Marvel Zombies Review: A Bloody Detour from the MCU’s Main Timeline

Marvel’s What If…? may have wrapped up after three seasons, but it left behind a lively legacy with Marvel Zombies, a spinoff of the 2021 episode “What If… Zombies?!”. This time around, we get a longer and bloodier peek into an undead superhero universe.

The result is an entertaining 4-episode series that knows exactly what it is: a gory, pulpy survival story in an MCU that doesn’t need to make sense anymore. Marvel Zombies stands out by not pretending it needs to connect to the next Avengers movie. It’s not trying to save the multiverse, fix the timeline, or set up 12 new spinoffs. It’s just here to have fun and show us what happens when Earth’s Mightiest Heroes get eaten alive.

It’s also one of the few Multiverse Saga projects that actually feels different. While recent films like Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts* feel like a much-needed course correction, Marvel Zombies shows that Marvel Animation might be where the real creative risks are happening. Even if the show’s not groundbreaking, it’s at least willing to get weird and messy.

The show picks up five years after civilization collapsed under the undead plague. Survivors like Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Ironheart (Dominique Thorne), Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Blade (Todd Willions), and Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) band together in a fight for survival as Wanda Maximoff, now the Queen of the Dead, stands in their way. The setup is just a basic zombie movie formula: journey for a hope of survival, find shelter, fight zombies, lose shelter, move on. It’s predictable, but still entertaining.

There’s a certain comic-book charm in seeing these mismatched heroes thrown together. Ms. Marvel is a charismatic lead, and her optimism balances out the gore nicely. Her chemistry with Kate Bishop and Riri Williams makes the series feel like a stealth Young Avengers pitch, and I’m on board.

The standout, though, is Blade Knight — a variant of Blade who became Khonshu’s avatar when Moon Knight’s Marc Spector fell in the zombie apocalypse.

This variant of Blade is a crescent blade-wielding, soldier of the moon who moves like he’s been ripped straight from the best Castlevania sequence you’ve ever seen, and he is easily my favourite part of the show. He’s voiced by Todd Williams, not the long-awaited Mahershala Ali, but character design is obviously modeled after Ali’s likeness.

The coolest part of his contribution as a supporting character is how right this feels. The supernatural world of the MCU has been implied for years (from Moon Knight to Werewolf by Night to Agatha All Along), and Marvel Zombies finally shows what a horror-fantasy blend could look like.

If Marvel ever wanted to test the waters for a Midnight Suns project, perhaps a team-up of Blade, Moon Knight, and maybe even Elsa Bloodstone, this was the perfect proof of concept.

Visually, the animation hits a strange middle ground. The fights are brutal and creative. However, the rounded animation style sometimes dulls the impact of the gore. It’s violent, but not always visceral.

The real charm of Marvel Zombies is how free it feels. In this world, there’s no continuity, no need to preserve the franchise for the next decade. Heroes die. Villains die. Then they get up and eat each other. It’s pure chaos, and it’s great.

That freedom lets the writers play with matchups and settings that would not happen in the live-action MCU without a billion-dollar budget — like watching a zombified Captain Marvel take on Ikaris, or the widows of the red room teaming up with Ms. Marvel. It feels like the writers are finally allowed to play again, and that sense of experimentation, ironically, gives the show life.

And while the finale plays it a little safe with an epic showdown, it also ends on a cliffhanger that I wouldn’t mind leaving unresolved if a second season never gets the green light.

In the end, Marvel Zombies isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s fun.

It delivers exactly what it promises: gruesome action, a refreshing lack of self-seriousness, and the promising version of MCU’s Blade. It’s a reminder that Marvel can still surprise us when it stops worrying about the next big blockbuster and experiments with a sandbox universe.

Final Score: 6.5/10 — It might not bring the MCU’s viewing numbers back from the dead, but it’s a bloody good time.