'VisionQuest' Episode 1 Recap: Is Tommy Actually Vision's Son?

VisionQuest episode 1 starts off with a brief recap of everything that has happened in Vision’s life so far, starting with his creation in Age of Ultron and stretching all the way to his death in Infinity War and his resurrection and transformation into the white-colored Vision in Wandavision. After flying out of Westview, Vision has settled down in Edinburgh, which is where his previous iteration used to live with Wanda. He has taken up the alias of Sherwood Ellis (a reference to two streets in Westview), he works as a bartender at The Old Selkie, and the only human that he has befriended is his employer, Fiona Guthrie. As they are wrapping up for the day, Fiona engages Sherwood in some small talk and this is where we learn that he used to come to that bar with Wanda. Also, it’s confirmed, for what I guess is the umpteenth time, that Wanda did die on Mount Wundagore (the MCU really doesn’t want the Scarlet Witch to be alive for some reason). Anyway, after Fiona heads home, Sherwood turns out the lights, heads to the walk-in freezer, and then goes into the house he has created inside his mind, whose inhabitants are Dum-E, U, Jarvis, Friday, Edith, and of course, Ultron (they are all backup versions of these characters). What happens next? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

Jarvis notices a leak in this house–he calls it a security breach–and informs Vision about it, thereby interrupting his newspaper-reading time, where he is learning all about the serial killer named Butcherbird. Vision assures Jarvis that he has nothing to be concerned about, because he isn’t on the radars of any government or private agencies. Vision’s primary concern is making sure that he is acting human enough at his workplace. Ultron can be heard throwing a tantrum upstairs, but Vision tells his “family” to ignore him. He goes over to his private theater to watch some of the old Vision’s memories so that he can feel what it was like to be him; yes, it does bother me when memories are shown in the form of footage from movies or shows instead of the POV of the character who has those memories. That’s interrupted by Ultron, who orders U to play the memories from his time in Westview. This agitates Vision, and he goes upstairs to have a chat with his father. They get into an argument about not wanting to revisit the events of WandaVision because, in Vision’s opinion, that version of him wasn’t actually him, but a facsimile of him created from Wanda’s grief. He is inhabiting the life the pre-WandaVision Vision had, because that was the most authentic version of himself, and he is trying to have a better understanding of the human experience. Ultron advises Vision to simply go outside instead of staying inside and then watching snippets of the past and the present. Even though Ultron tried to kill all humans, he has an appreciation for the species’ complexities; which compels Vision to ask him what he will do if he grants him freedom. Ultron says that he might explore the world or try to destroy the world again. Since Ultron knows that Vision will never let him out, he advises him to put that topic on the backburner and focus on going to the Sunday roast party that Fiona has invited Sherwood to; Vision says that he won’t. Ultron warns him that, even though he thinks that nobody is looking for him, it’s inevitable that somebody will sniff him out because, at the end of the day, he is one of the most powerful weapons known to mankind. After Vision leaves Ultron’s attic apartment, Ultron sends out a pigeon-shaped virus to access a certain data port and encrypt an outgoing package.

Vision and Fiona are seen wrapping up after yet another day of hard labor. Fiona again asks Vision to come over to her house and have the leftovers from the Sunday Roast with her. Before Vision can say yes or no, a bullet hits Fiona, causing her to bleed out. Vision tries to stabilize her but he is soon overwhelmed by a bunch of armed mercenaries. He sheds his Sherwood persona, becomes Vision, and kills everyone. When Fiona passes away, Vision takes to the skies after taking one look at the leader of the mercenaries, later revealed to be Paladin. As per the comics, Paladin has crossed paths with characters like Daredevil, Spider-Man, Wasp, Jubilee, and Captain America. He is supposed to have some superhuman abilities, he is great at hand-to-hand combat, and he is a solid marksman. So, yeah, the MCU’s version of Paladin is clearly punching above his weight-class. Paladin enters what’s left of The Old Selkie and immediately kills the sniper who shot Fiona as punishment for killing a civilian. Paladin gets a call from his handler, played by Diane Morgan, better known as Philomena Cunk (this, in my opinion, is a piece of casting that breaks the immersive experience). The handler says that the police are headed to the pub; hence Paladin has to scan the place as quickly as possible and then bail. The handler also says that the client who has hired them for this job wants to get in on their call, but Paladin says that he doesn’t want to do that. Paladin’s disapproval doesn’t stop the client from hacking their way into the conversation and reprimanding him for botching the operation to capture Vision. Paladin assures the client that he will get Vision eventually; he just wants the client to be patient. After the client exits the call, the handler tries to figure out who this client might be; she theorizes that they might be from SWORD and they are looking to get Vision back because they are the ones who tried to reconstruct him after Infinity War. Paladin tells the handler to keep tracking Vision; they will figure out what they should do with the client later. Vision is seen having taken refuge in an abandoned electronics store so that he can go into his mind palace and figure out what exactly happened at the bar, given he was very sure that nobody was looking for him.

