All over VisionQuestVision drew a line between his current self and his past self; Vision vs. the Vision, the former built from the pieces of the latter, with access to his memories but not his feelings.
“The Vision had a unique advantage,” Vision tells Thomas in the fourth episode. “An otherworldly source of power that helped him navigate the complexities of mind and heart.” The text of that conversation is that Vision responds to Thomas’s question about why Vision didn’t end up like JIM, the world’s first synthetic humanoid, whose inability to process complex emotions caused his clockwork to turn and turn until he was engulfed in flames. But the subtext is that he is also talking about the advantage his past self had over his current self. The vision had the Mind Stone. Vision not. The internal friction caused by this discrepancy of wanting to remember but not yet feeling desperate builds up. How long will it be until Vision also sets himself aflame?
Episode seven, “Immolation,” answers that question.
VisionQuest did a lot of interesting thematic work that sometimes felt too disconnected from its plot, testing the limits of its Marvel Cinematic Universe box with its internal meditations on humanity, identity and what it means to be alive. The more conventional MCU aspects of his story did an admirable job of reinforcing his philosophical leanings, but it wasn’t always easy. “Immolation” continues this uneasy alliance, essentially putting the external plot on hold while Vision gets his shit together.
“Immolation” begins with a flashback to the year 1939. In a massive estate, Dr. Phineas Horton (played by Paul Bettany) cuts a robot. He builds JIM, an exercise in grief over the loss of his real son, James. His wife, fed up with his withdrawal from reality, leaves him, telling him as she goes that she hopes one day he will be able to build something that will love him back. But that is the opposite of what Phineas wants. “Your heart will be built of metal and movement,” he tells JIM “Fueled by fire. And you’ll never have to know the consequence of love. Its grief, the pain of crying for someone who can no longer hear you. You’ll be free, my son. You’ll be free.” For Phineas, the weight of grief is too heavy to bear, so he tries to create a being that is devoid of emotion.
Back in the present, Vision and Thomas try to figure out what to do about Lisa. The nanos have fused with their neural network so they can’t just remove them. They have to reprogram them instead, and for that they need the source code. Meanwhile, Jocasta and Ultron are voiced in their attempt to open the vault that holds the rest of their nanos. There is a password that Jocasta cannot remember, tied to a person that she cannot remember either.
The client has a solution to both of his problems: they can help Vision and Jocasta find the answers they need – which of course are locked away in their subconscious – in exchange for them joining the client. That sends them both off to do some deep-sea code diving.
In Jocasta’s case, she got the address of a loft in Brooklyn that looks a lot like the attic where Vision locked Ultron in his mindspace. There she realizes that she was part of a research duo, but she can’t remember who her partner was. Ultron also has a sneaky side conversation with FRIDAY, in which he manages to convince her that he is actually still on Vision’s side.
In Vision’s case, the client promised that the source code could save both Vision and Lisa, but it’s the prospect of saving Lisa that gets him to agree. Thomas loves her after all, and even though he’s still not sure what his relationship with Thomas is, or what he even wants it to be, he knows somewhere in him that helping Thomas and Lisa is the right thing to do. The Paladin delivers Vision to the spear Corvus Glaive, which was used to impale him Avengers: Infinity War to use as an energy source, because sorting through its code will take a lot of energy.
Vision’s journey into his subconscious takes the form of three major conversations, each of which leads him to a truth he’s been running from throughout the season. First he sees Ultron, who implies that Thomas is Vision’s son, punishing him. Then see the vision the Vision, his former self, who calls him out for being a coward who consistently runs away from his problems instead of dealing with them. And, finally, he sees JIM (also played by Paul Bettany) and Phineas, whose strained father-son relationship hits uncomfortably close to home. Phineas deliberately designed JIM without emotion, but JIM wanted to be able to feel more than anything, and he shook his creator so deeply that the fire that consumed him consumed Phineas as well.
However, even when Vision is faced with a scene in which he sees his relationship with Thomas – and his relationship with Ultron – reflected, he still can’t help but try to get away.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Vision tells JIM
“He wasn’t my father,” JIM responds. “But he was my something.”
Tragically, but, ahem, Vision really needs that source code, so could JIM possibly point him in the right direction so he can continue running away from his problems? He is on a deadline, after all.
JIM tells him that the answer lies in vision. “But where, oh, where is the vision?” he speaks.
Suddenly there is nowhere left for Vision to run. His resolve shattered; he admits that Thomas is his son, that he feels unimaginable grief over the loss of Billy, Tommy and Wanda – and that he and the vision are one and the same. “I am the vision. I was always the vision. There’s only one, and I’m him,” Vision says. It turns out that when the client said he was going to give Vision a heart, he just meant Vision would find it within himself because it was there all along.
In the real world, Vision transfers the source code to Lisa just as she begins to limp, saving her life. And he holds up his end of the bargain, opening to surrender to the client, who we now know is Jocasta’s research partner. The departure point is Phineas Horton’s estate, where James Spader, sporting a funny mustache instead of Ultron’s bushy beard, emerges from the shadows. Clearly, Ultron is based on who this is.
Back in the fourth episode, when Vision and Thomas were talking about JIM, Vision said that JIM died because he lacked a Mind Stone. Thomas, however, has a different opinion. It wasn’t a Mind Stone that JIM was missing. It was a family.
New episodes of VisionQuest coming to Disney+ on Tuesdays.
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