Marvel Television’s VisionQuest brings together existential questions about grief, identity, artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human, while its cast and creator prove that conversations about such weighty themes can be a lot of fun.
The final chapter in a trilogy that began with the groundbreaking WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along, the Disney+ series reunites Paul Bettany, James Spader, and showrunner Terry Matalas for a story that explores Vision’s search for meaning after being rebooted, blending cerebral science fiction with questions of love, loss, and humanity.
Our conversation with Bettany, Spader, and Matalas was every bit as entertaining as it was insightful. The trio traded jokes, teased one another, and shared plenty of laughs while discussing the series’ deeper themes, from grief and creativity to artificial intelligence and the complexities of Vision’s backstory.
Bettany also reflected on how his own experience of fatherhood informed his portrayal of Vision, while Spader offered his thoughts on the relationship between grief and creation. Along the way, the conversation took a few delightfully unexpected turns, with the actors’ playful banter revealing a dynamic just as engaging as the questions at the heart of VisionQuest.
Terry, you described VisionQuest as cerebral? It is cerebral, nostalgic, existential. How do you balance all those qualities?
Terry Matalas: How I balance all of them? You know what? Well, I think it remains to be seen if we have, but I find that fun. You know, I love going from humor to drama to terrifying to thrilling. I think that makes it a proper meal. It’s the kind of thing that I personally gravitate toward, and hopefully it works. You know, you get some brilliant writers and an incredible composer, and sometimes even actors, and hopefully you’re able to craft something special like that, something that is able to blend those ideas.
Paul, characters are both fathers and sons. Did you draw on your personal experiences as a father and son when portraying them, or did you try to keep those experiences separate?
Paul Bettany: I don’t think it is possible. And for me, that was very obvious. Vision at some point discovers that he may well have a human son, which is, of course, impossible. And my eldest son is not mine biologically, and yet somehow, impossibly, he’s absolutely mine. I feel no difference between my biological children and my non-biological child. And somehow, he is as much mine as my biological children. And that was really instructive for me in this show. Thank you. I shall now leave.
Terry, there’s a lot of backstory with Vision, which must have been a challenge. How did you handle that?
Terry Matalas: You know, it really didn’t feel like a challenge. Like, you know, most characters in any kind of narrative have a backstory to draw from.
Paul Bettany: But when they don’t, the actor’s busy inventing one.
Terry Matalas: Yes, and then you have to hear about it. But it wasn’t that difficult. For me, the show lives on its own, hopefully. And, you know, we’ll catch you up on anything Marvel-y that you might want to know. But I think you can jump right in. We were at a screening with Henry, who plays… I mean, his mom, who’s in her 70s, hasn’t seen a Marvel anything, and she got all of it, every conceit in the thing. So, you know, hopefully…
James Spader: So did I.
Terry Matalas: And him, if we can get it past him, you’re in good shape. So, you know, I think you want to be mindful of it, and it is a rich backstory for him. But you can’t let it dominate the thing.
The story deals with different kinds of AI characters. Has working on the show and portraying these characters shaped your perspective on AI in the real world?
Paul Bettany: No, not at all. And I don’t think it’s attempting to do that. I think that Marvel has obliquely been talking about it for years, because they’ve given us a sort of bad version of AI in Ultron, who wants to subjugate humanity, and then a good version in Vision, who sort of wants to augment humanity.
There’s a bad version who thinks that human beings are sort of inefficient, and a good version who thinks that that inefficiency is sort of what makes them extraordinary. But the show is for sure not about that. But somehow… I’ve always found that the robots in Marvel end up usually having the most human responses to things. So I only speak for myself. Well, ours is make-believe.
James, Paul, both of you started out playing your characters through voice acting before eventually portraying them physically. How was that journey for you, both in terms of the characters and the story?
Paul Bettany: It was a shock, I can tell you. Because what used to happen was I’d come in at the end of a film, when they had spent all of this money trying to tell the story, and they were like, “Oh,” and then they spent all of the CG trying to clear stuff up for the test audiences that didn’t understand a thing. And then you just come in and say it, and you solve the problem for them. So everybody’s super grateful, and then they give you a bag of cash like you’re a pirate, and you run off home. And that was great.
James Spader: The same for me, entirely, except for that bag of cash.
Paul Bettany: Yeah, you didn’t get the bag of cash. Well, look. They used to give me a bag of cash, and it was honestly the best job in the world. And then they made me come in and work for my living. I mean, I say work… I use that as a loose term.