Jarvis advises Vision to take a beat, because he has just lost his one human friend, Fiona. Vision says that he didn’t have a personal attachment; hence, he doesn’t need to mourn her. Vision sits down for a meeting with Dum-E, U, Jarvis, Edith, and Friday to talk about the attack. He says that, in order to catch the one who is hunting him, they all have to think like predators; and the only predator amongst them is Ultron. So, Dum-E and U bring Ultron to the conference room, and he is asked to opine on what Vision should do next. Ultron says that Vision should go after Paladin and kill him, but he believes that recommending that plan of action is pointless, because Vision has already made up his mind to run and hide. Friday is the only one who agrees with Vision, while the rest vehemently disagree with him. All this back and forth prompts Ultron to start yapping about freedom and whatnot, and that’s when Vision figures out that Ultron’s the one who called the hit on him. Without beating around the bush for too long, Ultron admits that he is indeed responsible for the attack on The Old Selkie. No, he is not the client; he just knew that the bounty on Vision’s head had been picked up by Paladin via the dark web. And, to “speed up the inevitable,” he leaked Vision’s location to Paladin, thereby forcing Vision to do something other than bartending and rejecting Fiona’s invites. Vision takes Ultron back to his attic and says that it was a mistake keeping him alive. He almost deletes Ultron, but he walks back on that decision, robs him of his access to the outside world, because Vision believes that boredom is a far greater punishment for him than death. In the meantime, Paladin and the handler are seen trying to learn what they can about the events at Westview by hacking into SWORD’s files on WandaVision. Based on that, Paladin tells the handlers to scour every government database and seek out every file that has the words Westview, Wanda, Billy, and/or Tommy in it. It doesn’t take long for the handler to seek out Tommy, a young lad who was recently involved in a criminal incident and was taken in for a psych evaluation by the police in London. Going by the lighting marks on the body of his victim, it’s evident that Tommy is Speed.

We are introduced to Tommy, a conman who lives in London with his friend, Lisa. They make ends meet by stealing money and other valuables from regular folk. And after pulling off one such heist, they are seen talking about the ethics of grifting and conning. That discussion is interrupted by a PSA about the brutal attack at The Old Selkie, and of course, the blame is put on Vision. The image of Vision triggers Tommy’s memories of Westview and the time he had to spend at St. Mabyn’s Psychiatric Hospital, and he starts to have a panic attack. Lisa brings him back to reality and tells him that they have to go on the run because the guy they have just conned is coming after them with his mates. Just when it looks like they have given those hooligans the slip, Tommy is captured by Paladin. Lisa tries to help him, but Paladin advises against it, because he will shoot her down if she does anything funny. On that note, Paladin tells the handler to broadcast their message to Vision and see how he responds. In the ending of VisionQuest, Vision receives the message that the handler and Paladin are broadcasting. Jarvis tells Vision that the message is specifically for him, and he has to bypass their security protocols to access it. Knowing that that’s reckless, Vision gives Jarvis the go-ahead to let that broadcast into his mindsphere, or whatever you like to call it. Paladin talks directly to Vision, shows him the video of Tommy talking about Billy, Wanda, Vision, and his time in Westview, and he tells Vision that Tommy is in his custody. Ultron congratulates Vision, while Vision looks perplexed at this discovery. So, the big question here is: Is Tommy actually Vision’s son? Yes and no.  Yes, Tommy and Billy were created by Wanda, and when she took down her hex around Westview, Tommy and Billy were supposed to be deleted from existence as well. But (as revealed in Agatha All Along) since Billy wanted to live, he extracted his and Tommy’s souls and planted them in William Kaplan’s dying body. While Billy’s identity remained active, Tommy’s soul remained dormant. And with the help of Agatha, Billy managed to find a body for Tommy, i.e. Thomas Shepherd. So, yeah, Vision, Billy, and Tommy are clearly not biologically related; but, since they were a family inside Westview, that makes Vision the father of Billy and Tommy. Hope that makes sense.