One of the most remarkable aspects of the MCU is that even after 18 years and countless movies and TV shows, there really haven’t been many bad performances. It’s been such a remarkably well-cast, well-acted franchise that it’s easy to take even great portrayals for granted. But no one should do that with Paul Bettany and VisionQuest. His work on the show hasn’t just been among the MCU’s best ever. Bettany has given an Emmy-worthy performance that might also be the greatest of his career.
I’m not sure what even I would have named as Paul Bettany’s best career performance before VisionQuest, but that’s because he’s always good in everything. Whether playing a villain like in The Da Vinci Code or an imaginary gregarious best friend in A Beautiful Mind, he just always rises to the part across any and all genres. That’s why it’s not surprising just how incredible he’s been on VisionQuest, which asked him to play four different parts. And yet that’s exactly what’s been so remarkable about what he’s accomplished.
Bettany’s moving primary performance as the White Vision through the first six episodes were among the MCU’s best entirely by itself. (Especially episode three.) Before White Vision accepted who/what he really is in its penultimate installment, the role required him to be both human and not human at the same time, equal parts charming and awkward, brilliant but clueless. He also had to both be Vision but also an entirely new, totally separate character who was also Vision. And he had to do all of that while believably conveying the fact he was simultaneously not feeling or understanding any emotions while also holding all of them back out of what proved to be self-preservation, something he both knew but wasn’t aware of.
That one single role—defined by having to be two different things in all ways at all times—came with an incredibly high level of difficulty. It required nuance and depth, as well as deep emotion and humor, the kind of performance that can only be truly well-done by a gifted artist at their best. That’s what he is and that’s what he gave. He avoided all of the pitfalls and trappings his main role on VisionQuest inherently created and delivered a fully authentic performance as a synthetic being struggling with his own existence.
Then came the last two episodes, when an already great performance became something truly special. And not just in the MCU. In the show’s seventh episode, he had to play four different characters. All of them different in meaningful ways, yet all of them connected by a shared source code. They all contained something that bound them not into a family but into a “something.” Phineas Horton, the Human Torch, the original Vision, and the White Vision all were different beings, but also not.
Each passed something fundamental on to the next, until only one existed. And Bettany played all of them flawlessly. He argued with the memory of the original Vision, in a scene that highlighted just how much he had made White Vision unique in both his physical performance and his demeanor. Then he talked to himself while meeting Horton and JIM, one of the MCU’s most remarkably acted sequences ever.
At no point did it ever feel like Bettany was talking to Bettany. Horton, JIM, and White Vision were all equally fully realized. And yet, each of them really did share the same DNA. And because they did it made White Vision’s painful admission to JIM about why he’d refused to accept the truth about Tommy so evocative. He’d hidden his pain and fear without really making it disappear.
In the series finale, we then got to see The Vision in all his glory. All the memories and experiences of each era and ancestor of the character came together. Bettany didn’t merely return to playing Vision as he had before meeting Thanos. He was no longer the lost White Vision, either. Bettany fundamentally understood the source code that began with Phineas Horton, the one that created JIM, Ultron, and him and created something that combined them all.
Superhero TV shows aren’t exactly a favorite of the Television Academy. But it’s impossible to give a better performance than Paul Bettany did on VisionQuest. Whether it’s his personal best ever doesn’t actually matter. Neither does whether he gets the Emmy nomination he will clearly deserve. Even in a franchise full of great acting, and with an actor who is always good in everything, Paul Bettany so unbelievably tremendous on VisionQuest no one should take it for granted.