VisionQuest’s London première puts Vision’s identity crisis in focus
Paul Bettany, James Spader and Terry Matalas attended the BFI IMAX première of a series that puts Vision on the run — alongside a boy who could be his son.
The short answer: Paul Bettany, James Spader and Terry Matalas attended the BFI IMAX première of a series that puts Vision on the run — alongside a boy who could be his son.
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Paul Bettany, James Spader and showrunner Terry Matalas attended VisionQuest’s UK première at London’s BFI IMAX. The series gives Vision a challenge that rebuilding his body could not resolve: deciding who he wants to become.
The event was the official Empire Presentation at the 70th BFI London Film Festival, with Empire’s Chris Hewitt introducing the first two episodes. Cast members including Ruaridh Mollica, Emily Hampshire and James D’Arcy attended, alongside special guest Joe Locke.
Memories are only the beginning
For viewers who followed WandaVision, the starting point is Vision’s unresolved departure. S.W.O.R.D. rebuilt him as a weapon, but his Westview counterpart restored his memories before the white synthezoid flew away. Recovering those memories did not settle who he was. VisionQuest follows that rebuilt being as he tries to make a life among humans.
His hiding place is initially an Edinburgh pub, where he works while trying to understand memories that do not quite feel like his own. The Disney+ series concludes the trilogy begun by WandaVision in 2021 and continued by Agatha All Along in 2024, but its immediate concern is personal: how to turn recovered memories into an identity.
Ultron, inside his head
Vision has company in that search. The AI personalities embedded in his programming include F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H. and J.A.R.V.I.S., played by Orla Brady, Emily Hampshire and James D’Arcy. Hampshire described their roles to D23 in human terms: F.R.I.D.A.Y. represents socialisation, J.A.R.V.I.S. security, and E.D.I.T.H. a hunger for experience. There is also Spader’s Ultron — hardly a reassuring guide for someone deciding what sort of being he wants to be.
Matalas told D23 that the idea grew from wanting to extend Vision and Ultron’s final exchange in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Rather than simply bringing back an adversary, he made that uneasy relationship part of Vision’s inner life, with Ultron serving as a father figure.
This is a story of a guy going through an identity crisis, and when you go through that, you spend a lot of time in your own head. Terry Matalas, speaking to D23
Bettany described the approach to D23 through two familiar stories: Pinocchio’s wish to become human and Frankenstein’s questions about creation, purpose and morality. For him, bringing Ultron back also makes it a story about fathers, sons and damage passed between generations through corrupted files.
A possible son, a new pursuit
A bounty ends Vision’s discreet existence and sends him on the run with Thomas Shepard, played by Mollica. The boy could be his reincarnated son. Both are trying to understand their connection, turning the escape story into something more intimate: Vision must resist Ultron’s influence while facing the possibility that he, too, might be a father.
There is continuity behind the camera as well. Jac Schaeffer, creator and showrunner of WandaVision and Agatha All Along, remains an executive producer. Matalas told TheWrap that their early conversation gave him room to take the story forward on his own terms. He described Schaeffer’s decision to leave him a creative blank canvas as generous — a handover that links the trilogy while allowing its final chapter a different approach.
For Bettany, the search for belonging reaches beyond the fiction. Speaking to Extra, he said meeting young fans had helped him understand who Vision was for: people in the midst of self-discovery, especially those who feel like outsiders. He connected that audience to his own memories of being bullied at school and not knowing where he would fit in.