Josh Reviews Marvel Zombies
I wasn’t planning to watch this show. It’s a spin-off from Marvel’s animated What If…? show which, though I liked it, I never felt lived up to its potential. And it’s based on the Marvel Zombies comic book series, which never much interested me (even though it was created by two super-talented creators: Robert Kirkman & Sean Phillips). But over the past few months, I feel like I kept hearing that the four-episode animated Marvel Zombies show on Disney+ was pretty great. So I decided to give it a try.
And you know what? It’s pretty great!
The first three of the four episodes are, in fact, EXCELLENT. They deliver everything that I’ve been missing from the live-action MCU in recent years. The fourth episode was a bit of a letdown — and, spoiler alert, it ends on a cliffhanger, which really irritated me because a second season has not been announced, meaning that even if it does get made, it’s years away.
Despite that, I’m glad I wound up watching this show. I had a blast watching those first three episodes.
The show picks up on the status quo left at the end of the first-season zombies What If…? episode, which is that Earth has been overrun by Zombies. Here in episode one, we catch up with Kamala Khan, Kate Bishop, and Riri Williams. They’re living and working together, managing to survive the zombie hordes in New York City. But then they find a crashed quinjet with a miniaturized (by Pym particles) device that can transmit an S.O.S. to the Nova Corps, who have the technology to come and stop the zombies. All they need is a way to transmit the signal off-planet. And so begins their quest.
Right away, this show hooked me with the brilliant decision to team up Kamala (Iman Vellani), Kate (Hailee Steinfeld), and Riri (Dominique Thorn). This is an inspired grouping, and I loved seeing all three of these characters given a chance to shine! I’ve enjoyed all of them in their TV shows so far (Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, and Ironheart), and they were fantastic here working as a team. I’d love to see lots more of all of these three great heroes in live-action. For now, it was a delight to get to see them given a spotlight here on this show!
Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel winds up being the central hero of this series, and it is an absolute pleasure. Iman Vellani was instantly iconic in this role when we first met her in the Ms. Marvel show. I loved getting to see her in the movie The Marvels. This show allows Kamala to really step into center stage as a central hero of the MCU (in the way I hope will happen in live-action eventually). One of the moving moments in the series is when Thor dubs Kamala an Avenger. (“You are the Avenger now.”) And we get to see her meet Peter Parker/Spider-Man, a moment I have been desperate to see ever since first seeing Kamala in her TV show (and that I really hope we see happen soon in live-action!!)!
This series also centers Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Katy (Awkwafina) in a way that delighted me, and that I have been waiting for. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was the first post-Endgame film to embrace the opportunity to introduce new characters into the MCU. Now, I have been continually defending Marvel from the criticism it’s been receiving for the past several years, and I stand by that. I think that overall the quality of the movies and shows has continued to be pretty great, with just a few hiccups (Secret Invasion was a huge disappointment, and The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World both seem to have been re-edited and re-shot to the point of incomprehensibility). But I have been holding up as my example of the biggest problem of post-Endgame Marvel the fact that we haven’t seen Shang-Chi again since his movie, even in a small cameo. I’ve been waiting years to see him pop up again and interact with other MCU heroes, even if just in a small supporting role! That sense of interconnectivity was one of the key innovations of the MCU. While people liked to complain about that as the MCU continued (“I have to watch all these other movies to understand this movie??”), I always thought that was a dumb complaint (the vast majority of the movies and shows stood on their own just fine), and that interconnectivity was what kept bringing people back and getting us excited to see the stories continue. I think it’s a huge mistake that we haven’t seen Shang-Chi again since his movie, and I loved how central he was in this story. And Katy too!!! Even better!!! I LOVE that Katy got to wield five of the ten rings!! What a great idea (that they should definitely use in live action)!
The Black Widow movie didn’t set the world on fire, but there’s no question that Alexei/Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) really popped, and I loved seeing their stories continue in Thunderbolts*. So I was delighted that they both got a lot to do here, as well as Melina, Rachel Weiss’ character (who is voiced here by Kari Wahlgren). (However, Melina’s death was one of the dumber moments in the show; there was zero reason for her to stay behind, as opposed to escaping with Red Guardian and Yelena.) I absolutely loved how well they were able to use Red Guardian. He got a ton of funny moments, but also a strong emotional arc as he deals with loss after loss. (I love that it’s Kamala, in one of the many great hero moments they gave her character on the show, who is able to reach Alexei in a key emotional moment.) And Red Guardian even gets to finally fight Captain America!!! (Albeit in zombie form! The end of that fight had me laughing out loud in amusement and disgust. It was great.)
This series did yet another thing the main live-action MCU has failed to do, which is to give us Blade! And he is SO PERFECT! I’ve never been a huge fan of the Blade character (either in the comics or his three original movies), but I loved Blade here! What a genius idea it was to make Blade the new Moon Knight. I loved the design of the character. (Paul Rudd’s Ant Man to Blade: “Wearing white in the zombie apocalypse? That’s a choice!”) I love how kick-ass he was. And bravo to voice actor Todd Williams, who makes his Blade sound exactly like Mahershala Ali (who was supposed to play Blade in the MCU — and did voice the character from off-screen in The Eternals — but who so far has yet to actually appear).
