, and I think it's very important to note that Vision is going through a mental health crisis, and he is an AI, one of the most advanced, powerful machines that has ever seen the face of that planet on Earth-616. And yet in Captain America: Brave New World— I almost said Brand New Day— Brave New World, well, We got to see the discovery of adamantium in the MCU. And if that didn't happen, we wouldn't have gotten to see at the end of episode 2, the climax, the Paladin shooting Vision and it actually hurting him. Vibranium was the strongest metal for so long, and now adamantium has entered the picture. And it's a great metaphor for the change being brought into the MCU and how the MCU will adapt and wrap itself around change. Change, change, change. There's a lot of it coming, especially— you know what I'm going to say— after Doomsday, and especially after Secret Wars. I don't know what kind of MCU we're going to be looking at after this December. I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about. But back to this story. I cannot even tell you if this story will be important in the light of Doomsday. There's always a chance. They've been setting things up with this show for a while, but they also could be setting this show up for a bigger series after the Multiverse Saga. Because if you believe it or not, it takes a long time to get these things made. And Vision Quest has been on the horizon for quite some time. I think it's been pushed off multiple times, and it was great to see it. It impressed me so well. I was, I was in that world with Vision tonight. I don't know about how anyone else feels about that, but I, I'd like to think that There was a really great journey in these 2 episodes, and I thought it was really powerful. And for Vision to be like living and working a job at one of the places him and Wanda used to frequent, I thought that was really sweet and also very, very sad because they all just missed each other. And the proof that this family that was created in a hex by the Scarlet Witch herself and all scattered across the MCU for all these years to be told stories of Tommy and Billy actually surviving and jumping into other bodies, which the MCU kind of calls sleep— dreamwalking, sleepwalking. And that's something Wanda does to get to her kids, ironically, through the multiverse in Multiverse of Madness. And ironically, the way her kids survived that she didn't know or couldn't conceive is that her kids would be dreamwalking into other bodies of other people to stay alive despite multiversal consequences, which have been completely explained in that movie itself. We're going to ignore that for now and just acknowledge that Wanda's family is still out there, and now Wanda is on the books gone. But we don't really know if she's really gone because there's always that speculation. When the lady at the bar that Vision was working with, pretty much his only friend, asked what happened to the redhead, the little fling that they had going on, and what became of her. And he literally says, I think she was crushed by a mountain, which I laughed at, but I also was sad— saddened by it in a way, because I want Wanda to have her family. I want Vision to find his humanity. Through this whole two-episode premiere, Vision has tried to convince every being in his vicinity that he doesn't really have feelings. When the whole, the whole two episodes are him reacting to these feelings that he can't erase. Similar to Tommy, his forgotten son, who completely is confused and trapped and sent to mental wards because his mind got fused with a. kid that was born out of a, a hex, a magical circumstance. And all those reminders from Ultron in this episode about how magical the world is outside of him, outside of Vision, because we go inside of Vision's mind and we go into a whole AI world with all of Tony Stark's AIs. Jarvis, just a rather very intelligent system. Friday, female replacement intelligent digital assistant youth. Edith, we know this one, even dead, I'm the hero. Dummy, D-U-M-E, the arm that Tony used in the early movies. And you, I think another version of the arm. I don't know, these characters didn't talk because The robots didn't talk. And of course we have Ultron living in Vision's head. You know, something that slightly bothered me but then I became okay with was the fact that I always kind of imagined Vision just being Jarvis because he had the same voice as him. And Paul Bettany's main part was to come in and play Jarvis and do that voice all the way through 2015. I mean, that's a lot of time of playing an AI. So when he came out talking like Jarvis and he was the actor who played Jarvis, I just thought Vision was Jarvis renamed. But in that very movie, Vision says he's not Ultron or Jarvis, he's the Vision. So he has the voice box of Jarvis, and there— this is a different reincarnation of Jarvis who Vision refers to in this show as brother, which I find Very, very adorable, but also very sad because we had our first sacrifice, a robotic one, and it was Jarvis giving every other AI in the simulation of Vision's mind, uh, a chance to live after Vision is shot with those adamantium bullets, falling into the trap of Paladin, a very cool villain. I'm liking him. The guy's very likable in general, and we do all want to understand who is controlling this, who's in charge here. The voice that the Paladin's talking to, is that Ultron, or is Paladin a version of Ultron? Because he has the mannerisms and he has the voice. He— it's almost like Paladin is doing an impression of James Spader. I'm not even kidding. And I don't know if that's just a coincidence, but I don't like coincidences, especially in situations like this where we're kind of confused about what's going on, and there's a lot of secrets at play, like who else could be behind this. I, I think Ultron is one of the greatest villains we've had, one of the very few Avengers