Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Marvel Zombies episodes 1-4
Marvel Studios’ latest release is something the MCU has desperately needed since Avengers: Endgame. Currently streaming on Disney+, the animated Marvel Zombies four-episode special is visually stunning and an epic Marvel crossover. However, I feel as though it highlights a key Multiverse Saga problem at the same time.
Starring several iconic heroes, Marvel Zombies spins out of Marvel’s What If…? season 1, episode 5. Depicting a bleak dystopian reality where a zombie plague has infected the globe, the few surviving MCU heroes trying to save the world is all kinds of intense. As such, Marvel Zombies is the exact kind of project the main MCU should have had post-Endgame.
Marvel Zombies Is The Culminating MCU Crossover The Multiverse Saga Has Sorely Been Missing
In Marvel Zombies, we get to see so many MCU heroes coming together for the first time. This includes the Young Avengers like Kamala Khan’s Ms. Marvel, Riri Williams’ Ironheart, and Kate Bishop’s Hawkeye. In the main MCU, the Young Avengers idea has only been teased, with Kamala proposing the idea to Kate Bishop at the end of The Marvels.
Despite the living struggling to survive among the undead, Marvel Zombies remarkably provides so many first-time interactions between heroes who’ve inexplicably yet to cross paths in the main MCU reality.
Key examples include Shang-Chi and Yelena Belova (resulting in some surprising flirting), as well as Spider-Man and Ant-Man (an epic MCU partnership that makes WAY too much sense on so many levels).
While Marvel Zombies’ full roster of characters is by no means on par with the full cast seen in Avengers: Endgame, it’s far more culminating as an epic crossover than anything we’ve seen in the entire Multiverse Saga thus far.
The number of characters meeting each other and fighting alongside each other for the very first time, mainline Earth-616 reality or otherwise, is actually pretty crazy. It certainly highlights the fact that the Multiverse Saga has been very disjointed thus far, despite having far more projects (movies and shows) compared to what was seen in the previous Infinity Saga.
By this point, one would have hoped that some sort of interim Avengers-type crossover movie would have happened before the next two Avengers movies, something along the lines of Captain America: Civil War, which many consider to be “Avengers 2.5” given its larger cast of heroes and rival teams.
In that vein, it can be argued that something like Secret Invasion could have been an “Avengers 4.5” given the sheer scope of the source material in the comics (though the MCU version is much smaller in scale and anything but).
Despite being animated and in an alt-MCU reality apart from the main timeline, Marvel Zombies is certainly a major crossover event.
After all, the new MCU project features multiple heroes coming together to face a larger threat: an undead Wanda Maximoff (aka The Queen of the Dead) and her legions, including undead versions of Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Abomination, Okoye, and more. When considering Marvel Zombies’ full cast (both alive and dead), it’s easily the MCU’s biggest crossover since Endgame.
Absent MCU Characters Take The Spotlight in Marvel Zombies (Highlighting The Biggest Problem Since Endgame)
Beyond just having an impressive roster of heroes in Marvel Zombies, it’s also worth pointing out how the special puts a spotlight on heroes we’re still waiting to see again in the main MCU.
Case in point, Shang-Chi is a leading hero in Marvel Zombies. Given his popularity, this makes all the sense in the world, though it further highlights the fact that outside of animation, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi hasn’t been seen or heard from in the MCU since his debut movie in 2021.
Things get even worse when we turn our attention to Mahershala Ali’s Blade, who, in this reality, was chosen to serve as Khonshu’s Moon Knight after Marc Spector was lost to the zombie plague.
Despite being voiced by Todd Williams, this new Blade Knight is clearly modeled after Ali, who was first announced to be playing Blade back in 2019 in an MCU movie that has yet to materialize six years later due to numerous delays and apparent setbacks.
As great as it is to see these aforementioned heroes and more characters get the spotlight they deserve in animated form and in an alt-reality, it does make things more frustrating that the same can’t be said when it comes to the main MCU continuity. In this way, Marvel Zombies’ high entertainment value can very much be viewed as a double-edged sword.
Will Avengers: Doomsday Get The MCU Back On Track?
Marvel Zombies being so good certainly puts even more pressure on Avengers: Doomsday to make up for what we haven’t had in the main MCU and Multiverse Saga. However, I do have hope and optimism that Doomsday can be an epic MCU crossover for the ages, just like the Avengers films that came before it.
The Russo Brothers are directing, multiple teams will be coming together from various realities (Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four), and an absolutely peak villain is serving as the threat in the form of RDJ’s Doctor Doom.
All the right ingredients are there to redeem the Multiverse Saga’s lack of connectivity and major crossovers thus far. In the meantime, it’s actually pretty nice to have something like Marvel Zombies to hold us over.