VisionQuest is bringing back a familiar Iron Man villain to undo a major injustice. The MCU's WandaVision trilogy will conclude this year with Disney+'s VisionQuest, and it is littered with Iron Man connections. Not only does the series star Paul Bettany's Vision, whose origins lie in Tony Stark's first AI helper, JARVIS, but the WandaVision threequel has also piled some of the OG Avenger's other techy creations on its cast, such as FRIDAY, EDITH, and even Ultron.
Disney+'s VisionQuest is linking itself closely to 2008's Iron Man by bringing back the MCU's first-ever villain: Faran Tahir's Raza Hamidmi al-Wazar. The studio has yet to confirm how Raza fits into VisionQuest's bigger picture, but his long-awaited return gives Marvel Studios the chance to right an 18-year-old wrong.
Most will simply remember Raza as the Ten Rings terror cell leader who took Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark hostage in Afghanistan and forced him to build powerful weapons, specifically his Jericho missile. Instead, Stark developed his first Iron Man suit and used it to escape, kickstarting his superhero career.
Despite an early focus on the Ten Rings, it was later revealed that Jeff Bridges' Obadiah Stane was the true antagonist and had hired the terrorists to kill Stark. Promptly after, Stane temporarily paralyzed Raza before his men opened fire on the Ten Rings encampment, leaving his fate seeming murky, but still uncertain.
In many ways, the mystery surrounding Raza's fate is one of the biggest injustices in Iron Man. Despite entering the fray as a frightening adversary for the Armored Avenger, he was simply tossed aside for the third act in favor of a big twist villain, with his true fate never being revealed (although most assumed he was killed).
18 years after Raza appeared for the first and last time, Marvel Studios has the chance to reverse Iron Man's injustice to the Ten Rings villain by giving him a true ending and perhaps the chance to be an even more significant villain.
Wait, Why Is Raza Returning in Disney+'s VisionQuest?
Mere moments before he was betrayed by Obadiah Stane, aka Iron Monger, Raza shared his hope of being "[repaid] with a gift of iron soldiers." Almost two decades later, there is a very real chance that Raza's goal is unchanged in VisionQuest, still looking to kit out his Ten Rings faction with the latest tech.
Fans already know that Vision will be pursued by the gun-for-hire Paladin in his Disney+ series, seeking to steal his advanced technology. One has to wonder whether it was Raza who hired Paladin, still seeing Stark technology as the solution to his problems even after the superhero genius' death.
It took 13 years after Iron Man's release for the Ten Rings' true nature to unravel in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. That movie made it clear that Raza was merely leading one terror cell of Wenwu's ancient global organization, although the Ten Rings officially has a new top dog in the MCU after Shang-Chi.
James Spader's Ultron is believed to be VisionQuest's main villain, but there is one major obstacle. Unless something changes in the show, Ultron has no physical body and is merely a remnant of programming inside Vision, which may open the doors for Raza and Paladin to be the real-world foes of the WandaVision sequel.