villains, a title villain. Age of Ultron. I think to underestimate him, and to say we have probably underestimated him, or at least Vision has in this episode, is an understatement. Because if we simply just look at the character of Ultron He's in prison. He'll say and do anything, especially conjure up a story or whatever he needs to tell Vision to get him into the place he wants Vision to go—the EMP chamber—to save his son Tommy. Two things aligning with Paladin and assisting Paladin and getting Vision where he wanted Paladin to go was Ultron in this episode. He told. and convinced Vision that that was his son. Tommy is his son. He even brings up the Ship of Theseus, the beautiful conversation, uh, Wanda's Vision from WandaVision and real Vision, White Vision, from this episode, talk about how you replace one plank of the ship and different pieces all throughout time. And once it is all different pieces from the beginning— I'm explaining this kind of bad, but It's not— is it the same ship or isn't it? And neither or. It's both the ship of Theseus, one, and it's not at the same time, two. But Ultron goes on to say, there's a King Theseus and he sent the ship. Be the king, don't be the boat. A strong argument to make Vision do exactly what he wants, uh, Ultron wants him to do. And that's hilarious because we underestimate Ultron because Why? He's so likable. He is the funniest part of the show. He is witty. He's quick on his feet. If you've watched The Office, you know James Spader shamelessly kind of plays himself or different versions of himself. I never really watched The Blacklist. I could say I watched the first 8 episodes in 2 days on Netflix and never finished it again. Not because I didn't like it, it just fell wayside to other things, other shows. But the fact is, he plays very convincing, very convincing himself. And I think that's great. I think here's one— he's a one-of-a-kind actor, and I really, really appreciated his performance. I love seeing the actual robot Ultron. They didn't hold back on the visual effects for him in this, but we didn't get to see a lot of it because, let's be honest, as Kevin would say, you are very expensive. She-Hulk season 2, make it happen, make it happen, he said alone Everyone started throwing tomatoes at him with the literal twerking She-Hulk like painted on each one. Guys, I won't talk about She-Hulk anymore. Uh, I'm having a good time here because I just love Marvel so much. And when they put out a show with 2 solid episodes like this just to show us we haven't gone anywhere, we're still telling these stories and the stories we want to tell. And you may just want to be a part of and listen to and watch and get lost in. And I love every time we go into Vision's mind. I mean, there's great CGI effects. I don't even like calling CGI CGI. Just the effects in general are fantastic. Paul Bettany plays this character in such a way where he's so captivating to watch. I can compare his performance to that of Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. I'm not saying that this show's better than Breaking Bad. I'm not like trying to make some huge statement by saying that. I'm just saying in the same sense where I don't want to take my eyes off of this character. He's so complicated and convincing, and to see him fazed by emotion when he claims he has none, it's powerful. It shows that there's still something in his heart. He can barely stand to watch the WandaVision files, which Ultron wants him to. Why does he want him to? Because he's got something up his sleeve. He's— I mean, he's either really bored and just really wanting to mess with Vision and get him to do things for the hell of it, or he's in alignment with Paladin. He's who hired Paladin. I'm just thinking of that moment in Age of Ultron where he transferred Money, a lot of money to Ulysses Klaue, who is dead, but that's not the point. The point is Ultron is messing with Vision and almost literally his father because he created him in that cradle and he put the Mind Stone directly into his body. And I think when we look into Vision, we see his coat and it's a lot— a lot of it's blue. I think that's new Vision, and a lot of it looks kind of like Jarvis. But some of it also looks like power from the Mind Stone, because the Mind Stone was running so much of Vision, in my opinion, that he still contains some of the aspects and some of the powers that would trickle down from having the Mind Stone pretty much ruling your robotic vibranium body for however many years. This show reminds me of something That I mean, I hate to say this because I love these movies. I love them so much that I wish that there might have been another Avengers movie with Vision, or my favorite movie of all time—not just Marvel movie of all time—Avengers Infinity War. It would have been a little bit cooler if they didn't stab Vision within less than five minutes of him being on screen. I think it would have been a lot cooler to see him at the Battle of Wakanda. Wakanda fighting for his life, fighting for the stone, instead of everybody doing a play to let Shuri take the stone out of his head. I think it would have been sick if— and I never thought about this until just watching this, just specifically because you think about Vision's time in the MCU and he calls himself a hero, and I'm not arguing that he wasn't, it's just we didn't get enough time with him being a hero. And he made a sacrifice in Infinity War because he wanted the stone just ripped out of his head for the very moment he found out it would complete Thanos's gauntlet. But it would have been much more powerful to let him get stabbed like he gets by the same character, stabbed and broken. And he says, you'll be— you bleed like any man. That should have been the one moment Vision took the hit. And then from that moment on, he goes to Wanda and say, take— kill me and take the stone. We have no