Marvel’s Vision TV Series Bringing Back an MCU Villain No One Expected

Nearly two decades after Faran Tahir terrorized Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in 2008’s Iron Man as Raza, leader of the Afghanistan-based sect of the Ten Rings, the actor is set to reprise his role in Marvel Studios’ Vision series at Disney+. The Iron Man and Star Trek alum is the latest actor to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the Paul Bettany-led WandaVision spinoff series, which has reportedly cast James Spader as the A.I. villain he played in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Deadline first reported the news.

Tahir appeared just once in the MCU, although he was mentioned by Wenwu (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a.k.a. the Mandarin, in a deleted scene from 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. In Iron Man, Raza kidnapped Stark to force him to build a Jericho missile — setting the industrialist on the path to becoming an armored avenger — before he was dispatched, albeit off-screen, by Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

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Terry Matalas (Star Trek: Picard) is head writer and showrunner of the as-yet-untitled Vision series, the latest from a post-Endgame corner of the MCU that has expanded with 2021’s WandaVision and 2024’s Agatha All Along.

Bettany voiced Stark’s A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Iron Man trilogy before Spader’s rogue robot Ultron built him his synthezoid body in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Powered by the Mind Stone, Vision joined the Avengers and served with Earth’s mightiest heroes in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War until his death at the hands of Thanos in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War.

A resurrected Vision returned in WandaVision, brought back by his grieving wife Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) magic after S.W.O.R.D. dismantled and rebuilt the “most sophisticated, sentient weapon ever made.” As the all-white Vision, the new version had a programming directive to destroy the “true Vision,” only for his memories to be restored before flying away from Westview.

What Is Marvel’s Vision Quest?

Plot details remain under wraps, but the series is expected to pull from Vision Quest, a story line spanning issues of West Coast Avengers in the 1980s. After the Vision tapped into every computer system on the planet and seized control of America’s nuclear arsenal, the world’s government security agencies formed Vigilance: a multi-national venture to keep a “watchful eye” on the synthetic android.

The Scarlet Witch learned that Vigilance scientists dismantled her robot husband and wiped his memory to erase data he might have uncovered from the world’s security networks, leaving him an all-white blank slate. (This was adapted into the MCU after the events of Avengers: Endgame.) The Avengers sought the help of Vision’s “grandfather,” Hank Pym, to restore the Vision, only to learn that Vigilance erased Vision’s back-up memory on file. Pym eventually uploaded data tapes into the synthezoid’s memory to reprogram the rebooted Vision, but without the emotional connection to that information.

Marvel Studios’ Vision series is expected to premiere on Disney+ in 2026.