The Best MCU Villain Is Coming Back

For big fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the big question regarding Ultron is how, exactly, the character will be returning. He seemingly faced a very definitive death at the end of The Age of Ultron, but he may be some kind of Variant, or maybe his consciousness managed to survive on a computer or hard drive somewhere out there. It’s even possible that we’ll only see the character in flashbacks if Vision decides to take a walk down memory lane (assuming that this version of the character even has those memories).

No matter how it’s done, you can bet that Spader’s return as Ultron is going to be tied to Vision’s arc in this currently untitled series (though fans have taken to informally calling it Vision Quest after the iconic West Coast Avengers comic of the ‘80s). This series is a sequel to WandaVision, a show that many consider to be the best Marvel TV show ever made. At the end of that show, Paul Bettany’s Vision came back to life as an all-white android constructed purely by Wanda’s immense grief.

It seems like the Vision show will be all about the crunchy question of who this new hero really is: everything about him has been reconstructed, meaning that, on even a molecular level, this is not the Vision that we know and love. He is most likely going to spend the series struggling with his identity, and speaking with Ultron (the creator of the original Vision) might go a long way toward answering that question.

Fortunately, the show is in the hands of someone who helped another iconic character recently answer such questions about himself. The showrunner for this Vision series is Terry Matalas, who recently brought us the excellent third and final season of Picard. That season had a title character much like Vision … someone who had been reborn into a new body and had to figure out whether to lean into an old life with his old crew or a new life with his newly discovered son.

Matalas stuck the landing for that character and show in the best possible way, and we’re hoping that his Star Trek success is a good omen for the success of the Vision show. Notably, that third season of Picard brought back the shapeshifting Founders and the Borg and made those characters feel fresh and new (which was particularly impressive with the otherwise played-out Borg). So if anyone can make the return of a classic villain like James Spader’s Ultron seem cool and compelling, it will be Matalas.

We’re going to have to be patient to see how the new show plays out, though: the Vision show is intended to be the final installment in a trilogy of shows that began with WandaVision and will continue with Agatha All Along this September. That means we have to wait until sometime in 2025 or beyond to see Vision and Ultron interacting onscreen once more. Given the collective talents of Matalas, Bettany, and Spader, we’re willing to say that the wait will be worth it.