other options. And enough of me fantasizing about Vision being more of a hero on screen, but this show I think is an example of them bringing him back. And I think he could be in movies again. I think he could be in Avengers movies. Seeing that Universal poster of Doomsday— or I don't know if it was an official poster, but I saw a poster that had Loki on it as King Loki, God of Stories. Wow. So that was a show that we saw here on Disney+ that turned completely up as a huge plot point, if not the crux of everything that happens in this upcoming Avengers movie, let alone the first villain. Now we've seen all the villains come back. Now we've seen Ultron, despite him not being played by James Spader in What If— something that was a crime because that first season of What If was a lot of fun. But we get to see Thanos come through through What If— Josh Brolin comes in and uses his voice. And, uh, now we have Ultron, and of course we have Loki, who we never really stop seeing get chance after chance and resurrections. This time Thanos, he got resurrected again. It's good to see the resurrected— resurrection of Vision and, you know, all the characters That were our Tony's former AI. They really lighten the show up. I love that he kind of kept them there. I don't know if that was a conscious thing. I, I don't know, because there's something that made me rethink the end of Age of Ultron when we see Vision and Ultron talking. You know, it's Ultron's the last robot, and Vision says, I was only born yesterday, and it cuts to a far away shot. Of Vision killing the final Ultron bot. Well, I think that was actually secretly Vision absorbing the Ultron AI and putting him in a mental prison deep within his, uh, complex circuitry and memory, because he did it with all the other AIs. So he's kind of like a house for all of the AIs that Tony created. So Tony's living in this show in a one— in a, in a very unique way. And we get to hear more about Stark Tech, and I kind of like that. I, I think the homage to Tony is really great by using all of the AI, especially the quiet ones, Dummy and U, having them be kind of just like the henchmen. Because even in the first Iron Man movie, I think it's Dummy is totally screwing things up, and used as a fire extinguisher at a bad time. Just great to see, great to see. It really hurt when Vision lost his only friend. And to say he doesn't really have emotion or a heart or feelings when he kind of just like rampaged all those guys that were coming after him. This guy Paladin, I just wish he didn't have so many James Spader mannerisms. And somebody on that— somebody on that writing crew or production team said, you're gonna do some James Spader mannerisms, you're gonna talk a little bit like him because we want the audience to wonder if you're really him somehow. At least that's how I felt about it. But then he gets the call from the person who hired him. Who was it? You know, I'd really like to put one in the— I'd like to put a prediction in the, you know, throw my hat in on this one. What if it's Sharon Carter? The power broker. What if she wants vision? Because whatever she's working on, we haven't heard about in five plus years. So it's either Ultron, which would be another good guess. He Ultron is speaking to the the Paladin and his army, or it is another influential source like Valentina Alegre de Fontaine. I don't think so, man. You know, I would like Vision on my superhero team. I would like to see Vision as an Avenger again. I think, you know, Val is definitely capable of hire— capable of hiring people like this. The Paladin could be her new weapon outside of the New Avengers, the very public New Avengers. Val's not gonna just stop being a criminal just because Yelena says we own you now, even though she does technically. That's why she's not gonna mess with Yelena or the New Avengers and give her the Avengers Tower. so she can take all the credit on all the hero work, the big potato stuff that they do, and have someone like the Paladin taking care of her underworld empire. I don't know if she's in contact with the Power Broker, aka Sharon Carter, but why aren't we? Did we all just forget about that? Like, she, she played a pretty big part behind the scenes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And I guess Falcon and the Winter Soldier isn't looked back on fondly as I look back on it. And I haven't rewatched it. I think definitely before Doomsday, I'm gonna do a rewatch of Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Brave New World. So let's just recap the story so I could say that I did, because I don't want this to be an entire rant and stream of consciousness type episode completely. Let's, let's talk about what we, what we know about Vision. We know he lives in this freezer for probably a long time I'm guessing years he's been doing this job with this nice lady in the bar that him and Wanda used to hang out at together when they ran away together on their special little trips, because they, they were doing that quite a lot. And another sign that Vision still cares, you know, he, he mourns Wanda despite being changed. It's a good metaphor. We all change, but it doesn't mean we lose every bit of ourselves as we go along the way. We are a culmination of everything we've done, seen, and where we've been, who we've met, their influence over us, the power held with love, the power of love in general. It's a beautiful thing, and I think it's quite the thing that's got me, you know, in a repetitive sense, probably this entire episode. That Vision is a very emotional robot when he doesn't want to admit that he is, because he is mourning Wanda still. He can't face it. He can't fully face it because what happened in Westview wasn't fully him, but in a way it was. And that's where we get the Ship of Theseus, because that was Vision to Wanda, and he actually unlocked Vision's— all his memories. So He