WandaVision Episode 5: This Marvel Comics Story Could Bring Vision Back to Life

Despite his domestic life with new bride Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in the Westview suburbs, [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

Despite his domestic life with new bride Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in the Westview suburbs, Episode 5 of WandaVision reveals that the Vision (Paul Bettany) is dead and disassembled. Just weeks after she blips back to life in Avengers: Endgame, the Scarlet Witch storms a top-secret S.W.O.R.D facility and steals the colorless corpse of the Vision — violating Vision's living will and Section 36-B of the Sokovia Accords. Now the unusual couple, and their quickly-growing twin boys Billy and Tommy, are living in a reality-bending sitcom made possible by Wanda's hex powers and as-yet-revealed forces beyond even Wanda's control.

When the Vision vanishes mysteriously and a virus erases the Avengers' computer systems (West Coast Avengers #42), Cameron Brock reveals the world's government security agencies formed a multi-national venture to keep a "watchful eye" on the android Avenger (West Coast Avengers #43).

After the Vision tapped into every computer system on the planet and seized control of America's nuclear arsenal (in Avengers #254) — later revealed to be part of a years-long plot orchestrated by Immortus, a.k.a. the time-defying Kang the Conqueror — Brock formed Vigilance to guard against Vision hijacking the world's computers. The first part of Vision Quest ends with the Scarlet Witch learning that Vigilance scientists have dismantled her synthezoid husband — the same horrific discovery Wanda makes nine days before the events of WandaVision (in "On a Very Special Episode...")

West Coast Avengers 43 Wanda Vision
(Photo: Marvel Comics)

In Better a Widow, the Avengers learn Vigilance has erased Vision to strip him of the data he might have uncovered from the world's security networks (Avengers West Coast #43). Because Scarlet Witch and Vision recently rejoined the Avengers — again giving them access to the team's super-sophisticated computers — Vigilance wiped Vision's memory, turning him into a blank slate.

When Scarlet Witch asks Hank Pym, Vision's "grandfather," to reassemble the synthezoid, Pym reports he's a blank canvas without the accumulated data that comprised the Vision's particular memory. The Avengers preserved a back-up memory on file, but Brock's virus expunged every program that could restore the Vision.

West Coast Avengers 44 Vision
(Photo: Marvel Comics)

Pym manages to rebuild the Vision, but before the process is complete, he reanimates as a rampaging robot — think the Terminator — and is neutralized by the Avengers (West Coast Avengers #44). When the team's US government liaison permits the Avengers to reprogram Vision however they wish, Pym says Vigilance destroyed all traces of his former personality — effectively killing him.

Pym reprograms Vision's memory banks with data tapes to familiarize him with the Avengers, and the Vision is reborn. All-white and monotone-voiced, the Vision is a human-shaped computer that is mechanical and not at all human (West Coast Avengers #45). "He has all the information we can supply," Pym explains to Scarlet Witch, "but his emotional connection to that information is nonexistent."

West Coast Avengers 45 Wanda Vision
(Photo: Marvel Comics)

Vision Quest leads into the Darker Than Scarlet storyline, where the shocking truth about her twin sons drives the Scarlet Witch to madness.

When the Scarlet Witch attacks the Avengers as a villain, Immortus reveals she's a Nexus being — one who belongs equally to all possible timelines and all realities and divergences throughout the Multiverse. It's Immortus who engineered the Scarlet Witch's various tragedies — and her subsequent mental break — to make her susceptible to his control, allowing him to wield her probability-altering powers and safeguard key events across an infinite number of timelines.

It would be years before the Vision would regain his emotions, ultimately allowing him the opportunity to reconcile with the Scarlet Witch before the disastrous events of Avengers Disassembled and House of M. In 2018, Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding revealed an alternate look for Vision in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron — his debut appearance — that resembles the White Vision.

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, and Randall Park, new episodes of Marvel's WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.

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