You'll Need 25 Hours To Complete The Homework For VisionQuest
Marvel's newest TV series is maybe the densest out of all of the Disney+ streaming shows.
Just like with Avengers: Endgame, there are a lot of moving parts at play in the MCU moving into Avengers: Doomsday. There are currently two separate teams of Avengers running around (one of which we haven’t even officially met yet); the Fantastic Four have just been introduced as the premier superhero team of a whole other dimension, and there’s now officially a Marvel multiverse wreaking havoc on canon itself. With all that going on and the threat of Doctor Doom looming in the distance, is there any wonder that certain plot threads feel like they haven’t been revisited?
One such plot is that of the Vision, a character we saw for the last time in live-action back during the 2021 series WandaVision. After he was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, the agency S.W.O.R.D. reclaimed Vision’s body for use as a weapon, while Wanda Maximoff created a manifestation of her former lover (as well as two children) in a small town named Westview – by the end of the show’s finale, the “Westview” Vision has ceased to exist, with the original Vision (having turned stark white due to S.W.O.R.D.’s reprogramming) leaving to rediscover himself after regaining all of his previous memories. Thankfully, it seems like Vision’s dangling thread isn’t being forgotten as the first two episodes of VisionQuest released this week, although to understand it requires a lot of MCU homework going in.
After Wanda’s magic manifestation of Vision ceased to exist, the original Vision has had yet to make his return to the MCU...until now.
What Do You Need To Watch Before VisionQuest?
Despite being a direct “sequel” of sorts to WandaVision, VisionQuest is surprisingly one of the more dense television projects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, referencing numerous prior films and TV shows, including, but not limited to:
- Iron Man (2008)
- Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- Iron Man 2 (2010)
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- WandaVision (2021)
- Agatha All Along (2024)
While there are a lot of projects in the MCU that are fairly easy to pick up without knowing all the previous context, VisionQuest is not one of those; it represents the culmination of a lot of different elements in the long-running franchise so far. All in all the homework necessary for VisionQuest amounts to about 25 hours of MCU content, not counting the eight episodes of the new show itself. Also being left out are two honorable mention projects that tangentially add context to aspects of the series: Agent Carter and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, two TV shows that would bring the total number of hours up to somewhere around 43.
Since debuting back in 2015, the Vision has been a major player in several key MCU events.
What Makes The VisionQuest Homework So Important?
We already know that part of VisionQuest will be exploring the history of artificial intelligence in the MCU, as well as exploring the real personalities that inspired them – this includes Jarvis (who was introduced in the original Iron Man as a nod to Howard Stark’s loyal butler) and Friday (the AI introduced in Age of Ultron after Jarvis was used as the base for Vision’s personality). On top of the history of AI, the Vision as a character began his journey way back in Age of Ultron and played a crucial role in several major MCU events before meeting his demise when Thanos ripped the Mind Stone out of his head in Infinity War. The WandaVision trilogy continues his story but also introduces Billy and Tommy Maximoff, twins who were created from scratch using Wanda’s chaos-magic powers but who actually gained physical bodies during the events of Agatha All Along.
While Marvel Studios has given no official confirmation that the Vision will be in Avengers: Doomsday, it’s not at all out of the question, especially considering the timing of him receiving a Disney+ series only two months before the film releases. It’s been almost six years since the character was last seen in the flesh (or his vibranium body), and it’s been eight since he was destroyed in Infinity War – for a character who was so relevant to the middle and final chapters of the MCU’s original Infinity Saga, it would be an awesome comeback for him to return to his superheroic self in time for the face-off with Doctor Doom.
