Marvel Studios has gone back and canonically adjusted the ending of its second Avengers movie through a new piece of lore from the latest follow-up to 2008's Iron Man. Of all the Avengers films, Avengers: Age of Ultron has always been the most divisive, and it can get lost in the conversation next to 2012's The Avengers, which started it all, and the culmination of the Infinity Saga with Infinity War and Endgame. Still, there's a lot of love out there for Age of Ultron. In fact, it's really the last Avengers film to focus on just the original core six, as by the time Infinity War rolled around, the team had broken up and the heroes were spread across the world (and the galaxy).
However, Age of Ultron is undergoing some changes, as VisionQuest, the most recent spinoff in the Iron Man saga, is altering one key part of what fans knew about Tony Stark's MCU legacy.
VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas recently spoke with New Rockstars, explaining how the show, in one specific way, retconned the ending of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
In the 2015 film, Vision (Paul Bettany) confronts the last surviving Ultron bot (James Spader) in a distant forest, away from the main Sokovian battle.
After a quick, philosophical chat about humanity, "You're unbearably naive," Vision blasts Ultron with the Mind Stone as the camera cuts to a distant flash.
While many fans hoped for an eventual return, this was always communicated to fans by Marvel Studios as Ultron's final, permanent death... until now.
VisionQuest's premiere revealed that Vision destroyed only Ultron's body, first saving a copy of his code. A stark (no pun intended) difference from what's been understood as MCU canon for years.
As VisionQuest has largely acted as an Iron Man trilogy sequel by dealing with the remnants of Tony Stark's AIs, it makes sense that the show would also delve into one of his greatest failures as well. By bringing Ultron back, it provides a lot more room for narrative exploration of the ramifications of the killer robot surviving his ordeal with the Avengers, as well as raises new questions about past MCU moments, knowing that Ultron was rattling around Vision's head.
As Bettany and Spader previously explained, Ultron has spent the years since as a digital prisoner inside Vision's mind, locked in an upstairs loft of the mansion-like Mindspace, where Vision now has access to speak with his old man wherever he so pleases.
Matalas had good reason for wanting the keys to the story of Ultron in the MCU. It turns out that the writer and producer actually traced the "what if he did a backup?" idea to Vision's reluctance to kill Ultron in Age of Ultron.
He wisely points out the open-ended nature of how that sequence was shot, leaving Ultron's return open:
"Vision was very much about, 'I don't want to kill Ultron. Ultron's in pain.' I'm like, 'What if he did a backup?' You cut away. Typically in film and television if you cut away from the death, even sometimes when you don't, there's a chance that person can survive."
From there, he "saw the 'Dexter' thing happening," referencing the TV series and how Dexter (Michael C. Hall) talks with his late father:
"So, I thought it would be… I kind of saw the 'Dexter' thing happening, where Dexter was talking to his father and then I started to think."
That image inspired the house built by production designer Will Hughes-Jones, with Ultron locked away "like [Hannibal] Lecter in the attic:"
"I saw this image of this house in my head, this weird AI thing. It's a lot like what Will Hughes-Jones designed, that exterior.
I drove him a little crazy on it and then I started to think about the other AIs that could inhabit and that Ultron would be locked like [Hannibal] Lecter in the attic as the adviser."
When asked by New Rockstar's Erik Voss whether Vision ever told his fellow Avengers about the backup, Matalas didn't think that would've been "a smart call for Vision:"
"It didn't feel like that would be a smart call for Vision, but in my mind, and in the writers' room, and we would, you know, go deep on all these questions, it was: Well, just because he backed up his code didn't always mean it was switched on. It's in cold storage. Or maybe he was?"
Matalas then mentioned a fan wondering if Ultron was around when Thanos killed Vision, which left him thinking, "I kind of want to see what that was like:"
"I saw somebody online who was like, 'Does that mean he was around for Thanos and had an opinion on Thanos?' I was like, 'I kind of want to see what that was like.
Did he go up into his house occasionally? Or was it even a house at that moment? Was it some other way of accessing that code that he would go to for advice or did he not really switch it on until after?'"
Whatever the answer, Matalas said Vision is now "definitely relying on this guy:"
"Either way you go, you still have this setup that as of this moment, he's definitely relying on this guy for some kind of advice. Whether that is because he has a better point of view on humanity or he actually kind of respects him, and even as twisted as he is, values his opinion."
As is the case for most situations like this, recontextualizing or retconning a scene from a past TV show or movie, there are a lot of "What If" questions, but what really matters is if these decisions lead to good storytelling.
Thus far, it's paid off: VisionQuest reviews were overall positive from critics, and after four episodes, fans have been loving the latest MCU Disney+ series.
Matalas and his group of creatives didn't shy away from being part of the greater MCU, with references quietly hidden in plain sight.
Will VisionQuest Connect to Avengers 5?
VisionQuest is, of course, influenced by Age of Ultron, and even Infinity War and Endgame, given Vision's first death and then F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s tragic memory of Tony dying.
Episode 3 also tied into the post-credits scene from Endgame's recent re-release, with Vision noting that Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) was unavailable to repair him.
But now the question is whether or not that will work both ways. VisionQuest concludes on November 10, just over a month before Avengers: Doomsday releases on December 18.
Right now, it's unclear if Vision, Ultron, Tommy/Speed (Ruaridh Mollica), or anyone else from the series will appear in Doomsday.
Still, Vision's new suit scene in the trailers could give fans hope that he'll be back on the big screen sometime in the future. The design trades White Vision's colorless look for his signature green, red, and gold, maybe gearing up for an even bigger battle after tackling Ultron, Jacosta, and the Paladin.
