Brief Story Line
After the events of WandaVision, Vision (Paul Bettany - A Knight's Tale, Margin Call etc) was now working at a pub in Edinburgh where he also lived there. He wanted to regain his humanity and was constantly in communication with the various AIs created by Tony Stark in his mindspace. To make it easier for him, Vision requested all those AIs to use human avatar, including JARVIS (James D'Arcy - Oppenheimer, Broadchurch TV series etc), FRIDAY (Orla Brady - The Foreigner, Into the Badlands TV series etc), EDITH (Emily Hampshire - Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, Schitt's Creek TV series etc) and even Ultron (James Spader - The Blacklist TV series, Mannequin etc).
Unfortunately Vision's peaceful life was cut short when a bounty hunter called Paladin (Todd Stashwick - 12 Monkeys TV series, The Way Back etc) tried to capture him. While pursuing Vision, Paladin tried other methods including using a grifter named Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica - Witness Number 3 TV series etc) who was doing some grifting in the streets of London with his partner in crime Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais - Mudtown TV series etc). Meanwhile the city was also rocked by the brutal killings of certain people by someone referred to as Butcherbird (T'Nia Miller - The Fall of the House of Usher mini series etc).
So what would happen to Vision? Why was he being hunted by Paladin and what was the connection with the Butcherbird killings? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
I was really intrigued and excited after watching the first two episodes of the series. I even thought that it was the best out of the trilogy of series that started with Wandavision followed by Agatha All Along and closed by this one. But when I reached the fifth episode, I was rather disappointed as it felt losing its momentum and became too serious with the AI philosphy and too much dialogues. It's a good thing that in the sixth episode, it became interesting again although I felt the pace was rather inconsistent till the end. It did have a good conclusion with a satisfying ending and even had an intriguing mid credit scene, but the best would have to be the second one which made me truly excited.
Now this series started off with some interesting plot and the prospect of seeing Vision having to deal with Paladin combined with some nice scenes of him coping with all those AIs was enjoyable to watch. Obviously it was helped by the performance of James Spader whose quality was never in question. He was so great in portraying Ultron with constant changes of his characteristics. His chemistry with Paul Bettany was awesome and entertaining to see too. In addition to the names I mentioned above, the series also had some support cast like Henry Lewis (co-host of Riddiculous quiz show etc) & Jonathan Sayer as the other AIs in Vision's mindspace DUM.E and U respectively, Diane Morgan (Mandy comedy series etc) as Paladin's handler, Mary McDonnell (The Boroughs mini series etc) as researcher Katerina Wells and few others including one important character that I better let you see for yourself.
This series was created by Terry Matalas who was mainly known as creator of 12 Monkeys series, showrunner of season 2 & 3 of Picard TV series and other works. As usual Kevin Feige was also credited as the Executive Producer as I believe he would oversee the whole story. One of the nice things about the series was definitely its connection to the past and future of MCU aside from its story. There were some actions involved in here using special effects that were pretty good and did not relied heavily on CGI. I liked the intensity of the first half of the series and the mystery surrounding Paladin's client, the Butcherbird killing and the conclusion.
For a series about Vision, I think it captured his character nicely and felt his story arc was properly concluded here. But that ending and especially that mid end credit scene certainly gave the notion that it's not finished yet. I also read that critics were impressed with this series that had 8 episodes with duration of 48-72 minutes (finale was the longest one). I myself felt that this was not exactly the best in the trilogy of series but I did enjoy this one better than Agatha All Along.
Overall I thought that this series was quite entertaining. I like the beginning and the ending but not so much in the middle. Despite my fondness of seeing James Spader doing monologues and showing his acting capabilities, but sometimes I thought it was a bit too heavy and his interaction with that certain character from episode five and beyond were sometimes too much and not that interesting for me. So if you want to see a series focusing on Vision dealing with the aftermath of all that happened to him in the past, plus the relevance of AI existence combined with occassional action scenes and a little bit of excitement during the hunting, then I think you would enjoy this. I myself would have been more entertained if they could maintain its pace rather than going up and down especially in the second half.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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