As was the case in What If…?, I was thrilled that so many of the live-action actors returned to voice their characters on this show. That was fun.
In addition to all the characters I’ve already mentioned, many other familiar MCU characters pop up, and they were all well-used. I was thrilled to see: Paul Rudd as Ant Man; Elizabeth Olson as Wanda Maximoff; Randall Park as agent Jimmy Woo — his buddy comedy business with Death Dealer was fantastic; Wyatt Russell as John Walker; Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie; Kerry Condon as F.R.I.D.A.Y. (the A.I. in the Iron Man armor)… they even got F. Murray Abraham to return as Khonshu!! (He voiced the character in Moon Knight.)
There were also some other characters with different voices, but across the board I was impressed how well these new voice-actors channeled the vibes of these characters from live action. This includes: Shang-Chi’s father Xu Wenwu (voiced here by Feodor Chin); Zemo (voiced here by Rama Vallury) — who finally gets to be a Baron, like he is in the comics!!; Thor (voiced here by Greg Thurman); and Spider-Man (voiced here by Hudson Thames). We also got to see Ikaris from the Eternals fighting Captain Marvel, which was awesome. (Though the show doesn’t do a good job establishing on-screen who Ikaris is. I didn’t realize it was the Eternals character until after watching the show. Still, I am a defender of the Eternals movie, and so I was happy to see an Eternals character pop up!)
The animation in the show is great. They do a good job capturing the look of these characters and actors from the MCU. This world feels epic, with lots of different locations. The battle scenes are particularly great. This show does not pull it’s punches. This surprised me!! I was impressed how much carnage and gore there was in this series!! In particular, we see a LOT of heroic Marvel characters die horribly. (This was the type of alternate-universe fun that I always loved in the What If…? comic books I read as a kid, and that I wished had been more present in the What If…? show.) There are a lot of wonderfully exciting and violent battle scenes in this show. This made me very happy.
I’d have declared this series a masterpiece had not episode four let me down. First off, the set-up didn’t make sense to me. If Banner/Hulk has absorbed the energy of all of the Infinity Stones, then he has ultimate power, right? So he should be able to defeat the zombies with the snap of his fingers. So I don’t understand why he’s in jeopardy and our heroes need to have this whole last stand to protect him. Then they bring in zombie Thor, and while the Thor/Hulk fight was cool, I don’t buy the premise. We saw in Thor: Ragnarok that Thor could barely hold his own in a fight with a normally-powered Hulk. So an Infinity Stones-powered Hulk should be able to annihilate Thor in a second. I also don’t understand why the Scarlet Witch would be able to get all the Infinity powers just by touching the Hulk. If I accept that’s the case, then why don’t one of the other heroes just do that and use the power to defeat the zombies? None of this makes sense to me. And then there was the cliffhanger. I expected that a zombie story wouldn’t end well for our heroes, and watching this I was curious whether they’d give any of our heroes a happy ending or have a totally bleak ending. I feel like they tried to dodge that dilemma with the cliffhanger ending, and it pissed me off. As I have written over and over again on this site, I think a cliffhanger in today’s era of streaming shows is a huge mistake and unfair to the audience. We have no idea if there will ever be a second season of this show, and if this winds up being the ending, I don’t find it satisfying. Even if Marvel does wind up making a second season, it will likely be YEARS before we see it. (This show came out months ago, and a second season has still not been announced.)
Other thoughts:
- I mentioned above the great Red Guardian vs. zombie Cap fight from the first episode. I also loved seeing Blade fight Ghost. (The way he dices her into pieces at the end was incredible.)
- Episode two kicks off with an astonishing action sequence as we follow Shang-Chi, Katy, and Jimmy Woo running through the city during the zombie attack. That was really cool.
- I really liked the idea that the ten rings can hold back Shang’s zombie infection. I’d have liked to have seen him have to struggle with allowing the rings to leave his arm during fights — wouldn’t that allow the zombie infection to spread? But the show doesn’t go there.
- I loved the Mad Max Skrull fight in episode two.
- I loved how Zemo is making use of the Raft (the superhero prison from Captain America: Civil War).
- It was fun to see Namor again; I loved the zombie Atlanteans. (I smiled to hear Blade pronounce Namor’s name the way I’ve always thought it should be said: NAY-more.)
- I liked that episode three connected the dots between where things ended in that What If…? episode and the start of this show.
- I was happy to see Rocket and Groot, but that got me wondering where Peter Quill was, when Earth was in jeopardy?
- I’m glad T’Challa was involved in this story, despite the death of Chadwick Boseman. They handled this very thoughtfully, with Spider-Man narrating Black Panther’s big scene in episode three. That was very well done.
So, OK, episode four disappointed me. But episodes 1-3 were a BLAST! I’m really glad I watched this. This series has the fun MCU crossover energy I’ve been missing. I hope Avengers: Doomsday can deliver the way this show does.
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