VISIONQUEST (Ep3 & Ep4) — No Strings on Me

Welcome back, Marvel Maniacs, to Marvel Maniac, an MCU after show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, and tonight we're talking about Vision Quest episodes 3 and 4, Reboot and Malware. And Marvel surprised the hell out of me by putting 2 episodes out again tonight. Is this the way the rest of the series is gonna go? We just, we just finished half the series in 2 weeks. So ironically, we might only have two more of these days. I thought we were covering this far through next month, but I'm kind of glad they did it this way. The half season ending was extraordinary. We have a lot to talk about, and I'm really excited to talk to you about it. And I love it after two episodes of buildup, which weren't even boring; they were fun. Things are really starting to move. We've got a murder mystery, a new synthetic villain, some really interesting developments between Vision and Tommy, and arguably one of the biggest cliffhangers of this series so far. And James Spader— oh my God, we're gonna talk about James Spader. So let's get into this episode. So I, I'm gonna say that both episodes were very good. Different episodes, but very good. And they added Uh, a lot of weight to the emotional story of Vision, and the story is getting a lot more ambitious as we hit the halfway point. I could watch Vision and Ultron just talk— Paul Bettany and, uh, James Spader— I could just listen to them talk about whether a ketchup popsicle would be delicious for like an hour, and I would probably be just as engaged in their conversations. They're just so good. Their chemistry is so fantastic. I'm gonna say it again, I think we're lucky to have James Spader back as Ultron in this complex form, in this really cool show that's kind of paying homage to Age of Ultron and that mid-Phase 2 feeling— or end of Phase 2, technically. There's a lot of information in these 2 episodes, but I'm gonna just say it's a surprisingly emotional story, and we're gonna hit the big beats starting with episode 3, Reboot. Vision, let's just say it and be happy about it. He finally acknowledges his son, though it does take some time. I'd say Vision is physically falling apart while desperately trying to understand who he is, whether and whether or not he could be truly Tommy's father in one sense of the word or another. Paladin's adamantium weaponry left Vision severely damaged, so he's restoring it to make like using makeshift repairs just to survive. So that kind of keeps the energy going through the third episode. Tommy's just equally lost. His memories of Westview are tangled up with an entirely different life. Um, and you feel for Tommy. I think the guy who plays Tommy— and forgive me for not running to the IMDb and getting his real name, we'll, we'll acknowledge him— but let's just give this actor some credit. He's playing the part incredibly well. It's got to be a tough part to play. Like, you're a kid in another body and you're sharing 2 consciousnesses that are kind of forming into one. I mean, how do you even direct that? That is A phenomenal job on his part. You know, Vision just cauterizes his adamantium wound. I can't believe they're using adamantium from Tiamut, the giant, uh, Celestial that was stopped by the Eternals. All— anytime adamantium is referenced, I'd say it's an Eternals reference and we're gonna get an Eternals 2 one day. That's all, throwing that on out there. We learned the Paladin got his adamantium from the Ten Rings, most likely Shang-Chi's sister. So there, that's the first I think I've heard mentioned of them in any other thing but Shang-Chi. So I'd like to think that beyond Avengers, uh, Doomsday and Secret Wars, we have some plans for Shang-Chi and a couple of movies, because man, I, I love that movie. I want more of that. Just that small connection to the Ten Rings in this episode gave me a little bit of hope, but we'll talk about that another day. Vision runs countless simulations just trying to figure out how to tell Tommy the truth. And in every one, Tommy gets mad and storms out of the room, and a painting falls off the wall. And I think it's done really well. It's—it reminds me of what probably Doctor Strange goes through when he was looking at all the different timelines and stuff. But instead, these are simulations, so they're different. But they're alike in one way: where Vision is kind of doing them in microseconds, and like he can think so much so fast. Like AI can really think. Quickly, technically. And not one simulation actually gets him to the place he wanted to be. But he's hesitant to acknowledge that he is the Vision who loved Wanda and raised her children. He sees himself as a different Vision. And while that may be true, it's also not, because Vision does slip multiple times in these episodes. He's the most afraid of looking at the Westview files because it's the part of himself that probably hurts so much, um, and it hurts to think about Wanda and It's very complicated because his entire memory of that