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There were already unconfirmed reports that James Spader was reprising his role as the mad AI Ultron in the upcoming “Vision Quest” series, but we can now considered those reports confirmed thanks to another star of the show. Faran Tahir, who played the villain Raza in 2008’s “Iron Man” and will be returning for “Vision Quest,” spoke to ComicBookMovie and mentioned his reunion with Spader.
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“It was sort of a reunion for us as the showrunner [Terry Matalas] was someone I worked with on a series called ’12 Monkeys,'” Tahir recalled. “We had already worked together nine years ago, and there’s another cast member who was on that show who is also in this one. James Spader and I did a couple of episodes of ‘The Blacklist,’ so there was a nice reunion of people who had worked together before. It was nice to have the team back in a different way, setting, and reality. It was a lot of fun.”
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As the desert warlord Raza, Tahir played one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s very first villains. It’s Raza who, in “Iron Man,” kidnaps Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and pushes him to create a destructive missile for him. Stark instead creates the very first Iron Man suit.
Later in the film it’s heavily implied that Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) has arranged for Raza to be murdered, but we never actually see Raza die.
Fittingly the same can be said of the titular villain in 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” The robot who appears to be the final vessel of Ultron (James Spader) leaps at Vision (Paul Bettany) and there is a blinding flash, but we never actually see Vision destroy the robot.
Now that Raza is returning, Tahir is excited to see how fans respond to him and how he has changed.
“I think it’s a very exciting project to return as a character that I played 17 years ago,” Tahir said. “When you play a character, you create a history for [them]. What we have decided is that this is seven years after the fact of when Tony Stark [died] and all that happened. How does this character evolve, and what has he become? Does he become something more? He is not static in this universe and has also gone on with his life, and with where he ends up, how does he place himself in this universe? It’s a great challenge. There are some great surprises in there, especially for Marvel fans.”
“Vision Quest” does not have a release date yet, but is expected to stream on Disney+ in 2026.
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