Marvel's VisionQuest Makes Two Big Changes To Paladin And Lisa Molinari's Backstories

Contains spoilers for "VisionQuest" Season 1, Episode 6 — "Deadlock"

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has rarely shied away from making subtle (and less subtle) changes in its characters' origin stories, backgrounds, and even powers. "VisionQuest" is no exception. As it continues to show what happened to Vision (Paul Bettany) after the "WandaVision" finale, the series  smartly recycles the scariest plot point of "WandaVision" with Vision's Mindspace, where multiple artificial intelligence characters from previous projects reside. "WandaVision" also reimagines Todd Stashwick's Marvel character Paladin as the most recent holder of the legacy codename and the resources that come with it. 

Now, Paladin's backstory gets another extra wrinkle, courtesy of the episode's revelation that his mission control, The Handler (Diane Morgan), is an artificial intelligence herself. What's more, Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais) gets what seems an awful lot like a superhero (or villain) origin story, with a twist that differs quite a bit from her comic book storyline. Let's take a closer look at the latest developments on "VisionQuest" Episode 6 ("Deadlock"), and what they mean for the characters involved.

Paladin's twist comes when "Deadlock" reveals the true nature of the mercenary bounty hunter's mission control, the Handler. As it turns out, the Handler isn't your everyday "woman in the chair" archetype. Instead, we find out that Paladin's operation controller is an artificial intelligence herself — and quite an unhappy one, at that. 

A tactical A.I. with a name so long that the show doesn't even let her finish saying it, the Handler is tasked with Paladin's client management, weapons acquisition, and "snark." This isn't her true calling at all; though she's pretty capable at what she does, the Handler secretly dreams of far more mundane A.I. tasks like helping students write their assignments.   

Since Paladin isn't a big fan of updating software, the Handler avatar spends all her time stuck in a ratty office Mindspace as she performs her tasks. Taking pity on her, E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) lets her loose in the data stream, which has the added side effect of completely disrupting Paladin's operations at a crucial time when he's trying to bluff Vision (Paul Bettany) into surrendering.

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe's liberal interpretation of Paladin and the Handler (who, to be fair, seems to be an MCU-exclusive character), it's only natural that some of the other characters are heavily reimagined too. "VisionQuest" has already offered its version of Marvel Comics synthezoid Jocasta (T'Nia Miller), whose MCU version is a vengeful monster with a human consciousness and a penchant for turning humanity into a race of nanobot-controlled hive minds. 

"Deadlock" adds to the machine antics by having Jocasta demonstrate her technology to Ultron (James Spader) when she subjects Lisa Molinari to it. Lisa immediately turns into a mind-controlled cyborg creature who fights Vision under Jocasta's control, before Thomas (Ruaridh Mollica) renders her unconscious.Whether Lisa's humanity can survive the ordeal remains to be seen, but the fight scene makes clear that her physical attributes have been greatly enhanced. 

In the comics, Lisa is very much an empowered human, though her powers aren't tech-themed. Instead, she's powered by a mystical Tiboro's Coat, which grants her the ability to grow extra arms and fly. Appropriately enough, she uses the code name Coat of Arms. A trailer for "VisionQuest" has already showed that she'll gain at least one set of extra mechanical arms before the show is over, so a version of this power will eventually come in play here, too.

While the comics version of Lisa isn't averse to using the occasional gadget to get an edge, she tends to lean heavily toward magical artifacts and objects. The show's apparent intent to erase her magical nature and give her a tech-based power set is a pretty major backstory change.