James Spader made his MCU debut in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, and has now returned with a scene-stealing turn in Disney+'s VisionQuest. Last night's episode [Spoiler Alert] saw the villain finally inhabit Vision's body, achieving what he set out to do 11 years ago.
The series isn't over yet (we've reached the halfway point), but fans are already eager for more Ultron. What If...? has already given us Infinity Ultron, minus Spader, and the hope among fans is that Marvel Studios will find more stories to tell with the villain.
With Avengers: Doomsday set to unleash a Multiversal war, it stands to reason that Ultron—or one of his Multiversal Variants—could factor into the movie. However, according to Spader, he doesn't even know what Doomsday is.
"I can't tell you the amount of people that come up to you if you've been in one of the Marvel films," Spader told OutNow.ch. "In the interim, people would come up on the street, and they'd say, 'So just tell me… are you going to be in such and such?' And they'd mention some film I'd never heard of."
"And they're still doing it to this day!" he continued. "Doing this press tour for this, 'You can tell [me], does Ultron show up in Doomsday?'"
It seems fair to say that Spader and Ultron won't be in the next Avengers movie, but who knows what could happen in 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars. If the villain makes it out of VisionQuest in one piece, heading down the Annihilation route by having him attempt to conquer the cosmos might be the right move.
Time will tell on that front, but Spader is chewing the scenery and clearly having a blast as Ultron, so we're sure he'd be open to reprising the role.
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."
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.
Four episodes of VisionQuest are now streaming on Disney+.