One of the biggest villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is set to make a surprising return.
Ultron will reportedly appear on Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series built around Paul Bettany’s android Vision. The series is tentatively set to begin production next year; Terry Matalas of the later seasons of Star Trek: Picard, is the executive producer and showrunner of the Vision series. As in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the evil robot will be played by James Spader.
According to Variety, “jow Ultron will return for the series is unclear. For Age of Ultron, Spader performed the role via performance capture, but that process remains an expensive proposition for a TV series.”
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Spader’s Ultron first appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was also the first time Bettany — who had previously provided the voice of the artificial intelligence inside Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor — played Vision. In that film, Ultron creates Vision himself, using some vibranium and one of the Infinity Stones. (Ultron himself was created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, using the same Infinity Stone and some of Stark’s technology.)
In Marvel Comics, the characters’ origins are somewhat different, but still intertwined. There, it was Hank Pym who created Ultron — who then, in turn, created Vision as a spy and double agent who could destroy the Avengers from within. Instead, Vision decided to become a hero and remained a longtime member of the Avengers team.
In the MCU, Bettany’s original version of Vision died during the events of Avengers: Infinity War. In the Disney+ series WandaVision, Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch used her magic to recreate him temporarily — while a government organization rebuilt Vision’s original body (and gave him a new white paint scheme) without his original memories. In the WandaVision finale, Wanda’s recreated Vision was erased, but not before he restored the “real” (white) Vision’s memories.
Presumably the new show will focus on that version of the character — and, in some way, Ultron.
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