VisionQuest Recap: Bad Romance

VisionQuest
Deadlock
Season 1 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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After one episode that was all procedural investigation and another that was all cagey conversations, VisionQuest continues with an episode full of confrontations and commitments. Some characters declare their intentions with battle. Others kiss. While Ultron is proud of keeping his loyalties secret, a lot of loyalties seemingly get settled this episode. But the process of pinning down everyone’s feelings makes for a straightforward, workmanlike episode: “Deadlock” covers important ground, but it’s largely missing the previous two installments’ playfulness and creativity.

“Deadlock” opens with Ultron’s reunion with Jocasta. Her metal body is in Josephine Carrington’s mausoleum, alongside a mysterious grey machine. But she meets the currently bodiless Ultron in her mindspace: a bright, minimalist white room with a few simple bot servants, a constant soundtrack of classical music and opera, and some cardboard boxes. These, she says, contain the few memories she didn’t lose in moving from a human body to a metal one. 

Jocasta tries to take Katerina’s facial scan from Ultron by force, and he toys with her, pretending he’s caught in her trap, then shrugging it off and threatening her in return. (He also says they might need couples counseling.) Equality established, he says he really just wants to know her. He accepts the pain that it will cause, and she psychically connects with his mind. 

In Madripoor, Thomas wakes up in Paladin’s fancy “murder van” with a glowing device surgically installed in his arm. Paladin says it’s a motion-sensitive explosive that will explode if Thomas runs, or even walks briskly. Thomas complains about being stuck in the Keanu Reeves movie Speed, which sends Paladin off on a surprisingly indignant, knowledgeable pop-culture rant. Apparently this heartless assassin is also a big dork.

In Madripoor, Lisa lectures Vision about not being the father Thomas needs, so he pushes her about not being the girlfriend Thomas wants. (Thomas apparently kvetched to Vision about that offscreen.) Lisa admits she’s afraid to date Thomas. If their romance goes badly, she’ll just be another in the long list of people who rejected him. 

Madripoor still looks like a cheap knockoff of Blade Runner’s regressive, cringey Orientalist-fantasy future. It’s a conveniently lawless place where folks can eat noodles at street kiosks, wave guns at each other, or both, without interference. Paladin meets Vision and Lisa in a street bazaar to prove Thomas is alive and demand Vision’s surrender. Vision refuses to cooperate, so Paladin summons his drones. But it turns out the mysterious handler he’s been speaking to via his AR glasses is an AI he’s been running off a cheap-ass Tajikistan server farm. Edith finds her and lures her away to a better life on the internet, leaving Edith in charge of Paladin’s gear and systems.

Meanwhile, Ultron has absorbed Jocasta’s backstory. Josephine Carrington began studying neuroscience out of grief, after her father died of a degenerative brain disease. She and her colleagues created the first AI life from a scan of her brain and the AI code Phineas Horton developed for J.I.M., the Synthetic Man glimpsed in Captain America: The First Avenger and teased in VisionQuest episodes one and four. Josephine wanted to give everyone in the world an AI companion, a nanobot that would live in their bodies, guiding and teaching them, and rescuing them from loneliness. Then Josephine died from the disease that claimed her father, and her collaborators sold her creation to Stark Industries — ”a goddamned weapons manufacturer.” She left behind billions of unactivated nanobots, locked in a device she calls the Nest — the mysterious device from the opening sequence. The Nest is locked with bio-keys from her four collaborators.

In Madripoor, Paladin tries to undermine Vision by telling Thomas how the synthezoid was created to kill Wanda Maximoff, Thomas’ dream-mom. But Thomas chooses Vision’s side, and finally defends his dream-dad instead of blaming him. It’s the first of many declarations of loyalty in this episode, and an important moment of maturity from Thomas. Vision, though, has other concerns: He’s learned Paladin’s real name and family history, and threatens to kill Paladin’s estranged adult daughter, Tilly. That’s an empty threat (does anyone really believe Vision would murder an innocent civilian?), but Paladin falls for it, losing his temper. As he and Vision are about to fight, though, the new mercs Paladin’s client sent after Vision start shooting everything in sight. 

The new bounty hunters are led by Raza Al-Wazar, the low-level Ten Rings merc Obadiah Stane hired to kidnap Tony Stark all the way back in 2008’s Iron Man. (Actor Faran Tahir even reprises the role.) Like Paladin, he and his mercs apparently weren’t listening when the client said to bring Vision back intact: They’re armed with adamantium bullets, which leave Paladin and Vision equally wounded. Raza also has a short-range signal jammer that disables Paladin’s drones. (His goons communicate this by pointing to it and loudly announcing it, like anime characters declaring which powers they’re using. It’s a rare bit of welcome whimsy in an otherwise generically straight-faced episode.)