situation was transferred into him, as well as everything else about remembering who he was as the Vision. But he still thinks of him as himself, as a different being. Which, yeah, we change down the roads, you know, just like humans. We get older, years pass, we look back at our choices and who we were Sometimes we wish we were who we were in the past. I find that very relatable. Sometimes you wish you didn't change as much as you did, and sometimes you don't even realize how much you changed until you take a look in the mirror. In Vision's case, he's still Vision, and he needs to look in the mirror and realize that. But there is the side of it where, you know, it's the ship of Theseus conversation that keeps getting brought up again and again. You know, one of my favorite parts of WandaVision brought up early in the last 2 episodes by Ultron, you know, be the captain. Well, ironically, we end these 2 episodes with Ultron steering a giant captain's, uh, steering wheel. So we'll get to that in a bit. And let's get back to Vision and Tommy. You know, it's interesting that it takes Vision nearly dying again to finally accept who Tommy really is, because Tommy has this fear of the pool, and he went out, you know, he stormed out of the room like in the simulation. You know, Vision was not wrong about him storming out of the room no matter what he had to say to try to explain the situation to Tommy. And I'm gonna backtrack. I think Paladin got fired. I don't think we know who the person is. Uh, my suspicion is the person we meet, or the thing, the, uh, crazy robot we meet at the end of the— these 2 episodes. I think that's who hired Paladin, but we get some backstory for him and how his dad was horrible to him, but then his dad got brutally murdered, and then he became a paladin by being trained by the guy who killed his dad. I think there's like an anti-hero story in the works here for him. So Tommy saves Vision. That's one of the biggest parts of this episode, and his fear of the swimming pool connects that traumatic circumstance surrounding his new existence. After all this time, after all this begging kind of from Tommy just to get an answer from anyone in the world who he is, Vision finally lets Tommy know he believes who he says he is. He is Tommy Maximoff, son of Wanda Maximoff and Vision, and he had a brother named Billy, and that was real, and he's not lying, and he's not crazy. To validate someone's thoughts like that, imagine how lost he must have been. It— he played it really well. I mean, I, I felt for Tommy. So he steps into the very place that is associated with his trauma to save the man he hopes is his father, and he has believed to be his father, and tried to comprehend. This is the moment where Vision really becomes his father again. He has to trust Tommy with his life, and Tommy has to trust himself. And I think it's a— I definitely think it's an emotional breakthrough for Vision, which is something that he's been denying, these emotions and how he can't feel. And ironically, by the end of the episodes, he's feeling too much that he hands the wheel over to someone who we know would have killed the entire population of this planet. Anyways, I just can't get over it. You know, the ending is always the craziest. You know, I can't imagine coming home from Avengers: Doomsday and like probably not wanting to talk about whatever crazy ending they have first, but that's just how Marvel does it. And I gotta say, halfway through the series, it's pretty dang good. Vision Quest is a ride, and I really, really am enjoying it. There's humor, there's, um, serious relationships at play. There's, I mean, just so much, uh, charisma from Ultron and having him back in a way we never Could quite imagine. But the episode that would have left us on a cliffhanger if it were one a week from this point on brought us right into Malware, because saving Vision came with a price. When he rebooted, something else broke into his system, and that's where we get to episode 4, Malware: The Butcherbird Mystery. So episode 4 opens with Vision's internal AI team performing what is essentially like a technological exorcism Vision finally has some words with this new antagonist who's hiding herself under a hood and seems to be extremely powerful, withholding shots from Paladin's— what I assume are more adamantium bullets. I mean, would that mean that this new AI that we're about to talk about is made of adamantium? We will find out. I have no idea. What do you think? Marvel Maniac Pod at gmail.com. Send me your thoughts, your concerns, your predictions for the last few episodes. We're halfway done, but I'm a glass half full kind of guy. I think the best is yet to come. Back to the story at hand. I think it was really inventive—that whole sequence of the exorcism and him talking to who we know begin to know as Joe Joe Costa. In the final credits of this episode, that's the name instead of the Butcherbird Killer. So after Vision's fellow AI saved him and got him out, like got her out, which