‘VisionQuest’ Episodes 1-2 Deep Dive

hello welcome back to house of r i'm joanna robinson and joining me today there are no strings on her it's mallory rubin oh my god we duck joanna robinson what a pleasure to be back with you can i just i mean like i know you know me so well but can i just say that like when that happened in the show i was like i hope someday someone calls me that and there you did you already did it done but i'm gonna continue calling you that take it off the bucket list appreciate you buttercup oh part of the house of our canon yeah tex odd we duck yeah part of the house of our canon wonderful uh we're here to talk about vision quest that's right episodes one and two right after this from the creators of zootopia and frozen comes disney's hexed welcome to hex and enter the world of witches where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an angel and she would become an angel and she would become an angel and she would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic disney's hexed arrives in theaters this thanksgiving choice hotels get you more of what you value here's a little tune to help you remember same drive different day don't you wish you were getting away pack your bags and come on through texas ohio alaska we're up there too comfort in it's calling your name save on the stain oh and free waffles are yours to claim well i hope you like my little song book direct at choice hotels.com all right quick programming reminders yeah so we are covering vision quest week to week in whatever permutation disney decides to drop it on a tuesday two at a time whatever they're gonna do we're gonna cover it twists and turns yeah um really excited to cover it with you um it's been a minute since we've done a marvel show uh it's fun to be back in the mix with that um we also as we mentioned before we have our eyes on some late october movie releases we haven't fully cemented our plans but you have seen wicker i have seen wicker we're thinking about some clay face stuff we're thinking about some wildwood stuff it's all just sort of in the mix but i'll have to see both of those there's a lot of delights uh in store for us later this month as well as a big project that we're gonna let you know about later stay tuned just something we're really watch the space we're really really excited about um so how can folks keep track of that how can they make sure they don't miss whatever ambiguous thing it is i just teased thanks for asking dad papa people okay audrey duck yes people out it's enough i'm just you know i gotta test your workshopping yeah yeah here's what i'd recommend follow the pod follow house of r on spotify or wherever you get your podcast you can watch full video episodes of house of r on spotify incredible stuff you can also of course watch full video episodes of house far and the midnight boys pew pew on the ringerverse youtube channel you'd also love it if you followed at house of our pod crisp nailed it crisp nailed it cool delicious like a granny smith apple on instagram yeah tiktok we have fun stuff cooking there all the time including some pending announcements as joanna indicated and of course the inbox is open hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com send us your vision quest thoughts send us your wicker thoughts clay face wildwood what else what else is happening uh survivor survivor i haven't seen last night's yet so no spoilers but baseball oh yeah yeah baseball playoff football how's your how's your fantasy league uh it's pretty close to calamitous okay it's not i move i was in last place for one week which was really dark my entire team is hurt it's been a an injury calamity but also my quarterbacks are a shit show i wish that no one in the world knows what it feels like to have justin herbert and bo nicks as their quarterbacks in fantasy this year it's just a very bleak experience i just really agree it's so grim yeah wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but you know i'm not a fan of the fantasy league i'm not a fan of the fantasy league i'm not a fan of the fantasy league i'm not a fan of the fantasy league i'm not a fan of the fantasy league my points total despite the record okay so i i won last week i beat danny kelly second best team in the league granted everybody on his team was on a buy but it doesn't matter i wins a win i wins a win moved from 12th to 8th working my way back up the standings single didge that's that's a good place to be seven teams in the league are two and three so there's a lot of parity guess what the three guys who professionally cover fantasy football are in the top three spots in the league and everyone else is just trying to hang on that's less embarrassing for them than last year much okay but we'll see how it goes in the playoffs great long season spoiler warning not for football but for marvel anything that's ever happened in the mcu is on the table that's right anything that's happened in marvel comics is on the table uh we will have a theory corner for this show this is a very like theory friendly show so we'll have a theory corner um you know and we might use some some comics knowledge or whatever to to inform that uh that will be its own separate event towards the end of the podcast um but you know comic lore is is in the mix as we discuss this show um anything's happened on mcu television yeah other stories about robots you know who knows sure sure which one i robot possibly okay you know might bring up battle star at some point oh we love a toaster um i mean there's a short circuit reference in this two-part premiere johnny five still alive wonderful stuff that made me happy i love short circuit when i was a kid of course he did oh i mean yeah least surprising thing ever of course yeah great stuff uh should we go to our opening snapshot let's do it quick facts yeah these two episodes are called no strings and theseus to vision references we're already quite familiar with an ultron reference a vision reference we're already quite familiar with also i like i also think of them as like identifiers right like there's no string like who has no strings ultron who is theseus in the revised conversation about the ship of theseus vision so these are sort of like yeah i am uh you know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't that kind of titles both written by terry metallis who is the showrunner of this show both directed by christopher byrne terry metallis and i said this a million years ago sort of when he was announced for this show was a showrunner i was quite excited about because his when he took over the third season of star trek picard it just really bumped up the quality of that of that series which had sort of struggled a bit in its first two seasons and then like really ended really uh on a high note and uh all reports are that feige kevin feige who's a star trek fan is star trek fan right saw that season and was like get me terry metallis and they like he like came into the office terry tells the story about how he came into the office and they just like talk star trek but also he's like but also i love marvel sir like if you if you could use me um and uh and drove off the lot and then like feige called him and they just kept talking and then he got this show uh terry metallis also uh was a showrunner on 12 monkeys a show that i never watched but a lot of people speak very highly of yeah and he's used you know he's used a lot of uh chris burn uh was also a director on 12 monkeys and then like emily hampshire there's a number of 12 monkeys cast members in this show so there's a lot of like for the 12 monkeys fans are living and terry metallis has also said that there are some like 12 monkeys easter eggs if there are i missed them because i wouldn't know i watched some of that show but i can't say i feel i've retained much right i mean i love love the movie never watched the show so yeah um so that is sort of what we're here to talk about today um i have sort of like a a big picture sort of thematic table setter question for you but i guess i should just ask molly rubin did you enjoy these episodes of television i did yeah i i definitely am in the like not love spot through two i think that it's been enjoyable and fun i bettany's amazing spader is just god tier like watching the two of them uh trade lines in a scene is wonderful i think that rory rory rory who plays tommy is a delight yeah through two episodes absolutely loving our time with tommy and i think the performance is really good so the cast is really fun um you know the overall it's interesting like you to the on the end the episode title front no strings theseus something i will be kind of monitoring across the season is how the at least initially very prevalent and heavy um uh return to very specific iconic lines of dialogue and moments from the prior series yeah feels because i think there is a logic to it in the show where we have ai's we have uh artificial beings and our vision our central field and we have a lot of things that are figure in particular is in this position of asking who am i and has had these memories and this data set activated so it makes complete sense they're very lucky to have an infrastructure where it allows them yeah it's like a totally logical decision i i don't know if it will feel at a certain point like it tips into just like it depends how often they do yeah you know whether it is going to start to feel a little bit stale instead of innovative or whether it unlocks a lot of thematic richness in returning to those moments and exploring that parallel i'm like undecided on that i think through through two episodes obviously when we go through the uh breakdown we'll talk about some of the particular like lines and moments that manifested I think the two you know these were the two vision scenes that we identified as most important in our WandaVision uh sort of revisited podcast which was uh what is grief but love persevering and the ship of theseus both of which get a significant hit um in these two episodes and so I think one worked better for me than the other but I was skeptical of both of them yeah I agree but I I have to hope that that's just like an early days thing and not an ongoing thing along with I mean these episodes had so much to do in terms of like we'll talk about this a little bit more but like in terms of like making sure everyone's caught up it's been so long since WandaVision not to mention you know not everyone in the world watched Agatha so like there was just a lot to catch up on so it had a lot to do and for me I would also put my feelings about one and two as like very much but not love mm-hmm but with excitement for the possibility of you know I think the dynamic of all the AIs in in the vision mind space is really really fun and and has a lot of possibility I am in love with Edith let me let me throw it out there now like rock star of this show so good yeah um so all of that like the potentiality for a lot of fun stuff there um a lot of complicated stuff there and then the fact that like we don't have to wait for Vision and Tommy to find each other they're already together and on a road trip with like a ghostly Ultron by the end of episode two so it feels like all the pieces are in place and there was just like a lot of other stuff that they had to do in these first two episodes and I think that what my hope is and what you know to to your point maybe even feels likely is that this is a little bit of an inversion of our experience with WandaVision and Agatha where I think you know many people but certainly the two of us were astonished and bowled over by receiving something that was so important to us and I think that's something that we're going to that we had no idea would be like that yeah right and that's just one of the great delights as a tv fan this is born out of its connective tissue to prior experiences that we and the characters have and so the surprises may be a weight in the future yeah I think that's possible um again we'll talk about this as we as we go but like you know you noted the no strings the Ultron we agree the speed of performances you know no surprise really fun and like even though Age of Ultron is not my favorite I've always really liked Ultron as a villain and always really loved that that voice performance in that movie um I think that the idea of you know we get a lot of like Jarvis Vision older brother stuff and of course Ultron dad papa peepaw being presented here presenting himself as the father figure kind of grandpa in the back seat of the car at the end when Tommy and Vision are together given how Agatha with both Billy thinking about Wanda Agatha thinking about Nikki and then of course Wanda Vision with Billy and Tommy all of these stories have been about and and with Vision himself born out of as we are reminded in these episodes not only Jarvis and Ultron but Bruce and Tony all of these stories are about like parents and kids family um the family line was another like family is repeated line that I was like oh no I'm getting a little nervous about this actually um the it's that later late season thrones thing yeah and again I think the cover here of like these are robots they're like they're like they're like they're like they're who would be recalling this information makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily always just land with the viewer. I like when we're able to think of those lines and make those connections rather than the show always doing it. The generational stuff, though, right? Having vision not only working through and assessing what it means to be presented with this question of, is this my son, right? Am I other vision? No, but what will the journey of working toward a different place be? But then to also have this question of, like, where did I come from? That's really fun. I think that, and this kind of gets into what I know you want to hit next, while obviously, like, Tommy, you know, the second episode is basically a Tommy episode. We get a lot of Tommy even just at the end of the first episode, so there was a lot of Tommy in the double premiere, which I quite enjoyed. And so that makes, obviously, Agatha undeniable connected text because of our journey with Billy there. However, I think it's reasonable. Two episodes in to say, is the real trilogy, which we've been talking about, Age of Ultron, WandaVision, and Vision Quest, more so than WandaVision, Agatha, and Vision Quest? I think it'll depend entirely how much Billy is or is not involved in this. And I think also, I hear you on that. And yeah, we'll talk about Ultron in a second. I could possibly see that, but I think that just depends how you orient whose story. If it's, like, Vision's trilogy, it's that. Right. But what I love about both Agatha and this show, is how defined they are by Wanda's absence. Like, how it's just coalescing around this sort of, like, great wound of an absence of a character that we really admire, or I really admire anyway, and, like, a character whose absence I feel from the MCU. So I just, if I think of it as a Wanda trilogy, that's what that is. But if you think of it as a Vision trilogy, I think you could orient it differently. That exchange, like, haunting her footsteps, not hers, his. Yeah. And that acknowledgement. And obviously we get the literal return to the footage, the reels of shared experiences. We have the flashes in Tommy's mind. So Wanda was, of course, intentionally and reasonably inescapable in a great way. The Vision and the Wanda and the Tommy and the Billy of it all feels very much connected in the television MCU experience. Ultron was a really big part of the double premiere. I loved that. So I'm curious to see how central the Ultron journey is, too. Obviously we'll hit a lot of that in Theory Corner, I think. But that was, like, a pleasant surprise to me, ultimately, at the beginning of the season here. It's just that, like. Because I definitely thought the show was going to be the search for Tommy. And it's like, oh, Tom's here. So what is this show? Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, so here is what Terry Metallus has said about his sort of, you know, he was given Vision Quest, knowing that WandaVision already existed. Agatha had not sort of premiered when he was cooking up this project. So trying to think of how he could put it together. What would be interesting to do with White Vision? After he flies out of Westview at the end of WandaVision. So Metallus said, I believe this was just green rant. He said, this is a story of a guy going through an identity crisis. And when you go through that, you spend a lot of time in your own head. I've certainly been there. Metallus said, I've asked myself, who do I really want to see him with? Wanda's not there. So immediately I went to Ultron. I wanted that last scene in Avengers Age of Ultron between the two of them to go on for another 127 minutes. Then it dawned on me, what if that was the series, right? So that this is. And like, on the one hand, it's a little surprising. On the other hand, it shouldn't be. Because like the poster is James Spader and Paul Bettany. Like, you know, they've been sort of like couching it that way. I think I was just sort of like, this is a Vision and Tommy show. And it still is. But it's very much an Ultron show. So here's the exchange from the end of Avengers Age of Ultron, right? Vision says, you're afraid. Ultron says, of you? Of death. You're the last one. You are the last one. You were supposed to be the last. Stark asked for a savior and settled for a slave. Vision says, I suppose we are both disappointments. Ultron says, I suppose we are. Vision says, humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that. Ultron says, they're doomed. Vision says, yes. But a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It's a privilege to be among them. Ultron says, you're unbearably naive. And Vision, in a very. A very Joss Whedon fashion says, well, I was born yesterday. So Vision finding the beauty in humanity and Ultron, you know, in his quest to destroy them, finding nothing but, you know, something to deride, to mock, to pity, to look down upon. That dynamic to be flipped here at the beginning of this show where it's Ultron holding up humanity as something to study and admire. Whether or not he means it, we don't know how much of anything he says in these first two episodes is just agendized to get to where he gets it by the end of this episode, which is one step closer to freedom, right? That lift is open. So, again, I don't. I think we should take everything he says with a grain of salt. But Spader has said, and we'll get to this quote, but Spader has said basically that Ultron's sort of view of humanity has shifted where we find him here. But I do love that scene from Avengers Age of Ultron. And so, like, thinking about that about, you know, before there was. Because what is grief but love persevering? We have this concept of, like, a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts, right? And so, another way to frame grief of, like, when you think about something like Westview and Vision inside of this episode having such a trauma response to even any images of Westview. And he's like, we don't play that. I don't watch that. It has nothing to do with me. I don't want to know about it. And Ultron's saying, essentially, like, is that. Because there's nothing to do with you or because it's so painfully full of hard emotions that you can't bear to look at it. And there's the grief part of it, but there's the, like, celebration of the beautiful just because it didn't last. Just because Wanda's gone. Though nobody's saying she's dead. But just because Wanda's gone. Yeah. Just because Westview ended doesn't mean it wasn't beautiful and isn't worth celebrating. I have also always loved that Ultron scene. We reference it quite a bit, you know, across the years. Covering Marvel. I was struck by, you know, the moments, we'll get to that scene, but the moments that Vision. is revisiting when he's in the pretty sick Mind Palace private theater. Yeah, when are we building that for ourselves? That'd be nice. Did you notice that only one of the chairs is like super comfy looking? Like he built this theater and it's just like one super comfy recliner chair for him. I would do you know, some wider, cushier. Like a love seat almost? Yeah, but just for me. Yeah. As you know, I don't really want anyone near me when I'm watching a movie. I do know this. I want to be far away from other people as possible. It's like eight feet separate. I want people to hear laughter to know it's a shared experience but I don't want anyone to be able to like throw a chicken tender at my head by mistake or like touch me or certainly cough on me. I love that scene. I was really struck by this for a couple reasons. One, just to jump ahead like a tiny bit though it's early in the episode when we're first kind of exploring the Mind Palace and Vision says, you know, for a species that's so recently faced extinction they certainly seem keen on trying to finish the job themselves one at a time if necessary. It definitely intentionally a way playing against our memory of that scene and that exchange to say like, okay, the whole series these two episodes it's going to be about Vision saying, who am I? That's what this is. But a lot of what we got in this first the double premiere of these first two episodes was like, well, I had one the earlier version of me had Wanda a guide. I loved that description like a guide to love a guide to relationships a guide to humanity and positioning that as the distinction. But this Ultron scene the one you just quoted with Ultron and Vision is before any of that. It is something innate about that character and all of the different fathers and aspects of humanity that were rooted into his code. So I like thinking about well, it's not just the question of family though this character this version of Vision has family too in a different form as we'll talk about. But the idea that like he's almost willfully telling himself something different. There is actually a difference and then also there is like a stubborn insistence that something has to be different. That's a fascinating place to start. The other thing I just want to quickly say while we're like thinking back to that Ultron moment. I actually don't have a good feel for like what the wider MCU fandom response was to this specific thing. But I think it's worth saying like this is a pretty giant retcon that Vision was like gonna keep some Ultron backup code on hand. It's like a pretty big retcon you know in and Ultron will say in this episode like to clarify it undeniably for the viewer you know I didn't ask to be backed up and copy and pasted out of Sokovia and into the prison you made for both of us. Pretty funny. Vision. I feel like a mistake I'm going to make covering this season is just saying Jarvis, Vision and Ultron incorrectly about these characters who are definitely connected. Apologies in advance. We'll do our best. You know the I don't want to kill Ultron he's unique and he's in pain but that pain will roll over the earth so he must be destroyed every form he's built every trace of his presence on the net. Vision is the character who said that in that movie. I had it took me like a minute to kind of work my way through that. Now I'm fine with it but I am I am curious if there's like a sliver of the MCU fandom that's like wait what? But the show kind of requires the idea that Vision has pulled all of these other I think sliver is possible but I also think that like not well I could be wrong I don't know. I feel like Ultron's one of those ones that like a lot of people don't revisit when they rewatch the MCU movies because it wasn't super beloved and you can kind of a little bit skip it. You know you miss the creation of Vision you miss a few other things but like in terms of like skippable Avengers movies it is the most skippable so you've got a lot of the crucial content out there and the language memes you know? It's true. You love a meme. Which is nuts because as you know I'm barely online anymore. I'm basically like scroll doom scroll Instagram and that's it. And my Instagram algorithm's in a great place. Good. It's in a I mean It's just wicker and pets? Bad for my time spent my screen time but yeah it's just like so many cats and after I came back from Hawaii so many like tropical locations. It's great. Should we go into our deep dive? Let's do it. From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hexed. Welcome to Hex and enter the world of witches where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hexed arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving. I wrote a little song to remind you Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotels got it all a rooftop bar have a ball cocktails up here feel just right it's Cambria amazing alright bring a date your team or even your mom book direct at choicehotels.com see you on the roof You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle. No negotiation. No guy from an online listing lowballing you. Which means by the time I'm done explaining this you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey. Better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. I just noticed that our deep dive colors are scheme is a little mind space-y vision-y. It's got the yellow and the sort of turquoise in it. That's right. Okay. So what we're going to do we're not going precisely beat by beat just because these are two fairly sizable episodes of television. On the what a twist and turn front. The episode length. The episode length a shock to me. Okay. That they were an hour. I think just because WandaVision and Agatha were not so I'd made an assumption that they would be broadly in the 30 to 40 minute range. Then of course the fact that it's one and two three and four and five and six are going to come out together. So it's two hours of TV a week for people. So a lot. I hope that doesn't work a lot. And so I like it. I like being able to watch multiple. I hope it doesn't like diminish like a barrier of entry volume of real time consumption and discussion of the show. But then they're doing I haven't thought about that. Like Amber was like three hours at a time. Not the most viewed show I guess. But like and also one of the 10 best shows of the century. I don't disagree. I'm just saying like I just hope people are like aren't like oh man two hours. I think it'll depend on how fun and exciting they find Vision. I think I think that two hours is is child's play for a lot of people. Yeah. And then for some people it's not so. So yeah we're not going to go exactly beat by beat. We're sort of thematically clumping but vaguely in order. We love to thematically clump. OK. So this first section I'm calling previously on. Yes. And I just wanted to discuss this. We alluded to this earlier but like you know obviously a long time you know since WandaVision a conversation inside of the MCU has been how much homework do I have to do before. You know we did a whole episode rewatching WandaVision. You know I rewatched most of Agatha. I definitely rewatched Ultron. Same. You know and like a lot of people bump up against that idea that they have to do homework in order to feel oriented. And as we mentioned on our WandaVision rewatch podcast it has been a while a long time since since White Vision flew out of Westview at the end of WandaVision. So you know if you'll remember in the early days of MCU television they would do these they would release these little like special packages of like everything you need to know about Falcon the Winter Soldier Loki you know like WandaVision. They built it into the show here. Like we open with recaps of including footage and a voiceover and all of that and then we get the cinema moment that we talked about and then baked into dialogue. We get a lot of exposition like you know Wanda did this or I was that and some of it clunks and some of it doesn't but I was curious I do think this is a better approach than not doing it at all and just assuming that people have done the homework on their own. Yeah. And I do think there is plausible coverage of here's the character who's trying to remember who he is so for him to go back over his own memories Yes. is something that and you know the opening one is a little like hit you on the head with the anvil but that's okay previously on the character revision that's fine. I think the cinema one is like quite elegant and fun so you know slight mixed bag but like how do you feel like this addresses that question of of homework which we talk about in Star Wars shows as well and other things. Yeah. I so I thought that this opening few minutes was pretty bad and very clunky and made me super nervous that the show was not going to be good honestly and then as soon as we got out of it I was like okay this is fine. As soon as the other AI showed up I was like you know because even Fiona who's like where's that redhead I mean we love Fiona we love Fiona. I'm in active mourning over my queen Fiona I can't believe we didn't go to get to go to our tiny head and we're all flat for a roast god damn it I was screaming protect Fiona at all costs when a bullet exploded. her torso I'm devastated that being said like her one scene is basically like further exposition you know what I mean so the funny we last yeah yeah for sure um I think that on the does it assuage people's anxiety that they missed a lot or like are they gonna be able to recall what they need to recall obviously it's just it is actually helpful it is I think weirdly even though I agree with you the cover of vision revisiting these moments from og vision's life it makes sense there was something about the voiceover that made me feel like it was just more it was less previously on even though that is how it functions and more like the show starting in a way that just slightly tipped it into like uh not loving this I thought like you that the um the home theater set up in the mind palace was like really wonderful I thought that the deployment the you know the way it was set up was like really wonderful I thought that the deployment the you know the way it was set up was like really wonderful I thought that the deployment the you know the way that the Ultron's um attic loft stack of tvs was used to show us the footage from Tommy's psych eval like things like that I thought all worked really well and that still operates under the that that that all still falls under the the bucket of like either a character who is revisiting a memory or a character in Tommy's case who has this the uh like an incursion of flashes he can't fend off right or uh we've got hackers and synths and AI and tech savvy uh assassins who can find what they need to find like in the flow of the show it all works great something about the opening I was like yeah it's funny the opening um again there's there's just so much Star Trek DNA on this show yeah and the opening felt very like old school tv show to me so like yeah yeah these are the voyages of the starship enterprise like opening or even like the early seasons of Buffy and to every generation is born you know one girl in all the world or like sliders there's just like a number of shows from like the 80s and 90s where this was like a common thing to do of like we're going to give you the premise of this show in voiceover at the beginning of every episode they're not going to do at the beginning of every episode they did it right any of this episode but I'm not I'm not saying it doesn't make it feel clunky but it almost made it feel like nostalgic to me like something I would find on the sci-fi channel or something like that in a way that that I kind of liked and Terry Metallus like coming up not just running Star Trek Picard the third season but coming up on the set I believe Voyager and Enterprise like really went to school uh with Star Trek storytelling I think it's so interesting to see the unexpected DNA of that across this and I think this is one of the places where you see that you know yeah I think in general homage across this tv trilogy WandaVision Agatha um and and now Vision Quest is part of the fun of it and I think it's kind of like a so broadly I like that as well to your question about like does this help or or um does this assuage the anxiety or spark it I don't know I could definitely see it going either way mileage may vary like I'm sure there were plenty of people who were like I feel caught up now and I didn't do all the homework let me tell you something rewatched we obviously had both rewatched uh WandaVision for our WandaVision revisited pod I rewatched Agatha this weekend after we had done that yeah just a wonderful show it's so good I've been time in my life revisiting it um so I'd encourage people to do it if they have a spare I was going to seven hours I was just gonna rewatch and I told you this but like I just I was just gonna rewatch from like the Billy reveal no no like I started in the middle I was like Billy reveal onward that's what I'm gonna do and then I just like had to go back to the beginning because it was just like so fun and so good it's great um the best I could see people feeling like oh boy this is you know multiple minutes of reminders of stuff that I haven't seen in six however many you know longer for years and then feeling anxiety but hopefully it felt like uh okay I'm caught up now hopefully I don't know um one thing that he mentioned in this sort of voiceover um is her name was Wanda she made me feel real you already talked about Wanda as a guy but I love this yeah Wanda as also creator because we talk a lot about like Tony you know Stark and Banner as uh you know as Vision's creator uh Ultron and Jarvis as you know Vision's creator like all like who's the father figure there's a lot of options here Jarvis being cast as the older brother I think is interesting but like you know these are all potential like figures but like Wanda as ever is like the divine mother like what you know what what she did to create yeah who Vision is she made me feel real like and and Bettany has in like almost every single interview that he's given about the show uh introduced this sort of like binary storytelling of of when you tell the story about the invention of a creature and he's like you can either have the Pinocchio like I'm a real boy like I'm excited about the Pinocchio or I'm a real boy like I'm excited to be alive or you can have the Frankenstein why have I been burdened with his existence and who made me and you know blah blah and he was just sort of like thinking about those two examples uh as he's thinking about Vision um but you know like Wanda made me a real boy essentially you know like I just think that uh Wanda as creator of Vision is so interesting I I love that as well and I think you know with Ultron there uh in Age of Ultron and then again I've you know no strings on me singing Pinocchio lyrics like it's on our mind there as well but like I think that because coming out of Westview the idea of Wanda's creations as this like foul wrong thing right from a character like Hayward or Sword like the people who are like our favorite people we really respect let me tell you a lot more Sword mentions as well in these two makes complete sense but I'm like I don't really need to be thinking about Sword and these two episodes are ever again I'm good I'm good I agree um I'm hoping we'll get to it in Theory Corner but I'm certainly hoping that the sheer volume of Sword mentions is just real red herring like none of this is gonna involve Sword stuff but we'll find out um but yeah you know to have those those obviously our emotional reaction to watching WandaVision and everything that happened in Westview in that show is like you know to the the grief love persevering idea the fact Wanda's