Marvel Zombies (2025): What Went Wrong?
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Spoiler Warning!
This month, Marvel released an animated show titled Marvel Zombies (2025), a spinoff series of What If…? (2021-2024). This series expands on the “What If…Zombies?!” episode from season one, turning the episode's hypothetical situation into a four-episode TV-MA series, with a potential second season on the horizon. The reviews are mixed, with Marvel Zombies (2025) currently sitting at a 64% Critic Score on Rotten Tomatoes. This makes it the second-lowest-rated Marvel Disney+ series, only surpassing Secret Invasion (2023). With the current standing, Marvel Zombies (2025) is in the bottom 10 of Rotten Tomato Critic Scores of Marvel projects. So, what went wrong?
The series centers around Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, voiced and brought to life on screen by Iman Vellani. Joined by Kate Bishop/Hawkeye and Riri Williams/Ironheart, both of whom are also voiced by their routine actors, Hailee Steinfeld and Dominique Thorne, the characters find themselves in a survival situation.
The group ends up finding a transmitter that, if sent from above the planet’s atmosphere, can send a distress signal through the zone blocking all communication—this signal acts as a desperate plea for someone who will aid them in fighting the zombies. Eventually, the characters’ search for a spaceship to successfully send a signal, which ends up being the “MacGuffin” of the series; the catalyst. This chase leads to Ms. Marvel in new places with new characters, including Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Red Guardian (David Harbour), and a version of Blade who would become Moon Knight (Todd Williams).
The world-building of the post-apocalyptic world is a genuinely fun experience. It is a joy to see how the characters we know and love react to being caught in the apocalypse. It is also refreshing to see some of the characters from various movies finally interact, especially since the mainstream movies have denied audiences this for so long. Fights between zombified heroes, like the one between Red Guardian and Captain America, allow us to see some variance in how fights between them would turn out. And many of the fights in the series are visually entertaining, being much gorier than the typical MCU allows.
However, despite all the positives of a series set in an alternate universe, there are many drawbacks. A show that takes place in an alternate universe, filled with characters that the audiences already know, puts the audience in a unique position, where the production no longer prioritizes creating deep relationships between the characters and the audience. This is most evident in the first three episodes, where newly introduced characters are killed off just as quickly as they are introduced, which can be quite jarring for audiences and is a notable flaw.
The show has some great moments exploring themes like grief. For example, Red Guardian is left mourning his daughter, and Ms. Marvel grapples with the guilt of many dying to fulfill her goal. That said, the aforementioned flaws evoke questions about how and if audiences can truly become emotionally invested in the story and the characters. Are they able to truly feel the impact Yelena’s death has on Red Guardian, when in the main movies she is alive and well? Perhaps a project like this was doomed from the start, never being able to get into people’s hearts the same way the main universe could.
While the show is composed of many memorable concepts and characters, they tend to lead to non-linear storylines and generally confuse audiences. Firstly, there are the villains of the series: the titular zombies. They start off as what you would expect—the flesh-eating, brainless fiends that our heroes must mow down for some cool fight sequences— but with the added layer of some having superpowers or a skillset if they happened to be an Avenger or a god before they turned, it certainly sparked confusion.
Similarly, when the audience learns about “The Queen of the Dead,” everything stops making sense. “The Queen of the Dead” is a version of Scarlet Witch whose power allows her to be more conscious than the other zombies. She is capable of manipulating people, making herself look human, and has a full-blown, yet very ambiguous evil plan she is working on. There is almost nothing that separates her from a human, besides the fact that she has an “army” of zombies. While there is nothing wrong with switching up the expectation of a zombie, they never explained why Wanda was still evil and helping the zombies, even though she is so self-aware.
You would think that Marvel would hesitate before making another poorly-explained evil Scarlet Witch after how controversial that was during Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), but they did not. Now the beloved Avenger, Wanda Maximoff, is yet again torturing another character, only this time, it's Ms. Marvel instead of America Chavez. Arguably, this is somehow even worse because it is never explained why she is specifically targeting Ms. Marvel.
The Dead Queen’s role in this show is to “remake the world” through defeating Infinity Hulk—who was only mentioned for the first time in the penultimate episode—using its god-like power to do so. What she actually wants to do with the world is unclear, but according to the director, Bryan Andrews, who explained in an interview after the show's release, The Dead Queen apparently needs Ms. Marvel to “remake the world;” and nothing more outside of that. Anyhow, the show ends on a cliffhanger, with Ms. Marvel getting trapped in a fake reality of Wanda’s making.
While Marvel Zombies (2025) has some good moments and is an enjoyable watch, it can be dragged down by the lack of creating stakes and bizarre writing choices. If there is ever a season two, hopefully the show will take the criticism into consideration.