was a good moment, we learned a little bit about the Butcherbird Killer. And this killer has been murdering people associated with this place called Markridge Biotech. This is very important information that I had to go back and kind of see. Um, because the ending was such a revelation. I'm like, did I miss something? So I did go back and I, and I got some more information. So her victims were members of the team that pioneered stable artificial intelligence. It wasn't just a Tony Stark creation in the beginning, which is kind of a retcon, but they never said that Tony did that. But in my opinion, you know, Tony is always creating and creating and creating. So I'd imagine he created the AI. I'm sure he expanded on it, and this miss— this just may have been the group that started working on it, where Tony kind of put the final pieces together, because the company was sold and acquired by Stark Industries. So Tony did take over. So there's this missing biometric material, including an eye, fingerprints, blood, and it suggests the killer is trying to unlock something. Dr. Josephine Jo Carrington supposedly died in 2008, so she wasn't a part of the murders, and the AI are putting it together. By the way, the AI dummy, he, he becomes like profoundly smart at moments of these episodes, which just are really good lighthearted moments in what is a very complicated story. So Joe, we know by the end, is killing all these people to get to something and also as some form of payback. And Katarina Wells, uh, is the final surviving target. While the other AI in Vision's mind were figuring out who they were based off of, real people in, I guess, Tony Stark's life, in my opinion, but we didn't really know why or who, who they actually were to him, which I'd like to see some clarity on. If Robert Downey Jr. wasn't so expensive, maybe he'd make a appearance on this show in a flashback of some sort. There's no way in a million years that's happening though. Joe insists that she isn't just an artificial intelligence based off of Josephine Carrington. She claims that she actually is Josephine Carrington. So does this woman somehow transfer her consciousness into a synthetic body? Did she fake her death? And what the hell did her former colleagues do to her? In 2008, when she supposedly died, how did she go underground and then come back as this? I mean, it's an unsolved mystery. This is just the very beginning of her story, but we know what she claims and we don't know the complete story behind it. So she could just be kind of lying, but I don't think they'd put a reveal like that so close to the end of the episode. We could talk about the characters identified as Joe Costa in the credits who. who has a significant connection to Ultron in Marvel Comics. And I'm not going to go through comic history. I wasn't there to read the comics. I'm here for this story, so I don't want to get like that much really spoiled for me. But that is comic book based, which you'd hope for in a comic book show. Sometimes we forget how great these stories are, that they come from animated comic books, which is a beautiful thing in my mind. It's creation inspired by creation. And in the context of this show, I think that's a very appropriate saying. At the AI gala, we get to learn a little bit more about JIM, which was an early synthetic man created by Dr. Phineas Horton. This robot's systems couldn't cope with the intensity of his emotions, eventually causing his body to burn. So much complexity in human emotion that it completely completely destroyed the first version of artificial intelligence, going all the way back to when they were starting to work with that. Now Vision is afraid of acknowledging his emotions, and there's kind of— there's, there's definitely some connection there. Vision is always denying that he's the old Vision, but there's so many moments where he proves that he is the actual Vision. So maybe the most dangerous thing about being human isn't feeling nothing. Maybe it's feeling so much that you don't know what to do with it. So we're at this gala and things are kind of amping up. Tommy realizes that Vision lied and said there were 4 people inside of his head, different AIs, but there was really 5. And he does admit to Tommy that it is Ultron in his mind. Genocidal maniac, as Tommy referred to him. Jocasta attacks the gala as we expected. She's going for her final victim, and Vision is still damaged, so he can't access his full abilities, but he is trying to put up a fight. Tommy is in danger, and Vision can't overpower the attacker. So Ultron, you know, he, he mentions that you're too tied up in emotions. You're like a father who just desperately wants to save his child. Ironically, the thing that Vision wasn't acknowledging about Tommy being his kid, he finally acknowledges that, and it takes him— it takes away from him being able to actually defend himself in this fight. That's irony, and that's crazy. And I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I'm like, no, Vision, do