Cornered and outnumbered by a mutual enemy, Paladin switches loyalties and throws in with Vision. He also admits he didn’t put a bomb in Thomas’s arm — it’s a light-up UFO toy. Thomas and Lisa hijack Paladin’s death wagon, but its automated security nearly kills them. Edith, still controlling Paladin’s systems, disables the defenses and saves the day. Lisa drops her own defenses and kisses Thomas. 

In Jocasta’s mindscape, Ultron and Jocasta lower their defenses as well. He admits he doesn’t necessarily want to wipe out humanity; he just enjoys judging them and laughing at their expense. Jocasta calls him “a digital Greek god,” so he names her for a Greek queen: Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother and wife. But he points out there’s still a missing character in her history: Who made her robo-body and uploaded her into it? 

In Majipoor, Paladin’s client hijacks the local electronics to address Vision, offering to end his suffering and restore the soul he lost in his latest resurrection. But the client doesn’t call off Raza’s troops. Vision and Paladin fight them together until Thomas and Lisa rescue them with Paladin’s bulletproof van. Edith sends Paladin’s drones to mow down goons, while Raza draws a sword to face Paladin. Paladin finally displays some of that “trained in every art” skill we were told to expect, and easily knocks out Raza. 

While Vision and Thomas have a stiff, emotionally awkward reunion, Jocasta shows Ultron the one sample nanobot that isn’t locked in the Nest, and opens up to him about her new plan to control humanity through the nanobots. “You want to put strings on them,” Ultron says, sounding more nonplussed than delighted. Still, he accepts that she wants him to prove his loyalty by watching her reprogram a human. She infects Lisa with the nanobot. While Jocasta is distracted, Friday reveals that she’s hiding in Jocasta’s mindscape, disguised as one of her bot servants. She calls Edith to reveal her location and explain what’s happening. 

Lisa’s eyes glow red and livid circuitboard-esque patterns form on her cheeks as Jocasta takes over and speaks through her. She tells Vision that synth life can finally fix humanity by reprogramming them. Vision isn’t on board, so Jocasta puppets Lisa into attacking him. He and Thomas knock Lisa out, sedate her in Paladin’s murder-van, and flee. 

Back in Jocasta’s mindscape, Ultron is stunned to learn that he can now taste whiskey after sharing Jocasta’s memories. For the first time, he says, he feels real. Suddenly, his conversation with Vision after Jarvis’s funeral, about whether love truly exists, takes on new importance. Is he really falling for Jocasta, or playing a deep game to gain her trust? Either way, the episode ends with a passionate kiss between the two synths. It remains to be seen whether Ultron’s love or loyalty are authentic, but for the moment, he’s fully thrown in with his synthetic lover and her plans to take over the world. 

In the van, Vision recaps WandaVision for Thomas again, in a way that feels much closer to the truth than his episode three interpretation. This time, he says Wanda’s desperation to hold onto love made her unrecognizable, even to herself. He doesn’t know it yet, but that same description might stretch to fit Ultron changing his fickle ways for Jocasta, or Vision upending his entire life and self-image for love of Thomas, or whatever Thomas is willing to do next to rescue Lisa. This episode is mostly about characters choosing sides, and for the moment, they’ve all decided to choose love, no matter how much they have to chance to make that work.

Loose Wires

• Even though characters keep telling us Lisa and Thomas are teenagers, it’s hard to keep that in mind. The actors are 25 and 27, respectively, and don’t look or behave anything like teens. 

• Vision complaining to Edith about teenagers prompts a cute reference: “Woof,” she says, “tell me about it. My first boss was a junior in high school.” Who knew E.D.I.T.H. was having such a rough time working for Peter Parker in the Spider-Man movies? 

• Lisa steals Paladin’s keys off him and uses them to start his “murder van” — so why doesn’t she also use them to open the door? Does she stand back and let Thomas superspeed-pick the lock just so he’ll feel useful? 

• Ultron naming Josephine/Butcherbird “Jocasta” is an unlikely allusive stretch to connect her to her Marvel Comics iteration. But it kind of works, too: As the founder of modern AI architecture, she’s kind of his mother as well as his lover, right?