Created by Bryan Andrews and Zeb Wells, Marvel Zombies is set in the alternate timeline introduced in the What If…? episode “What If… Zombies?!”, where a virus has turned most of the world’s population, including the Avengers, into zombies. The story follows a group of survivors as they discover a potential key to ending the zombie plague, which leads them to risk their lives traveling across a dystopian landscape and fighting superpowered zombies to save the world.
The Marvel Zombies comic series has always been considered one of the most insane alternate universe stories in Marvel’s long history of comics, and ever since the MCU began many people wanted to see the Marvel Zombies story adapted in some way. It wasn’t until the introduction of the Multiverse that this became possible when we got our first taste of an adaptation with the fifth episode of What If…? Season 1, which was focused on an alternate version of the MCU that was plagued by a zombie apocalypse.
While the episode itself wasn’t as hyper violent or gory like the source material, it was a mostly solid episode that was dark, action packed, tragic, and a bit emotional as we saw some of our beloved heroes fall prey to the zombie outbreak in a vain attempt to cure the world. The episode ended on a massive cliffhanger, leaving many to wonder if there would be more to the story of this alternate universe. Sure enough, it wasn’t long till Marvel Studios announced an R-rated follow-up series. It was in the works for a long time, and after having gone through a few delays it has finally arrived in all its gory glory, but was it worth the long wait? It absolutely f**king was!
The first season of Marvel Zombies is one of the biggest animated surprises of this year, delivering a bloody and emotional rollercoaster of a zombie story with beloved comic book characters while also serving as a love letter to post-apocalyptic horror, with refreshingly twisted ideas from the source material and the MCU up to this point. It has so much to love, being just as violent and fun as promised from the advertising, but it also has a lot more heart than I expected, moving me in such a way that I had never felt with some of the recent Marvel Animation projects, with the exception of X-Men 97. Despite being only four episodes this first season earns its heartbreaking emotions with its perfect handling of the characters in this apocalyptic universe that gets increasingly wild as it progresses.
The voice cast is truly phenomenal across the board, with their performances that is enhanced by the writing and characterization being so on point for every character as well as giving them each a time to shine either alone or together in unique pairings. Serving as the leading character and true heart of this series is Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, aka Ms Marvel. At this point Iman has truly embodied everything about this character in the mainline MCU but it was amazing to see in this alternate universe and truly deliver a powerful emotional performance that really pulls on your heart strings, as well as makes her character feel extremely compelling in such a dark and unforgiving world. She proves herself to be a shining beacon of hope and a true Avenger that this world needs more than ever, while still acknowledging the fact she is a kid that has lost so much and has had to mature quickly as a result of that. She manages to share amazing chemistry with every cast member and character in this series with the most significant among them being Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop and Dominique Thorne’s Iron Heart. This trio was absolutely perfect together and proves for a fact that these characters need to come together in live action as the Young Avengers team, especially after there has been so much set up and teasing for them to come together.
Iman Vellani wasn’t the only standout in terms of giving an emotional powerhouse of a performance as we get several from returning cast members reprising their roles such as Florence Pugh as Yelena and David Harbour as Red Guardian. After coming fresh off their emotional journey together in Thunderbolts* we see these two characters thrust into this zombie apocalypse setting where we see them as a true father and daughter duo that works just as beautifully as it has in their past live action appearances. And just like in Thunderbolts* there was one scene between both of them that had me completely tears and features David Harbour delivering quite possibly the best voice acting of his career next to his recent work in Creature Commandos.
Another duo that proved to be really great in this series is Shang-Chi and Katy, reprised by Simu Liu and Awkwafina respectively. These two were perfect together in their film and they were perfect together in this series as a zombie survivor duo who share the power of the ten rings to fight off their undead foes in badass fashion.