Terry Matalas: But you had to put on the special suit. It wasn’t just voice acting.
James Spader: I did, because I did motion capture for Age of Ultron. So I was doing all the scenes with the actors and so on and so forth. And, you know, there was some money. It wasn’t the bloody lucre I was looking for, but it was enough to pay the bills, certainly. But then this show came along, and boy, then the coins just kept rolling in. Eight episodes. Yes. Lovely. It’s all spent, though. So if there’s work out there…
Paul Bettany: Please tell somebody. James and I are gainfully unemployed.
Many characters in this series respond to grief by creating something. What do you think about the relationship between grief and creation?
Terry Matalas: Ooh. Ooh, wow. That’s an excellent question. Yes. I mean, what better way to translate that feeling into art, face it head-on, and get it out? And it’s, you know, look, it is an experience we will all share at some point, and probably one of the most relatable things. So I think it’s… Gosh, I think it’s probably… I mean, even love songs are usually inspired by the breakup part, which is grief. So I think there’s…
James Spader: I don’t think the grieving ends until you start creating something. Something. Anything. You know, make yourself a meal. Yeah. Anything. But you better start creating something, or the grief is just going to keep washing over you.
Terry Matalas: It’s a terrific question.
One of the most moving moments is in the second episode, when Jarvis dies. We see the wake and the eulogy, and Dummy is mourned before he speaks. How did you come up with that deeply beautiful and moving scene?
Terry Matalas: You’re talking about the funeral bit? You know, that was our brilliant writer, Cindy Appel, who had that moment. I had seen Jonathan sing that song, and Jonathan sang a thing. I’m a big fan of Henry and Jonathan. I’ve watched their mischief comedy bits. And Henry’s voice is so deep and wonderful and melodic. Honestly, honestly, the best voice on the show. If I could pick a deep voice to hear, that’s the one. And so I knew…
James and Paul: That’s so good. That’s so good. I wonder if he’s available for that show you’re doing.
Terry Matalas: I say that, of course, after… But no, I thought it would be really surprising that a character named Dummy, who was the arm, would have that.
James Spader: You know, I thought that scene was between Paul and me at the back of the couch there. What was that other stuff?
Terry Matalas: Yeah, I think we do cut to you guys eventually. But I thought it would be wonderfully surprising to hear that voice come out of that robot named Dummy. And so I’m glad to hear you liked it.
Each of you represents a different stage of involvement in the MCU: Paul, you’re a veteran; Terry, you’re relatively new; and James, you’re a revenant. How does that affect your collaboration on the show? Do your different perspectives on the characters and this world come into play?
Paul Bettany: Gosh, I don’t know that I even think like that ever about anything. I just sort of take people as they are, as I find them. I mean, I knew James and I had had a scene together at the end of the day, very rushed, in Age of Ultron, and I really enjoyed the scene and wished there was more of it. So I was really excited for us to work together, but also, frankly, just to hang out, because he’s a delicious hang.
And with Terry, I met him and within really minutes, I could see that he was a very intelligent person who had a really great grasp of story, and moreover… Yeah, I’m just lying. I’m trying to sound like a man of the people. Mostly, but moreover, television, which I don’t… My head is very much stuck in the three-act film structure, and I think Terry has a really great innate sense of long-form storytelling. And, yeah, I felt immediately like we were simpatico.
Terry Matalas: That’s an excellent word.
Paul Bettany: Simpatico? Yeah, simpatico.
Paul, you’ve appeared in several Marvel movies and now in a TV series. What do you enjoy most about this format, and how does it change the way you approach a character?
Paul Bettany: Yes, that’s a really good… It’s a really good question. I’m not sure it pertains to my experience in Marvel, but I have had… The difference for me in television is something like a thriller, for instance, in a film, will necessarily become a drama, and you will have more time over those hours to… Okay, so I made a film about a TV show about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. If it had been a film, it would have been a dogged cop chasing a psychopath.
But in a television series, you get to sort of get into the domestic life of each of those characters, and I do think the same is true here in a way, where I had a very unique lane to swim in with Lizzie, which was a sort of romance lane, but there just wasn’t enough real estate for there to be much of it. And in TV, you’re able to sort of really explore more of the inner workings of these characters over that…
James Spader: Yeah, in a film you have two hours to tell the story. In a series, you’ve got, you know, six to eight.
Paul Bettany: What he just said. But better.
