VisionQuest, S1E3: Reboot

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STV032: Season 1, Episode 3 of VisionQuest, “Reboot,” trades the chase scenes of the premiere for something quieter. Vision is failing, Tommy is scared of water and of his own speed, and a bounty hunter is still on their trail. Most of the hour belongs to a father and son trying to talk.

Patrick Mason, Jeff Haecker, and Rob Leonardi call it a puzzle-piece episode. The Butcherbird Killer steps out of the true-crime show Ultron has been watching and turns out to be another synth, red-eyed, with a gem of her own on her forehead. Who made her, and why is she hunting? Rob wonders whether Tony Stark built more than he admitted. Patrick asks whether Ultron’s escape into the internet touched every AI in the world, and whether the Mind Stone is what makes Marvel’s AIs more than toasters. Jeff traces White Vision’s own revival back to a drone that picked up a trace of Wanda’s chaos magic in Westview.

Paladin gets his turn too. He drops references to the Ten Rings, Werewolf by Night and Hell’s Kitchen in a single breath, the episode shows how the Paladin line took him in as a boy, and then his client cancels the contract. Does he keep hunting Vision, turn on the client, or end up as an ally?

The heart of the episode is Vision and Tommy. Vision runs simulation after simulation of one hard conversation, trying to tell a scared young man the truth without telling him he is crazy. Rob, a father, recognizes the exercise. It takes Tommy phasing through a candy machine for Vision to accept that the answer might be magic, and it takes Tommy’s speed to bring Vision back after the reboot. Along the way Tommy reaches for an old sitcom, Small Wonder, about an engineer who passes off a robot as his adopted daughter, and the panel trades stories about the comfort shows they keep rewatching.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. carries her own weight. She was in Tony’s suit when he died in Avengers: Endgame, ran the numbers, and could not save him, and now she has to step up again. The panel also talks through the people Tony’s AIs are patterned after and asks who Ultron might be based on, landing on Arnim Zola as one candidate.

Then comes the funeral for J.A.R.V.I.S., where DUM-E and U finally speak and U sings “Danny Boy,” Ultron and Vision trade opposite views of grief and love, and a final stretch that turns into a horror movie, with nods to Poltergeist and The Exorcist. James Spader and Paul Bettany get their due.

The episode closes with speculation about who hired Paladin: Sharon Carter as the Power Broker, the Ten Rings, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, another Wanda, or Billy.

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