depth of feeling and love for Vision was strong enough to create a new version of him a family obviously there were some bad things like keeping 3,000 citizens of Westview uh under mind control for a hot second there a hot second there we had some notes we talked about that how long is it's like a week right it's like yeah like a couple weeks maybe maybe a couple weeks I mean it's more than no time at all little the thing we talked about little daughter in her bed is like Wanda not realizing really what she did until she did you know the fact that there's like the just creation of a human experience before any of that yeah it's like such a beautiful thing to to be able to remember and you know this this vision feeling his distance and removed from that but also clearly putting such stock in it and value in it really great place to to find this version of the character so you know part of that creation before you know when you think about it like us seeing Vision look like Paul Bettany that comes from the world they created when they were in Edinburgh together like that's that's the WandaVision stolen life that Fiona bore witness to you know what I mean so when she's like that redhead you know yeah but like a bob shot but that's that's like that's a creation of Vision is like what if he looked like Paul Bettany and we're all like thank you yeah thanks Wanda. Different sides different teams we've got to meet up in Scotland to fuck like good choice great good choice um Sherwood Ellis is the uh adopted name that he has created here and as uh Paladin points out or as we as we find out that's the those are the streets in Westview uh where the home was not very stealth of Viz. Vision's saying nobody's looking for me not even an Avenger um and I'm like but you're in Edinburgh where you were known to be. Yeah and this is your adopted name I have similar questions about uh Billy not being able to find Tommy when Paladin could find him in like two seconds but uh yeah then we put the the the heart on the bar of course invoking um you know the the the deed in in WandaVision and all of that very very sad further Wanda Intel well it's complicated I guess she was sort of crushed under the weight of a mountain and Fiona's like emotionally um but again incredible stuff no one including anyone on the press door is saying Wanda is dead. Right I mean this is very reminiscent of the language in Agatha you know the yes no oh wink wink maybe who knows you know playing with us in a in a kind of fun like way um you know we talked about it on our WandaVision revisited pod and I think we both were like Elizabeth Olsen seems done with this so we're inclined to say no but that like so it stands to reason that we'll say hello again line does feel like a promise to the audience so I don't know I I still am kind of undecided on how likely it feels but obviously it's a promise to the audience. Obviously they're keeping the possibility yeah I don't I don't think yeah it's interesting I don't feel like I would call that a promise but the promise of possibility yeah the promise of possibility that's it that's it little kernel that's it right there little kernel where are you now after two episodes of her showing up here versus like in Avengers Doom Doomsday or Secret Wars or something like that I don't know because to your broader point the clock starting early on when Tommy showed up. has recalibrated what I thought like the focus and pace of the show was going to be this has been part of the pleasure two episodes in like different version of it but I don't know Paladin is like a much more present figure in the show than i thought so yeah the balance is a little bit different than i was expecting but in a fun way because then i don't feel like i have as much of a sense of like how it's going to go from here or what to anticipate um again i could have done with more fiona i do feel deprived and robbed of fiona you wanted that sunday roast when why do you think white vision who's on this like um journey of self-discovery never went to go visit wanda between the end of wanda vision in the beginning of multiverse of madness i don't know i can answer for that i suspect nobody does and i kind of wonder if i wonder that line about nobody from because there's the like oh vision is mistaken and thinking that he's so off the grid he's unplottable no one will find him no one's looking everyone has forgotten about him like that's an exchange and that is quick he's quickly disabused of that notion so it's there a little bit to be like actually you're about to get palatable and right ultron already knows yeah yeah and then the which they call an email was so funny to me i just got i just get such a kick out of him um that line that you mentioned about the avengers like no avengers i never can tell when the mcu or any larger connected universe does something like that if they're kind of like we've checked the box of the audience wondering if anyone in the avengers is looking for vision i think the line where they were like why don't we call the mcu or any larger connected universe Call Banner or, you know, Clint Barton or whatever. And I just feel like that was so that people at home could be like, why wouldn't they call Banner or Clint Barton in this moment? Yeah, for sure. So there's not, on the one hand, not always a great explanation other than because all of the characters can't always pop up to save the day. And that's how comic book storytelling works. And it's connected in many ways to the tradition of down in the little corner where you would say, like, as seen in issue, you know, whatever, right? But it has been a problem in the MCU. We've asked this question before on Disney Plus. But your specific question of why wouldn't Vision have sought out. That's a specific, really inside of this character set, version of that kind of question that, like, I don't know. I mean, I guess the answer could be because he was not emotionally ready. He was early in his sort of journey. He shot out of that skylight in the Westview library. And guess what? Signature move. It remains the same. Edith coming in through the skylight and then in the Edinburgh bar, the pub, just popping right back up. Skylight escape? Incredible stuff. Edith's fantastic. Okay. Edith is great. Kills me. Love her. Viz just winds down in the walk-in. Every night? Fiona cool with that? With Viz? Listen, when Fiona closes down and goes home and is like, my boyfriend's working a double, so no sex tonight, but I'm going to go home to watch some telly in my tiny little flat. Let me know if you want to come over for Sunday roast or next day leftovers. I don't think she's checking the walk-in. She's gone. But does, like, Vision closes every night? I guess so. Okay. Here's what I'll say. Having worked in places that have opening and closing shifts. You don't get keys and closing shifts right away. Fiona, very trusting. Very trusting lass. To her detriment. I did when he closed the door in the walk-in. You know, I had a moment where I was like, is this wise on the security front? And then, of course, very quickly, there's the exchange with Jarvis about running security checks and everything. So I'm like, okay. I mostly was just thinking of Carmi and the bear. Now, Vision is a vibranium synth, so he could open the handle no matter what. But I was like, oh, no. Not a safe place to. Do you think Claire Bear could talk him out of. Of the walk-in? That's the question. Okay. That is the question. Next section I'm calling Home is Just Me. So you keep saying Mind Palace, which is what I said. They on the show call it, and in press, call it the Mind Space. I don't know why you wouldn't just call it a Mind Palace when that is, like. Beautiful about. An existent. Well, it's a beautiful thing, but, like, the Mind Palace is, like, an existent concept. But, sure, they call it the Mind Space, which. I guess. White facade in the front. Very white Vision. Red brick facade in the rear. Rear. Very original Vision to me. And to me, I mean, like, I don't know if that's the intention, but to me that's, like, this is who he thinks he is, his forward-facing thing, but his true self is there, just lurking in the backside of this building. When we watched the trailers, when I overanalyzed the trailers to death, we saw the red brick facade, and we sort of thought, like, over time the white house would, like, maybe turn into the red brick house by the end of the show. But it seems like. It seems like it's just sort of, like, front of building, back of building kind of idea. But I really like that as the duality of Vision. Yeah, exactly. Great visual representation of this idea of, like, trying to. Not only carrying an awareness of different. Because often we talk with characters about what is, like, repressed, what is undiscovered, what is unknown. So much of our journey with Billy and Agatha, and we'll compare how that's. You know, the Tommy experience is different, and again, a fun way to have that be, like, related and parallel, but quite distinct. For reasons that we'll explore. You know, Vision is, like, not only aware, keenly aware, cannot stop thinking about the fact that this other version, earlier version of me that I was then rebuilt from, had this whole life that I didn't have. And the fact. So, like, the idea that that's there, right there, and that if you just walked around the bend, you'd be able to see it, feels like a perfect. Especially because this is a space that he has constructed for himself and his little AI-found family that he's decided. He's decided to go grab them. He didn't have to do that. He picked them all to go share the space with him, right? That all feels, like, really great on the really great front. Our guy is just, like, ripping off a fit right away. Standing, looking at the Mind Palace suit. Very. Trench coat and a hat, the fedora. I mean, the hat, briefcase. Thematically important. Yeah. Very, like, Don Draper-y or, you know, Henry Mancini's Mr. Lucky theme play. When he walks in, that's the score that's playing when he walks in. That's a Cary Grant film. So, if you prefer, it's a very, like, Cary Grant kind of fit. Yes. Which feels like. Continues the Agatha WandaVision tradition of, like, fashion from a different era. Oh, 100%. That roots us into the frame of mind. 100%. And I think, you know, what everyone, all the AI are wearing and all of that is very important. And on the sort of, like, interior design, what era are we in front, you know, Ultron will later call it, what, like, the psilocybin collection from Ikea or something like that? That's the iconic line from Ultron. One of many. All of them are. But this is another, like, sort of color theory front, right? The main color motif inside of the mind space or the mind palace, if you prefer, is a sort of turquoise blue and an ochre yellow, which those two colors match, if you've rewatched Age of Ultron recently, the sort of, like, really coolly rendered light clouds that represent Jarvis and Ultron. Jarvis being the goldy yellow color and Ultron being the blue color. It's also the color of the mind stone and then the blue chip that that sword puts in. You know, so there's just this, like, duality of, like, the two greatest sort of, like, light-based inspirations for him, Jarvis and Ultron. We get when we go into the mind space in the first place and we're zooming through this sort of, like, cool pixelated Tesseract-y kind of thing. It's that gold and blue color. You know, so, like, these are the building blocks of. Of a vision. And then that sort of, like, the chip that made. Or the thing that. The spark of life that made me. Is it the blue thing that sword gave me? Is it the yellow thing that Wanda gave me or the mind stone gave me? You know, we talked about this at the end of WandaVision. Like, what happened to White Vision when HexVision, three versions of Vision, HexVision sort of. Unlocks the memories inside of him and what happens to the blue and the gold inside of him. So, I just, like, love that as, like. I mean, I think the production design on this show is extraordinary. And I think the opportunity for, like, fun prop-based sort of explorations, you know, like, it's not beeping and booping and it's not Tony Stark. Tony Stark with, like, his, like, sort of screens and stuff like that. Like, all of that is very cool. But I think it's even cooler to see them, like, get on an analog phone or, like. Yeah, yes. Get out the Viewmaster or whatever it is. Like, all these fun, like, prop-based literalizations, like, for us to grok and understand what is happening with the AI. A schematic on a table, you know, like, Edith Mission Impossible-ing down on top of it. Again, again, so funny. All of that is, like, so fun for me. But I think just even down to that sort of, like, blue and gold warring factions almost. Like, I started to think about Jarvis and. Voltron is almost, like, the devil and angel on Vision's shoulder. So, like, these are the two sort of, like, factions inside of him, facets of his identity. And I just think it's beautiful. Like, you know, I don't think this show is perfect right out of the gate. But I think the work that they've done on this house. Yeah, it's awesome. I have no notes on. Yeah, I'm really enjoying it as well. I think the fact of, like, the extension of that color coding into just even the. Like, the chyrons, the identifying nameplates that pop up for each of the AI. Of course, also, there's the undeniable, like, Stark Industries, Stark Industries, Stark Industries. So, all of these things connect in a helpful, fun way. The bright light blobs of code manifestation of Ultron and Jarvis in that blue and orangey-yellow from Ultron. Anything, anything. And so much of. Anything. Anything. Anything. Anything. as you just outlined in the show, does this, anything that takes us back to that is like, like my favorite thing in the world because one of the things that just kills me across the whole history of the mcu is the way in ultron that they're like he escaped through the internet he's in the internet we're heading to the internet it's like it's just like baffling so i'd say that who do tony find when he went to like look at the internet charvis you know our friend in the internet uh i were about you jane uh so funny to me so i enjoyed that just got a kick out of uh out of that little memory portal on the production design front we also have the like mindstone motif everywhere like in all these windows um my favorite being like the window up in the and the attic which like at one point vision sort of leans his forehead against the mindstone uh cut out window that is almost like because we're in the attic yeah it's almost like the forehead of the house yeah and especially because the lift is deployed so often um you know to go up to to visit ultron but also then he was like oh hello that sprung open i can couldn't go down now this question of i like what you're saying about uh jarvis and ultron angel devil and they've you know in some ways been that since the minute ultron came into the story but also there's a little bit of a at least in a few moments jarvis is never like bad but there's a little bit of a complication when as vision is has decided to go try to find the near the end of episode two um and and you know jarvis is like spent all this time trying to convince you human emotion important good be on your guard actually like you know that he has to kind of switch the position that he usually occupies and then ultron as you've noted is like throughout these two episodes espousing the virtue of art and you know he's surrounding himself by television he's watching he's talking he's got he's got bosh uh triptychs right in his attic and he's like you know if you could go anywhere where would you go and he's like yeah i'd go to the prado where that painting is by the way i saw that once in madrid incredible you're such a bosh head i am actually both the prime video show and hieronymus you know i have never watched the prime video show bosh but it is important to many of the men in my life um it is the fact that the lift takes you from the head the logic center down into where do they gather to try to talk about feelings the living room the family room the kitchen the heart right like that's just fun design that kind of heightens the thing we're thinking about anyway i really like that and then to your point about like something like the viewfinder or the phone you know jarvis tough one because we love jarvis well jarvis heads here pulling a lever like a real physical uh tactile tea and a love you know yeah all of that very star trek by the way i think that the overall design the production design the set of this mind palace this mindscape mind space whatever we're calling it we can call it mind palace it's fun it's cool right there's an energy to it it has a specificity so like it works on that level i think the idea that all of these um all of the ai are gravitating toward a very retrograde human rendering that inversion is i think really effective the idea that we as people like strive for advancement right for progress and they're like to tvs yeah yeah like that because they want to be connected to something that is dot matrix printer i mean i like it thematically and i also was wondering i was curious about that i was like how much do you think that's thematic and how much or and how much do you think that's just like really cool production design like we talked about this a lot when we talked about loki like the tva has this retro tech design to it which just looks cool yeah like to have tube tvs and and and all that sort of stuff like that that's 60s ethos in the tva um and so there's part of it that i think it works both ways yeah i think it's thematic and then i think it also just like looks cool and is fun yeah definitely it looks awesome but i think the idea that vision who has gathered these other uh figures to share the space with him and help him