Thanos' genocide in Avengers: Infinity War, known famously as the Blip, still lingers in the MCU years later and is set to play a major role in Marvel's next Disney+ show. The Mad Titan traumatized the entire world when he wiped out half of all life, believing the universe's resources were too finite to accommodate its rapidly growing population. Although it was undone by Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers, the event remains a major talking point.
Marvel Studios rolled out new VisionQuest merchandise, and among it is a T-shirt that reveals how central the Blip will be to the show. The shirt features the inscription "Get A Grip, Don't Believe The Blip," a fascinating detail, since the Blip is an accepted fact within the MCU. Countless people lost loved ones, memorials were erected for the vanished, and those who returned had missed five years of their lives that they will never get back.
The notion that some people deny the Blip ever happened is an angle the MCU has never explored before, and it's a fitting one. After all, there are people in real life who believe the Earth is flat despite all evidence to the contrary. VisionQuest is already shaping up to be a thought-provoking show set to examine the ideologies of complex characters like Vision and Ultron, making it the perfect place for an idea like this.
How VisionQuest Will Likely Explore the Blip
How the show handles this plot point will be interesting to see. Vision was dead by the time Thanos snapped his fingers, having had the Mind Stone ripped from his forehead moments earlier. When the Blip was undone in Endgame, Vision didn't experience that either, since he had already died.
He returned in WandaVision when Wanda Maximoff recreated him from scratch, and he underwent another resurrection when SWORD rebuilt his body as White Vision, who later inherited the original's memories. Vision's understanding of the Blip is probably a mess since he didn't experience it, yet he carries the memories of someone who lived through everything leading up to it.
VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas has confirmed Vision is caught up on MCU history, joking that "He's watched all the movies." In the show's trailer, we see him reviewing memories on a cinema screen, and the Blip will likely be one of them. Posters for the series have hinted at the same thing.
In the trailer, a series of portraits titled "Birth," "Death," and "Re/Vision" hang inside the mansion in Vision's mind, with one of the artworks showing Thanos tearing the Mind Stone out of Vision's head. Given that the Blip is central to Vision understanding his existence, the very question the show is built around, Ultron may be spreading false propaganda through the "Get A Grip, Don't Believe The Blip" mantra to distort that understanding.
Ultron is confirmed to be one of the AIs Vision consults in the series, acting as the devil on the shoulder of a synthezoid he has long dismissed as naive. In Age of Ultron, one of the first things Ultron does after becoming sentient is plug into the internet, through which he learns about humanity's failings.
To convince Vision of the same, he could push this propaganda through that same medium until it goes viral, ending up on T-shirts and posters, further clouding Vision's grasp of the event.
Interestingly, this very shirt already appeared in the trailer, worn by Vision's reincarnated son, Tommy Shepherd. It's possible the propaganda has reached Tommy, who wasn't around during the Blip and, as an impressionable teenager, easily buys into the denial.
It would fit who Tommy is, given that his entire childhood was a lie, his young self nothing more than a creation of magic. Skepticism would come naturally to someone who lived through the Hex and was later reincarnated into a real human body.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
