{"id":802773,"date":"2026-10-14T22:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802773\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T22:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:34:11","slug":"visionquest-review-sometimes-fun-overly-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802773\/","title":{"rendered":"VisionQuest review \u2014 ‘sometimes fun, overly complicated’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now trying to live quietly in Scotland, artificial life form Vision (Paul Bettany) starts being hunted in both the real and digital worlds.<\/p>\n

Streaming on: Disney+<\/p>\n

Episodes viewed: 8 of 8<\/p>\n

After five years and many other shows, Marvel returns to its original, and arguably best, small-screen project. 2021\u2019s WandaVision<\/a> was the studio\u2019s most ambitious swing, putting Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her supposedly dead love, Vision (Paul Bettany), in a surreal sitcom world, created by Wanda to avoid processing her own grief. VisionQuest<\/a> picks up the title character\u2019s solo story in a sometimes fun, overly complicated off-shoot that lacks its progenitor\u2019s light touch.<\/p>\n

\"VisionQuest\"<\/p>\n

After the loss of Wanda and his two fictional children, Vision is now working in a pub in Scotland, hoping not to attract attention. He lives a rich internal life, literally. In his digital mind, Vision shares a big house with other artificial entities from the MCU, including J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D\u2019Arcy), F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) and, perhaps unwisely, his creator, Ultron (James Spader). Despite possessing the sum of all human knowledge, Vision is still working out who he is, a question further complicated when he meets Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica), who claims to be his child, one who cannot logically exist. Over eight episodes, Vision tries to answer his questions of identity while, naturally, being hunted by mysterious forces.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit \u2018Doctor Who does The Matrix Reloaded\u2019<\/p>\n

In tone, it\u2019s a bit \u2018Doctor Who<\/a> does The Matrix Reloaded<\/a>\u2019, with a mix of goofy sci-fi and head-scratching philosophy about the blurry lines between man and machine. It\u2019s best when just playing with the characters, letting the various AIs bicker, or having Vision and possible son try to connect, a dynamic made extra-awkward by one being a machine. The cast is excellent, particularly Bettany, now very settled in Vision\u2019s underplayed humour and emotion, and James Spader as Ultron, being deliciously mean to everyone. The plot, sadly, can be a slog, taking a convoluted path to places that aren\u2019t necessarily surprising.<\/p>\n

VisionQuest exemplifies something that\u2019s become tricky for the larger Marvel franchise, which sometimes treats plot like a memory quiz, testing how much you\u2019ve been paying attention over the years. This plucks from across the MCU, all the way back to Iron Man<\/a>, in a way that\u2019s quite clever in its tying together of disparate elements, and might be thrilling to dedicated fans, but is verging on hostile to the casual viewer. If you watched WandaVision, the Avengers<\/a> movies and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness<\/a>, you should be fine, though if you didn\u2019t bother with, say, Agatha All Along<\/a>, certain key moments won\u2019t land. All the elements for a great time are here \u2014 if only it were less of a test of who\u2019s done their homework.<\/p>\n

It ties the story up in a slightly messy knot rather than a neat bow, but VisionQuest feels like a fitting enough conclusion for one of the MCU’s most beloved characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now trying to live quietly in Scotland, artificial life form Vision (Paul Bettany) starts being hunted in both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-802773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}