Review: VisionQuest, “Forever” | Season 1, Episode 8

Hey free subscribers—it isn't definitively the end of an era, but the end of VisionQuest marks an endpoint for a trilogy that spans the MCU's streaming era. To read the rest of Caroline's review and join the conversation, become a paid subscriber.

If there’s one thing that’s defined basically every Marvel Disney+ show, it’s the impulse to do too much. Though you’d think the miniseries format would inspire showrunners to drill down on what they want to say with the limited time they have, it instead seems to make them panic that they won’t get another chance to work with these characters again. So they toss out multiple antagonists, a huge ensemble of supporting characters, as many dangling MCU threads as they can, and more themes than you can shake an Asgardian scepter at—all while building to an action-packed finale in which the main character gets a new look. (Hello kintsugi-inspired Vision.)

If VisionQuest is the end of this first era of Marvel Disney+ TV, it’s fitting that it follows that rulebook to a tee. This is a show that simultaneously wanted to be a sequel to WandaVision and Agatha All Along, a sequel to Avengers: Age of Ultron, fanfic about all the AI voice assistants Marvel has ever introduced, a meditation on technology in the modern world, and a moody, moving story about father/son trauma, all with a sassy bounty hunter on its margins for some reason. On top of that, this finale also introduces and resolves a humanity-ending villain plot, and that’s not even mentioning Joe Locke’s Billy Maximoff finally (finally!) making a long-awaited cameo appearance.

Objectively, it’s too much for any show to handle and it lends itself to an overstuffed, unbalanced feeling that has kept this series from reaching anywhere near the heights of WandaVision or Agatha All Along. Yet, grading on a curve, I’m also kind of impressed that this finale manages to weave together the season’s many, many threads as cohesively as it does. Last week, I complained that VisionQuest just wasn’t making me feel anything emotionally. This finale much more successfully tugged at my heartstrings, which helps make up for some of the weaker narrative choices that get us there.