•Marvel’s new Disney Plus series VisionQuest follows White Vision (Paul Bettany) as he grapples with his identity. The first two episodes were released Tuesday night, and the show has already established what may be the most complicated family tree in Marvel Cinematic Universe history.
The series picks up after Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) demonstrated “just how far grief could drive someone with the power to rewrite reality,” according to a report for Polygon. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda’s primary goal was to reach another universe where she could reunite with her children, Billy and Tommy—boys who “seemingly disappeared along with the rest of the family she created inside the Westview Hex” in WandaVision.
Following Vision’s death in Avengers: Infinity War, S.W.O.R.D. rebuilt the synthezoid as an emotionless weapon, but Hex Vision was able to unlock his memories during their confrontation in WandaVision. In VisionQuest’s opening episodes, Vision has tried to live a peaceful life in Edinburgh, interacting at night with various artificial intelligences—including J.A.R.V.I.S., F.R.I.D.A.Y., and even Ultron—inside a mindscape he created for himself.
During an early conversation with Ultron, Vision dismisses Westview as pure fantasy. “Bullshit,” Ultron replies. “It’s just a deep, scary well of emotions you can’t handle. Isn’t that the point of this mindspace?” By the end of episode 1, Tommy somehow exists in the real world outside Wanda’s Hex, and a bounty hunter called Paladin (Todd Stashwick) tracks down Vision’s son to use as bait.
Billy Maximoff survived by taking over another boy’s body
The revelation makes “practically no sense” without having watched Agatha All Along, the other Disney Plus series that establishes how Wanda’s supposedly imaginary children could survive and how Tommy acquired his new body.
Set three years after WandaVision, Agatha All Along follows witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and a mysterious teenager played by Joe Locke. Identified only as “Teen,” the boy helps Agatha break free from the spell Wanda placed upon her at the end of WandaVision, then persuades her to assemble a coven and travel the legendary Witches’ Road.
Teen’s identity is concealed by a magical sigil that prevents witches from hearing his name or learning who he really is. That sigil was placed on him years earlier by Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), who met a boy named William Kaplan at his bar mitzvah and secretly slipped the sigil into his jacket after glimpsing “his fractured future.”
The enchantment, as Agatha explains, is a “redaction spell” that hides its subject from other witches. It didn’t resurrect Billy or put his soul into William’s body; it merely concealed his identity until protection was no longer necessary.
Shortly after meeting Lilia, 13-year-old William was riding home with his parents when Wanda began collapsing the Westview Hex nearby. Their car crashed at the exact moment Billy Maximoff’s magical world disappeared. William died, but Billy’s consciousness slipped into William’s body. He awakens with no memory of William’s life and subsequently pretends to recover his memories while privately investigating what happened.
“I died that night. And when I came back, I was different. Something else. Something more,” Billy explains to his boyfriend once the sigil is destroyed. Agatha confirms what Billy himself already suspects: He is Wanda and Vision’s son inhabiting William’s body.
Billy broke “the natural rules governing life and death,” which is why Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), the literal embodiment of Death, considers him an abomination.
Billy gave Tommy another life
Billy spends much of Agatha All Along searching for his brother Tommy. “He’s out there somewhere,” Billy tells Agatha. “I can sense him. I just can’t find him.”
Near the end of the Witches’ Road, Agatha helps Billy reach out psychically and locate a dying person who could become Tommy’s vessel. Billy finds a boy being held underwater in a swimming pool after a cruel prank. He initially resists choosing him because he senses “the boy has no loving family waiting for him” and wonders whether taking the body would make him responsible for the stranger’s death.
“Agatha, am I killing this boy, so my brother can live?” he asks.
“No, Billy,” Agatha replies. “Sometimes boys die.”
Billy then places Tommy’s soul inside the drowning boy’s body. Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer confirmed to Entertainment Weekly not long after the episode aired that Billy completed the transfer, even though the series never clearly shows Tommy awakening.
“The intention is that, yes, he got what he was missing in that he successfully put Tommy’s soul into the body of that young man who was the victim of a teen prank,” Schaeffer said. “You know how these things go, and we’ll see in future properties if they stick to that narrative. … It was a tricky thing to shoot because Tommy was not cast at that time, and so we had to shoot it in an obscure way.”
VisionQuest casts someone as Tommy and picks up on this exact plot thread.
Thomas Shatford is Tommy Maximoff’s new identity
After Paladin fails to subdue Vision with a group of heavily armed mercenaries, he quickly hacks into classified S.W.O.R.D. files and learns the truth about Westview. That gives him the idea to search databases for keywords like “Vision,” “Wanda Maximoff,” “Tommy,” and “Billy.” He discovers a recorded psychological evaluation from somewhere in London that leads him directly to Thomas Shatford (Ruaridh Mollica).
“I had a family that wasn’t my family, parents that weren’t my parents,” Thomas says in the recording. “Mother… we called her Wanda. Father, a machine. She called him Vision.”
Just like with William and Billy, this Thomas was dying when Billy placed Tommy’s mind and soul into the body, though it’s likely that Tommy was trapped in some kind of limbo for years before Billy did so—that could explain why he’s more disoriented than his brother.
VisionQuest episode 1 introduces Thomas as a young London grifter working alongside a pickpocket named Lisa. Thomas claims to enjoy becoming a different person every day, but Lisa pushes back: “If you don’t ever get to be the real you, you might as well be invisible.”
That line becomes sadder once Thomas sees news footage of White Vision’s encounter in Edinburgh. The images trigger flashes of Tommy’s former life, including memories of the original Vision and the Westview Hex. Thomas suffers a panic attack as Lisa tries to ground him by repeating his assumed identity: “You are Thomas Shatford.”
Except he’s not, and that identity crisis mirrors what his father is going through. Even in episode 1, Lisa makes random comments about Thomas being “weirdly fast.” Tommy was a speedster just like uncle Pietro, so it’s likely that he maintains his powers just as Billy did in his new body.
VisionQuest has firmly established the most complicated family tree in Marvel Cinematic Universe history. Thomas Shatford is not the son that Hex Vision physically helped raise in Westview. White Vision never had a son at all, but he does have the memories from the original Vision and Hex Vision. As he says in the trailer, “I have his memories, but not his virtue.” Vision may regard Westview as a fantasy that Wanda conjured, but the frightened young man abducted by Paladin is living proof that at least some part of what Wanda created was real enough to endure.
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