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vision quest Episodes 5 and 6 upped the series’ stakes even further, as Ultron made his move on the female synth, Jacosta, while Vision made a move to rescue his son Tommy from the Paladin. However, as the AI is evolving in its own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that doesn’t stop the show from making bigger crossover connections along the way. Take, for example, the return of (SPOILERS!) the first villain of the MCU: Raza (Faran Tahir), leader of the Ten Rings sect who kidnapped Tony Stark and forced him to create the Iron Man armor.
But while MCU fans were probably excited to see Raza return, they may not have noticed the other character’s cameo, unless you’ve been a long-time fan. vision quest showrunner Terry Matalas.
Dale makes his MCU debut
Terry Matalas likes to pull the same move as many genre greats: referencing a character or event from one series in another. Matalas’ favorite character has been the character “Dale”, played by Brian Quinn, best known as a member of the Tenderloins comedy group that stars in the hit series. Impractical jokers. Quinn, a long-time friend of Matalas, has appeared as Dale on the showrunner’s series. 12 monkeys TV reboot, its 2020 MacGyver restart, and Journey to the stars: Picard (as the new owner of Guinan’s pitbull – great responsibility).
Dale makes his MCU debut in vision quest like a lonely crypto-brother who was tricked by an AI into coming to the city of Madripoor to have an affair with someone who doesn’t exist. He laments all of this to Tommy’s pickpocket friend Lisa (Lauren Morais), not realizing that his bad trip (and his bad luck with women) is about to get much worse when his wallet goes missing.
One of Dale’s distinctive features is his ugly tie with a crazy design. He’s used it in the three cameos he made on Terry Matalas’ TV shows, but he’s clearly on vacation in vision quest. But fear not: if you look closely, you can see that the tie design is still present, like on Dale’s hat design. Dale wouldn’t be Dale without him.
Through Dale, Terry Matalas is tying together different franchises like Infinity Stones in one glove. It would be really funny to eventually reveal that Dale is some kind of all-powerful cosmic entity that actually exists in all of these universes at once. Or it’s a joke that we can gladly continue to operate with. As the meme goes: it’s a “Dale Cinematic Universe” and we all live in it.
vision quest is streaming on Disney+.