James Spader will reprise his role as the villainous artificial intelligence from 2015's “Avengers: Age of Ultron” for Marvel Studios' upcoming Vision series starring Paul Bettany.

Terry Matalas ("Star Trek: Picard") will serve as executive producer and showrunner on the untitled series, which is scheduled to debut in 2026. Though Vision technically died in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," he was resurrected twice in the 2021 series "WandaVision," first as a spectral creation created (and then uncreated) by magic, and again as a ghostly white robot with no memories of his past.

That proves difficult for Vision when Ultron returns, as the characters have a long history. Ultron created Vision's original synthetic body as a permanent home for his AI, but the Avengers intercepted it and planted Tony Stark's AI assistant JARVIS inside it instead, creating Vision. At the end of "Age of Ultron," Vision confronts and destroys the last robot containing Ultron's consciousness, but the actual moment happens off-screen. News of Spader's return confirms that at least some version of Ultron survived.

How Ultron will return for the series is unclear. For "Age of Ultron," Spader played the role via performance capture, but that process remains an expensive proposition for a TV series. Variety reported that the same approach for transforming Tatiana Maslany into the titular "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" cost Marvel about $25 million per episode for the 2022 show.