(This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the finale of VisionQuest“Forever.”)
For showrunner Terry Matalas, VisionQuest was always going to be a Marvel series about fathers and sons.
When he was asked a few years ago to republish the last chapter of the WandaVision trilogy – succeeding creator Jac Schaeffer, who reportedly stepped away from the project to focus on Agatha throughoutthe second installment with Kathryn Hahn – Matalas only received one clear directive from Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige. The new series was to focus on Paul Bettany’s synthezoid Vision and his superpowered son Tommy Maximoff – one of the twins he shared with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), the Scarlet Witch who apparently perished at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
“We knew Tommy was going to be a part of it, and then I had to ask myself, ‘Who is Vision talking to? He doesn’t have Wanda on this show, and Tommy felt like something you wanted to get to,'” Matalas tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I immediately went to see Vision’s father, and specifically Ultron (played by) James Spader. I was so taken by that last scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron between the two of them and I wondered, “Well, what if that Was that the show?’
Over the course of eight episodes, the newly resurrected “White Vision” – whose original memories had been locked away by the SWORD agency following his death in Avengers: Infinity Waronly to have them unlocked by the version of himself created by Hex in the WandaVision finale before flying away – embarks on a deeply psychological journey of self-discovery. As he struggles with his fractured identity, Vision confronts a mirror-image philosophical Ultron – his deeply toxic and cynical creator functioning as a dark father figure – and struggles to accept Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica), an orphaned teenager who is the super-powered reincarnation of his and Wanda’s son Tommy.
Although she was credited as executive producer, Schaeffer was not creatively involved in VisionQuestwanting to give Matalas and his writers a room – most of whom had worked with him on Star Trek: Picard – “a blank canvas” to play with. “I called her briefly to thank her and just because I’m such a fan of what she did with WandaVision. I watched every episode twice when it came out, and then I would go to YouTube and dissect every Easter egg,” Matalas says. “But she was very clear from the start that she didn’t want to share any creative (contribution).”
THE VisionQuest the finale, however, still pays homage to WandaVision And Agatha in more than one way. The show’s puppet master – revealed to be “The Client”, Virgil Horton (also played by Spader, whose human identity inspired Ultron’s avatar) – holds Vision and the AI Jocasta (T’Nia Miller) captive to execute a digital immortality plot. When Virgil fatally shoots Jocasta, a devastated Ultron murders Virgil and unleashes a deadly swarm of nanobots on London. To stop the genocidal AI, Vision traps them both in a creative space. WandaVisiondubbed style sitcom simulation UltraVisionforcing Ultron to deal with the deep grief of losing Jocasta – the AI companion he is unwittingly in love with – which ultimately neutralizes the threat and causes both of their systems to collapse.
Subsequently, Tommy and his twin brother Billy (Joe Locke) – who was last seen in Agatha – work together using their combined powers to successfully bring their father back to life. The finale also features a post-credits scene – not included in the screeners sent to press – of Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom resurrecting Wanda, who had apparently been crushed under a mountain amid her grief over losing Vision and their twins at the end of Multiverse of Madness. The Maximoff family reunion is on!
Call from New York just hours before the VisionQuest finale dropped on Disney+ Tuesday, Matalas opened below for THR about how the series became another meditation on grief in the MCU, why it decided that Vision and Tommy reunite with Billy but not Wanda — and that disturbing mid-credits scene with Ultron. As the former showrunner of PicardMatalas also pays tribute to Patrick Stewart, who died on October 28 at the age of 86: “I would like to remember him, a little bit where we left him (in Picard), who was at this poker table surrounded by his friends laughing.
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In addition to writing episodes one, two and eight, you also directed episodes seven and eight – which really open up Vision on an emotional level and pay off his relationships with Tommy and Ultron. What was most important to you when you were looking for how to land the plane, so to speak, on VisionQuest? Why was this the good ending in your mind?
I think all endings have to touch the beginning in some way. So honoring WandaVision returning to the sitcom format as a sort of last stand has always been our North Star since the beginning of the writers’ room. We had a few different versions of it, but this seemed like the right way to end it rather than just doing a rock and sock ’em robot battle royale – which we do, so we’re giving the Marvel fans their popcorn. We thought it would be fun to replay the final fight between these two in this father-son sitcom. (A reference to) Sanford and Sons is one of the first images you see in the first episode (from UltraVision), so we knew we were heading towards some sort of All in family, Sanford and Sons dynamic between Ultron and Vision.
You mentioned that Jac didn’t want to get creatively involved in VisionQuestbut does she know that you paid homage to her with this show-within-a-show format?
No, as far as I know, she has no idea.
There are so many little pleasures WandaVision Easter eggs in UltraVisionbut I particularly enjoyed flipping through all the wacky episode titles. You offered so many!
I actually made them in post. I think we generated a list at first from a few different writers, but eventually it came together in post. It’s the most fun there is. We kind of want to see every one of these episodes. I remember when we screened it for Kevin Feige, one of the questions I asked just to check was, “Will UltraVision does it last too long? And he immediately cut me off and shouted, “No!” He says: “It could go on for another 90 minutes, and I would have watched every minute of it.” So it was a big swing. We were really scared. We didn’t know if it was going to work, and as of yet it hasn’t aired, so I don’t know if it did. (Laughter.) So we’ll see.
For all theaters in UltraVisionwhich proves to be an ineffective way for Vision to appeal to Ultron’s better angels, Vision knows that the only way to stop Ultron from using the nanobots as a weapon of mass destruction is to force him to feel the grief of losing Jocasta. What did you want these final one-on-one conversations between Vision and Ultron to represent?
I think Vision says it best, which is that we can’t deal with this alone, and grieving is really about opening it up and bringing it into the light, as it is with all pain and trauma. I hope that’s the message people come away with, that you can’t really bury it in your code. You really have to face it, and it’s very difficult to do it alone.
VisionQuest final.
Disney+
Why do you think Vision is the only one who can ultimately reach Ultron?
I think Vision is the only one he respects, whether it’s because of Ultron’s own ego and Vision was sort of his own vision, if you will, of what he could be. But we always knew we wanted to bring Ultron to a comic book-inspired place. Ultron fell in love with Jocasta in the original comics, and taking her on the same kind of journey that Vision had been facing all season seemed like the right story for these two to truly understand each other in the end.
We had several different versions (of the final scene of Ultron). We had a deleted scene where Jocasta sat with Ultron in the mansion at the end and survived. And now we’re just hinting that he’s going to, at some point, bring her back. And then the question is: will this start the cycle again? Will he do the same thing as Wanda or Vision, without really facing his grief and then finding another way to bring back his loss? And would she even want that? So that seemed like the right end of the circle, if you will.
You’re referring to the mid-credits scene of Ultron holding a hard drive labeled “Jocasta”. Why did you choose to include this final scene? Was this a directive from Marvel?
We were all so in love with Jocasta and (wanted) a promise that she would carry on in some way. Once again we had a deleted scene in which she survived beautifully. I think that scene might one day see the light of day, but it kind of, in its entirety, robbed the finale of its punch a little bit when we had it there. But there were no real directives from Marvel other than Tommy was going to meet Vision, and that in the end, cold white Vision would revert to his original red self. It’s a pretty blank canvas to work on. Working with Marvel was truly wonderful and collaborative in every way.
Paul Bettany told me that Marvel’s original plan was always to center VisionQuest around Vision and Tommy, but did you always plan to bring Billy back into the fold as well?
It had to be. The end of Agatha was (Agatha and Billy saying), “Let’s go find Tommy.” I think it would have been terrible and not very satisfying not to see the boys find their…
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