VisionQuest Showrunner Terry Matalas Didn’t Have to Worry Too Much About the MCU’s Bigger Picture — ‘We Pretty Much Did Exactly What We Wanted’

Marvel’s upcoming TV show VisionQuest took one last lap at New York Comic Con 2026 ahead of its release on Disney+ on October 14. As part of Marvel’s Television and Animation panel, the cast — Paul Bettany, James Spader, Emily Hampshire, and Ruaridh Mollica — and showrunner Terry Matalas came on stage to greet the crowd before screening the series’ first episode for the room.

After the panel, IGN’s Jeffrey Vega asked Matalas about the writing process for VisionQuest. How much did the writers have to weave around the bigger picture of the MCU? Turns out, not too much.

“There was a couple of early ideas that we would talk about with Kevin [Feige] and be like, ‘Well, what about this?'” Matalas said. “And you could quickly read his temperature. But we pretty much did exactly what we [wanted] with these — I had a brilliant writing staff that we conceived in the room and I think it’s all on the screen.”

The cast and creator of Marvel Television’s #VisionQuest take the #NYCC stage! https://t.co/AmpRbr67ZT

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— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) October 8, 2026

Matalas said he was given a a lot of freedom to explore what happened to Vision after White Vision flies off at the end of WandaVision, and approached thinking about the many possibilities of a blank slate “organically.”

“Time has passed for the audience and I think you want to lean into that. What has [Vision] been up to? Where has he been? I think him being on this identity quest, trying to figure out, ‘Am I the old Vision? Am I something new? What am I?’ It sort of all came together pretty quick,” Matalas said. “The only thing I knew for sure from Kevin [Feige] when he called about it was he’s going to reunite with his son. He’s like, ‘The rest is up to you.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ I remember very clearly I was at home. I hung up the phone and I was like, ‘Well, who’s [Vision] talking to? Because Tommy feels like a thing he’s got to get to.’ And I was like, ‘It’s Ultron. It’s Ultron.’ And then I was like, ‘How do I get to Ultron?’ Ultron was dead.”

The first VisionQuest reactions are out from its debut screening at NYCC and they’re positive, calling it a “worthy successor to WandaVision.” Now, let’s see if Wanda shows up when VisionQuest premieres.

Leanne Butkovic (she/they) is an Editorial Programming Manager at IGN, where they’ve also written about TV, movies, and games.