kind of transferred over what happened in Westview, even though Vision has that buried very deep. Kind of like when you don't want to remember a traumatic moment or thing because it's too hurtful to think about it, we disassociate it. You know, Vision, Vision is so human, and I hope he learns that across this series. And I really enjoyed the character of Tommy. I thought he was fun. We get Vision getting hunted down by the Paladin. We don't know why. It's just kind of crazy that that nice lady that he's been working with for all these years dies. And throughout this episode, it's the AIs with Vision trying to kind of figure out what the motive is, and the motive becomes Tommy. And we learn a lot about Tommy. He's a pickpocket. He's completely— was completely wrecked by the idea of his mom being Wanda, his dad being Vision, getting all these memories. He's not just the kid that died like in Wiccan, AKA Billy, who found himself in that body after that person had passed. So Tommy, the youngest— they're both the same age— he is occupying a brain with the same character of Thomas. And Billy, if we see him again in this series with Agatha come into play, all those events, it seems to be just be— he seems just to be Billy. I don't think he has the other kid walking around in his brain with him. That's why Tommy is having such a hard time and going into mental hospitals. And how do you explain in a superhero world that this supernatural thing's happening to you and there's not one single person who will listen to you. I mean, I feel that burden, uh, in my stomach because it's kind of assessing mental health and how you can get kind of caught in a system like that if you have, you know, your, your robot and— your robot dad and your witch mom create a fantasy hex and make you— birth you and age you in a matter of a week or two. It's kind of freaky. So there's Tommy, and then there's the, there's the decision to go and save him. And there's a lot of back and forth between Vision and Ultron in the series. It seems that Vision visits Ultron when he wants the hard advice that he can't pull out of himself. And Ultron is a part of Vision. And I don't know if Ultron is going to be like maybe at the end of this show surprising us, similar to like the Swordsman and Hawkeye, but in a much bigger way where maybe Ultron has been trying to help Vision just live his life, even though I think he'd be trying to take over Vision's body. Just maybe why, if he were the person that the Paladin is hired by, maybe he is exactly trying to do that through him. However, I don't— I don't know. I just don't know. They've done a great job of making me wonder if the Paladin is a version of Ultron. That manifested himself into a body, or someone put his consciousness into a body. And there's 2 instances. Ironically, the person hiring Paladin, who is really Ultron, is Ultron. Like, we got 2 Ultrons. That's where I'm at with this show, in a sense. Like, that's the level of craziness that I'm thinking about, about all this. So a lot of great dialogue. I'm not going to go over word for word, but as you can see, you could tell I really like this show. The ending scene where Vision says, I'm here for the trap— I think that was in the trailer, but it played so well it made me laugh. And then he froze time, and all of the little details like the guy having the gun hanging out of his pants, like, I really like that. He knew, I'm here for the trap, and he yet still falls into a trap. He underestimates this villain. And I gotta say, the Paladin is pretty, pretty brave. I'm not— a noble way, but he's pretty damn clever to be getting Vision into these traps. He put him in an EMP room, and that was based off of pure emotion. Vision was convinced by Ultron to go into that room. Vision takes some hits with some adamantium bullets. We got a damaged Vision yet again. I hope it doesn't stay this way the whole season, for God's sake. I think the way this episode ended was great though, because we have Tommy, uh, a lost soul, someone who truly misses his family in the sense that he can admit, and Vision, someone who doesn't want to even admit that he had a family, come together as family to escape this place and out of the claws of the Paladin. We are set up for a very fun series in episode series. We've watched 2, we got 6 more. It's gonna be a lot of fun to be talking about this in future weeks. There may be 2 episodes a week, not every week, but I want to do— definitely build up to Doomsday a little bit and talk about that while we are still in this universe of Vision Quest in this time. So look out for some special— not this week, but there's going to be a special week where We are going to talk about other things on another special episode, most likely Saturday morning episode. So look out for that. We'll talk about that. Any ideas? [email protected]. Rate the show if you liked what you heard today and give it a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. I'm telling you, it goes a long way for me, and especially if you've made it this far, it'll only take you a few seconds. Say a little bit about what you liked about it or not. Just put the five stars on it. It would mean the world. Because I love this show and I love talking about everything Marvel with you guys. And I'd like you to join our Discord server, which is in the notes of this show as well. Scatterbrained reaction from Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, here about Vision Quest. It's good to be here. We'll talk more about this. And follow me on all socials, Mr. Honest. I post clips from these episodes and I make little movies for them too, so they're a lot of fun to watch. Some of my favorite parts of the episodes that we do. And we're gonna keep going. Doomsday December Vision Quest now. Let's get it, Marvel Maniacs. I appreciate you being here one more time, and until next time, Avengers, disassemble.