It’s the worst-case scenario for Vision: Ultron is in control of his body and loose out in the world. Luckily for Vis and, you know, mankind, Ultron doesn’t seem too interested in mass extinction at the moment. He’s more eager to spend some time getting to know his grandson, Thomas. Or, rather, that’s what it looks like he’s doing, but it takes some time for Vis and his AI friends to figure that out.
With Ultron at the proverbial wheel (though it was briefly a literal wheel in the last episode), Vision, E.D.I.T.H., F.R.I.D.A.Y., D.U.M.-E., and U. have been locked in the attic and cut off from the outside world. Thanks to Ultron’s big mountain of old televisions, though, they’re still able to access his recent memories—though they can’t see anything he’s currently up to. They figure out that he took Thomas to a pub, and using hacked data from all the cell phones inside (creating an impromptu Dark Knight Machine of sorts) they’re able to create a simulated recreation of what Ultron said and did while he was at the pub.
VisionQuest has been hit-and-miss with some of the stylized depictions of computer concepts, but the holographic visualization of the pub as a stripped-down black box theater was clever. It fits the way that the AIs like to approximate human behavior, but it also reflects that they’re not working with a complete picture of everything in the pub. It’s a nice insight into these characters that doesn’t require one of them looking straight into the camera and talking about how sad it was when Tony Stark died.
As for what the AIs actually glean from the fancy recreation: Thomas is mad at Ultron for the whole “attempted genocide” thing in Sokovia, particularly since he knew Sokovian kids at the orphanage where he grew up. He asks Ultron why Vision bothered to save him and why he’s so determined to kill humans, but Ultron kind of shrugs off the questions with non-answers, but he does concede that the only humans he likes are artists, because they tell the truth. (It doesn’t read like some kind of cute nod to the dynamic between real artists and brainwashed AI people who think they’re artists, but perhaps it’s meant to be something like that.)
Thomas cuts to the chase and asks Ultron if he thinks Vision actually loves him, and Ultron offers him his take on the “visualize an apple” thing that goes around the internet every once in a while: When Thomas thinks of an apple, he thinks of an apple. When Vision tries to think of an apple, he thinks of the fundamental component parts that an apple is made.
In other words, according to Ultron, Vision is incapable of the kind of love that Thomas is looking for. The kid doesn’t really buy it, and he tells Ultron that he’s the one who’s incapable of making any kind of connection with someone the way Vision has, and so there’s no hope that he’ll ever change. “You’re alone, and you always will be,” he says before leaving… at which point he gets grabbed by Paladin again.
In the Mind-Mansion, Vis and his pals determine that this all happened 20 hours ago, and after a brief exploration of Ultron’s chat history with Paladin—in which Ultron relishes saying the phrase “chatter on the bounty hunter message boards” so much that he says it twice—the good guys realize that Ultron had a secret conversation with Jo Carrington at the pub that was imperceptible to regular humans. They’re able to listen to what it was once they hit the right frequency, and, much to the AIs dismay, it’s all very flirty and ominous.
Basically, Jo needs various biometric keys from her old colleagues in order to do something secret, so Ultron scanned the woman’s face in the last episode before she was killed so he’d have a bargaining chip to use with Jo (his metal heart is all a-flutter at the thought of a lady robot who loves killing humans as much as he does). Ultron takes Jo to a simulated version of the Louvre and explains that it’s not human art that inspires him, it’s human pain. “There is grace in their failings,” he says.
Jo disagrees and takes him to a (simulated) record store, showing Ultron that there are countless songs about falling in love and there’s nothing new or unique about any of it. Ultron wants to know more, but she just invites him to her place to continue their conversation. Of course, Ultron can’t actually leave Vision’s Mind-Mansion without VIs’ approval, so he heads back inside to give Vision a choice: Shut down the firewall that keeps Ultron trapped in the mansion, setting him free but giving Vision his body back, or keep Ultron locked up and let Paladin kill Thomas.
