“What is grief, if not love persevering?”

~ Vision, to Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision, Episode 8.

Paul Bettany reprises his role as the synthezoid Vision in VisionQuest , the third and final entry in the trilogy of MCU shows that began with WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along, finally coming to its conclusion five years after it began – though, to be fair, the story of Vision and Wanda Maximoff goes back to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and hit a pretty major turning point in Avengers: Infinity War.

In many ways, Vision’s story is the most fascinating and philosophically coherent arc in the entire MCU. Vision has died and been reborn more than once, and in more than one body. This is not exactly uncommon in comic book stories, which have their fair share of resurrections. But Vision’s story goes deeper. Marvel is telling a story about impermanence in a universe where almost nothing is allowed to remain impermanent. We’ll come back to this in a minute. Spoilers ahead.

A Brief Recap Of What Came Before

Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision first meet in Age of Ultron and their bond continues to grow in Captain America: Civil War . In Infinity War, the pair have moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to live in peace. This is where Thanos’s Black Order finds them. Ultimately, Wanda kills Vision at his behest since she has the power to destroy the Mind Stone and stop Thanos and his genocidal plans. Unfortunately, Thanos reverses time with the Time Stone and retrieves the Mind Stone, killing Vision a second time.

In WandaVision , Wanda, overcome by grief and loss, uses her witchy hex powers to take over the entire town of Westview and create a perfect world for her perfect fake family. She resurrects a version of Vision in this fantasy, takes over the minds and will of everyone in the town (except their neighbor, Agatha, who turns out to be another witch). Wanda even creates children, Tommy and Billy, who grow up in the sitcom world Wanda creates, aging far too fast.

Meanwhile, S.W.O.R.D. builds White Vision and uses some of Wanda’s magic to power him. They send White Vision into Westview to take out Wanda and Vision and he and Hex Vision fight. Ultimately, Hex Vision tells White Vision the story of the Ship of Theseus. The story goes that the Athenians kept fixing Theseus’s ship over the centuries, replacing it with new pieces to preserve it and honor their hero’s legacy. But, if all the pieces have been replaced, is it still the same ship? Or perhaps, Vision posits, it is the rot that matters most. The rot that is the experience, the memories, the wear and tear of life.

He restores White Vision’s memories and the two part. Hex Vision doesn’t survive the end of Wanda’s spell, but White Vision does and it is this Vision who we come to now, in VisionQuest. But we’re not quite done recapping what came before.

In Agatha All Along , Agatha and a coven of witches go on an adventure down “The Witch’s Road” but not all is as it seems. The mysterious “teen” they bring with them turns out to be Billy, Wanda and Vision’s son. Only, he isn’t in the same body since he and Tommy weren’t real. His spirit, however, transferred into the body of William Kaplan, another boy who dies and becomes Billy Maximoff – sort of. He struggles to recall either life clearly at first, only realizing his true nature toward the end of the show. He also eventually gets Billy’s powers (Billy is Wiccan in the comics).

Billy (Joe Locke) and Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) find Tommy’s spirit and when Billy has a vision of a boy being drowned, he is able to transfer his twin’s spirit into that teenager’s body. “Am I killing this boy to save my brother?” he asks Agatha. In the end, he saves both, though we don’t learn that for sure until VisionQuest .

And so, throughout each of these films and shows, we continually return to these same questions of identity, rebirth and what it means if the ship has all its pieces replaced. Who is Billy? Who is Tommy? Who is this Vision we come to now, in his very own TV show?

Vision And The Mind Castle

VisionQuest picks up sometime after the events of the previous two shows. White Vision is on a quest to understand both humanity and the real Vision who he feels so drawn to but so distant from all at once. He spends his days in a pub where he and Wanda once spent time together. At night, he sleeps in an abandoned electronics store. He’s created a mind castle and occupied it with other programs.

J.A.R.V.I.S. is here, one of the oldest AIs in the MCU. As with the series Agent Carter, he is not merely a voice, but also a body. James D’Arcy reprises the role – though in Agent Carter he was still an actual person, Edwin Jarvis, before Tony Stark modeled his AI after him. The AI J.A.R.V.I.S. we first meet was originally voiced by Paul Bettany.

We also have E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) and F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) and, most importantly, Ultron himself (played by a truly marvelous James Spader). Ultron, like the rest of the programs in Vision’s mind castle, is made to take human form, and so we get a bearded, bespectacled human version for the most part. He is locked in the attic, too dangerous to let roam free.

The mind castle segments are delightful, but especially the banter between Ultron and Vision. We’ll come back to this.

Meet Tommy Shepherd aka Tommy Maximoff

Of course, we don’t only follow Vision. We’re also introduced to Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica), a young Scottish grifter who spends his days conning people with the help of his pickpocket friend, a girl he met on a bus to a mental institution.

