The Butcherbird killer in VisionQuest is not an AI built to copy a dead scientist. By her own telling, she is the scientist. When Vision meets the robot that has been killing AI experts, he assumes its mind is “based” on Josephine Carrington, played by T’Nia Miller. She sets him straight: “I’m not based on her, I am her.”
Jo Carrington died in 2008, and it appears she uploaded her mind into a robotic body, one that Marvel Comics readers know as Jocasta. In the series, the authorities find several wealthy, well-known AI experts murdered around London. Episodes three and four of VisionQuest reveal that the killer is an AI much like Ultron, and that she shares a name with a comic book character.
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A killer with a signature and a shopping list
Every crime scene carries a calling card. Somewhere on each body is a carved shrike, also called a butcherbird, which is how the news media came up with the “Butcherbird” nickname. The killer also takes something from every victim: key biological components, such as blood or an eyeball.
The victims have a shared history. All of them belonged to the same think tank group that, decades earlier, pioneered breakthroughs in AI technology. Carrington is the one member of that group who isn’t a target, because she died in 2008.
The killings caught the attention of Vision (Paul Bettany) and especially Ultron (James Spader), an avowed “true crime” enthusiast. Both know the killer is tied to Vision’s current troubles.
Katerina Wells (Mary McDonnell) is the last surviving member of the group. Jocasta came looking for her in order to take a biological component before carrying out her revenge. But Ultron, who is inside Vision’s body, tricks Jocasta into disintegrating Wells before she can get it. How and why Carrington moved her consciousness into the robot, and what she wants with the components, remains a mystery. All the show says is that she did it before dying of an undisclosed illness.
Jocasta in the comics: Ultron’s bride who turned on him
The comic book Jocasta was a tad bit friendlier. Writer and former Marvel EIC Jim Shooter and artist George Perez created her, and she first appeared in Avengers #162 in 1977.
Ultron, the villainous AI and one of the Avengers’ most lethal foes, designed her as his “bride,” a companion who presented as female. He hoped that together they would conquer the human world. He gave her sentience by using the brain patterns of heroine Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp. Her body was made of titanium steel, and her powers and computer capacity were almost identical to those of Ultron’s other creation, the Vision.
The plan fell apart when Jocasta realized that her full actualization would cost the Wasp her life. She rebelled against her maker, helped the Avengers defeat Ultron, and served as an unofficial member for several issues. She also developed feelings for the Vision, technically her brother, though he was married to the Scarlet Witch at the time. Heartbroken, she left the Avengers and wandered the world for many years, occasionally lending her old teammates a hand when they needed it. Sometimes she teamed up with other heroes, like the Thing from the Fantastic Four.
In more modern comics, she joined Hank Pym’s Mighty Avengers team, and the two shared a brief flirtation. That was, let’s just say, a bit awkward, since her personality was based on that of Pym’s ex-wife, Janet Van Dyne. It gets worse: Pym, the first Ant-Man and the man who created Ultron, was technically her grandfather. Her name comes from Jocasta of Greek mythology, who married her son Oedipus, so it makes some kind of sense. She later joined the staff at the Avengers Academy, and she still shows up now and then to help the Avengers against dire world-ending threats.
What the MCU changes
The MCU drops the Janet Van Dyne brain patterns entirely. Instead, her robotic body holds the mind of AI pioneer Jo Carrington. That change turns a character built as a villain’s accessory into someone with a personal history, a grudge of her own, and a target list made up of her former colleagues.
Where she ends up is an open question. Will she side with Ultron, or become a hero, as she did in the comics? VisionQuest releases new episodes every Tuesday on Disney+.
