Warning: spoilers for WandaVision ahead.

White Vision, a dangerous creation of S.W.O.R.D. acting director Tyler Hayward in Marvel’s Disney+ series WandaVision, left the series finale in an unexpected way. But according to showrunner/head writer Jac Schaeffer, she was not concerned with where that version of the character ends up or what happens to him once he left Wanda’s hex around Westview. In a new interview, Schaeffer explains why White Vision’s fate is an “afterthought” and why his exit is not a “Marvel cheat.”

After having a fascinating philosophical discussion with Wanda’s remade Vision about the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, White Vision is imbued with all of the memories of the original Vision, utters the line “I am Vision,” and then immediately flies away, bursting through the overhead glass in the town library and disappearing, presumably to be brought back again when Marvel has a need of him in a future project.

“That’s not the man that [Wanda] had children with,” Schaeffer told CinemaBlend about White Vision. “That’s not the one who’s been in the sitcom world with him. That’s not the one that she said goodbye to on a hill in Wakanda. That’s the body and the data. So for the purposes of me and my job on the show, and what I focus on, where he ends up is an afterthought to the story proper.”

“Vision’s whole thing is identity; his whole thing is, ‘I was a voice and then I was a body. And now I’m a memory,'” she continued. “There’s a constant sort of self-analysis of ‘What am I?’ So to me it doesn’t feel like a Marvel cheat of like, ‘Now there’s another one out there.’ It actually feels very, very right.”

I see her point about Vision constantly questioning the nature of his existence and how it makes sense that he would continue to evolve across these MCU stories, but on the other hand…it kind of feels like a Marvel cheat to keep him around, even in this altered form. The conversation Wanda had with her recreation of Vision just before the hex swept him away was so touching…right up until the moment that Vision basically looked at the camera, said, “I’ll be back again someday!” and winked. Personally, I feel like it robbed the scene of some of the power it could have had if Vision’s loss was actually permanent, and from a cynical perspective, the idea that there’s another iteration of the synthezoid floating around out there with the same memories as the “real” Vision feels like a cheap way to keep that character on the board.

Of course, it all depends on what Marvel chooses to do with that character in the future – but in my opinion, it’s going to have to be pretty damn special to justify robbing this show of the full emotional impact it could have had.

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