not— don't do this. Don't, don't give Ultron the power. Do, do— don't you remember how we tried to destroy the entire world? He wants humans dead. He is an extremist, and he has been playing you like a fiddle. He's been playing Vision like a fiddle, and us as an audience too. Because me, in these last 2 episodes, up until the end, I'm saying, I'm saying, wow, they're doing— I'm like, they're actually doing a freaking, uh, redemption story for Ultron. And I think that— I'm thinking that's actually a really good twist for The hero— the villain of an Avengers movie to turn around and become like a saving grace, like Loki. I mean, they did it with Loki, so you're thinking maybe they could do it with Ultron. Maybe he'll do like a self-sacrifice in the end. But right now it doesn't seem like he has good intentions, but he hasn't done anything that terrible yet. He did actually kind of thwart the new antagonist into destroying something on that woman that she needed to get into somewhere. So Ultron is ultimately handed over control by Vision, which I just still can't believe. We don't know what— or do we not know who we're dealing with here? Um, but there's a bigger thing at play. Ultron has been cultivating Vision's trust since the beginning of the series, and he's been funny, conversational, surprisingly sympathetic, and occasionally Genuinely helpful, and that comes across to us as well. That's credit to the actor, credit to the writing at once. Even the audience might have started wondering, like, what has changed here? Does he just want to get out? He probably just wants to get out, but then he keeps on kind of prevailing in this, like, trusting kind of way. Ultimate manipulation. The man has been locked inside a guy's head for upwards of, of 11 years. I mean, it's been a while. So Ultron, knowing that Vision's greatest weakness is that he's fear— he has fear of losing Tommy, he exploits that, and that's how he gets in. So we literally see Ultron, like James Spader Ultron, steering the boat, uh, from his room like a giant wheel. Ironically, Ship of Theseus. Don't be the ship, be the captain. Well, Ultron, that line from him early on definitely kind of was a foreshadow to this moment where he's theoretically steering the ship now. And he is singing his very famous and familiar No Strings song. And I gotta tell you, this time it was scarier because we know what Ultron wanted to do. We know he's ultimately deemed humans unredeemable. I mean, is he that extreme after experiencing all this art, culture, television, crime mysteries, news stories, all this time in Vision's head? Vision at least gave him access, I guess, to the Wi-Fi and let him watch TV and stuff. So he locked him in this room, but at the same time, he could have been becoming more versed on Earth. And there's, you know, grace in their failings. And I think you missed that. That's something Vision says to Ultron towards the end. Uh, before, we didn't know at the time. We thought Vision was taking out the last Ultron, but they showed that shot from so far away that what really happened was Vision absorbed the final Ultron, meaning Ultron lives, which might have been a huge mistake. We, we are still gonna know what— we're still to find out what that means for the rest of the story, and how in the world will Vision even ever get a chance to beg for his spot back in his own mind. I don't know what's going to happen in that sense. Maybe Ultron will start feeling love and weakness and self-destruct because his code is like technically the bad guy. Or maybe this Joe Costa will have some sort of love relationship with Ultron and it turns him into caring about someone even though they're both crazy super destructive AI. I wonder if he'll go to her side or she'll come to his. I also wonder if they're going to give us like the— like almost to the end of the season for Vision to get out, or will we actually see Ultron give the steering wheel back to Vision in a twist of opening next episode? He gets them out of the situation He stops Joe Costa from getting what she wants. She walks Tom— he walks Tommy out of the place to get to know him because he has said he's considered himself Vision's father. So Tommy would technically, if we were to go along with that, be Vision— uh, he— Tommy would be Ultron's grandson. I really like this idea. I think the thing that counteracts this happening is that I have no strings on me part. But I still think if they play it right, and it was just the twist is Ultron gives steering back to Vision, I cannot any longer handle what that means because I— you never know which side Ultron is on. And that's why this series would be nothing without having Ultron come back like this. It's so great. And just can we talk about James Spader's voice? Coming out of Paul Bettany's body, because I absolutely love that. And it works like if you ever watch the show What If— we know we get an Ultron. What if Ultron won? He gets the body of Vision. We get to see Ultron flying around as Vision. But