navigate this journey of discovery could have been in some like shiny glossy tech futuristic space but like shows a house yeah you know a house that you would share with a family and turn into a home is purposeful and quite effective so i think it's a really good idea to have that so i like it functioning in both of those capacities let's talk about that family so i love that like vision you know we we talked about this when we when we did our wanda vision uh revisited episode but like the idea that wanda creates the hex creates this like reality for herself there in agatha spoilers for agatha if you didn't watch it billy creates the witch's road like billy creates a reality uh you know and tie that inside that entire show and then you and your mother have the same tell yeah and then vision create your vision like makes his own hex essentially and like makes a wanda made herself a family vision makes himself a family and what i like about this is like so jarvis says to edith when he's trying to keep her in line vision took great care downloading each of us graciously providing resonance here in his quantum processors but what ultron says is enslaving poor stark ai and that's another wanda vision connection of like are you creating this beautiful eden for everyone you know like when wanda's confronted with the reality of what she's done in the hex she's like no you're fine like i've made a storybook world for us all to play in you know and they're like can we see our children though actually and we're zombies and we hate this um you know and so when ultron's like enslaving poor stark ai and vision's like that's not what i did at all but he is the boss of all of them he can threaten to he threatens to delete ultron he could threaten to delete anyone else in there like he is the ultimate you know master of his of his domain the same way wanda is so i just like that there is this like slight moral like yeah funkiness to what he's created on the ultron no strings front the idea that inherently when ultron comes into the mcu into the story there's a humanity versus the artificial aspect to that but then here there's a the person who's puppeteering the strings is is is vision and ultron's uh desire to an effective way of like reminding vision of that or so that he kind of can't deny it you know the other ai are also happy to to be there they seem so down and so chill but like yeah exactly all we've glimpsed is this little moment in time but jarvis is like we've been doing this for a while we've been here we've been working through this with you for a while so it's like okay was was every day just like pratt falls through the the skylight and like i ran some sims in a uh you know a racing vehicle happy place replacing bulbs and and polishing silver is that what he wants to do i don't know how did he get breath on the silver just part of the simulation i love this i mean are they eating those tomatoes these are questions dude ultron eats a biscuit you know the the sesame chicken calzone like we don't need to eat thank you for bringing up both of those things because first of all this is on the like rich front the fact that as ultron observes this is something vision has chosen to include in this theater in this space like but also he's saying i'm not that guy i don't i can retrace his steps but i don't feel what he feels i don't feel that connection to humanity and yet he is desperate to uh drench himself in things that feel human like waiting for 40 extra minutes for your food to arrive and then it's cold as ultron says um that was hysterical when ultron brought up the sesame chicken calzone it was like like first of all i thought that sounded great but like if you want us to eat at least pick something good and then the this is at the end of an incredible speech and they're all looking at him with clarity and suspicion and they're just like this is very dry this is great just incredibly entertaining there's also there's like also weirdly like it looks like water in his teacup you know what i mean it's just sort of like it's right and it's wrong at the same time yeah um yes on the on the sesame chicken calzone front yeah um when i was uh having dinner with friends with friends with friends with friends with friends with friends with friends with the weekend they made they they do this thing in their house where they make they make a vegan no vegetarian version of a crunch wrap supreme like at home essentially with like um beyond beef or something like that and delicious it was so good it was really really good reminds me you haven't made the dip yet oh you're right okay great no thank you so much um something don't if you call me if you call you i can guarantee you something to think about odd we duck there you go guarantee you i'll never make you that dip um but they made the crunch wrap supreme and then i was like i was like well as everyone has said a million times over every culture has its own version of like sort of the dough wrapped packet of something and i was like you could make this crunch wrap supreme with like you know like with like indian food flavors we were talking about like oh you put paneer instead of this you know i'm just sort of like uh like what's the italian version i was like well that's i guess that's a calzone but like you know just sort of like the opportunities and i was like why not a sesame chicken calzone thought it sounded delicious why not i quite agree let's do just like a quick run we've already been talking about them but let's do a quick rundown through the family shall we okay so we start with jarvis james darcy here briefly uh reprising ish his role where he played live at the live action the real life inspo for jarvis edwin jarvis in uh agent carter and in avengers endgame yes um i love james darcy i was really excited that he was in this show if jarvis is gone gone but like anyway i i we've said goodbye before we'll say hello again security housekeeping encryption okay Yes. That's him in the older brother role. Okay. Friday. Socialization, humor, tactical ops. Humor is really weird to me because, like, I understand that, like, when we meet Friday in here, she's, like, helping him analyze his interactions and try to explain it to him and stuff like that. But I'm just sort of like. He thought you wanted to shag his wife. You smile too much. She's so analytical. I'm like, this is not who I would turn to for help with my, like, humor. You got to go to Edith. Yeah. Who's a nonstop laugh. A firecracker. Friday. Female replacement intelligent digital assistant youth. Interesting, Tony. Really interesting. Female and youth being in your name of your AI. Interesting. It's not great. This is Orla Brady taking over for Carrie Condon. The great Carrie Condon voiced Friday, of course. And Friday, among other things, who was a Jarvis, a young female Jarvis replacement, was with Tony Stark when he died, among other things. I would cast her in, like, a sister. I don't know if, like, older. Middle sister? Just right there with a potential scroll. Middle sister? Yes. Sure. Middle sister? Yeah. I mean, obviously baby sister, Jarvis, older brother. So why not, like, you know. Dummy and dummy, like frat brothers. Cousins, I was thinking. Oh, I mean, sure. Speaking of the bear, I was, like, kind of facky, sort of, like, kind of friends of the family, cousin kind of stuff. That's great. As you know, and as listeners of the Ringer Podcast Network know, no offense to you, dummy specifically, long-time favorite of mine, just a long-time favorite of mine, in there in the lab with Tony and, I mean, they both are, but so many key moments, so many laughs over the years. How much did you love that the chyron for dummy said General Maiden's limb servo control and fire suppression? I fucking loved it. Yeah. It took me back. Yeah. It took me back. For folks who don't remember, dummy in the Iron Man movies is, like, there with the sort of, you know, to put out various fires was early missed, like, just fucked it up again and again and again. There's a great supercut on YouTube of all of the dummy doesn't put out a fire moments inside of Iron Man. Last scene with Happy Hogan, right? Like, that's the last time we saw dummy, at least. Holding on to some Stark tech. Yeah. This is Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayre of Mischief Comedy, and I mentioned this in our trailer breakdown, but, like, Mischief Comedy, the play that goes wrong, they have, like, a whole series. Peter Pan goes wrong. Christmas Carol goes wrong. Like, this is the whole thing. My sister and my nephews are, like, obsessed with this, and when I told her. Cool kids. I was, like, when I told her, I was, like, too, they're very cool. When I told her two members of the company are in, she knew exactly who it was. She was, like, oh, it's this one and that one, and I was, like, without telling her anything about it, and I looked it up, and she was right, and I was, like, okay. She's, like, they're the two standouts. They're perfect. And then Edith. Recreational game theory weapons. Edith stands for Even Dead I'm the Hero, of course, from Tony Stark. His gift for Peter Parker. She worked with Peter Parker and Mysterio. Sure, sure did. Emily Hampshire, 12 Monkeys. So, Schitt's Creek. Waiting for, I mean, again, a wonderful performance. I was waiting for her to be, like, it's time to read some of Brad's texts. I haven't read some of Brad's texts or sent a drone toward him in a minute. It's been a minute. I just, you know, Edith always makes an impact. She's really giving me, like, Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph sort of energy. Big fan. Big, big fan. Baby sister, right, of the family. The way that Vision looks at her, like, when she comes in and she's just sort of, like, nattering on. About the Rubik's Cube and the parachute test and stuff like that. He's just, like, grinning at her and just sort of, like. Huge smile on his face. Just, like, just, like, loves absorbing her energy. No surprise that the Bettany performance is wonderful in many respects. And it's obviously always, like, just a pleasure to listen to him speak as these different versions of Vision. But those little expressions have been so good through two episodes. That, what you're identifying, the brightness in his face as he walks across the room to greet her when she arrives. But then the, like, the perplexity. The little kind of crinkled, perplexed look that he met Fiona's when he says the thing about the mountain, you know, crushed under the mountain. And Fiona, as you know, it says, like, you know, it can feel like that sometimes. And he's, like, you know, every little look tells us something about how he is processing and receiving some insight into human nature. It's just been really great. I was thinking about how long Bettany, I mean, like, obviously he's been here voicing Jarvis since, like, day one. But how long he's been playing Vision specifically. The St. Maven's, like, I'm here for the trap sort of sequence. There's a moment where, sort of still wearing his human face, he looks at the guy at reception. And he gives him, like, a head tilt. And then, like, a scrunch face, I'm about to beam, like, explode you. And I was just, like, Bettany just, like, knows, he knows all the, like, sort of Vision facial stuff to do to, like, I'm about to, like, shoot a beam at you or whatever it is. And he gets to be pretty dark in a couple of the scenes in these two episodes. Oh, very violent. You know, the, like, oh, that's the old me. Yeah. A very violent new me. It's been fun to get that variance in the performance really good. Anything else you want to say about, like, this particular mix of characters? Again, on the Star Trek front, I just want to say, like, this is obviously a family, but it is also a crew. A crew, yeah. Like, that Vision's body is the Starship Enterprise, and he is the captain, and this is his crew. And, you know, in terms of, like, them sitting around and trying to figure out what they're going to do or all the different personalities together or stuff like that. Like, there's just, like, so much. It's so clear what Terry Metallus is drawing from when he puts them together that way. And sort of, like, when he's under attack and they're sort of, like, the set's breaking apart and they're like, oh, battleships. Like, this is just, like, a classic. The Enterprise is under attack. Like, let's brace ourselves for impact, all that sort of stuff. It's, like, it's really good. I am very pro this crew and this space and the renderings inside of it so far. I think my only worrier question is the thing we already talked about at the top of the pod of, like, the characters. Who have all of this information at their disposal? How often will they just be repeating or reciting prior beats from the MCU? We already talked about that. Broadly, I think it's been just very fun. Very specific and distinct, even though it is definitionally connected to a lot of the Tony canon, the Stark canon, and prior properties. Because we have the rule of the human avatar is just such a smart and makes sense for Vision, the journey he's on. But it's just such a smart thing for the show to do. Because then we can form a different depth of attachment to them very quickly, right? I think there is a sweetness, certainly, to this. Okay, I'm saying that I'm different because I don't have this family. But I have, like, I have formed this little family in a fashion. However, you know, like we were talking about earlier, not just the, like, the comp that you made already to, you know, this I'm in control aspect. But after that shift across the episodes, and obviously Ultron is pressing, pressing, pressing, but from It's Impossible. It's not true. It's impossible. I was going to do it anyway, but then when you gave me the I know what you're about to do look, I had to. Luke Skywalker, you're with us always. I literally can't help it. Oh, man. That was fun, right? The, like, why do you keep saying something's impossible, but also then the clarity that we have that, like, it's not that he actually thinks it's impossible. It's that he's, like, that's not the, it's a different, it's a different guy. Like, do I get to claim that? Do I get to feel close to that? What does it mean to open myself up to it? And there's a journey inside of just these two episodes. I think both. I think, like, you know, he's like, hey, the hex ended. Like, that's it. Yes. And then he's like, uh-oh. Yes. He knows the grief, love, persevering line. Uh-oh. Okay. The Madman in the Attic. This is the last part of the family, right? So Vision's watching home movies in his mind movie palace. Anything you want to say about the choice of footage? Obviously very Wanda focused. It was nice to get in addition to some Ultron, unsurprisingly, and some WandaVision, unsurprisingly, a little Civil War footage in there, which, you know, Vision gets up to some stuff in that movie. So, you know, I think it's just interesting to think, you know, given that he calls for that clip and there's like an identifier, right? The number, the alpha, et cetera. How many versions of this has he watched? I feel like it doesn't. He says, you know, quintillion simulations is something that he says to Paladin. And the idea that these quantum processors are in a very human rendered space sitting down in a not big and comfy enough armchair to revisit this, it was really striking to me that it was a montage. I think that's mostly for us as viewers at home, but it's like it's not just new data byte. Then the next data byte, there's like a kind of thematic pairing. There's an emotional quality. There is basically. A human being sits down to watch a movie or television aspect of it, which, of course, is a connection to Wanda. Nearly blows the circuits when Ultron tells Dummy and you to turn on WandaVision. What I love about Dummy and you and like when they're in their sort of like movie palace bellhop uniforms, pick up the phone, do what Ultron tells them to do. No questions asked. They just do it. I love the sort of like who told you to do that? They point up, you know, sort of. Moment. Really good. Enter Ultron and his truly incredible attic set. I love this set so much. Amazing. I think it's incredible. The bank of televisions, all of the art. Just really, really good. Does the idea of an elevator inside of subconscious and especially like locking away dangerous things in certain places make you think of Cobb and Mal in Inception? Impossible for it not to. I think the. I mean, Nolan was actually also on my mind when Tommy and Lisa were talking and Tommy was saying. Like, like, which we learn then later is a lesson that we hear this first at the end of episode one that we learn in the bus scene at the beginning of episode two that this is something she actually taught him. But this idea of like reinvention, it made me think of the young man and Cobb from Following, actually. Yeah. So Chris Nolan all over this. Someone says it's a skeleton key to understanding who Chris Nolan is. Some might. Some might. Ultron, once hellbent on destroying humanity, has changed his tune. He's now fascinated by them, almost aspires to be one of them. This is what James Spader said. Quote, he's come to appreciate humanity, not in a begrudging way, but in a conditional way. So we get this like 50-50 coin flip idea of like, I might go to the Prado or the Louvre or. Yeah. He says the modern, which is interesting. Yeah. Tate Modern? Maybe. Yeah. I've just never heard of anyone call a museum the modern. Tate Modern, great museum. Someone, someone on Reddit. Also great museum. Someone on Reddit suggested it was a James Spader Easter egg because apparently, I think. What I read was that the modern is the name of the cafe at the MoMA and that James Spader is known to like haunt the cafe at the MoMA in New York. So maybe it's like. Okay, there you go. This is a Spaderism. Wonderful cafe. Wonderful cafe. 50-50 coin flip. Real, real Targaryen odds for old Ultron here. Will he go like take in an exhibit or will he kill everyone? It's a good question. So a couple things that I really liked about this. One, I think. Like the idea of all the simulations and the number of times they've been in these scenarios. It just makes you think of like probability and, you know, AI's running scenarios and the idea of like what does the math actually tell you might be possible. That just feels like a part of the DNA of the show, right? And kind of breaking through actually that I've run the numbers approach into what does it feel like to talk to this person or to consider the outcome and make a choice. I mean, I think my feeling watching these first two episodes was, and I loved this, I probably inside of the span of every sentence found myself vacillating, right? Like wanting to believe that the thing that he was saying was true and also feeling a deep skepticism because he's Ultron. I think it's both. Yeah, yeah. That's where I am. Not, not, not it could go either way. But that Ultron is capable of both genuinely trying to urge Vision out of the nest, like push him in a direction that will be good for him while also engineering his own escape. Yes, right. Because there's always the question of what is his motivation and what is he benefiting from? You know, the fact that he later at the end of episode two is like, Jarvis wouldn't have been my first choice or my second. It's like, really? The security guy? I know. You and I are both, you and I are completely aligned on that. That it like, to me, it felt like he actively talked, you know, a noble self-esteem. You know, sacrifice, like actively whispered Jarvis into his own death and like, you know, I don't know if, you know, like, I guess you could say, oh, dummy and you would have been his, but no, he wants the guy who's in charge of security off the board. And the one who has Vision's ear the most, right? So that's obviously worrying. I really, I really agree. Here's my little carrier pigeon. But it's so funny because like, it's, it's an almost an aside to himself. Like the way it's delivered doesn't feel performative, but I was like, of course you want it. You don't want Jarvis out of the way. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. But I also maybe believe in when he's like, he was a good guy. Yes. Right. And I think that complexity is just delicious. And it's one of the reasons that he's an interesting character to watch. And like, certainly one of the reasons why retcon or not, obviously connections to Vision and this idea of like a reset, a rebirth. Well, the person who was there when you were born for the first time, it just makes sense to experience this journey like next to. The idea that Ultron also would be on that journey. This has been one of the master strokes of this trilogy. Like, yes, WandaVision is about Wanda, but it's also very much about that version of Vision. And it becomes a little bit about the other characters as well. Yeah. And Monica, Agatha, Tommy and Billy, like the origin of that. Agatha, that's just one of the incredible pleasures of that show is how we come to realize over time that we're on that journey with all of those characters, right? This like kind of question of, well, what's waiting at the end of the road, right? What are you working toward? But really like. How did you find yourself in a place where you were going to go on this journey in the first place, right? So the idea that we have these questions with Ultron where we're like, when he's sitting there in front of those screens, taking that all in, when he's like, I'm a true crime junkie. And I'm like, dude, do you think that Ultron listens to the podcast? Has he listened to Justin Sales do the wedding scammer? Like, this is just amazing. He loved the one. He's waiting for season two, the wedding scammer. Aren't we all? Aren't we all? As are we all. You know, and talking about art and having that relationship to it and the things that he says, the thesis scene, there's a, there's a manipulation. And there is a, I'm saying no strengths, but I want to be the one holding them always aspect to Ultron undeniably. But there is a, feels like a real truth in the connection he has formed to these human experiences. We're on the same page. That's great. Well, what I think is interesting, and we're about to talk about Paladin, but. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the villains we're meeting in this show are people who have a chance for redemption on the other side of it as well. Or like, I just don't think it would be satisfying for Ultron to just like be the villain of this show. I think it should be much more complicated than that. Yeah. And I, it feels like thematically in terms of the overall kind of mission of the trilogy and how much worse of this has been part of the Wanda experience, but where we seem to be starting with this version of Vision is like, we should probably want to believe that that's possible for Ultron, a version of it. But is that something that the show knows we're going to be inclined to feel and is maybe going to play with, you know? I guess it's a possibility. I just think that like, having come off of Wanda where it's like, I don't know, I don't know if it's like Wanda hero or villain, that's something you can debate off of WandaVision. Agatha, you know what I mean? Exactly. Like, the entire journey with Agatha, where we definitely thought it was going to skew harder towards redemption and it doesn't, but then there is also, you know, a protection for Billy at the end of the day, you know what I mean? But like, but she is as villainous as she said. You know, it's just like, it's these three shows more than your average MCU property, I think. Like, to hang in the gray, the moral gray. Yes, and there's a messiness to it that is just compelling dramatically. Yeah. Because it's not clean. But in terms of what this is interested in exploring for Vision specifically, maybe for Ultron specifically, across the trilogy it fits. There's maybe no better place to do it than here because of the question that the machines are asking, what does it mean to be human? That, right? It's the gray. It's the mess. It's the complexity. It's like, I am not just easily. I am categorized as one thing, either or, always good, always bad. Like, I don't know if you've heard. Conflict is the human heart. Yeah. It's the only thing worth writing about. That's true. Like, this is our shit. So like, I think, I'm not surprised that we feel this way about Ultron through two episodes and want this to be the Ultron story. Yeah. I'm open to other possibilities, but it feels like it's so perfectly of a piece with what this overall slice of story in this universe is like. I'm interested in exploring, not about what it means to be a witch or a synth or an AI, but what it means to be a human being trying to figure out how to navigate loss, desire, ambition, all of it, right? And the inherent contradictions inside of all of that. A man must have a code. Let's talk about Paladin. A surprisingly large part of this show thus far, two episodes in. Yeah. is Paladin, a comic book character, a long-running comic book. comic book character played by Todd Stashwick, who is Terry Metallus' like guy. This is his guy. He's in 12 Monkeys. He brings him in for the third season of Picard. He has like a really good role in Picard, I will say. So it makes me sort of more optimistic than I might otherwise be because Paladin thus far to me feels like he's in a slightly different show than the rest of the show does. I feel similarly about Lisa. Like Lisa and Paladin are not sort of folding in exactly the way that I want them to thus far. I'm not saying they won't, but like anytime we're sort of like out of the mind space, I'm not having as good of a time as I am inside of the mind space or with Ultron or something like that. So I'm interested to see where this all goes. Quick Paladin comic book character story created by writer Jim Shooter and artist Carmine Infantino. First appeared Daredevil January 1978. He's a mercenary, more of an anti-hero than a villain. He's thunderbolted, but who amongst us hasn't thunderbolted in their day? Name for the lead character in Have Gun, Will Travel, which is a fact I learned from Euphoria season three. That's right. There's a bird named Paladin from Have Gun, Will Travel. So that is where that name comes from. That's funny. So the reason I think Paladin, and I actually don't know, maybe he's only here. He's only here for like the first third of the show. I don't know how deeply involved he's going to be in the entire show, but the moment where he shows up and he's like, no civilians and kills a guy for betraying that code, or later when he kills our guy, Duller's Ed, after Duller's Ed is the most cartoonishly villainous character to ever exist. Clancy, yeah. So that we could all just sort of like delight in Paladin dispatching, tasing him and then shooting him in the head. Yeah. Yeah. His kills so far have been like people who mistreated the person who killed Fiona and the person who tormented Tommy and Lisa. And so that puts Paladin in a like his interests are counter to Vision's interests. But like, I don't think you have a character do that. Say no civilians. Yeah, yeah. Without a hope of, can we plausibly redeem him or put him on a different side of the conflict before the show is over? Do you know what I mean? Yes. I think that there is some aspect of just establishing for us, this is a character bound by rules, like governed by rules, that will position us to like maybe anticipate or better understand quickly, even for hour long episodes, it's only eight episodes, how he behaves. But I agree with you. It felt like, oh, you think this is wrong. And the like, rundown that we get. Yeah. Of the line, he's not the Paladin, he's a Paladin. And what's that? Dread pirate robber of mercenaries. What that mantle means. Like, it's not just the question of, is that person hero, villain, anti-hero? It's, you know, we get that line, like, doesn't matter who they're going after, hero, villain, like the contract is the contract, right? He does all of it believing himself to be righteous. Yeah. So, you know, the fact that like we have the voice on the other line, the handler, right? And we have hacked by the client. I'm like, bounty hunter getting a call from the client? What is this, Mando? You know, where's Grogu? We're all asking, where's Grogu? I will say. Are we? I'm always asking, where's Grogu? Always. Can we talk about the handler for a second? Yeah, please. Go ahead. Yeah. So, the comedian Diane Morgan, who's great. That's definitely an AI, right? She's alone in a room. In a very like. Weird little office room? Yeah. And also just the, something about the way that the screens were behaving. I know it's there to tell us like, hack, firewall breach, but there was a kind of glitch aspect of it that made me think like we're in the Matrix sort of, you know? She's, I think she's definitely an AI. That seems like a likely and a good bet for Theory Corner. She was amusing. She was entertaining. I think the, so the fact that we go from Madman in the Attic, I love that, I love that turn of phrase from you. And Ultron's saying. Saying things in that scene that are just riveting poetry. You don't see the pain and confusion. That's when he asks, he asks Vision to look at the painting. What do you see in Vision's like brushstrokes, the mathematics of paint, luminosity, composition. And Ultron says, you don't see the pain and confusion or the anger or grief. Ultron also loves Bosh. Exactly. Exactly. The Pride video show. I kind of think anything that has to follow right on the heels of that, it's tough. It's a tough ask. Like, that's just amazing. I kind of found Paladin entertaining. I thought like the, to a couple things. One, little bit of a, in addition to what you've identified about, okay, are we being primed for some little kernel of moral fiber that maybe we can latch onto? There's a little bit of a humor and a charm to them. There is. You know, there's the like. lures a vision back to the to fiona's pub and he's kind of mocking him like you know you can't have a drink uh twists the guts and he's like honestly as i get old you know same and i was just like i kind of like this i don't know um i i i think the big surprise as we kind of indicated in our big picture thoughts at the top was sheer screen time and i you know ultimately will i see how i feel about that at the end of the season if that continues to be the case across the episodes we have characters in this two-part premiere edith most of all saying more than once uh he feels like a level one boss not the big bad oh yeah i mean who hired paladin is is one of the big theory corner questions of these two episodes biggest theory is is the the question most people feel preoccupied with and they're like mephisto no actually sharon carter which like oh my god heaven forfend it better not be sharon carter seeing mad report in a headline of a newspaper mad report mentioned and sharon carter theorized i was like please don't take me back to the power broker i can't go there real roller coaster journey of like oh mad report maybe we'll go back fun into oh my god but it's the power broker plot is waiting oh no i can't do sharon carter i i think that even though it is clear to the other characters into the viewer at home we get the the calls from the client this is so you've committed a faux pas by hacking my systems all that and and like the voice is is distorted distorted yeah yeah who is it okay yeah theory fodder where our brains are are activated that's all fun um we'll talk about that in theory corner this like reminds me of when you were analyzing house of the dragon trailer you're like that seems like a feminine gate i was like is that a male intonation or a female intonation the even though something else is waiting for us to discover there and the bread crumbs are abundant already paladin being more present in the story through two episodes then say in like a in a meaningful way then say the salem seven and agatha i think is a good thing we'll see but i kind of think that there's been a little bit too much of a like impulse in the mcu shows to say we need some other like dusting sprinkling little garnish of a potential threat that isn't actually really ever developed in the story i think the problem i have is that it's pinging like sword for me it's pinging whatever his face i refuse to remember his name tyler something right word yeah yeah from wandavision which i did not like and so i'm just sort of like i don't want i agree yeah the performance is much more like much funnier much more charming i like this actor like i you know i am optimistic that it's going to go somewhere but right away i'm just like getting sure like that any like i said anytime we left the hex it wasn't as fun for me as being the hayward stuff in wandavision was not good so if this is if this is this show's version of that i won't at the end of the season feel good about it i'm i'm inclined to hope that there's just more to this but maybe i'm just like yeah when you get older and you have a lot of whiskey you do have a tummy ache i'm rocking with paladin so far i don't know dog grooming the van like it's funny here are the two main here are the two main uh things seemingly preoccupying the marvel studios reddit post these episodes yeah number one who's the client sure number two why didn't vision kill paladin sure when he's so happy to kill so many henchmen and he just lets paladin walk away multiple times when he could have just killed him um that seems strange where on that list if those are one and two is hat watch hat watch four um not as important to gen pop as it is to me but i think it's going to i mean vision showing up in that hat and then ultra on making a big speech about maybe i'm a hat guy now and then looking at himself and it's spader in the in the foreground but then in the mirror it's yeah putting a hat putting a hat on a robot incredibly it's just like one of the most delightful things oh my god and the journey about to begin and then at the end of course he's got his hat hats we're like uh-oh ultron's journey is beginning what does that mean hat watch is a big part of my theory corner experience so far um not killing paladin look you're right should hat watch replace wig watch no we actually got an email from a listener asking if lace on the face aka beard watch uh should replace wig watch inside of this episode. A wig of a fashion. A wig of a sort. We're bringing back wig watch, though. It's happening. I should hope so. Okay. No, I think wig watch can never go and hat watch and beard watch and whatever other watches just have to coexist alongside wig watch always. Not killing Paladin doesn't make sense in terms of the just reckless abandon of when Vision Doesn't make sense at all. And that's okay. It's fine. Because the story's got to continue and that's the answer. Paladin has the strongest armor in the world plot armor. Yada, yada, yada. Yeah. We wanted to keep this after a while. The fact that Vision is in no way tormented by the death toll is pretty funny to me. Like, the first, the guy he goes up to at St. Maven's and is like, I'm here for the trap. We're just in, like, Voldemort confetti territory with, like, what that laser beam does to that guy. Oh, yeah. Well, then we get, like, the wide shot of the hospital and it's just, like, blood clouds spattering against the window. He killed a ton of people. A ton of people. The show's a little more, considering how candy-coated cute it is, compliment, to be clear, it's a little more violent than I was anticipating. Also a compliment. Like, I think that that blend has been kind of a. Yeah. It's been a. It's like when people just stayed dead in Agatha and I was like, what? I know, right? Yeah. Oh, my God. I was like, all these people are definitely