Author: Charles Murphy

When Star Trek: Picard‘s Terry Matalas took over the development of VisionQuest from WandaVision and Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer, he assembled a creative team whose resumes suggested that the project might become one of Marvel Television’s most eccentric streaming series to date. Coming out of New York Comic Con 2025, where fans in attendance got a glimpse of what to expect from the show, it seems as though that may well be the case.

Though VisionQuest is meant to serve as the endcap of a trilogy that began with WandaVision in 2021 and continued with Agatha All Along in 2024, it will also connect to and explore concepts left on the table during the Infinity Saga and includes the return of one of the Avengers’ greatest villains from Marvel Studios’ first collection of films with James Spader returning as Ultron. Ultron won’t be the only AI in the show, however, as several of Tony Stark’s programs are also set to return, though this time they’ll all have human forms, allowing for some interesting interactions with Henry Lewis as D.U.M.-E, Jonathan Sayer as U, James D’Arcy as J.A.R.V.I.S., Orla Brady as F.R.I.D.A.Y., and Emily Hampshire as E.D.I.T.H.

While speaking during a surprise appearance at NYCC, Paul Bettany explained that the series would focus on the White Vision’s “attempt to connect to” the memories given to him by Red Vision during the season finale of WandaVision, though the Synthezoid is “having real difficulty connecting to them.” While speaking to Phase Hero’s Brandon Davis following NYCC, showrunner Matalas gave some additional insight into Vision’s plight in the show and discussed its core dynamic.

Simply put, VisionQuest is about “A man going through an identity crisis,” according to Matals. Vision is “trying to find a way to identify with who he was but is having difficulty as he is out in the world and seeing humanity in a more direct way…[he] has some doubts about us.” From what can be gathered from the teaser shown at NYCC and from Bettany’s comments, the series will take us inside Vision’s mind while he struggles, revealing that he’s “been saving and copying and pasting [the AIs] to keep them alive inside his head,” including Ultron, which leads to what Matals calls the show’s “core dynamic.”

“This is a show about the Marvel AIs,” said Matalas. “You do get to see robot Ultron, but you see a lot of James Spader and a lot of Paul Bettany together,” teased the showrunner. “They are very much a core dynamic of the show.” However, much has changed since fans last saw them together during the climax of Avengers: Age of Ultron, which Matalas calls his favorite scene from the 2015 film. “Where they are now, Ultron isn’t quite the same and Vision isn’t quite the same. So it’s interesting to see what that new dynamic is going to be.”

Of course, any expectation that Vision’s creator has undergone a catharsis and will be looking out for his “son” seems far-fetched given Ultron’s place as one of the most sinister foes of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. And as Bettany teased, Vision has kept Ultron “behind a pretty impressive firewall because he’s a psychopath. But he’s a clever one.” We’ll see what sort of evil Ultron gets up to when VisionQuest hits D+ in the Fall of 2026.

Source: Collider, Marvel.com, Phase Hero