And speaking of badass, we get a very surprising appearance in this series from Blade, voiced by Todd Williams, with the motion capture face of Mahershala Ali, who in this universe has inherited the mantle of Moon Knight, serving as the new avatar of Khonshu, reprised briefly by F. Murray Abraham. With the MCU’s adaptation of Blade having been delayed indefinitely, this appearance marks the first time we physically see Mahershala Ali’s Blade make his MCU debut. Despite the initial awkwardness of the appearance, Blade proves to be an amazing addition to the series, being the ultimate sword-slinging badass that thrives in the zombie apocalypse while also wielding the power of Khonshu. On top of that, Todd Williams delivers an extremely solid performance of the character while also delivering a dead on impression of Mahershala Ali. If there’s anything his role in this series proves is that the mainline MCU needs to have Blade now more than ever, as well as have him interact with other characters given how awesomely he fits with some of the characters here.
Serving as the main villain of this series is the returning zombified Wanda Maximoff, who now goes by the title of Queen of the Dead and is reprised by Elizabeth Olsen. Elizabeth Olsen delivered an incredible villainous performance as Wanda in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but here she takes things to the next level as this terrifying and sadistic all-powerful witch that feels like she was pulled straight out of an Eldritch horror. She’s built up beautifully in the beginning of the series before being fully unleashed upon our heroes in a horrific manner as she manipulates the hordes of the dead as well as dead heroes and villains for her own surprising agenda.
The rest of the characters are handled with great care, getting their times to shine in the action and emotional moments, but one of the biggest standouts to me was the way they handled Black Panther, formerly played by the late Chadwick Boseman. In the What If…? episode we saw Chadwick briefly reprise the role of the character before leading to a cliffhanger ending that left the character’s fate unknown at the time. Rather than just writing off the character without showing anything, they actually end up giving Black Panther a phenomenal visual outing to honor the memory of Chadwick Boseman in an unexpected way. I applaud Bryan Andrews and Zeb Wells for making such a unique tribute that both respects the character and the actor while also fitting in the story they wanted to tell.
This series follows some of the traditional narrative routes that most zombie apocalypse projects tend to follow but it manages to put fresh and fun spins on it by utilizing every character, story thread and world building element ever presented in the MCU at its disposal, creating a truly epic story that also doesn’t hold back on darkness, gore and shocking deaths of major characters. There is humor that is present in the series that offers some good levity in between the heartbreak but it all comes in a much lighter amount compared to the What If…? episode, leaning more into more mature elements that this universe provides, which ended up being one hell of a necessary upgrade.
The series feels more grounded and realistic as a result of leaning into the mature and darker elements but that doesn’t mean the series holds back on incorporating the non-grounded elements of the MCU, such as the cosmic and supernatural realms. From the tension to the stakes, everything is written beautifully as it all culminates into an Infinity War-level finale that goes to some crazy places and delivers an extremely bold cliffhanger ending that sets the stage for a second season to follow. It has been confirmed that a second season has been planned but has not been green-lit yet. I truly hope it does get green-lit because this series deserves a second season, and after such an insane ending I have to know what comes next!
On an animation and technical level, this series feels like it vastly outweighs everything from the earlier What If…? episodes by a huge amount. The animation is crafted and directed with such immense precision, featuring inventive cinematography in the form of animated tracking shots in the action and cinematic scale not seen before in previous Marvel Animation projects. The same goes for the smaller details of the series such as the visuals, the backdrops, the gore, the editing and even the sound design that I certainly didn’t expect to see done here.
Laura Karpman and Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum deliver a truly amazing score for this series that mixes superhero elements with horror elements in a wonderful combination that enhances the series in major ways.
The first season of Marvel Zombies truly proves itself to be a unique and fantastic standalone story that is separate from the mainline MCU, while also being the perfect series to kick off the spooky season. If you love the MCU or love horror or love both then this is the perfect series to watch and I highly encourage everyone to give it a go. I’m going to give Marvel Zombies Season 1 an A+ = 100.
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