VISIONQUEST says identity isn't where you came from, it's what you do the moment you leave
Grief doesn't just break people in VisionQuest. It rewrites them, and the show wants to know who gets to sign off on the new draft. (Hint: it's you who gets to decide.)
Spoilers for VisionQuest episodes 1–4.
Four episodes in, Marvel Television's VisionQuest has a lot on its mind — maybe too much. But one thread cuts through the noise for the Ensigns Kaplan: loss changes who you are, and recognition from others helps makes that change real.
A trilogy built on loss
VisionQuest closes the trilogy that began with 2021's WandaVision and continued through 2024's Agatha All Along. Created by Terry Matalas, it premiered October 13 with "No Strings" and "Theseus," and like its predecessors, it's a meditation about how grief profoundly changes a person.
But unlike WandaVision and Agatha, the message of growth here still feels muddled to us, as if the show has too much it is trying to say. What stands out most is how it ties grief to questions of identity. And not just how we see ourselves, but our social identity: what happens when that identity is recognized by others as your reality (and while not necessary for identity formation, that recognition can feel euphoric and help one solidify who they are).
That's where we think VisionQuest lands its strongest message. Our read? It's not the past that defines who you are today — it's the moment you leave it and start to walk your own path. Your identity can keep changing as new parts of yourself surface and old parts die.
Tommy twice over
The most striking example of questions of identity so far isn't Vision. It's Tommy.
For those that need a quick refresher: Tommy and Billy Maximoff are the children of Wanda and The Vision, unwittingly conjured by Wanda during the events of WandaVision. When the Hex collapsed in the final episode of WandaVision, “The Series Finale,” their spirits scattered. Billy’s soul landed in a dying teenager — Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke), the Agatha All Along hero and the MCU's interpretation of Wiccan, one of Marvel's best-known queer heroes. Tommy's took longer. It entered Thomas Shepard (Ruaridh Mollica), a young London grifter and orphan, as he was drowning, during the penultimate episode of Agatha All Along, “Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End.”
Now Tommy carries two complete lives. One is Tommy Shepard, a foster-care delinquent bounced between homes, never truly loved. And the other is Tommy Maximoff, a child conjured from love, made by two people who wanted so much to be parents that they conjured children from the ether.
The contrast is stark. And neither life was the boys' choice — the original boys never got a say in whether they wanted to take part in this. Tommy and Billy just have to live in the overlap.
Souls, orbs, and rebirth: “there is no I — only soul sparks”
This reminds us of gilgul, the Jewish mystical idea of souls moving from one life to the next. It became a major doctrine in Kabbalah, though many medieval Jewish philosophers rejected it. Its purpose was purification: a soul gets another chance to repair past failings, and the tradition frames that as an act of mercy. That’s a rough fit for VisionQuest. Tommy’s soul isn’t being punished or purified. It’s looking for a home, and it finds one in a body that has just died.
In my mind's eye, the concept plays out like this: at death, souls leave the body and drift through the universe as glowing orbs, waiting for a chance at a new life. Picture the orbs in Donnie Darko for a visual reference. It's how we make sense of the way the conjured boys slip into bodies that have just been vacated.
A related, closer echo might be the Lurianic idea that a single root soul sends out “sparks” into many bodies, and multiple people can even carry sparks from the same root. I can’t help hearing that in Tommy, who holds two lives and two sets of memories at once. And the tradition’s related concept, ibbur, describes a second soul entering a living person for a limited time, to complete a specific task (like in Star Trek III). Tommy’s situation is permanent, so it doesn’t fit either, but it’s another reminder that the show is borrowing the shape of these ideas without adopting them.
Vision's own crisis
Vision wrestles with the same problem from the other direction. He's died and returned more than once:
The original, killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.
The version Wanda unconsciously rebuilt out of grief and love — still not the Vision we knew.
The cold, white copy S.W.O.R.D. built, which received both of the other Vision's memories.
Each carries the memories of their past selves. None is the same man twice. Comics readers will recognize the shape: the 1989 "Vision Quest" storyline in West Coast Avengers (add issue numbers and creative team) had the government dismantle Vision and rebuild him white and emotionless. A body once full of color and life, reduced to an automaton who believes he's devoid of feeling. We’re not convinced he actually is.
What we’re watching for is whether Vision accepts the past that made him, however far away it feels, as part of who he is now — that he can be both. Even the second episode's title, "Theseus," winks at the old ship paradox: replace every part, and is it still the same ship?
It ties into the mind-palace thread, too. As we noted with Marvel Television's D23 announcement, Vision's head is already crowded with the AIs of Tony Stark's past, including J.A.R.V.I.S., now played by James D'Arcy, an AI built in the image of a real man.
You can see Vision's faith in himself in how his faith in his son grows. It isn't until Vision truly accepts Tommy as Tommy that he realizes Tommy is Tommy. Identity, here, is relational. Being seen — by a father, a friend, a community — is what makes it stick.
The first four weeks of VisionQuest are available to stream now. Episodes 3 and 4 ("Reboot" and "Malware") arrived October 20. Episodes 5 and 6 land next week, with the finale, "Forever," on November 10. Four episodes left to decide what VisionQuest is really saying.
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