After some debate (an earlier episode acknowledged that Vision does whatever he wants, regardless of how the other AIs feel about), Vision decides to drop the barrier and lets Ultron leave. Before he does, though Vision tells him that the only one who can save him now is himself and that both he and Jo should be ready for Vision to come after them. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” Ultron responds, as genuinely as he can muster, perhaps hinting that he’s not as evil as he seems. F.R.I.D.A.Y. chases after him, meaning her and Ultron are both out of Vision’s mind, though what this means in any literal or practical will have to wait for the second of tonight’s two episodes.
Back in control, Vision wakes up where Ultron evidently left him: On a plane carrying animals to Madripoor, the Marvel universe’s preeminent hive of scum and villainy—as previously seen in The Falcon And Winter Soldier. That seems to be where Thomas is being held, meaning Ultron at least pointed Vision in the right direction. Maybe he’s nice after all? Also, Thomas’ girlfriend Lisa is there, and she’s refreshingly on board with all of the ridiculous stuff happening.
This episode felt compelling as it went on, but in retrospect, it was a lot of people chatting about what their motivations and ultimate goals are, right down to Ultron straight-up asking Jo what she’s trying to accomplish. The second of the two episodes that premiered tonight, “Deadlock,” is more traditionally eventful, but also a little shakier.
It begins with Ultron finding his way to Jo’s Mind-Mansion, which is a very sparsely decorated white room that is staffed by emotionless “bots” rather than Vision’s chatty AI friends (though one of them is secretly F.R.I.D.A.Y. in disguise). Ultron casually touches a box that apparently contains some of Jo’s memories, and he quickly collapses into a coughing fit and gets chained up by Jo. The box actually contained a virus, and it’s just a matter of time before she takes over Ultron’s code and gets the biometric data he got from Katerina… except, as he explains, he’s been around a long time and has seen every corner of the “interweb” and overcome every virus contained therein, so he easily breaks free. So, instead, she agrees to show him everything there is to know about her and her backstory.
Before we see that, though, we check in on Thomas, who just had big, blinking device sewed into his arm. Paladin says it’s a bomb that will be set off by any sort of, you know, super-speed stuff. Thomas says “you turned me into Speed,” referring to the movie (Paladin points out that it’s a reverse-Speed, if anything), and that just might be the absolute worse justification for a superhero name in the long history of the MCU. “Speed,” which is the superhero name Tommy uses in the comics, is bad as it is (his brother’s super-sobriquet is not much better, honestly), but this is such a weird and needlessly awkward way to reference it for the show.
It turns out that Thomas and Paladin are in Madripoor, getting ready for a handoff with Vision, who has apparently already communicated with them and set up a meeting. When Vis arrives, Paladin tells him about the bomb in Tommy’s arm and says he’ll disarm it (there’s a “disarm” joke, of course) if Vis agrees to shut himself down and surrender to Paladin peacefully. Vis fires back by revealing that he knows Paladin has an estranged daughter, and he notes that he could easily mess with a stoplight, or a drug prescription, or the smart home controls for a furnace and get revenge on her if Paladin doesn’t hand over Tommy.
There’s also a bit where Paladin references the “WandaVision” reality and reveals that this Vision was built to kill Wanda, which briefly touches on some exhaustingly overplayed “you kept secrets from him???” drama that was annoying way back when the Arrowverse did it—and their seasons were three times as long, so they needed to fill time with something. VisionQuest has no such excuse.
As this is happening, E.D.I.T.H. hacks into the office of Paladin’s handler, who turns out to be an AI, and convinces her to just quit by talking about how nice it is at Vision’s Mind-Mansion. It’s a cute scene, and I like Diane Morgan complaining that she wanted to spend her AI life helping college students write papers or doing online clothing returns, but it just happens so easily. It comes from the uncomfortable pairing of the serious-ish superhero stuff that Vision is up to and the wacky computer jokes that happen in his head, and it seems like the show is just not going to outgrow that.
