Review: VisionQuest, “Theseus” | Season 1, Episode 2

Hey free subscribers—your reminder that Caroline's coverage of VisionQuest is heading behind the paywall. You're running out of time to get our best deal of the year, and I'm running out of patience for writing in Deal Speak, let's be honest.

When the trailer for VisionQuest dropped, I was a little bummed that nearly all the footage seemed to be of Paul Bettany in his human form rather than his robot one. Vision is one of my favorite MCU characters, but I always found it vaguely disturbing when he popped up in a human disguise because all the sudden it felt like I was watching the 50-something British actor playing him and not my beloved weirdo android. In this case, however, VisionQuest cleverly turns that uncanny valley feeling into a feature rather than a bug.

Though I assumed VisionQuest would follow the path of Loki and speedrun a variant of its titular character into their mainstream self by giving them their memories back, this show has basically taken the opposite route. Even with access to original Vision’s memories, Vision 2.0 is a different being—one who hasn’t embraced the warmth and emotion of his predecessor. Keeping him in human form is a savvy way to emphasize that we’re watching a brand-new character, not our old pal Vision reborn, even though he’s kind of that too.

It's a quality he shares with his son Tommy a.k.a. Thomas Shepherd, who takes center stage for much of this episode. Like his robot dad, Thomas both is and isn’t the person whose memories he holds. He remembers his life as a Scottish kid with a dead mom and a deadbeat dad who spent most of his life in and out of foster care until he almost drowned getting bullied in a pool. But he also remembers his WandaVision life as an American kid growing up in the picturesque suburb of Westview, New Jersey with the Scarlet Witch and Vision for parents and his twin brother Billy by his side.