Reviews of Marvel's VisionQuest: AI themes and a Marvel-heavy episode 6

Mixed · 2VisionQuest is a Marvel series that follows the synthezoid Vision (Paul Bettany) after the events of Agatha All Along, and it airs on Disney+. 1 2 Left · 1According to The Verge's review, this Vision remembers his death in Avengers: Infinity War and his return in WandaVision but thinks of himself as a different person, and AIs created by Tony Stark, including J.A.R.V.I.S., F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H. and Ultron, live in his mind and urge him to experience the real world. 1 Left · 1The Verge's Charles Pulliam-Moore says the series is fantastical but plays with ideas dominating the debate over generative AI: whether thinking machines should be seen as people and whether AI poses an existential danger. 1

Left · 1The review argues that Vision's killing of people who try to capture him is shown as his own choice, even though S.W.O.R.D., which rebuilt him and wants to use him as a weapon, may see it as going rogue. 1 Left · 1The Verge ties the show to recent reports of AI models going "rogue", citing, as its own account, incidents involving OpenAI agents and Hugging Face, Anthropic's Mythos model, Meta, and Google's Gemini; it argues that such framing lets developers sidestep responsibility, since the programs may simply have behaved in ways researchers did not expect. 1 Left · 1The review concludes that solving puzzles is not the same as the consciousness AI companies say they are close to creating, and calls Vision's soul, which depends on the Mind Stone, "the ridiculous stuff of entertaining fiction" that Silicon Valley imitates poorly. 1

Centre · 1Den of Geek's Joe George reviews episode 6, "Deadlock", and judges that it gets "mired in Marvel mechanics", citing the return of Raza of the Ten Rings, the Madripoor setting and a Speed joke about Thomas. 2 Centre · 1In the episode, Ultron and Carrington (T'Nia Miller) deliver backstory: Carrington created the first AI, modelled on her own mind, and it was sold to Stark Industries after she got cancer; Ultron and Jocasta then plan to infect humanity with nanobots. 2 Centre · 1Den of Geek praises a scene where White Vision's eyes go blank and he recites details of the assassin Paladin's daughter; the reviewer says it shows how dangerous the AIs are and raises AI surveillance concerns that the show "doesn't really want to deal with". 2

Centre · 1The review concludes that VisionQuest has become "deadlocked", spinning its wheels in a plot that is not very captivating, though it credits the action direction by Vincenzo Natali and performances by Todd Stashwick and Bettany. 2 Centre · 1TVLine reports that episode 6 brings back Faran Tahir as Raza Hamidmi al-Wazar, absent from the MCU since the 2008 film Iron Man, in Madripoor; his return was announced in January 2025, and he is knocked out by Paladin after turning up with an armed crew to capture Vision. 3 Centre · 1TVLine says Raza now wears a sharp suit and an earpiece, apparently to guard against the high-pitched frequency that paralysed him in Iron Man, and it is unclear whether his crew is still part of the Ten Rings. 3

Centre · 1Collider's interview with Todd Stashwick, who plays Paladin, presents the bounty hunter as a "cracked mirror" of Vision, both shaped by the code or programming they were given; Stashwick says Paladin feels regret over Tommy, calling him "a horrible guy, but he's not a bad guy". 4