What to know about the new animated series 'Marvel Zombies'
Ever wondered what your favorite superheroes would be like if they were zombies? That’s the horrifying question Marvel Zombies answers.
This new animated series from Marvel Studios serves as a spin-off of the 2021 anthology series What If...?, which explores alternate timelines in the multiverse, showing what would happen if major moments from the MCU films occurred differently.
Marvel Zombies particularly focuses on the timeline introduced in the fifth episode titled "What If... Zombies?!," which imagines members of the Avengers becoming undead creatures and initiating a worldwide zombie apocalypse.
If this concept intrigues you more than it terrifies you, read on to know more about the new miniseries.
What is it about?
Directed by Bryan Andrews, Marvel Zombies is set in the same timeline as the What If...? episode and takes viewers into the shoes of a group of survivors who discover the key to fighting back against the super-powered undead. Together, they put their lives at stake as they journey across a dystopian wasteland and battle zombified heroes and villains in a desperate attempt to end the plague.
Marvel Zombies is not an original concept, as it was actually adapted from the five-issue comic series of the same name published from December 2005 to April 2006 by Marvel Comics.
Marvel Television head Brad Winderbaum was a longtime fan of the comics, which is what led him and the filmmakers to adapt them when they were developing potential story ideas for What If…?
"It’s just so much fun as a concept. When Bryan and I were making What If…?, it was a real early episode idea that we knew we wanted. It was almost the reason to make the show, just to do a zombies episode," he said in an interview.
Andrews, meanwhile, said that he hopes the "audience can be on pins and needles, wondering who’s going to make it out."
With this, you can expect to see lots of gore and deaths in the adult show that are a staple element in any zombie story, so parents might want to keep their kids away from this series until they're a little bit older.
In fact, the trailer even showed Blade slicing Ant-Man in half and tearing Ghost to pieces.
"We wanted to do justice to the genre that we’re fans of. We just didn’t want to do a PG-13 zombie show! We were surprised at how much we got away with in What If…?, to be honest with you. But this really levels up in a major way," Winderbaum said.
Meet the cast
Marvel Zombies begins with the team-up between Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Kate Bishop/Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld), and Riri Williams/Ironheart (Dominique Thorne).
Andrews said that he wanted to explore the apocalypse through their eyes as they're "definitely young and possibly naïve."
"They’ve got incredible skills, but they may not be prepared for the amount of pain that’s coming. Being able to turn that on them and see how long their hope survives is good. If you did that with an older character, they’ve been through a lot of stuff. But doing it with younger characters, all bets are off," he said.
As the show is split into four 30-minute episodes, you can expect to see more characters get spotlighted.
These include Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), and more.
Marvel Zombies streams on Disney+ on Sept. 24.