Marvel Zombies TV Review: The What If…? spin-off is a gory and violent blast of superhero horror

Plot: After the Avengers are overtaken by a zombie plague, a desperate group of survivors discover the key to bringing an end to the super-powered undead, racing across a dystopian landscape and risking life and limb to save their world.

Review: Marvel Studios has had hit-or-miss projects made for Disney+, but that seems to be relegated to their live-action offerings. The MCU has found a diverse creative output via animated projects between What If…?, X-Men ’97, Eyes of Wakanda, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. What If…? benefited from having key actors from Marvel Studios’ feature films reprise their characters in alternate timelines and unique stories, including episodes set within a dimension plagued by a zombie apocalypse. Inspired by the comic books of the same name, Marvel Zombies picks up from the 2021 episode that introduced the undead world of superheroes and delivers a brutal and gory four-episode mini-series that further explores the survivors fighting the zombie hordes led by Scarlet Witch. The result is a fun and fast-paced binge watch that will entertain fans of the genre spin-off.

Marvel Zombies picks up not long after the events of the What If..? episode that preceded it but now focuses on the surviving trio of Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) as they try to survive against the onslaught of zombified superheroes and villains who can retain the use of their special abilities despite being undead. The animation style of the episodes remains consistent with the look of What If..?, but Marvel Zombies has upped the violence and gore to garner this series a TV-MA rating. Being animated, the gore is not as gnarly as an R-rated zombie movie, but it is the most violent we have seen in an MCU project to date. The extreme bloodshed will likely put off little kids, but most fans will have fun seeing their favorite good and bad guys dispatched in unique ways. But, while you never know which characters are safe and will survive to the next chapter, Marvel Zombies does keep the stakes high as the leading trio of heroes try to figure out a way to end the reign of The Red Queen, aka Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen).

Part of the fun of What If…? was having the famous actors from the movies portray their likeness in animated form. Marvel Zombies has assembled most of the star talent available to play characters surviving into this timeline, including Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tessa Thompson, Paul Rudd, Randall Park, David Harbour, Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, F. Murray Abraham, and Zenobia Khan. Tom Holland continues not to lend his voice to Peter Parker due to contractual limitations between Marvel Studios and Sony, which means Hudson Thames continues to replace him as the animated Spider-Man. Mahershala Ali, who has been cast as Blade despite the film featuring the daywalker not having come to fruition yet, does not lend his voice to the Blade/Moon Knight character known as Blade Knight. Todd Williams lends his voice to Blade Knight, a cool twist on two popular Marvel characters. I would love to see them get their own animated projects if live-action appearances are not in the cards.

Clocking in at four episodes, Marvel Zombies feels more like an extended episode of What If…? rather than a standalone project. The deep dive into what happened to this world is interesting, and the pairing of characters who have not met in the Sacred Timeline of the MCU offers some fun moments of interaction that we may never see in live-action. Iman Vellani, Dominique Thorne, and Hailee Steinfeld have all headlined Disney+ MCU series that have had one season and have yet to reappear in the MCU, but all three prove why they deserve to get another round on screen. While we will see most of them in Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel Zombies proves that with so many characters in the massive Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is not enough running time to devote projects to everyone on the big screen. If animation is the only way to get more of these actors playing their roles, I would love to see it.

Created by Bryan Andrews and Zeb Wells, all four episodes of Marvel Zombies are written by Wells and directed by Andrews. The blend of 3D and traditional animation style gives Marvel Zombies the same distinctive look as What If…?, which gives the violence a comic book sheen. Even though clearly animated, Wells and Andrews ensure that Marvel Zombies keeps in line with the existing canon of the MCU and the characters we have come to love, and put them into a wholly different setting than they are accustomed to. We still see them make the same decisions and sacrifices they would, but without the safety net of making it to the end. My biggest issue with Marvel Zombies is, like Ironheart, it is being billed as a mini-series when it is presented as the first in an ongoing project. Maybe Marvel Studios is literally using the phrase “mini-series” to explain the limited episode count. Still, rather than tying up the story, Marvel Zombies ends with an ambiguous finale that could be considered a cliffhanger. The problem with cliffhanger endings is that they only work if the show is coming back.

Marvel Zombies is more of a curiosity than a full-fledged MCU project, but it could be so much more. When this spin-off was initially announced, I had hoped it would run for more than four episodes and develop into something larger, like the comic book series that inspired it. I had fun with this storyline, the focus on Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, and Hawkeye, and the incorporation of countless characters and references from the MCU at large. Marvel Zombies, like What If…? should be an ongoing anthology that explores stories that cannot be addressed in live action films or series rather than sporadic offerings that Disney+ rolls out now and then. As a quick binge, fans will have fun watching for easter eggs and callbacks, but those watching Marvel Zombies for what it is will find a solid horror story wrapped in a mash-up of comic book lore and zombie tropes. Marvel Zombies is a fun watch, just in time for Halloween, that makes good use of the concept despite the potential to be so much more.

Marvel Zombies premieres on September 24th on Disney+.