VisionQuest Recap: Tommy, Can You Hear Me?

VisionQuest
Theseus
Season 1 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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VisionQuest’s opening episode probably made it crystal-clear that this is a show about identity and self-definition. But just in case anyone missed that, episode two rings the same bell again and again, through different characters.

Back in WandaVision, VisionQuest protagonist Neo-Vision was a rigid sentient weapon until Illusion-Vision refocused him on the Ship of Theseus, a famous philosophical thought experiment that paralleled both bots’ experiences as reflections of the first Vision. Neo-Vision confidently parsed the puzzle by turning it into a paradox. Given one historic ship in which all the original parts had been replaced, and another in which all the original parts had been restored, Neo-Vision said, neither one is the true Ship of Theseus. Also, both of them are. By that light, he both was and was not the superhero he was modeled after. “I am Vision,” he said, definitively, before flying away.

He hasn’t held onto that certainty. But he finds a parallel for his doubt and confusion in “Theseus,” when he has to decide whether to rescue another character whose identity is compromised by someone else’s memories. “Theseus” opens with footage from a psychiatric evaluation, as Thomas Shepherd, the con artist we met in the pilot episode, frantically addresses a prison psychologist. Six months ago, Thomas drowned during rough horseplay in a pool. He woke up with Tommy Maximoff’s memories overlaying his own. (Tommy’s brother Billy was similarly reincarnated — or just incarnated? — in the MCU series Agatha All Along, where teenager William Kaplan dies in a car crash and returns with Billy’s memories and powers.)

Tommy’s memories terrify Thomas, because they feel as vivid and real as his own, and he no longer knows who he really is. (Ding-ding goes the “identity theme” bell!) Unfortunately, his doctor interprets all the screaming about an alien presence in Thomas’ head as a garden-variety psychotic breakdown, and remands him to a more secure facility. 

On the prison bus, Thomas meets Lisa, his con-artist partner-to-be from episode one. Seeing him shivering and twitching, she lays out a version of her philosophy, which again seems like it’s also aimed at Vision. “In my experience, who you are is less important than who you pretend to be,” she says. “Each morning is a chance to become someone new.” (Ding-ding again!) When Thomas asks why she’s in prison, she embraces the “pretend to be someone” idea by saying she killed a man and wore his face to escape capture. (VisionQuest’s second open Silence of the Lambs reference.) Eventually, though, she admits she’s a kleptomaniac.

That quickly comes in handy when Clancy, a sadistic guard, tells the inmates they’re being shipped to the infamous sanitarium Saint Mabyn’s. Lisa protests, Clancy moves to assault her, and Thomas gets in the way. Under the pain of Clancy’s stun baton, Thomas accesses Tommy Maximoff’s speed powers, blurring into super-fast motion. The friction causes an electrical shock that burns Clancy, and Lisa steals his keys. She and Thomas escape together. 

In the modern day, Vision doesn’t see how Tommy could exist outside of Westview. Ultron dismisses all objections with an airy, “You should know by now, this universe of theirs is a very strange one.” He’s more or less saying, “It’s magic, let’s just move on.” And they do! Friday briefs them on Paladin, the latest in a centuries-long line of extremely dedicated bounty hunters. He may not sound impressive enough to challenge a superhero, even with Friday playing up Paladin’s unbreakable dedication and his training in “every art and every weapon.” So we cut to Paladin dumping Thomas at Saint Mabyn’s, and casually murdering Clancy. (Okay, sure, he’s reminded us he’s ruthless and scary — but what happened to the “No killing civilians” rule from episode one?) 

Vision initially dismisses the Thomas video as a “sentimental ploy to draw me out,” until Thomas mentions Wanda saying “Grief is just love persevering.” Those were the comforting words Vision privately offered Wanda in Age of Ultron after her brother Pietro died. Vision is shaken by this evidence that Thomas did meet Wanda. But he’s possibly more compelled when Thomas breaks down, begging, “Please, I don’t know who I am!” (Ding-ding!) Vision can certainly relate. He doesn’t have to accept imaginary memories as a familial connection to relate to Thomas’s identity questions, which parallel Vision’s.

