VISIONQUEST Showrunner Reveals the Two MCU Scenes That Inspired the Series and Kevin Feige’s One Mandate

Marvel’s VisionQuestis bringing Paul Bettanyback as Vision, but the Disney+ series isn’t simply picking up where WandaVision left him.

Showrunner Terry Matalas built the story around two specific moments from the MCU, both of which get right to the heart of what makes Vision such an interesting character.

One comes from Avengers: Age of Ultron. The other is the philosophical showdown between the two Visions in WandaVision. Those scenes became the foundation for a series dealing with identity, memory, humanity, and what exactly makes Vision, well, Vision.

Matalas explained: "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 Ship of Theseus sequence from WandaVision is interesting. Hex Vision and White Vision discuss the classic philosophical question of whether something remains the same object after every one of its original components has been replaced.

White Vision essentially becomes a walking version of that question. He possesses the memories of the original Vision, but he isn’t technically the same being.

Now that he’s out in the world, VisionQuest gets to dig into what those memories actually mean and whether they make him the Vision we knew.

The other major inspiration comes from the ending of Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Vision confronts the final Ultron robot. Their conversation turns toward humanity and its flaws, with Ultron calling Vision "naive" for maintaining an optimistic view of people before Vision destroys him.

That scene becomes even more relevant with James Spaderreturning as Ultron in VisionQuest. Bringing these two characters back together opens the door for the series to revisit their opposing views of humanity while Vision wrestles with his own existence.

Despite all of the MCU history involved, Matalas says Marvel Studios gave him plenty of room to build his story. He explained his working relationship with Kevin Feige and Marvel Television chief Brad Winderbaum:

"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,"

Feige’s main direction for the series was surprisingly straightforward. Matalas continued: "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.'"

That gives Matalas a pretty fun playground to work with, especially considering just how strange Vision’s family history has become.

Vision’s son Tommy Shepherd will be played by Ruaridh Mollica, while his brother Billy Maximoff previously returned in Agatha All Along, played by Joe Locke.

There are a lot of ways Marvel could have approached another Vision story, but building VisionQuest around the character’s biggest philosophical questions feels like the right call.

It sounds like Vision is going to have one hell of an identity crisis.

VisionQuest premieres on Disney+ October 14.