VisionQuest Episode 7 Brings Back A Powerful Cosmic Item From Avengers: Infinity War

Contains spoilers for "VisionQuest" Season 1, Episode 7 – "Immolation"

In its 7th episode, "Immolation," the "WandaVision" spin-off "VisionQuest" adds plenty of interesting lore to the artificial intelligence corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also brings back a key cosmic item from the franchise's past, and uses it to incite an event that effectively gives the show its very title.

As the desperate Vision (Paul Bettany) and Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica) contact Paladin (Todd Stashwick) on their quest to find the requisite source code to save Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais) after her exposure to Jocasta's (T'Nia Miller) prototype nanobot, the bounty hunter reveals that he has just the thing to provide enough juice for the mission.

As it turns out, Paladin has a piece of Thanos' (Josh Brolin) minion Corvus Glaive's (Michael Shaw) namesake melee weapon. The glaive is one of the most powerful weapons in the MCU, and the villain famously uses it to impale Vision in "Avengers: Infinity War." 

After the Battle of Wakanda, Wakandans ended up in possession of the glaive, and have since turned it into a cosmic power battery. Since the glaive is demonstrably able to harm Vision, Paladin somehow managed to steal it from Wakanda after the movie's big battle, ruining his relationship with the country while gaining an artifact he doesn't even really want to use because he distrusts cosmic artifacts. Hey, the guy likes to be prepared for every eventuality. 

In Episode 7, Vision quickly finds out that the source code he's after is very difficult to locate, and locked behind layers of his memory that he'd rather leave untouched. An encounter with Mindscape versions of J.I.M. the Synthetic Man and his obsessive creator Phineas Horton (both played by Bettany) teaches him the pair's backstory: Horton sacrificed everything to create an unfeeling synthezoid he thought would be superior to man, J.I.M. disliked his emotionlessness and sought to feel something, and in the end they both burned together. 

This prompts Vision to embrace his own emotions and memories, including the ones that Wanda Maximoff's (Elizabeth Olsen) magically-created Hex version of Vision left to him during the ending of "WandaVision." Thus he becomes his full self once more.

In other words, "Immolation" finally delivers on the show's title by sending Vision on a full-on vision quest, and the whole thing is powered by his "Avengers: Infinity War" enemy's old weapon. Considering that the glaive has been used against Vision in the past and is a powerful deterrent against him, it's oddly fitting that this very artifact turns out to be a game-changer on his mission to find the source code, and fuels Vision's path to regaining his identity.