Review: VisionQuest, “Reboot” | Season 1, Episode 3

VisionQuest is such a chaotic ensemble show, it’s funny to think that from Thomas’ perspective, it’s a two-hander. He perceives this week’s road trip as a bonding exercise between two loners with no one else to rely on. What he doesn’t realize is that Vision has an entire peanut gallery in his head. The show has some fun playing around with that imagery during its opening car scenes, when Vision keeps looking to the backseat at mental projections Thomas can’t see. On a more serious level, though, it actually is one of the main things separating Vision 2.0 from his predecessor. The original Vision really was a loner, which is what bonded him with Wanda. They were outsiders with no one else to lean on. Now, however, Vision 2.0 basically has a whole family inside his head at all times, even as he maintains he’s more disconnected from life than his predecessor.

It's one of the many fascinating paradoxes this show is engaging with at any given time. Given that the friends in Vision’s head are also AI programs, I understand why he’s not considering them to be the kind of “human” connections he’s struggling to make. But what could be more human than the way they look after, love, worry about, and mourn one another? Vision 2.0 wants to see the world in a binary way, where things are either one thing or another. Yet as with his eventual embrace of the idea that one person can be both Thomas Shepherd and Tommy Maximoff, it feels like his arc this season is going to be about learning to see in shades of grey.