If the embed above goes dark, the episode can be found on YouTube here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlO_TW2_Ca8
Marvel has put the entire first episode of VisionQuest, “No Strings”, up on its YouTube channel for nothing, which is generous, and also faintly comic in its timing. The eight-part Disney+ series started on 14 October and its finale arrives this very week, so the free sample has turned up at roughly the moment the rest of the box of chocolates has been eaten. Still, it is the oldest trick in the dealer’s room, and Marvel has form: the first three episodes of WandaVision went up on YouTube a fortnight before VisionQuest premiered, and Wonder Man got the same treatment. The theory is that one free hit of Paul Bettany pulling pints will have you fumbling for your Disney+ password.
And pull pints he does. The Vision in question is the white one, rebuilt by S.W.O.R.D. and carrying his predecessor’s memories around like inherited furniture he is not sure he likes. He is now living in Edinburgh and working at a local bar, which shows either remarkable forgiveness or a very good rental deal, given that the last time Vision visited the Scottish capital, in Avengers: Infinity War, Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight did their best to turn him into a kebab near Waverley station.
Marvel’s own synopsis has him isolated and struggling with his identity and the complexity of human relationships, which is fair enough; plenty of Edinburgh bar staff would say the same by the end of the Festival. When it all gets too much, he retreats to his home in his “Mindspace”, a sort of interior flatshare populated by the retired software of Stark Industries: J.A.R.V.I.S., E.D.I.T.H., F.R.I.D.A.Y., the robot arms DUM-E and U, and James Spader’s Ultron. Quite how DUM-E was ever trusted with a fire extinguisher again remains unexplained, but the real problem lodger is obvious. Few people would knowingly take a room in a house where the bloke upstairs once tried to drop a Sokovian city on the planet from a great height.
That episode title, incidentally, is a knowing nod to the Pinocchio song Ultron crooned so menacingly in Age of Ultron. A puppet who wants to be a real boy is not exactly subtext where Vision is concerned; it is more or less his job description.
His peaceful existence, the blurb continues, is interrupted when a bounty is placed on his head. It is a head with a long history of people wanting to remove things from it, so this hardly counts as breaking news. Todd Stashwick’s mercenary Paladin is the cast-list name most likely to be cashing that cheque, and showrunner Terry Matalas, who worked with Stashwick on both 12 Monkeys and the third season of Star Trek: Picard, clearly knows exactly how to deploy a man who looks permanently mid-grievance. Meanwhile, a mysterious grifter called Tommy Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica) is troubled by disturbing memories of Westview, which for anybody who sat through WandaVision is the most ominous phrase available, short of “and now a word from our sponsors”.
The critics were broadly kind when the opening pair of episodes arrived last month, finding the premiere a confident, slightly odd and rather melancholy start, light on the usual sky-beams and heavy on a robot quietly wondering why he cannot get the hang of people. Here at SFcrowsnest, we have a soft spot for that sort of thing. It is the Pinocchio question reheated for the streaming age, and Bettany has always been best when Vision is at his most courteous and least certain.
The upshot is that anybody who has been holding out can now watch the first hour gratis, and if it takes, the entire season is sitting there waiting to be binged in one sitting, which, let’s be honest, is how most people watch these things anyway. Vision would have worked all this out in a nanosecond. The rest of us get to find out over eight episodes and a monthly direct debit.
Join the conversation (0)