VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas has revealed the two MCU scenes that inspired the Disney Plus show – as well as Kevin Feige’s one mandate.
The show brings back Paul Bettany’s Vision after the events of WandaVision, which saw Wanda bring the synthezoid back from the dead in her magical Hex. In the end, she brought down the Hex, but White Vision escaped with all of the regular Vision’s memories.
“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,” Matalas told Polygon.
The Ship of Theseus scene is a discussion between Hex Vision and White Vision, in which the Hex version explains the philosophical issue of the ship: if all of its parts are replaced over time, is it still the same ship? This applies to White Vision in the new show, since he has regular Vision’s memories, but he is a separate creation.
The last scene of Age of Ultron sees Vision destroy the last of the Ultron robots, after the two have a brief conversation on the nature of humanity. Vision is far more optimistic than Ultron, who brands the synthezoid “naive.” James Spader’s Ultron will be returning in VisionQuest.
As for Feige’s mandate, it was surprisingly simple. “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,” Matalas explained.
“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.'”
Vision’s son, Tommy Shepherd, will be played by Ruaridh Mollica in the show. Billy Maximoff, meanwhile, appeared in Agatha All Along, played by Joe Locke.
VisionQuest arrives this October 14. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows for everything else that’s on the way.