Hey, speaking of easy, we learn earlier in the episode that Paladin got his adamantium ammunition from the 10 Rings terrorist organization (best known for kidnapping Tony Stark and putting him in a cave in Iron Man), and Vision and Paladin’s conversation is then interrupted by… the 10 Rings! It’s not as barf-inducing as the Speed conversation, but it comes across like someone at Marvel decided it would be fun to see Raza Hamidmi al-Wazar again, so the 10 Rings group was written into the plot here. And hey, in their defense, it is a little fun to see him again.
Raza and his goons start shooting up the bar where Vis and Paladin are meeting, Thomas and Lisa run off, and then—perfectly concurrently for some reason—Thomas figures out that the bomb is fake and Paladin tells Vision the bomb is fake. So why do any of that at all? There’s also a part where Thomas and Lisa try to steal Paladin’s Battle Van and get locked inside as all of the air is sucked out, only for E.D.I.T.H. to immediately hack the van’s controls and save them. So why do that? It’s like the episode is in a hurry to get somewhere and just needs to fill time with action before that can happen, but it never actually gets anywhere.
Even the scene where Paladin’s Client takes over every television in Madripoor so they can send Vision a message is a waste of time. We find out that the Client has something up their sleeve about returning the heart that Vision lost when he was reborn, but we already knew the Client was up to something, and every time we hear their voice without any kind of reveal it just raises the stakes for how exciting that reveal has to be.
Anyway, during all of that, Ultron (and the viewers) get Jo’s backstory: Her father died of some degenerative disease, so she studied neuroscience and AI. She discovered that any AI could just mimic human behavior rather than do anything actually intelligent, so she scanned her brain and paired it with the J.I.M. AI to create the first true artificial intelligence. She planned to use a swarm of nanobots to give everyone on the planet an AI buddy in their head to heal them and be their friend, but she started to develop the same condition as her father before she could implement it. As she got sicker, her colleagues decided to sell her tech to Stark Industries, with Tony eventually using it to make J.A.R.V.I.S. (and also high-tech bombs and stuff).
She needs all of the biometric data from her dead colleagues in order to unlock the thing containing all of her nanobots, which she can then use to take over the world and “reprogram” all chaos and greed out of mankind, but Ultron won’t do it until he sees a demonstration. Jo tries to use it on Thomas, but Ultron (wisely) notes that nothing will ever stop Vision from destroying them if they hurt his “son.” So, instead, she uses it on Lisa, who gets transformed into a red-eyed robo-zombie. Thomas uses his super-speed to… shake her out of it, and they all run off in Paladin’s van.
We end the episode in Jo’s head, with her sharing a real memory of drinking whiskey with Ultron. Overcome with emotion (or his approximation of emotion), he says it makes him feel “real.” Jo, who has actually alive at one point, says that being a robot has made her feel less and less real, like she’s just a backup and the only Jo that matters is the one who died. Ultron says she’s real to him and they kiss, turning back into their robot-selves as they do (you’ll never be more aware that Ultron has no lips).
Stray observations
- -All of the talking about plans and goals in “Firewall” reminded me of something another famous TV robot once said: “You can’t just have your characters say how they feel, that makes me feel angry.”
- -Do not perceive my criticism of the Arrowverse as coming from anywhere but a place of love.
- -When Ultron is outside of the mansion, he revers to the spherical code thing he was before he had a body in Age Of Ultron.
- -There’s a brief scene when Ultron is controlling Vision’s body where he fills the house with copies of himself that fill specific duties, like what the Stark AIs do for Vision, but he’s so self-assured in his own greatness that they just talk about how great they all are.
- -Jo compares Ultron’s fickle love/hate relationship with humanity to that of the Greek gods, prompting him to call her Jocasta. A much subtler way to bring in the name from the comics! Also, using this show’s understanding of robot parentage, she is his… grandmother? Great aunt? So the name kind of fits.
- -I can safely say that I am the only person in the state of Wisconsin watching VisionQuest tonight instead of the World Series. Go Brewers!
“Firewall”: B-
“Deadlock”: C
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