they didn't get James Spader to do the voice. They did get like someone who kinda sorta sounded like James Spader. But this is what I totally imagined was going to happen, even at the post-credits scene. Before the last episode of WandaVision when we saw White Vision for the first time, I was like, oh my God, Ultron is back. So I expected that voice thing to happen in WandaVision, and it could have, but it's just— I'm just grateful that it works so dang well here. I like— I just, I just like that. It's a great detail. They didn't have to do that. It makes sense to me that they did because Vision has a voice box and it was going all over the place in these episodes. Paul Bettany's a phenomenal actor. I mean, he's not even dressed up as the Vision anymore, but he's still so robotic yet so damn convincing as this character. Vision's body is synthetic, so his voice is part of that system. So when Ultron takes control, it makes the perfect sense that we hear Spader instead of Bettany. I just— that's one of my favorite parts. So Vision spent these 2 episodes learning what it means to be Tommy's father, and now the very thing that makes him a father His love and fear for his son is what Ultron used to take everything away from him. I mean, good God, the irony. So what does Joe Costa really want? That's a big question here. What is her endgame? What is she searching for? Is it revenge, or is it something much deeper than that? Did she get killed off and then re-emerge somehow because she was secretly building herself into a robot, then the company killed her off? Or did she die because of the company? I don't know. But what is secured in this container that she wants to open it? And why does she need these biometric keys like that guy's eye? Another good question is who hired Paladin? Because he's clearly connected to a larger story. Could Josephine be involved? Joe Costa? Or is it just another player pulling his strings like, I don't know, the Power Broker? who I think it'd be nice to kind of round that in and give us some more explanation of the corrupt Peggy— not Peggy, Sharon Carter. And we haven't seen any of that since Falcon and the Winter Soldier 5 years ago. So we need to— we need some answers on that. I don't know if it's going to be her though. I, I think it's Joe Costa. I, I— but that hired Paladin, and then once Paladin sees the threat, it'll be maybe his main mission to help Vision to take Joe Costa down? I don't know. I'm very curious to see where it's gonna go. So what does Ultron want with Tommy? Is he bringing him along, like I said, to take care of him for Vision because he knows Vision cares? The thing is, you know, my little theory about Ultron coming out and being a good guy after doing this bad stuff and locking the whole house down is kind of crazy. I do think he has bad intentions. I just think it'd be a crazy twist if he did something good with those intentions. But the red eyes definitely signify the evil version of Ultron, and he's always been evil technically because what he's about to do— what is he about to do? I don't watch the previews for next week, so I, I don't know anything. And what's he gonna exploit in Tommy? And how is Ultron gonna get Tommy to even actually trust him? Is he Is he going to threaten his life? Because Tommy knows that Ultron is genocidal. So Ultron has the body he once wanted and considerable power— considerable power and access to Vision's son. So does he intend to manipulate Tommy's abilities or accomplish something entirely different? I don't know. But that's where Vision Quest leaves us this week, halfway through the series, and things have gone Completely off the rails. Before I was watching this episode, I thought it was going to be just episode three. I was thinking, man, next week's going to be the mid-season finale, and that ended up being tonight, which I was like, whoa, okay, we got a whole movie on our hands here. I've gotta give James Spader and Paul Bettany their flowers because they've been phenomenal together. And what I love is that this show isn't just about artificial intelligence or superhero battles; it's about identity, family. And what it actually means to be human. Vision spent the entire episode trying to become whole again, and now Ultron has taken the wheel. I just cannot wait to see where this goes. This is a really fun cliffhanger. And that's going to be about it for Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show this week. My name is Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest. Go rate the show on Apple Podcasts. Give us a like on YouTube if you're listening. We're pretty much everywhere. On most platforms, I am Mr. Honest or Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest. Look me up. Look in our notes of the show. We have a Discord server where we can talk about theories, and I'd love to have you there. Everyone and anyone is welcome except Ultron. I don't trust him right now. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, Avengers disassemble.