Series Review: Marvel Zombies

I've said it before, and I'll likely say it many more times between now and the release of Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027: the MCU's Multiverse Saga really should have been named the Studio Interference Saga. The situation coming out of Avengers: Endgame from a storytelling perspective was always going to be a little weird, but Disney's idea that Marvel should be one of the tentpole studios driving traffic to Disney+ was them kind of killing the metaphorical golden goose. Phases Four, Five, and Six had some bold character moves and introductions, but there was very little throughline. Granted, let's be fair, some of this was the holding pattern the MCU found themselves in as they tried to figure out what to do with the newly acquired rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the rest of the Fox characters.

So the point in all this is that between WandaVision and Marvel Zombies, we've had little plot advancement or payoff for plotlines that have been introduced over the course of the runs of the various shows and movies. It took until this year for the giant Celestial head in The Eternals to be referenced again, The Thunderbolts was the first real crossover movie since Avengers: Endgame, and the overwhelming majority of the shows have amounted to nothing outside Loki. That's not to say that inherently everything needs to serve the plot 100% of the time, but at the same time, Marvel Studios built a brand on interconnectivity and payoff.

This issue is kind of the only reason that Marvel Zombies works; it feels like a culmination of years upon years of storytelling, even if it is in an alternate timeline that won't impact the main events. You get the appeal of bringing characters into the fold and seeing them interact with people they wouldn't normally, the large action sequences, and the interesting alternate universe version of events that What If...? promised but largely never delivered on. Sure, we haven't seen Shang-Chi or Katy in canon since 2021 in their debut movie, but we get to see them here again while we wait for the sequel. Maybe it doesn't make a ton of sense that the Hulk, who could barely hold the Infinity Gauntlet without almost losing an arm, managed to absorb ALL the energy from the destroyed Infinity Stones, but Infinity Hulk looked really cool. How are Zombie Captain Marvel and Regular Ikaris so evenly matched that neither can kill the other and just fight endlessly for five years? It looks cool, don't think too hard.

That said, there are some shortcomings. Killing off Kate Bishop and Riri Williams in the first episode is a mistake because no dynamic introduced for the rest of the show matches the dynamic Kamala has with them. Similarly, I understand that it's a trope of zombie media that the entire thing is just a funeral procession, with the characters slowly being picked off one by one. However, introducing characters only to have them die quickly after introduction loses its emotional impact within two hours.

I also don't think Spider-Man's inclusion here was big enough or interesting enough to warrant this being a Disney+ series instead of a theatrically released movie; that was probably a mistake on their part. As always, the continuity of the lore gets muddied in the Disney+ shows so it is unclear if say, Ikaris is alive (if he can tank hits from Captain Marvel for five years, he's probably still alive after flying into the sun) or the Infinity Stones weren't actually destroyed by Thanos in Endgame (no radiation field of Infinity Energy threatened to destroy the planet after Thanos destroyed them). Arguably, introducing these ideas here and having them resonate through the MCU proper would be the smartest way to deal with this new layered continuity. You tease elements to foreshadow without making it mandatory reading material to understand what's happening.

It's entertaining enough, it's pretty, but if we never revisit the wasteland of Marvel Zombies, I'll be fine. Also, definitely do not buy that Katy and Shang-Chi weren't hooking up in the wasteland and I'm not entirely sure why they needed to affirmatively confirm that they weren't. It's a weird line of dialogue that's just kind of there.

★★★