D23 ‘26: VISIONQUEST brings Edwin Jarvis full circle, as James D'Arcy returns to the MCU as J.A.R.V.I.S.

When Marvel Television debuted the first trailer for VisionQuest at D23 on Friday, August 14, 2026, the biggest gasp for longtime MCU-heads wasn't Ultron's new face — it was the return of Agent Carter’s James D'Arcy, who appeared on stage standing alongside Paul Bettany, and is confirmed to be playing J.A.R.V.I.S. inside Vision's mind. It's a piece of stunt-casting that closes a loop nine years in the making: D'Arcy already played the human Jarvis, Howard Stark's loyal butler on Agent Carter, and Tony Stark's AI was explicitly named in that man's honor.

Who Edwin Jarvis was

Long before he was a disembodied voice in Tony Stark's ear, Edwin Jarvis was a decorated-in-scandal ex-British-Army aide turned butler, smuggled into Howard Stark's employ after Stark saved him from a treason charge over a forged letter of transit. Across two seasons of Agent Carter, Jarvis became Peggy Carter's reluctant, endlessly game partner-in-espionage — bomb disposal by phone, martini-mixing infiltrations, a "Tortoise of Fury" pin in hand-to-hand combat, and a memorable cold-blooded shooting of Whitney Frost after she nearly killed his wife, Ana.

Jarvis's real legacy, though, was domestic rather than tactical. He stayed on with the Stark family for decades, becoming a stand-in father figure for young Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) — the one constant presence comforting the boy through Howard's outbursts and boarding-school exile. “Fathers and sons," Jarvis told a young Tony. “That particular relationship... often so difficult to maneuver. For both sides. But time heals all wounds." When Jarvis eventually died, Tony named his new AI system after him: “J”ust “A” “R”ather “V”ery “I”ntelligent “S”ystem.

Why it matters for VisionQuest

That backstory reframes what D'Arcy is doing in VisionQuest. Vision's mind-palace already personifies Stark's old AI programs, indicating F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis), U (Jonathan Sayer), E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and even Ultron (James Spader) — but J.A.R.V.I.S. carries a weight the others don't: he's an AI built in the image of an actual person, now played by the actor who originated that person. Whether the series treats this as coincidence, a wink, or an active plot point (a program that "remembers" being a man who raised orphaned boys, opposite a Vision searching for his own sense of self) is one of the more intriguing open questions the trailer doesn't answer.

It also dovetails with the season's central crisis. Bettany’s White Vision — whose memory has been wiped and is living quietly in Scotland, insisting, "I'm not a hero anymore... I have his face, but not his virtue" — is a man built from someone else's template, same as J.A.R.V.I.S. once was. Having Edwin Jarvis's actor literally embody the AI Tony built to keep his memory alive gives Vision's identity crisis a direct, personified counterpoint inside his own head.

On stage at D23, Bettany reflected on the character's long, repeatedly fatal tenure in the MCU: he's been “an Avenger, a father, a partner to Wanda," and someone who's “made the ultimate sacrifice and rather inconveniently died several times" — a line he joked complicates long-term financial planning.

Easter eggs from the VisionQuest trailer 

Elsewhere, the footage confirms an adult Tommy Maximoff (Ruaridh Mollica), resurrected via Billy's spell at the end of Agatha All Along, tracking down his father and balking at sharing headspace with a "genocidal maniac," a likely origin story for his hero identity as Speed. Ultron himself (Spader) appears in personified human form for the first time, described by Bettany as kept "behind a pretty impressive firewall because he's a psychopath." New mercenary threats Paladin and Extremis-powered Lisa Molinari/Coat of Arms (Lauren Morais) hunt Vision with a detour to Madripoor, where Faran Tahir reprises his Iron Man role as Raza. The trailer ends on a robotic Ultron turning on a comics-accurate-redesigned Vision, implying that regaining his memories comes at a cost.

Notably absent from the mindscape sequences: Jocasta, confirmed to be played by T'Nia Miller, suggesting her role unfolds outside Vision's head.

VisionQuest closes out the trilogy that began with WandaVision (2021) and Agatha All Along (2024). Terry Matalas (Star Trek: Picard) executive produces; the eight-episode season also stars Todd Stashwick, Diane Morgan, and Polly Frame. VisionQuest premieres October 14, 2026, exclusively on Disney+.

Watch the trailer here.

Source: Marvel