Edith Marks? 'VisionQuest' Star Opens Up About That Shocking Twist
The vast majority of the cast of VisionQuest aren’t playing humans at all. Like Marvel’s take on Inside Out, the series features multiple AI consciousnesses who have taken up residence in Vision’s head. The breakout fan favorite of these characters has been E.D.I.T.H., the daredevil AI focused on helping Vision have fun.
But in the most recent episodes, we’ve discovered that these AI figures aren’t just lines of code, they’re actually based on real humans and act as ways to keep them alive even decades after they’ve passed. But how did the cast react to this big reveal? Inverse sat down with Emily Hampshire, who plays the fun-loving E.D.I.T.H., to discuss this big twist.
Warning! Spoilers for VisionQuest Episode 4 ahead!
In VisionQuest Episode 3, E.D.I.T.H. learned that she and all of her fellow AIs are actually all based on real people. In Episode 4, she realized just who this person is: Edith Marks, a test pilot for Stark Industries who passed away with her husband in a freak plane crash. Previously, Edith — and Emily Hampshire — thought her name meant “Even Dead, I’m The Hero,” as revealed in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
For Hampshire, showing E.D.I.T.H. in human form was an opportunity to create her character from scratch. “She has a body. It’s the most exciting thing ever,” Hampshire tells Inverse. “I was like, who would this person be when she’s let out of the glasses? And it was Edith in a way that she wants to have fun and experience life, but her idea of fun is blowing things off.”
Creating this version is one thing, but E.D.I.T.H. also had to reckon with the existential crisis caused by learning about the source material her avatar was based on.
“It really explained Edith a lot to me, but also posed the question: Is this generational thing passed down through AI?” Hampshire says. “And it just really made me think about what this show is about. It’s about identity, but it’s also about the person you were built to be; are you the same person? I just think it’s so interesting, this scene with Ultron, where Ultron, of all people, does the kindest thing to Edith.”
So much of VisionQuest is focused on what separates the AI from the humans, but it appears that to the AI personas, humanity is exactly what is so terrifying. If your personality were revealed to be copied and pasted from someone you’ve never met, how long would it take you to recover from the fact that you don’t know what is you and what is the programming, or if “you” exist at all?
VisionQuest may be halfway over, but we finally have our big dilemmas that will be explored over the course of the next four episodes. To borrow a metaphor from Vision himself, if you build a new boat using the ship of Theseus as a basis, does it count as the same ship?