At the end of last week's penultimate episode of VisionQuest, Vision came face-to-face with the mysterious Client: Ultron's human avatar in the real world. The season finale, titled "Forever," confirms that he's not Ultron and has, in fact, placed the villainous AI inside a small device that's rendered him harmless (and voiceless).
So, the moustachioed man isn't Ultron. Instead, he's Virgil Horton, the grandson of Phineas Horton, the creator of the Synthetic Man and the MCU's AIs. Virgil used the journal his mother stole from Phineas to help Josephine Carrington give AIs emotion, but betrayed her by selling the technology to Tony Stark shortly before the events of Iron Man.
He did so to regain the family fortune, and everything Phineas lost—including the family mansion—and Ultron is indeed based on Virgil's brain patterns.
It was Virgil who rebuilt Vision for S.W.O.R.D., turning him into the emotionless assassin we first met in WandaVision. At the same time, he used Tony Stark's refined Stark AI technology to build Jocasta and bring Jo—who he loved, despite betraying—back to "life." She wasn't easily controlled, however, but the villain has a new plan.
Virgil wants to put his mind inside Vision's body, similar to what happened to Jo when she became Jocasta. It's a twisted plot, and we have a full breakdown of how things went for him in our Ending Explained article, which you can find here.
Virgil is a newly created character and doesn't hail from the comics. Still, in introducing him, Marvel Studios has created a fascinating new lore for the MCU's AI characters and addressed some huge unanswered questions dating back to movies like Iron Man and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
In VisionQuest, Vision, rebooted and having escaped from those who sought to weaponise him, has been in hiding. Searching for new meaning, he consults the AI personas embedded in his programming, including F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H., J.A.R.V.I.S., and the infamous Ultron.
His discreet existence ends when a bounty placed on his head thrusts him on the run with Thomas Shepard, a mysterious boy who may be Vision's son, reincarnated. As Vision evades capture, he must confront his nature, resist Ultron's influence, and unravel the enigma that is his young companion if he’s to survive.
VisionQuest stars Paul Bettany, James Spader, Ruaridh Mollica, Todd Stashwick, T'Nia Miller, Lauren Morais, Orla Brady, Diane Morgan, Polly Frame, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, with Emily Hampshire and James D'Arcy.
In our full season review, we concluded, "Paul Bettany and James Spader are masterful in VisionQuest, a staggering achievement by Marvel Studios and Terry Matalas that understands its characters, does right by them, and delivers one of the best MCU stories ever told."
VisionQuest is now streaming on Disney+.