'VisionQuest' review: Paul Bettany and James Spader elevate the sometimes animated, sometimes boring Marvel spin-off from Disney Plus.

The sequel to "WandaVision" finds the hero's synthzoid sleeping until a bounty hunter comes after him, forcing him to escape by reincarnating his faster son.

VisionQuest opens with a memory lane. It really kind of has to. The latest Disney+ drama is a spinoff to a spinoff, picking up an 11-year-old story that has grown almost incomprehensibly even by the multifaceted standards of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fans who have followed the story since day one would probably still welcome a refresher.

The problem is what follows, which is yet more trips down memory lane, branching off in every direction to delve deeper and deeper into the past. When VisionQuest lets itself play, it can be downright impressive, with Paul Bettany's performance extracting new layers from the character he's inhabited for more than a decade, and James Spader's character making better use of his intelligent charm than he introduced in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron. But even as the characters think long and hard about the virtue of putting themselves out there, their series often retreats inward.

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Actors: Paul Bettany, James Spader, Royaid Mullica, Tina Miller, Todd Stashwick, James Darcy, Emily Hampshire, Orla Bradley, Lauren Morais, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sawyer, Diane Morgan

As the series finds the Vision (Bethany) - someone who isn't the sentient synthzoid who died in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, nor the one who starred in the WandaVision 2021 sitcom episodes, but the blank version that was introduced in the non-sitcom episodes of WandaVision, but then installed with the memories of one of the WandaVision sitcom episodes, it's confusing if you're lurking around all of that. It is that he too. Anyway, he was lying down and passing as a regular barman in Edinburgh.

It's a quiet life, but one that allows him to think about his two main concerns. One is mankind and our confusing and opposite ways. The other is his being. This Vision can access his predecessor's memories, but cannot fully feel them, which makes him feel frustrated and humiliated.

His loneliness is mitigated somewhat by another AI he's uploaded into his mental space, envisioned by creator Terry Matalas (Syfy's 12 Monkeys ) as a large white house on a purposefully digital green lawn. These include J.A.R.V.I.S. (Brian Darcy), a fraternity butler who runs security. F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), which offers social cues such as "You smiled, which is good, but too much, which is bad." and Ultron (Spudder), the megalomaniacal Vision imprisoned in part for emotional reasons. (By the way, he is Vision's father.)

But Vision's peace is shattered when he is pursued by Paladin (Todd Stashwick), an elite assassin whose employment may or may not be linked to a serial killer known as "The Butcher." One thing leads to another, and soon Vision finds himself on the run with Thomas (Ruarid Mollica), an 18-year-old man who is actually the reincarnation of his super-fast son with his late witch wife Wanda.

VisionQuest is more effective as a story about a long-lost father and son finding their way back to each other through impossible circumstances. Mollica brings Thomas the disarming innocence of a young man who wants to know better than he hopes, but still can't help himself. Bethany is hilariously confused, in the way parents everywhere are with teenagers, and painfully kind, in the more unusual way a robot allows itself to feel overwhelmed for the first time.

The chemistry between them is strong enough to reveal the depths that come with a narrative that only has so much time for the emotional nuances of finding the magical father/son robot you thought couldn't exist, but standing right in front of you, begging for a hug.

More surprisingly, VisionQuest's second most effective mode is as a love story. A major subplot involves Ultron's flirtation with a like-minded synthetic named Jocasta (T'Nia Miller), the potential ramifications of which are both strikingly apocalyptic and thoroughly textbook in the Marvel formula. But Miller and Spider (who are mostly allowed to look like themselves, rather than a CG piece of metal) are really fun to watch. Over simulated glasses of whiskey, they growl about how "a romance between you and me takes its toll." ("One can only hope that we are both at the same time," comes the reply.)

The sparks between them are serious in a way that Marvel rarely allows itself — albeit still PG in practice — and it's strangely moving as their mutual interest deepens beyond plans for world domination.

All that to say: this show is at its best when it focuses solely on its main characters and sits on the dynamic between them. But VisionQuest has other things in mind, and very few ideas for how to discover them.

Vision's identity crisis is mirrored and mirrored by almost all the characters around him, which makes sense when Thomas has panic attacks caused by memories of his childhood that logically can't be real (even though they really are magic). When we learn for no apparent reason that Paladin also had a hard time growing up, or Vision's entertaining AI E.D.I.T.H., it feels unnecessary. (Emily Hampshire) was based on a woman we've never heard of and have no reason to care about.

It gets downright boring when it turns out that half of these sad backgrounds have their own sad backgrounds. In VisionQuest, there is always a lower level in the basement of generational trauma.

All in all, a good chunk of the season's eight hours is spent on people just...explaining things. Sometimes, VisionQuest does this in a clever way, like a late sequence that borrows from WandaVision's comedic language. But often, it's just characters sitting around telling their origin stories, having their origin stories told to them, and reflecting on what their origin stories mean to each other. Sometimes, for a change of pace, they're diverted into boring flashbacks, or literally just watching WandaVision clips.

Apparently, all this soul-searching is in order for Vision to finally start living the life he previously only played in the palace theater of his mind—to try new things, make new friends, open himself up to joy and love and the pain that can come with them. Instead, I found myself wanting to lean into dear Vision Shirin to gently suggest that she try to step out of her own airless space and touch some non-digital grass.

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