It’s been a rough decade for Vision. The super-powered robot played by Paul Bettany in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was first introduced in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. At the end of that movie he killed his creator, Ultron (an evil AI voiced by James Spader). Then in the next Avengers movie, Vision died. Twice. He was resurrected by his wife Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in the 2021 series WandaVision, but suffered an identity crisis and disappeared.
That’s where we left Vision: setting off on a soul-searching quest to discover if he has a soul at all. VisionQuest picks up a few years later. “Years have passed since WandaVision. I would say we’re about current with Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” series showrunner Terry Matalas tells Polygon.
As an early trailer reveals, Vision is now back in Scotland, where he once lived peacefully in hiding with Wanda. By day he works at a local pub. By night he enters his digital mind palace, where he’s kept Ultron contained all these years.
That’s about all we know about VisionQuest. (Well that and Vision’s son Tommy makes an appearance.) So for Polygon’s fall preview, we caught up with Matalas, who’s best known for the 12 Monkeys series and Star Trek: Picard, to answer all our biggest, non-spoilery questions. Check out the full conversation below.
Polygon: Ultron is back in VisionQuest, but we’re also seeing him as the human version of James Spader with a big, bushy beard. Why did you decide not to just do robot Ultron the entire time?
Terry Matalas: It’s funny, people say it’s a budget thing, it’s not, it’s a James Spader thing. I love James Spader. Who doesn’t love James Spader? I just want to see James and I want to see Bettany.
You’ll get plenty of robot action in the show. The show is very much inspired by that last scene in Age of Ultron between the two of them. But watching Spader and Bettany chew up the scenery was something I saw in my head from the very beginning.
It is prohibitively expensive to do a CGI robot 24/7, but I also don’t want to see a CGI robot. It’s not going to be able to emote and do the things that James Spader can do with just the twitch of an eyebrow. So that’s pretty much the main reason.
Paul Bettany has been playing Vision for over a decade. He must have a great sense of ownership over the character? What did he bring to the show?
He’s an amazing partner. We have always been in lockstep as to what we thought his journey for Vision should be. It was a love fest from the very beginning. We were so aligned. That it was just an amazing partnership to be able to go through every one of these scripts, line by line.
The perspective he has is his interaction with the actual audience, having met so many people throughout the years, and what Vision means to different groups of people. Vision is an outsider looking in.
It was very clear from the beginning to me as to what we should do with this new Vision is that he wouldn’t be quite as in touch with humanity as his previous incarnation. He absolutely is Vision in so many ways, and not in so many others.
Is White Vision the same guy as Vision or are there differences?
You’re going to have to watch his journey in this series to answer that question as to what’s really going on with him.
The two scenes that really inspired the show are two of my favorite scenes in all of Marvel canon, which is the last scene with him in Age of Ultron, and the Ship of Theseus scene in WandaVision. That was the basis of the series.
The trailer describes VisionQuest as the conclusion of a trilogy that includes WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Do audiences need to have watched both of those shows to understand this one?
We definitely catch the audience up very simply. So it’s not a hard and fast rule that they need to watch. If anything, WandaVision, for sure, because it’s definitely a sequel to WandaVision. There are definitely elements of Agatha that are touched upon, but you can easily grasp what’s going on if you don’t have time.
It sounds like you should also probably watch Avengers: Age of Ultron before this.
It would be more rewarding to know who Ultron and Vision are.
You’ve done a lot of work in the Star Trek franchise. What’s the difference between an android in Marvel versus one in Star Trek?
They both ask similar questions about humanity and feelings. So there are definitely touchstones, with Data specifically. But in a lot of ways, our new Vision is kind of an anti-Data. Where Data was always striving to be more human, this Vision’s not entirely sure that’s a good idea. So they both share elements that are cut from the same cloth.
VisionQuest is arriving at a time where people are more worried than ever about how AI could change our world. Does the show address those concerns?
We do touch upon it in the way that AI will eventually be a reflection of us in some ways. We are essentially its parents and we need to raise it right and not give it necessarily too much freedom yet, and make sure we’re bringing it into the world in a responsible way. So there are themes that run through it, but it’s not a commentary on how AI has integrated into society.
How involved was Kevin Feige in the show?
There’s always a direct line of communication with Kevin and [Marvel’s head of television] Brad Winderbaum. They’re a text away. But for the most part, we had a lot of creative freedom to tell Vision’s story the way we wanted to. There were no borders we needed to be mindful of.
Kevin was very receptive to this crazy idea from the beginning. He called me and said that it’s the story of Vision, he’s going to meet his son, and he’s like, “The rest is up to you.”
We had a great time exploring the stark AIs. Being able to play it in that sandbox was a lot of fun.
Any specific Stark AIs you were excited to include?
We got to play with all the toys. You have to wait and see.
What genre is VisionQuest?
I think the show is first and foremost a drama. It’s an adventure. It’s a mystery. But it’s also surreal and very funny. Some of the actors involved just have incredible comedic timing, so we leaned into that. It kind of has its own tone, but I think it fits very nicely within the MCU.
This show has been in the works for a long time. What was it like to finally release the trailer?
What I found remarkable about the trailer is that it really did unpack quite a bit as to what’s going on with him. It seems to be well received. So I think if people like the trailer, they’ll be very pleased with the show.
VisionQuest premieres Oct. 14 on Disney Plus.