Like its hero, Marvel's 'VisionQuest' strives to make an emotional connection: TV review

In the "VisionQuest" episode, Vision (Paul Bettany) tries to help a British teenager named Tommy (Ruried Mullica) understand the exact nature of their relationship. The truth is something like this: The Vision is a recreated version of his former self who was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and then somehow brought back to him.

In the "VisionQuest" segment, the notorious android Vision (Paul Bettany) tries to help a British teenager named Tommy (Ruried Mollica) understand the exact nature of their relationship. The truth is something like this: The Vision is a recreated version of his former self, killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, and then his wife Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), a grieving witch, somehow relives the memories in 2021's "WandaVision." Tommy is an ordinary person suddenly imbued with the consciousness and abilities of a magically invented child Wanda, who survived the collapse of his mother's suburban simulation and crossed the pond in search of a host. RELATED STORIES 'Matchbox' stars Jessica Biel and John Cena New American Red Cross leader (EXCLUSIVE) Hugh Hefner's widow, Crystal Harris, asks Jessica Biel to 'please reconsider being her husband': 'I experienced sexual, emotional...physical abuse'.

Vision runs a simulation where he tries over and over again to condense all these stories and explain them to Tommy in a way that doesn't overwhelm him with anger and confusion. There is no version that doesn't end with Tommy storming out of the room. Popular in Variety

That's more or less what it feels like to watch "VisionQuest," an eight-episode Marvel Studios series intended as a sequel to "WandaVision." The show plays with some clever concepts, especially in its visual presentation; As the simulation scenarios pile up, so do the Vision clones until dozens of tired and angry Bettanys all collapse on the hotel floor. (Much of "VisionQuest" strips away the monochromatic veneer to show Vision as a normal human being, allowing Bethany to flex her edgy charm.) But the picture comes with so many complex stories and abstract concepts that "VisionQuest" ends up in the exact same predicament that Vision himself ultimately tries to tie together.

Artificial intelligence has long been a staple of comics and other forms of science fiction, but since real-life AI companies are serious about possible emotions, the Vision's preferred strategy for communicating his emotions takes a topical stance. He's created and/or formed a series of autonomous AIs—what we'd now call "agents," though creator Terry Matalas may have been overseeing scripts before that word fully entered the public lexicon—to help him with various tasks. There is F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), which helps decipher social interactions, and E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), who is a fan of fun. Mechanic D.U.M.-E. (Henry Lewis) and Yu (Jonathan Sawyer) tend to the more mundane tasks of preserving the shape of internal systems. Finally, there are more familiar faces from the early stages of the MCU: Tony Stark's old friend J.A.R.V.I.S. (James Darcy) is at hand. Most interestingly, so is Ultron (James Spader), the eponymous antagonist of the second Avengers film.

All these assistants take physical form in the so-called mental space of the Vision, a virtual and psychic plane that takes the form of a quaint Victorian mansion. Here, Ultron doesn't look like a menacing CGI robot, but the 66-year-old Spider himself: a wiry man with a flowing beard and trench coat whose menacing, mauve monologues ("I think your Greek tragedy has a dotagonist") are undermined by his appearance. To the show's credit, this Ultron is a pretty fun creation, allowing Spider to lend some of his cool air to a character who's still cynical, but a lot humbler than his supervillain days. Without access to the real world, Ultron must settle for being the villain on Vision's shoulder rather than an actor on his own.

When Mindspace intersects with said real world, "VisionQuest" becomes overcomplicated. Directors Christopher J. Byrne, Ganja Monteiro, and Vincenzo Natali — along with Matalas, who directs the final pair of episodes — revel in this shifting dimension: When a hostile android's neural network connects to the Vision's, the episode becomes a riff on possession and exorcism ("The power of the codes") and "The power of the code! The wheel, literally, is a ship's wheel being buffeted by stormy winds. But Since the AIs appear as an imaginary, invisible friend to Vision and speak for the others, "VisionQuest" never arrives at a consistent or legible way of delineating the relationship between the two realms or how events in one affect the material reality of the other.

The constant switching between mindspace and mindspace (sorry, that's where!) inevitably takes a toll on Tommy, who only exists in the latter. Even by the extraordinary standards of comic-based storytelling, Tommy's nature is bland — he's kind of another incarnation of Quicksilver, played by Evan Peters in "WandaVision," but isn't he? - Makes him a difficult character to map. That trying to make sense of the illogical fog of human emotion is the show's explicit theme only illuminates the problem rather than neutralizing it. As Vision questions what his purpose is without Wanda or the Avengers, so do we.

"VisionQuest" tries to balance such philosophical questions about consciousness (yes, the metaphor of the ship of Theseus returns) with more active engagements. At the behest of a mysterious client, bounty hunter Paladin (Todd Stashwick) is on Vision's trail, as is the aforementioned android (T'Nia Miller). Dodging them provides some momentum, though not enough to drive the entire cast so large, I haven't even mentioned Diane "Philomena Conk" Morgan, who plays the paladin's sidekick. Pretty soon, "VisionQuest" is trying to tie up all its awkward threads with basic stereotypes about the chosen family. "VisionQuest" often tells the audience how we should feel, but rarely achieves its stated goal.

"WandaVision" was the first Marvel Studios show to air on Disney Plus, and with its seminal sitcom homage as an allegory for sadness, the series continues to set a high bar amid the MCU's oversaturated era. This remains the case for the direct sequence. "VisionQuest" echoes many of the same themes about recovering from loss — though there's a throwback to the famous line about perseverance in love — with a hero who is, by definition, much less accessible. (And given AI's alarming path toward mass job replacement and/or civilization destruction, I wasn't particularly inclined to empathize with a number of digital creatures.) "VisionQuest" can be enjoyable in its comfort zone of intelligently optimizing mental space. But when it comes time to enter the tactile world, the show doesn't leave a lasting impression.

The first two episodes of "VisionQuest" will premiere on Oct. 14 on Disney Plus, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Wednesdays.