VisionQuest Episode 1 “No Strings,” and 2 “Theseus” introduce us not just to this new reality this version of Vision living in after the events of WandaVision, but also examine the question of who this character really is and what identity really means. Vision has access to the memories of the “other Vision,” but does that mean he is that Vision? In his mind, the answer is no. He knows what happened, but he doesn’t feel it. It didn’t happen to him.
But as much as Vision tries to make the answer to this question straightforward, as we find out in the first two episodes, it really, really isn’t. There’s something there. For Wanda, even though she’s gone. For the life they built together in Westview. And, of course, for his sons: Billy and Tommy. Even if they’re not his sons, or so he says when he’s confronted with the possibility of having to save Tommy.
MORE: Read our spoiler-free review of VisionQuest
WHAT IS LOVE?
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” the other Vision told Wanda during WandaVision. VisionQuest flips that question on its head. What is love? Perhaps, grief persevering. Because WandaVision and VisionQuest feel like two very distinct stages in the phases of grief. Perhaps WandaVision was bargaining. VisionQuest is then denial. And yet, denial only takes you too far. What is love, indeed?
That remains the center of the issues plaguing Vision. “I do not feel,” he says at one point, and that is his problem. He wants to feel these things the old Vision felt, because that’s his way of understanding humanity. But the problem with feelings is that they’re not at all philosophical. Instead, they’re messy and complicated. Vision might think he wants these feelings, but he’s actively avoiding them. And when he’s confronted with them, when they break through, well… it’s not nearly as easy as he thinks to handle what they mean.
MORE: How did WandaVision end?
YOU’RE MY SOMETHING
Just as it’s hard for Vision to understand Tommy as his son, it’s hard for a Tommy who is still partly another boy who never had a father, to see Vision as his dad. But that’s what they are to each other now (thank you, Billy!). There’s no escaping the reality that this Tommy has the memories and the feelings of Vision’s Tommy, and Vision, even if he would like it to be otherwise, has the memories and the feelings of the android he thought he wasn’t.
Vision was always a very interesting character in that he was always a study on who and what can feel things, and what the limit of those feelings are in a world like the one Marvel has constructed. Can we accept him as a fully functional being who loves and hates, one who gets angry and frustrated? And if we can, what does that mean not just for him, but for the other A.I.’s we see in this, like J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y?
These are big questions that the show doesn’t come close to answering in the first two episodes. But they are important questions that we must grapple with, especially when we throw in a wrench like Ultron into the mix.
MORE: What exactly happened to Wanda?
SHIP OF THESEUS
We went over this before, and yet it’s at the core of this show and at the core of who we are as humans. Ultron suggests to Vision, however, that the thought experiment is a cop-out. What does it matter, he basically asks. You still have to make the choices. And though Vision seems to resist this notion, he does go save Tommy. And he does get a tad bit emotional when Tommy doesn’t leave him to die, but returns for him at the end of the second episode.
Vision is made up of the same parts of the original Vision, and the same memories have been unlocked. What he needed to bring those two together, to become the Vision he was, or at least another version of him, was the feeling. If anything, VisionQuest feels like a journey towards exactly that, and perhaps a journey towards understanding that identity isn’t static.
We all change, for better or worse. Nothing remains static in life, and that includes people. And no one would dare suggest we are not who we are because of those changes. No, changes are a part of life. A complicated, sometimes messy, and often unpredictable part, but a part of life nonetheless. Now it’s up to Vision to figure this out.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of VisionQuest Episodes 1 and 2? Share with us in the comments below!
The first two episodes of VisionQuest are available to stream on Disney+.