coming back and they're like, nope, Sharon died. And I was like, what? Dude, I remember talking about this. We loved this at the time, but, like, deep, deep, deep into the season when Sharon's name comes up again and Agatha's just like, who? Oh, wait, can I say, Alistair emailed after our WandaVision episode to remind me of how I lost my mind when Paul Bettany in an interview said he got the chance to act opposite. Comments on the pod post about this, too. An actor that he, like, most had, most wanted to work with and he was talking about himself, but I lost my mind and, like, combed through anything I could ever think of and I think that's probably how I landed with Al Pacino and Mephisto, among other things. But I was just like, I lost my mind and it turned out Paul Bettany was talking about himself. I was like, oh, yeah, I lost so many hours of my life to that. Dude, the early COVID days, like, we were all just trying to make it through. All right, a speedy backstory. Let's talk about Tommy. Man. The old you would have responded to. I've responded with measure. Well, let's try something new. It's just a sick bar from Violent Vision. I'm ready to move on. Very good. Okay, after watching WandaVision Paladin and his court handler, aka AI, do in two seconds what a witch teen and his ghost babysitter could not do, which is find Tommy. What do you think about that? Doesn't make any sense to me, but we can figure it out. I mean, is there, like, I don't know. Is there something magically keeping Billy from Tommy? I don't know. That's possible. You know? Yeah. But it just seems, like, really weird that they were, like, Billy seems so powerful. Yeah. Juiced up with the aid of Agatha and they cannot in all their magic find Tommy. A person that, like, he made, like, he found the body in the pool or whatever. Like, he can't, like, locate that. But Paladin to his AI is like, find me any Tommy. And she's like, here's one. He mentioned Westview. I would encourage Billy and ghostly Agatha, if she's still helping him, to revisit Age of Ultron, as we already discussed, and remind themselves that it's in the internet. All your witchcraft and your magic, fine, good, handy in a pinch. Paladin and his handler are just like, and there are the Psycho-Val tapes. Did Billy try a computer? Where's Ralph Boner? Is Ralph Boner still help? Because Ralph was, you know, he's on the message boards. Oh, he's dialed in. Dialed up, dialed in. I miss him. I do, too. Maybe we'll get another Boner cameo. Do you think Boner took a trip to Edinburgh? Something to think about. Okay. So Billy put Tommy in the body of Thomas Shepard. This is comic book bullshit, but I just think it's always, think it's funny that Billy found William Kaplan and Tommy found Thomas Shepard. So they found two boys with their names. Yes. To have their soul shards implanted into. So as you alluded to earlier, Tommy's memory slash reincarnation doesn't work quite like Billy's, right? His mind is kind of dual-occupied by Tommy's memory. But Tommy Shepard and his whole traumatic backstory and being in and out of foster care and all the things that happened with Thomas Shepard and haunted by the memories of Westview as well. So unlike Billy, Tommy was never put under the sigil that Lillia puts William Kaplan under, so that's part of it. No bar mitzvah sigils for Tommy Shepard. Here's the section from his interrogation, right? Which I just loved this writing. Yeah. He said, he says, a house only haunted like the air itself was having a laugh. Really good. To describe the laugh track, that is such a good line. Like the air itself was having a laugh. Like an audience that wasn't there and there were meatloaves and green lawns, pixelated almost. Then he says, there was a man, his face like a demon, blood red, like a deep purple bruise with these kind eyes. He wasn't human, but he called me son. I loved that. And I do think that Rory Rhymes of Brewery is a fantastic actor and performs this really, really well. Some of the details are different in terms of like what we find out about what happened in the pool, but it's a very similar backstory to Tommy who like accidentally evaporated his entire school. Right. That there is like something calamitous happened because a teenager didn't understand his own powers. His parents aren't really in the picture and in the comics it's like a divorce, but his parents aren't really in the picture. His parents aren't really in the picture. In and out of detention centers, this is like Speed's backstory in the comics. And inside of the detention centers in the comics is where he meets Lisa, who we meet with him first on the grift and then later in the bus. Anything you want to say about this difference between Tommy and Billy and the ways in which the memories of who they were and who they are are sort of at war in their heads? I think this is, to me, ideal when the show is connected to something we have watched before but giving us a slight twist. We've just done it a different version of it rather than just rehashing more familiar material because the fact that they're having distinct experiences makes sense given the context that you noted, the sigil, etc. Yeah. But it also just helps them feel simultaneously connected and like their own people and their own characters, which they are. So I think that's, it's smart, but really what it does, it's like this, you know. And we don't have to call him the teen and pretend that he's not Tommy. Yeah, exactly. And we, we talked about that a little bit on the WandaVision pod that that was exciting that from the word go it was going to be like we carry information with us that it was exciting and annoying at the same time. For sure. Yeah. Like, you know, we were just like, this is Tommy. We know this is Tommy and like we didn't have five weeks on the internet of Theory Corner or anything that most people really knew. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think the fact that Tommy is in this place where on the one hand we can hear in the like, you know, why, you know, I, grifting is better than being a pickpocket than lifting wallets scene and, you know, he and Lisa are together, you know, completing a Muhammad Ali quote and talking about like the power of reinvention. The power of reinvention, the idea that you can decide who you want to be. Who you are is less important than who you pretend to be. Fits in this show. Of course. But also the idea of feeling completely destabilized by your sense of self or lack of sense of self also very, very at home in this show. And so I think finding Tommy in a place where, you know, we hear like the description of when the paladin little message, the transmission entered the mind palace at the end of episode one after Ultron sent his email via carrier pigeon. I just can't get enough of referencing that wonderful stuff. And of course, as we should note, they, you know, we're talking about our suspicions of Ultron, but that also, you know, leads to just discussion among the characters of like, wait, you did this thing. And then throughout episode two, Vision is like, this is the, like what's happening with Tommy is the consequence of what you did, Ultron. So that's keeping the suspicion very active for Vision as well as for us. But, you know, the language of like fired a bullet into your brain was the description of how that paladin message came in. And so there's this question of vulnerability. Like, but this is kind of what happened to Tommy. Who you are, having that like restored, being able to see it clearly in a way that Billy actually couldn't, should be good. But it isn't, right? It is presented to us as unbearable, impossible to understand, impossible to navigate. It leads Tommy to not trust himself and it leads everybody around him to tell him he's not well. Right? It leads, like, we can hear the doctor's voices on the end of that tape saying, an orphan who, like, went from foster home to foster home so desperate for a family that he invented one. Like, the fact that nobody around him for a minute is inclined to say, let me help you. They're just telling him that he's unwell is so devastating. When Vision shows up and he's like, you're not real, you're not real, you're not real. By the way, I have a note for Vision, which is like, he walks into the hospital in his human guise, at some point switches into, like, white vision mode. And that's the mode he decides to, like, sort of enter into Tommy's room and I'm just sort of like, put the bomber jacket back on, my guy. Like, He described you as a demon and you show up. up in white vision robot form uh like the form most most likely to trigger him man let's talk about our girl lisa molinari okay uh comic book character right uh created by paul cornell mark brooks for dark rain young avengers from may 2009 she's got kind of an incredible alter ego name in the comics that i don't want to spoil i'll just like leave it hopefully for later but it is very good uh but we have our eyes on her i have my eyes on you lisa especially as you run around talking about wearing other people's faces this is a quote i killed a man and then wore his face to escape capture she then said just kidding i'm a pickpocket but i don't know lisa i'm it's a weird thing to say i'm worried about you yeah i have some questions comments and concerns about lisa yeah uh that made me nervous as well for lisa but just also more broadly like the being on guard for people in this story doing that oh you know in this question of like what identity is real um wearing faces just masquerading as another form like i feel like that line is obviously there for a reason maybe it's to make it suspicious of the lamb shit i don't know man i mean yeah i don't know how many skin suits will be in this movie it's hard it's a television show hard to say i think that is a very conspicuous and alarming line and the very like quick yeah switch to like you know i saw the badge after i looked at the wallet like i'm here because i stole uh money from a cop did not distract us from how alarming that comment was but i thought they were very cute together you know the bus the original meeting the but i will the bus scene really annoyed me um tell me why i liked tommy and lisa on the grift yes i love i love a con you know real better call saul kim and jimmy energy like i really liked it uh the bus really annoyed me because i thought that clancy the character that our guy ben crompton dollars ed played yeah was so cartoonishly evil it like took me out of the whole thing and i just like it really bothered me too many cattle prods it was just like yeah insanely written i thought and weirdly performed from an actor we know is like actually quite a good performer and so like i don't know i just i i really disliked that i did like the escape i liked seeing tommy's like because tommy speed in the comics is not just like cannot just go really fast but he can um generate hyperkinetic vibrations that accelerate the molecules and matter causing any solid object he directs his vibration at to explode so sort of like blows the the doors off the bus they do a real like keanu and sandy and speed like sort of slide off off the bus on the door moment i liked all of that but everything up until that i like made me feel like i was watching a show i did not want to be watching yeah i thought the clancy ed stuff was very strange as well i what i liked for just inside of the the tommy lisa moment was you know tommy is terrified terrified right and he's having a panic attack yes yeah and he's he's shaking and she's like he tries to talk to her initially and she kind of turns away you know i'm gonna take a nap but then she can feel she can feel his distress take a breath vibrating off him almost yeah quite and the quickness with which she seeks to comfort him that was that warmed me toward her uh and then when we you know at the end of the prior episode before we get that glimpse into the history and realize that she's the one who sort of planted that seed of like reinvent yourself be someone else um you know that flirt easy flirtation and the clear affection between them in the alley the really like charming little like you know and she's got great like yeah she's got great you know great careful like really funny really cute the little chuckle the little smile um no i like their dynamic yeah i felt quickly like i understood what they meant to each other so that was that was that was effective i thought i agree um overall vision is reluctant to a believe that thomas is tommy and then b claim any kind of paternal responsibility for him but the grief as we mentioned the grief love persevering line is the key to proving definitively to vision that this is tommy yeah what did you make of that deployment of that line um i didn't like it personally but i did like that sparky was mentioned because we're thinking about you always sparky r.i.p um and i did like that it was like a scene that we didn't see inside of the wandavision show like that this happened we haven't seen every single moment that happened with the family inside of of wandavision i just felt it felt a little like yeah when you were raising sort of this idea of uh recycling lines hitting what is grief but being so early yeah just felt i didn't i didn't love it i agree it felt to me like a uh in feeling a compulsion to play the greatest hits with that line there in a way that i don't know maybe we didn't see that scene and it's a way to remind us we didn't see that but like we actually did see the scene where wanda talked to the kids about sparky and about how they we talked we talked about this on our our pod you're telling me you're telling me kids only need one scene to be comforted about no no no that's not my point but my point is like for the viewer at home who's maybe going to be asking these questions and wondering they actually do have a scene to think about where that didn't happen but what then it gets like it kind of then you're like wait are we supposed to what are we supposed to think about that are we supposed to think that someone is like i didn't agree with i don't agree with that i i just felt like they wanted that a they wanted to play the greatest hits and b they needed a line that like vision and wanda were alone in a room when he said what so they needed a line that like you know could not be like and then she said you'll be okay or whatever it needed to be like prove in one second division that this is somehow connected for sure to wanda in reality i don't know then it's like what is the actual answer for how that tommy has that information did agatha who witnessed it in the memory tour with wanda transfer it to billy who transferred it to tommy it was just a scene we didn't see in one division i think there's a lot we didn't see inside of one division yeah maybe um i think there's a lot we didn't see um maybe maybe i don't know because the concept of one division is that they're like speed running it yeah the the broadcast but then that we do know that wanda edits things out of the broadcast i don't know it's yeah it felt i don't know not elegant i would say uh i agree with that uh the other greatest that they play is this next section i'm calling another ship right so vision struggles with i loved i loved loved this part yeah which is vision struggling with vision struggling with vision struggling with vision struggling with vision struggling with his identity talking to ultron back in the attic talking to ultron the weight of living up to who he has been yeah this part this is one of my favorite you know uh tommy's description of the laugh track and then this sequence are like two of my favorite bits of writing in the episodes i have his memories but not his feelings i have his face but not his virtue all i can feel is the weight of him his legacy his worthiness his name first of all you'll near you'll near mention sure worthiness yeah shout out me on your always i love this idea that it's not just that like visions like uh i'm supposed to feel these things but i don't feel these things right like i can't look at westview because that's not me and i don't i don't love wanda and i don't own these children because like i'm not that vision like that's one thing but to say who he was is so vaulted he had the love of uh this family and he was an avenger and a hero and he was all of these amazing things how can i possibly live up to that i think that concept is beautiful beautifully performed by paul bettany the anguish of of that it's almost like shakespearean i just thought i thought this was like a really really beautiful moment and then we'll talk about the ship with these stuff but like i i just thought that part was so good i really loved this too and i thought in general across the two episodes the moment where vision himself is saying something about either og vision or one division hex vision were consistently really compelling you know the prior scene where he's saying um i wish to understand him and how he existed in the world because we are forever entangled but he is a stranger to me and therefore i am a stranger to myself vision he was a hero he lived he loved he died that was real westview was a fantasy connects to the scene we're talking about here obviously but also this idea that like he is in constant the vision that wanda created like a lot of how he's talking about himself is a relationship to the original vision that he was reconstituted from but he talks a lot about the wanda vision vision and the idea that that is a separate thing entirely because it was wanda's memory and not real right but there are three distinct visions versus one continuous yeah but also it's like well what is the difference when we talked about this a lot on our pod it's part of why we love that first ship of dc scene so much because it's like well surely you are the real vision because you believe yourself to be it's one of the things white vision says to him but