This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episode 5.
Throughout Avengers: Age of Ultron, the titular evil super robot sang a creepy version of a Pinocchio song, crooning, “I had strings, but now I’m free.” Ultron repeats that song at the end of VisionQuest‘s fifth episode, “Firewall,” when he convinces Vision to give over control of White Vision’s body. But even before he gets to take White Vision’s body for a drive, Ultron sure seems free of strings.
The AI scenes have been the trickiest part throughout the first half of VisionQuest, as the broad humor and CGI Mindspace fell flat, despite the compelling performances. So while Ultron never felt like a giant homicidal robot when he appeared in the form of a bearded, avuncular James Spader, we weren’t going to complain about the chance to watch a bearded, avuncular James Spader be charming. By taking over Vision’s body, playing mind games with Thomas, and forming alliances with Paladin and the Butcherbird Killer, Ultron reestablishes himself as a proper Marvel villain.
Most of “Firewall” finds Vision and his team trapped within the Mindspace, trying to retrace the steps that Ultron has taken in White Vision’s body. First, Ultron takes Thomas to a pub, where he prods the boy’s feelings about his synthazoid father. Next, he contacts Paladin to give the bounty hunter Thomas’ location. Then, he meets with the Butcherbird Killer to forge an alliance, before finally leaving White Vision’s body on a plane headed to Madripoor, the third-world underbelly of the Marvel Universe.
Once again, we’re in television genre territory, and the success of the episode’s plot mechanics depends entirely one one’s taste for CSI, Bones, and other such forensic shows. Much of Vision’s scenes involve him staring at screens and telling the AIs to zoom and enhance and rewind. The procedural signifiers are, of course, representations of supercomputer functions, not actual real things that real people are doing. But even with that allowance, they feel rote, completely disconnected to anything real. As a result, it’s hard to care that much about the actual plot of “Firewall.”
Now that we know that the Butcherbird Killer is a synthetic copy of Carrington, and that she’s seeking keys for something, in revenge for the life stolen from her. Those “keys” were the faces of the various members of the AI project with whom Carrington worked, faces that she copied as the Butcherbird Killer before offing her former colleagues. But since Ultron made a copy of Katerina Wells’s face and then killed her before Butcherbird could take it, he has a certain amount of control over the synth. Moreover, the information gives Ultron influence over Vision, who reluctantly removes the firewalls that keep Ultron from the internet.
Despite all the familiar tropes and concerned looks that Vision and the AIs exchange with one another, despite the fact that Ultron’s escape angers F.R.I.D.A.Y. so much that she abandons the Mindspace, it’s all a bit blurry. What do the keys unlock? What can Butcherbird do with them? What can Ultron do with them? It’s unclear.
Yet, the pleasures of the episode aren’t in the plot. Rather, they’re in Spader’s performance, now grounded by Ultron’s re-embrace of villainy. For all that the other AIs would shudder at his presence, for his occasional comments about killing all humanity, the Ultron of the first half felt like a wacky neighbor in a sitcom, more Kramer than Lex Luthor. Without tracks to follow, Spader seemed to do whatever popped into his head, which was fun to watch, but not particularly compelling on a dramatic or even comedic level.
“Firewall” doesn’t completely cure the show of that problem. A sequence set inside Ultron’s own Mindscape, in which Spader plays different parts of the synth’s identity, plays at best like Inside Out 3. But for the most part, Ultron has returned to open malevolency, which allows Spader to ground even his most charming line deliveries in menace. Every smile, every understanding wink reveals itself to be a manipulation technique, even if we don’t quite understand Ultron’s end goal.
Nowhere is that more clear than when Ultron romances the Butcherbird Killer (who still doesn’t have her name from the comics yet). Elegant and multifaceted, T’Nia Miller proves herself the perfect match the Spader. She can vamp effectively as Butcherbird and Ultron trade flirtations, and she can make villainous declarations with the best of the bad guys. But because Butcherbird claims to be the actual Josephine Carrington made synthetic, she retains levels of humanity that Spader doesn’t give to Ultron. A description about the taste and texture of brandy, brought up to taunt Ultron’s appreciation for human craft but lack of human taste buds, contains as much sadness as it does threat.
The AIs watching the sequence compare the romance to watching Hannibal Lecter flirt—an apt comparison, given that episode director Vincenzo Natali directed several episodes of the NBC series Hannibal, as well as the great indie horror movies Cube and Splice. In fact, much of VisionQuest has recalled that show, from the connection between charismatic killer and wounded investigator to the bird-themed murderers. Natali brings some of the visual acumen of that show to VisionQuest, making the scenes of Ultron’s interactions interesting to watch.
Each time Vision and the AIs trace Ultron’s location to a new spot, Spader and his scene partner appear on screen in black and white, while the AIs appear as colorized supporting players. The conceit makes the scenes feel like stage productions, complete with Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer carrying tables and chairs into frame, and then taking their place behind the bar to play bartenders at the same time that they’re playing D.U.M.-E and U.
With the artificiality even more heightened, one would expect Spader to go even broader and bigger than he had before. But instead, he’s more focused and frightening. The doddering old weirdo who offered a pleasurable distraction in the first half of the series is gone. In his place is an upgraded Ultron, someone who feels more dangerous precisely because he’s not a giant silver robot anymore. He’s now in human form and out in the world, all the scarier because he has no strings on him.
VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.
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