Marvel Zombies – review

Director: Bryan Andrews

First aired: 2025

Contains spoilers

Marvel Zombies was a limited (4 episode) animated series released in time for the Halloween season. It follows the Zombies episode of What If…? As such it is in an alternate timeline to the primary MCU. When we hit the first episode it is five years after the outbreak, the Earth has more or less fallen and is isolated from the universe by atmospheric energy interference generated by the Wakanda Event (the destruction of the infinity stones when Zombie Thanos threatened to use the infinity gauntlet).

young heroes

It starts with three young heroes; Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) aka Ms Marvel, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) aka Ironheart and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld, Sinners) aka Hawkeye, who have the repurposed AI driven ironman armour named F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Kerry Condon) with them. Every time they leave their base to enter the city for supply runs they encounter and are hunted by the zombie Hawkeye, AKA Clint Barton. This time they see a Quinjet go down and find a miniaturised transmitter swallowed by the zombified pilot. They ascertain that it is a transmitter to help save the planet and need to get it to a S.H.I.E.L.D. base.

Khonsu

It is during that journey that all three look about to lose their lives, however Hawkeye and Ironheart sacrifice themselves to save Ms Marvel (with F.R.I.D.A.Y. flying her out of the immediate area before returning to Ironheart) but she looks likely to die too until she is rescued by Blade Knight (Todd Williams, the Vampire Diaries). So, this is Blade but, after the previous avatar became zombified, he has become the avatar of Khonsu (Piotr Michael), God of the Moon, with the Knight in his name coming from the fact that the avatar is normally Moon Knight. 

Todd Williams voices Blade

He has fangs and was clearly the daywalker before this happened, but comments later call him a vampire (rather than dhampir, but we have no reason to believe he is a full vampire), with another suggesting he no longer drinks blood. This is unlikely down to his serum and more likely him being sustained by Khonsu. The other thing to note is the voicing by Todd Williams. The MCU Blade movie has been stuck in development Hell, though Mahershala Ali was cast as Blade and voiced him for a line in the Eternals. Whether this casting means Ali is no longer connected and Williams is, Ali was unavailable for this, or that the project has been finally abandoned, is unknown as I write this.

the Queen of the Dead

Another thing to note is Blade Knight is in all four episodes and represents a major Deus Ex Machina – due to Khonsu – so not the cameo of the character we saw in Deadpool & Wolverine. The series sees Ms Marvel, Blade Knight and those they gather round them being chased across the globe by the Queen of the Dead, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) – the zombified version of the Scarlet Witch, who was a central aspect of the What If…? Episode and who has gained the ability to connect to zombies psychically and is building a horde.

the Blade Knight

This was fun. Blade Knight gets to have plenty of sword play, and there are loads of Marvel heroes (either in flashback or present day) both zombified and still living. If I had a complaint, it was that it felt like lurching from one crisis to another. In a longer built series they would perhaps have had moments of calm to balance it out. That said, the scenario meant that perhaps it would have been relentless. There are moral ambiguities drawn in at times but perhaps not too much of that and the heroes tend just to be heroic. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.