also like the idea that yes that vision was the creation of wanda's grief wanda's love wanda's memory wanda's impressions and that is a little bit different but those the love the grief the memories the impression came from her time and experience with original vision original vision so what is their all father brother son to each other right and so that's like the idea that he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't like i really really like thinking about all that and the kind of uh moments in the episode where vision is is assessing that before we get to the the ship of dcs scene i agree with you i thought that the tommy the the top the writing in the tommy scene was beautiful and i think that this um this sequence was also really lovely and wonderfully written and i was struck by it too the i have his face but not his virtue in part because it's lovely but in part because virtue Virtue's not, I mean, reasonable people can disagree, about this and debate it, I would say virtue is not something you're born with. It's something you forge. And so the idea that he's looking at the original vision and saying he had something that I don't, it's like, but you can get that too. You can get that too. I agree. I like that interpretation a lot. But then also we have to think about the fact that like the second he was born, he could lift Mjolnir, which is worthiness. But like, you know, like that vision was sprung fully formed, you know, Athena like out into the world with all of these things. Yeah. And that like, but then it's like, well, this vision, again, like we talked about earlier, that predates this experience with Wanda. Yeah. So, you know, this character is so reasonably rightly, this is what the story is about, focus on that as the distinction. But like the thing that that original vision came into Stark Tower with in the first place, looking at that reflection in the window and then turning around, making the speech and picking up Mjolnir, like, that was there from the word go. And then he acted upon it. Right. So like this character can do that too. And then I think, yeah, the legacy point, like the idea that he's drenching himself in all these memories, he's immersing in them. And that like, it's not functioning to this point as a bridge, but like as a wedge, it's making him feel further removed from that possibility. Yeah. It's just very striking to watch. I think to your point about sort of what vision, what original vision did with, you know, the worthiness into like growing his virtue, let's say, or the version that is Hex vision, this idea of like code constantly updating this idea of change, I think is, and we know is so core to what we're talking about here when we talk about these AI in general and vision specifically. I like this idea of like, Edith is constantly like, let's do this. Let's, let's explore this. Let's do this. And then like Jarvis advising like caution and restraint and all these other things. So these like push and pull of like Ultron trying to push him out of the nest. And then like those who are saying like, we should hide, like, you know, what's the movement here? Ultron saying everyone changes. Human can be 10 different people on a day. The unalgorithmic alacrity with which they wobble. My goodness. Learn from them. And then, sorry, just really quickly, what Paul Bettany has said, again, I believe this is in the screen rant interview, but like what he has said about what he thinks is core to his mission or the way that he thinks about vision. He says, I would argue that the contract, and I think contract is such a fun, interesting word for him to, like a promise, right? The contract that the character vision has made with his audience is unbreakable, which is he must always be in a state of change. He's always trying to discover himself. I think this is important because the people that I've noticed that are the fans of vision are young people who are going through exactly the same thing. They have a differing array, a sort of baffling array of choices that they can make about who they are. So the fact that Paul Bettany thinks about vision as an Avenger, as a character that young people are sort of like interested in and preoccupied with, and then he's like, how can they feel themselves reflected back in this space? And he talked about in the screen rant interview, and in general, he's talked about like, Marvel is this kind of, he called it a boutique experience. He's like, you think of it as this big, uh, story churning out machine. He was like, but it's like Kevin Feige and Lou Desposito. And like, you know, there's just like a few people there and been there from the beginning. And the way in which they like have conversations with me about my character, rather than just sort of like dictate to me what my character is. So the fact that like, he has such a strong idea of, of this contract that, that vision has made with his fans, with his audience, with the young people who've grown up watching Marvel and thinking about them, you know, Paul Bettany talks personally a lot about being a father. So like the way in which he thinks about like, how can this be helpful and instructive to young people? I find so beautiful, uh, that he brings that level of thoughtfulness and care and, and father to legions of Marvel fans, uh, attitude towards, towards vision. And we talked about this when we talked about what, what an Android or a which is their curiosity, their bafflement about human behavior, how that can just be such, such a keen story, storytelling shortcut to exploring the nature of humanity from, from the outside in and stuff like that. And, and the nature of, you know, in a scary way, uh, sometimes AI constantly learning and changing and updating and all of that sort of stuff. So all of that being in the, in, in the mix, as we move into this, uh, next easiest section section is is something that I find really fascinating. What did you want to say about this theme of change? Yeah, no, I mean, I, I think that like what you were saying about Jarvis and Edith just made me think that like, that is very true to where those characters started, which is like a little bit, there's, there's something kind of core then about that aspect of their identity, right? Like Jarvis as, um, butler, nurturer, protector, Edith, glasses that Peter's accidentally using to activate drones to shoot a bus on the side of a cliff, like kind of a, a reckless unpredictability. Um, and so then that's like, how do we marry that with this larger assessment of like, well, okay, what is maybe core to your designed intention, who you think you have to be, who you were or what you can be. And so it's like fun to think about the, um, the synths and how they're, they're, uh, influencing each other. And again, like it was interesting to hear Jarvis say, we've been trying to help you think about human emotion. What was their respective journey with that? Like for any of those AI, like if, if any, you know, if anything kind of interesting to, I wonder if that will be explored, but the fact that at the end of episode two, Tommy and Vision are together and Ultron, now Tommy can't see him, but we can and Vision can, is in the back seat. Like not only like, you know, oh, you know, at the end of episode one, it's a boy mazel tov. And then at the end, like the kind of father, son, grandpa, people, um, tie of it all. But like saying this thing here about humans can be 10 different people in a day. That is a Tommy Lisa idea in these two episodes reinvention, you know? So that makes me feel like Ultron is getting it in a way that Vision isn't, but then I still always keep a wall in front of me. And so I think that's, I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. of caution up with Ultron because he's Ultron. So that's a fun place to be with the character. What's his ulterior? What is Ultron's ulterior? Yeah, always. And like, even where Ultron was at the very beginning, you know, when he's born and he's, we're seeing all of the flashes and clips of news footage and things that Tony has said. And obviously, you know, hilarious. One of my favorite moments, as you know, in civil war, like Ultron, my fault from Tony. My bad. Great shit. Um, but born out of a desire to protect right. Suit of armor around the world. And then it's like time. Um, peace in our time. Well, what does that actually look like? And who is the arbiter of that? And Ultron, even from the beginning, when he turned into an evil, um, maniac who sought to take a chunk of Sokovia, raise it into the air and then fire it into the ground as a missile that would destroy Earth so that humanity could be reborn. Fucked up and bad. He was still thinking about humanity, right? And what it meant to be human. And now he was doing it through the lens of seeing failure and pain and the need for a reset. But he was never an AI who was like, I'm not interested in humanity. He was an AI who was like, I think I can do it better. How present is that for him still? Here we are with these ship of Theseus redux. Yeah. I'm really mixed on this personally. Um, so we really, really enjoy the original ship of Theseus exchange. I think as someone who like really loved WandaVision, really loved Agatha is really protective of Jack Schaefer and her writer's room. Any whiff of like insult to it makes me bristle. Sure. So for Ultron to say it's bullshit, a busy work thought exercise for a college freshman. So lost in the questions, they ignore the story of brave Theseus, King Theseus himself. Yeah. Uh, that irritated me. Uh, I just felt unnecessary. I think you could, I think you could get to where we get to without, and that's not, it's Ultron insulting. Maybe not the Terry McAllister and his writer's room insulting, but like, I felt like you didn't need to do that to get where you got because we love Greek mythology corner and we're happy to like, for sure. Think about the expansion upon it and to think about, you know, be the King, you know, if your kid's in danger, like, and this is all obviously also Ultron for his own, uh, voting vision into action, right. Be the goddamn King, like all this sort of stuff, like, obviously. And if you, obviously, if you put words inside of like one of your villains, whether or not he's like ultimately the villain at the end of the season, like he is a villainous character, you don't have to own those. But I, it just felt like a weird, unnecessary shot fired at, at something. Yeah. I, I, I bumped on it too. I think that it can ultimately function as not an on trying to work vision, but still it gave me the same, like oh oh no yeah it's not nice um feeling I also once again I think particularly on the heels of the grief line and just the the kind of mounting heft of the number of of moments and scenes we had returned to I started in the scene like a little bit like oh no actually we're returning to yet another thing like how much of the show is going to be that I will say by the end of this exchange I liked where it netted out which you know is not just a rehash actually but like hey let's have a new spin on this existing idea um that makes sense for this version of the character in this moment be the king for the for the children right like that that um once I got over the bullshit line and or we got past the bullshit line and I got over like oh god is this just going to be the exact same exchange again um it felt like okay when a monster is your son don't be the ship be the goddamn king made sense as a little propulsive engine for for this moment I think to save the children in each passing year though same sons and daughters soon wives and husbands then mothers and fathers restore that ship in celebration of the day like I think that's really great writing I just think it started from a place that it didn't need to um yeah and that's just me being protective of a story I really love no I agree all right a noble self-sacrifice uh we've already talked about this a bunch about like Jarvis you already mentioned sort of Jarvis's seemingly contradictory or just adaptable changeable uh approaches towards emotion uh we'll get to the first of us painting and theory corner uh that that is part of their big like goodbye scene this is a very much like signaling Jarvis's death where they have like a big like yeah elder brother younger brother uh you're off to war sort of goodbye moment um yeah but uh how did this how did this you know and then we have Ultron basically saying like it doesn't have to be the end uh you know if ever there was a moment for a noble self-sacrifice this would be it right yeah and then Jarvis kills himself sacrifices himself uh his you know he talks about sort of like the energy to keep his code going going into the to feed the other characters to but we literally see sort of like golden characters of his code that that that golden orb from from Age of Ultron but like go into Friday and Edith and Dummy and you so I'm wondering if there's like echoes of Jarvis's life in the book I'm wondering if there's Jarvis are going to like sort of infuse these characters I don't know um but what how did this death work for you the scale I'm doing that the MCU Disney plus show scale I'm doing is uh worst death most aggravating death which I would say is Maria Hill and Secret Invasion where we were just like this this didn't do at all what you wanted it to do you thought you were doing something big and you didn't do it to something like Lillia Calderu in Agatha which I thought was like one of the best MCs in the world yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah death's full stop let alone in in the TV space yeah so uh where does this net out for you on on that spectrum um you know we stopped covering Secret Invasion midway through but as as we did talk about at the time and as you know my reaction to that death was to pop a bottle of champagne and celebrate because Maria Hill and the MCU never worked for me and I was glad they killed her sorry you're not sorry sorry you don't think women should be in positions of power and that's always been your stance he's fast she's weird thanks Maria I like Maria Hill fine I just I just really hated that death like I just think they really thought they were doing something with her and it just felt bad bad story I'm telling you but remember when Secret Invasion gave us platitudes that was something um I remember they made it that the roadie that was there Tony Stark's death was actually a Skrull remember very painful guy yeah I was just thinking about that the other day yeah amazing completely incredible um I don't know I will do you think she's the client uh could be okay could be um I don't know I think in part because of what you're saying about the little ones and zeros some pieces of Jarvis making you know his way into uh other aspects of the the AI family there like the fact that we thought Ultron was gone but here he is like I don't know that we're mourning Jarvis quite the same way because it seems canonically established that it's possible to restore some version of of uh of these figures so I don't know that I'm actively mourning I think that um you know what they were able to do that quickly in Agatha with with Lillia was like pretty incredible so certainly this doesn't measure up I was like oh bummer Jarvis that's sad that was sort of I wasn't like I need to cry and a hundred percent I was a bit more like I wanted more time with James Darcy personally it's great shout out Cloud Atlas shout out Sixth Myth all right uh all of that Ultron's now out uh you mentioned he appears in this sort of like ghostly form hat on in the back seat Tommy make sure that he like gets gets Vision um yeah did I give you enough time and space to talk about the shirling collar bomber jacket that Vision wears when he walks in to the room and he's like I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I just thought it was wonderful I mean a very on your like jacket correspondent front like where where is this ranking um pretty high I mean it's tough right now to compete with Joel's wax trucker from Last of Us and obviously the Hal jacket has been a big part of my year from Lanterns but this is dad jacket time yeah this is great is this like a like kind of nice you know a forest like hunter green and then that like chestnut kind of like a little bit of a kind of rich shirling collar just fantastic and I think you know Tommy also Tommy's like color is green iconically and Tommy's also wearing sort of like a green silky kind of jacket and so they really look like they match uh here at the end of the episode yeah delightful just great and now they're on the road that's right in a in a in a shitty station wagon and I'm excited to see it we're gonna go now to theory corner right we don't have any like spoilers to talk about but just sort of like if you don't like theories now's the time all right as I mentioned number one on people's mind who hired Paladin yeah what's your going theory right now um I think there are a number of possibilities uh I mean one of them is just Ultron right and I think the fact that he is like uh admitting to carrier pigeon email and like you guys aren't even bothering to monitor even the brightest corners of the dark web and all of that like fessing up to a degree of involvement so that he can say but that other this is the rest of this isn't me is it would be smart cover for it being him right so Ultron is certainly I think like a Vegas if not a Vegas favorite at least very high on the board think then and there's also just the fact that the client the way that that conversation with the handler and Paladin happens like it points to some sort of tech expertise tech prowess right so I think whether it's because he hacks via the sword yeah so then there's like okay is it Ultron or is it another synth another AI that feels um reasonable to consider given the the firewall breaching yeah because I am a lunatic the sheer volume of