They escaped the bus and have been on the run ever since, fending for themselves. We learn that he was on that bus because a group of boys drowned him, and when he came to he had all these other memories. Memories of Westview and Wanda, a man with a red, demon’s face and kind eyes. As you can see, this is picking up directly where Agatha All Along left off. A foster kid with no family, the system threw him into an even deeper, darker corner of the system once he apparently went crazy.

Meanwhile, Vision thinks he’s been forgotten by the world and by the Avengers, but someone is hunting him. By the end of the second episode, we don’t know who that is, only that whoever it is has hired Paladin (Todd Stashwick) to capture Vision. Paladin, who is actually just one in a long line of superhero bounty hunters, is good at his job. He tracks down Tommy and captures him, taking him to the mental institution and setting a trap for Vision. Vision tells him that he’s made a mistake: He’s not the Vision Wanda loved, and he has no feelings for the boy whatsoever. No feelings at all. For all his attempts to study humankind, he still refuses to believe he’s the same as the original Vision.

Ultron, who takes on an almost father figure role in this series, pushes back on this. He brings up the Ship of Theseus question again, and Vision acknowledges it as a very important philosophical question. Nonsense! Ultron counters. It’s not the right question at all. Theseus, he tells Vision, sailed on the ship to Crete to save children from the Minotaur. “When a monster has your son,” he says, “Don’t be the ship. Be the goddamn king!”

It’s a great full circle moment, going back not only to Hex Vision and White Vision’s conversation in WandaVision , but to Vision and Ultron’s final conversation in Age of Ultron .

There, Ultron tells Vision that humanity is the source of its own destruction. “They’re all doomed,” he says, to which Vision replies, “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.”

The irony, of course, is that Vision keeps coming back, keeps wrestling with this sense of identity and purpose. In WandaVision, the question of the Ship of Theseus was a perfect framing device for these different iterations and resurrections of Vision. But VisionQuest takes it a step further. It is not merely the pieces of the ship that matter, but the choices you make. Vision can choose to abandon Tommy because he’s not his father, or doesn’t believe he is. Or he can be Theseus and go save Tommy from the Minotaur (or the Paladin, as the case may be).

So he goes. He battles his way to the room where Paladin is holding Tommy, easily fighting through the ambush, only to find himself trapped in an EMP cage. His systems nearly fail before Tommy helps him escape, but Paladin is waiting on the other side with a shotgun filled with adamantium rounds, strong enough to blast holes in Vision’s vibranium armor.

Fortunately, those rounds run out, and Tommy helps Vision flee the asylum. Outside, he tells Tommy to leave him and save himself. Tommy, after protesting, runs off. Ultron is there, in Vision’s vision. They talk, and Ultron visits the programs in Vision’s quickly fading mind castle. “If ever there was a time for noble sacrifice, now is it,” he says, not volunteering. Alas, it’s J.A.R.V.I.S. who sacrifices himself, redirecting his processing power to Vision and his other programs. This gives him enough oomph to not die. Tommy returns with an old car and helps load Vision in and the two drive off, Paladin and his goons in pursuit.

As a huge fan of WandaVision and, to a lesser extent, Agatha All Along (which had its missteps but really stuck the landing) I’m thrilled to be back in this corner of the MCU. Along with Loki and Wonder Man , these are my favorite MCU shows, and Paul Bettany and James Spader and the rest of the cast are excellent here. I love this entire arc.

Superheroes coming back to life is so common, especially with the multiverse taking over so many storylines, but Vision’s arc treats it as a real philosophical struggle rather than a cheap retcon. In a cinematic universe where death has become increasingly meaningless, VisionQuest searches for meaning in resurrection and doesn’t give viewers or Vision any easy answers.

WandaVision asked, "Can love survive after death?" and answered, “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Agatha All Along took the Ship of Theseus question and extended it to Billy and Tommy, who are brought back to life in the bodies – and the minds/souls – of others. Who are they now that they’ve been rebuilt, remade, reborn?

And VisionQuest takes us one step further, with Ultron telling Vision to forget the ship altogether. It’s not about philosophical thought experiments. What we choose is what defines us. Our choices, our actions, our deeds. Vision told Ultron that a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts, and now Ultron is telling Vision that his identity is more than what he was programmed to be. A person can change.

And what is change, if not impermanence persevering?

Of course, we’re only discussing the first two episodes in this review, so anything could happen. We have six more episodes to see if this level of quality continues, but new showrunner Terry Matalas has done a terrific job following in Jac Schaeffer’s footsteps.

Either way, it’s off to a strong start, and that’s good for Marvel and for Marvel fans. I wasn’t at all happy with DC’s latest series, Lanterns , so I’m happy to have a new superhero show that I can actually enjoy.

What did you think of the first two episodes of VisionQuest? Let me know on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook . Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog . Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.