As I noted last week, VisionQuest is the new big series on Disney Plus, advertised as ‘from the people who brought you WandaVision,’ which, yes, was a fresh, surprising series when it premiered five years ago.
It turns out that the new show refers repeatedly to WandaVision, and I should have anticipated that from its very title: Just like WandaVision, which is written as one word, VisionQuest is written as one word in all the official marketing materials, which I missed last week.
It’s also the new show’s biggest stumbling point: It’s all about AI.
For all her witchiness, which eventually came to the fore, Wanda was a human. Vision is not. So the new show expects its audience to empathize with an AI protagonist whose primary supporting characters are also AI personas.
Granted, the AI personas are played by charming human actors, including Paul Bettany (as Vision) and James Spader (as Ultron, destroyer of humankind, who killed the original Vision, yet is now preserved alive in the attic of the new Vision’s mind). Yet, they are not human, and much of the “action” takes place in Vision’s mind, which makes the “action” even more anonymous and inconsequential than usual.
Aargh! It’s enough to make a human cry. Your mileage may vary. [New episodes debut every Wednesday until the end of time on Disney Plus.]