Paladin thinks that family connection should be compelling, though. Luring Vision to Fiona’s wrecked bar, he tells the synthezoid that whatever else Thomas is, he’s the only family Vision will ever have. He wants Vision to surrender to protect the kid. But Vision says he doesn’t care about Thomas, isn’t a hero, and isn’t bound by Vision’s morality. “Whilst it is true that I was once him, I’m not Vision,” he says. (Ding-ding goes the bell, as he contradicts his earlier statements about his identity.) He grabs Paladin by the throat, throws him aside, and leaves. Paladin’s mysterious client, who’s clearly spying on him, cuts into Paladin’s comms to berate and threaten him again.

Back in Vision’s mind-palace, Ultron watches a news report about the Butcherbird, the killer we got a newspaper hint about in episode one. He commends Vision on responding to Paladin with violence, but pushes him toward saving Tommy. Vision, caught between logic (Tommy was never real!), the emotional ties he feels anyway, and the conviction he believes he should feel about saving an innocent, rails about his own distance from Original Vision: “I have his memories, but not his feelings! I have his face, but not his virtue! All I can feel is the weight of him! His legacy, his worthiness, his name!… I want to feel what it’s like to be him, but I can’t!” (Ding ding ding ding ding!)

Ultron finally finds the key to set Vision in motion by re-evoking the Ship of Theseus. He’s a savvy adversary who knows how crucial that metaphor was to Vision’s awakening. Ultron tells Vision to stop being the ship, and instead be Theseus, the king who went to Crete to save children from being sacrificed to the Minotaur. Where Vision’s experiences and Thomas’s run in parallel, Ultron finds his own parallel to Lisa here, advising a fruitlessly cycling companion to just shut up about who they are or aren’t, and choose who they want to be. (Ding!)

Vision is ready to hare off after Thomas at that point, but Jarvis urges him to control his emotions. In an odd aside that feels like exposition being wedged into an unlikely moment, they consider a painting of a humanoid figure in flames, who Vision describes as “the first of us… a cautionary tale, a reminder of what may become of me should emotions consume me. Unstable, destructive.” 

Vision pretends he isn’t letting emotion rule him, but he’s clearly frustrated at giving in to Paladin’s manipulation after all. (And maybe Ultron’s.) When he arrives at Saint Mabyn’s, he caustically tells the receptionist, “Hello, my name’s Vision, and I’m here for the trap.” Paladin’s soldiers attack him, and Vision cuts a bloody swath through them in a battle sequence improbably set to John Denver’s “Calypso.” Thomas, strapped down in a padded room, initially panics when Vision arrives because the Tommy memories Thomas tried to suppress now have physical form. Vision frees and comforts him, but the padded room is a second trap, an “EMP cage” which destabilizes Vision’s processors and shuts down his powers. Tommy breaks them out by using Vision as a battering ram, but Paladin is waiting outside to blast Vision with a shotgun full of adamantium rounds. 

Vision, severely injured, tries to persuade Thomas to abandon him. But Thomas sees Vision’s arrival as the first clear proof that his Tommy memories are real. He feels a connection to Vision, even though he can’t define their relationship. (Ding!) He hotwires a car from the nearby parking lot so they can escape. Meanwhile, Vision loses control of Ultron’s prison, and Ultron strolls free. 

Jarvis sacrifices himself to stabilize Vision’s mind, deleting his code and shifting his processing power to the other AIs to keep them functional. “Sir, family is forever, and it’s worth the fight,” he tells Vision. While it’s unclear whether he’s talking about Thomas, the AIs, or both, it’s still a deliberate callback to Vision saying in episode one that he has no family. Vision recognizes that by calling Jarvis “brother” just before he goes. Thomas drives away with a limp, malfunctioning Vision next to him, and an illusory, wisecracking Ultron in the back seat. 

Loose Wires

• Vision pointedly drinking a shot to illustrate that Paladin doesn’t know him and can’t predict him is a pretty cool gesture. But, uh, why would S.W.O.R.D. design him with that capability? (Are we sure he didn’t just let the booze phase through him, which Vision could have done?) 

• Further evidence that this Vision isn’t Original Vision: He’s pretty calm about vaporizing humans! 

• Vision ranting about his past self, “All I can feel is the weight of him!” is an emotionally fraught twist on “All I can feel is you,” a much-quoted Avengers: Endgame line from Original Vision, who bravely denies Wanda is hurting him by ripping the Mind Stone out of his head to destroy it.

• Any theories about “the first of us”? On the first watch, I thought Jarvis and Vision were talking about Original Vision, but while he felt strong emotions, he wasn’t unstable or destructive.