Stark industry uh uh you know logos and the different AI and all that you think it's happy Hogan I was like could this is it any chance it's just a hammer is there well any chance there's a hammer headline in one of the newspapers that would be I don't actually think that's it to be clear but that would be you think Sam Rockwell in an attempt to sort of like boost his Oscar chances of Wild Horse Nine is like yeah also I'm envisioning yeah he's like you saw what I could do in like 17 minutes of White Lotus yeah just wait uh that would be incredible so Ultron one possibility another synth another possibility is a if it's another synth a synth with a connection to Stark or Stark nemesis or something could it be hammer I don't know sword as we talked about already my hope but also my belief is that this is a a misdirect that like Friday repeatedly is like sword sword sword like the characters are really on sword watch that sword is coming up a lot that the sword files you know the label on the reel of like confidential sword it's just a lot of sword probably means it's not sword however something that we talk and I think they must know that the sword stuff didn't land but that actually makes me nervous because like we talk about a lot wrap your arms around the thing that doesn't work one of the things the MCU does like we fucked up let's try it again that would be terrible that would be awful I really hope it's not that speaking of Sharon Carter could be Sharon Carter that would also not be good I think kill me uh could be Billy and Agatha I was thinking Billy right yeah could be Billy because he my my witch powers can't do it so let me hire this uh sort of it just feels too dangerous to I know the prompt is bring bring vision sort of like hole seems to be the prompt so it's not like kill vision but it still seems like very like violent to send paladin out if you're like looking for your dad yes though who you know who among us certainly Billy and Agatha good intention a lot of death around that could have could be could be Riri I mean I guess I guess it's possible let's wrap our arms around heck is it Echo um Valentina could be okay could be Doom I I would be so shocked if this show connects to Doom I don't think so I would be shocked I know I know that would be shocking yeah uh right now I think I'm like Billy Ultron like Billy and Ultron are I think the top two top contenders Justin Hammer just kidding number three it could be a character we don't know yeah it could definitely just be a character we don't know but like I think I think when you use voice like distortion like that doesn't that feel like it's trying to distort a voice we know yes or a voice we're about to encounter right and so then we don't immediately say like oh is that that character I don't know there are some members of the cast who have not uh entered the story yet okay um the painting of the man on fire yeah so this is the very first android canonically in the comics Jim Hammond invented by Phineas Horton became a human torch first seen inside the MCU on display in a display in Captain America the first Avenger uh so this is just sort of like the proto before there was Jarvis and Vision and Ultron or whatever there was Jim Hammond do you think people watching the double premiere like knew that piece this together were meant to understand that like obviously the language is as the first of us he remains a cautionary tale well it's just like any sort of comic book thing like I think it's yeah I I don't think you have that moment if you're not going to come back to a lot of lingering camera that painting and stuff like that so like I think it's a seed planted that certain people in the weeds in comic bookery yes we'll know what it is for sure and then it's our job as podcasters to tell other people what it is but I don't think anyone watching it is supposed to be like ah yeah I yeah clearly that's Jim Hammond you know yeah because again yeah I mean it's the camera's kind of lingering when they're taught when Vision and Ultron are talking about the painting and then we really stay on it as we leave that scene so they want us to be thinking about it but I was like how many people are going to be watching this at home just like wait that like kind of looks like it but it who that's obviously not a thing that we like know about this character so like yeah who is just feeling confused rather than like oh satisfying easter egg but I don't know I the thing that I really was thinking about watching that was just that it reminded me so this was mostly about color choice and the kind of look of the paint it reminded me so much of Battlestar and specifically the painting that Adama keeps in his office of the first Cylon war like it just now they're like a lot more that's not a solitary figure but it's a very like yellow brown kind of painting and that felt like uh I don't know that felt intentional to me that they were um doing something that looked a little bit similar to that and that's like the idea of carrying history with you you know I'm looking at it yeah and I part of the reason that I thought of that right away was because well I always love the way that that painting is there it's so present when you're watching Battlestar and at one point Adam and I got a print of it but it was you just like we ended up taking it actually like literally just can't see it because it's so dark so it like looks cool on the show but not at home um but yeah it's just very interesting interesting interesting to see where that goes yeah uh no one like if if they do a whole Jim Hammond backstory or something like that like no one's been announced as like in the cast that you know you're like that would be Jim Hammond or something like that so I don't know right um the butcher bird killer multiple talk about breadcrumbs multiple multiple things tech giant murdered butcher bird wings carved beneath the roof of the house and it's like it's like it's a victim is the headline that vision's reading uh vision uh Ultron says you know I have really become a true crime junkie madness and primal compulsions are terrific time wasters and then on the news we hear but ornithological experts have identified the markings as those belonging to the butcher bird the killer is still on the loose so I'm not an ornithological expert so I had to look up what the butcher bird was same um yeah a carnivorous songbird known for its habit of impaling prey on thorns sharp branches or barbed wire and then even at the very end when Jarvis um is starting to like delete what he can before the sacrifice deleting what he can to try to protect the core and Ultron's tvs yeah you can hear it yeah one more butcher bird yeah exactly um I was wondering I don't know that this is the case but I was wondering if it could possibly be your reference to butcher and blackbird the Bryn Weaver novel about serial killers I don't know if it is but I was just like butcher butcher bird butcher and blackbird um really fun fucked up book uh you know um anyway interesting I'm sure this will come back into play I'm sure this is like a lock multiple mentions a mystery that that Ultron is tracking that you know uh vision is reading about so something something to keep uh another headline missing adamantium hunt for stolen adamantium continues do we think this is just paladins bullets or is there something else that the adamantium could be up to Ultron builds his body from adamantium in the comics right you know is this something that like Ultron is sending carrier pigeons out to like steal adamantium in the world to build himself a body external to vision something like that like I mean you know but that would be a bit of a signature move kind of thing for for him after his vibranium uh amassing in age of Ultron yeah that's a good question is this just the the adamantium rounds that paladin has already used to shoot vision that worked like damaged him supremely and he only had like badly injured I think what yeah I hope he goes and gathers up those shelves and reforms new bullets like what's the plan you were sure that was gonna be enough what was the plan unbelievable um yeah so I guess my instinct would be that seeing that the adamantium rounds that Friday helpfully identifies for us the paladin used here did damage vision primes us for the fact that there's more kind of anti-vibranium you know strong enough to to pierce the shell material out there that paladin or someone else could use but maybe it's I mean we can mock paladin and I will uh for six bullets what was your plan but the emp cage yeah adamantium bullets the being able to like hack it fire a bullet into his brain hack into the system to deliver a message like this dude's impressive oh yeah and we get and when we get the download about like what his what he's a part of the history it's like not just he's strained in every weapon he's strained in every yard it's like he's got a brain not just with a gun right exactly uh mad report mentioned as we as we uh yes again real just roller coaster oh my god is Sharon Carter gonna be the power broker gonna be in this story uh or are we gonna see Baron Zemo dance again well that'd be wonderful one can only dream that'd be wonderful uh Lisa yeah friend or foe friend I that client Lisa uh less like you less likely than Justin Hammer okay probably more likely than Justin Hammer um I think friend because it would be such a bummer but this reminds me a little bit I'm not gonna spoil lanterns for people who haven't watched it in a vision quest episode and are like why did I just catch this very recent spoiler but it would remind me a little bit of something we discussed there of like well what would the lesson in a story about like opening yourself opening yourself up to love be if that was the answer to that question I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I'll go oh my god don't fall in love you'll regret it just to a couple more sections to go stock the fridge with easter eggs this is something we do on MCU shows is like instead of sort of exhausting our way through the whole thing we just talk about some of our favorite easter eggs anything you want to mention from this list or or a separate list that you had that you want to mention it's the first one on on your list here but the because we talked about hat watch yeah you know and of course apple war is always present on house of our when we got to glimpse that painting um I don't know anytime we see a hat now a top hat a fedora anything at all I think we have to be like so what you're referencing is the son of man which is a famous iconic uh image of a man with a bowler and over his face isn't as a green apple yeah a delicious looking green apple vision has reformed this thing no face at all hat and body no face and then just is it an apple or an or is it a red apple or is it an orange it's either a red apple or an orange yeah but it's not a green apple that's for sure yeah uh pomegranate so yeah that's that's the update so either it's a score one point for red apple I guess if if vision decided to replace the green apple with red apple erase the humanity from it uh red apple apple of knowledge all the identic imagery that's in this uh episode etc etc and also that tommy line like red you know yeah the the bosh for the bosh heads out there uh there's a lot of garden of eden imagery in there uh angel demon temptation formation of man all that sort of stuff yeah um all the groceries we could go through I don't I think it's fun for me it's and I don't know if this is real but I really like it when clancy aka dollar said aka ben crumpton says do you honestly believe that we're heading for young offenders I choose to believe that's a young avengers joke great stuff um that's my choice really uh that's my decision really really good uh banner and hawkeye mentioned visions reading camus let after he says he's a stranger to himself And, like, if you look at The Stranger, there's a lot of thematic, like, we got a great email from a listener that's, like, a very, very long, in-depth sort of, like, what the themes of The Stranger have to do with the show and stuff like that. God, I loved that book when I read it for the first time. Loved. Sanford and Son, Sesame Chicken Calzone, He Was a Good Guy, which is, you know, something Ultron has already said about Jarvis, et cetera, et cetera. Anything else you want to mention from the Easter egg section? I don't think so. I mean, it's just nice to have the TV screens back, I guess, so that we can… Pour over. Yeah. There's a lot of Getty images, honestly, on those screens. A lot of stock footage. A lot of royalty-free sort of things. Needle Drops. This is not necessarily a thing we normally do, but there's a couple really interesting ones inside of these episodes. So we get two songs literally about ships, and I'm wondering if we'll get one in every episode. I think that would be kind of fun. Both of them are from the 70s. We get John Dever's Calypso. Calypso from 1975. Yeah. Which starts with, To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean, To ride on the crest of a wild raging storm. This is the song that's playing at St. Maven's as Vision comes into the trap and then, you know, kills a bunch of people. And then Roger Whitaker's The Last Farewell from 1971. There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor. Tomorrow for old England she sails. This is playing in the pub right before Fiona gets got. We mourn. I don't know. I just really like these 1970s. Sort of like dad rocky kind of fun, hokey, a little like Guardian of the Galaxy kind of. We're going to reinvigorate certain like old dusty classics inside of this context. I thought those were both really great. Like I love a musical accompaniment. I love a needle drop. But they added a certain energy, an effective one to the scene. So I quite liked those. As I mentioned, Henry Mancini's Mr. Lucky plays when Vision walks into the house. Connie Francis is everybody's somebody's fool is playing also in the pub. And then Chopin, Nocturne number two and E-flat is playing in the attic when we meet, when we see Ultron. So very like, of course, like we're going to drop some Chopin. Like, you know what I mean? That's just very like, I've got a Hieronymus Bosch up here. I'm listening to Chopin. I'm like watching all the TV shows. I'm just soaking up all the art that the humans have to offer. Can't wait to go to the Louvre. Yeah. What a guy that Ultron is. Yeah. We're watching the needle drops. If anyone has any like further insight into the needle drops, I would love to hear. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. But I just thought, I thought those, those first two tracks especially were really fun. And I think it would be fun to get a ship themed song in every episode. But I don't know how long they can sustain that. And then at last, Weak Watch TM with me. I'm excited. Joanna Robinson TM. Do you wear wigs? I mean, Hat Watch. Yeah. But mostly Beard Watch. Mostly this just like incredible beard on, on James Spader. It's wonderful. I really love it. It's like, I said Mad Men in the Attic because Mad Woman in the Attic is obviously sort of like this famous text on Bertha from Jane Eyre. But like just his whole entire look is very like Mad Men, the Professor and the Mad Men sort of imagery. And I just like, I'm really excited. I'm really excited for this character design. I love what he's wearing. He's got like sort of a scarf tied as like a tie. And it's just like, it's really cool. There's some other wigs at play. Like, I mean, shout out the height on Jarvis's hair. I don't think that was a wig, but I just want to shout out the like teasing effect to get this like little pomp. Some good use of product. You know, Friday's definitely a wig. It is definitely a wig. But yeah, I'll just. How can you tell? You just can. You can't see the skin in their part. Oh, interesting. That's a, that's a huge tell. If you look at them in a different way, you can't see the skin in their part. And it's like. The old Boromir. There's no scalp. Yeah. Yeah. There's no scalp there. Crisscrossing hairs. It hasn't been plucked. That's a, that's a tell. Yeah. You're the best. But they look great. They do? No, no like bad wigs yet. I'll let you know if I see one. And also just no wig at all for, for our guy Vision in human form, right? That's just his hair? I think so. Which is great. Paul Bettany is 55. Which is incredible. And he looks extraordinary. It's a great haircut. And as you noted, across the journey of WandaVision, there were some. There had to be a hair journey. Right. Right. And so we had a lot of wigs there. We did. And this we don't here. Which is. I don't think so. Which is nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no idea. But. If it is, it's very, very good. Yeah. The best that money could possibly buy. Okay. That is it. Yeah. For Vision Quest episodes one and two. Excited to cover three and four. Same. So we'll be back for that. Yes. Mallory Rubin, anything else you want to say before we go? Fun show to talk about. Yeah. Fun show to watch. Fun show to think about. I'm really excited to watch the next. Now we've sort of like, the gang's all here. We're on the road. Yeah. Who's the butcher bird killer? You know, like, who's the client? All that. All these questions we could ask her. What hat will Ultron wear next? When will Mephisto show up? Is he dating the power broker? Yeah. Do you think we'll get a standalone episode that's just about Mephisto and the power broker? Yeah. And their love story. Yeah. Yeah. I do. It's what we deserve. Oh, my gosh. Thank you to the AI. The AI family that lives inside of our heads. Jacob Cornett. Scott Lee. Carlos Cheruboga. Arjun Arun Kapal. Jomia Deneron. Y'all are the best. See you soon. Bye. Welcome to Disney's Hexed. Welcome to Hexed and Enter the World of Witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. 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