So finally we’re getting to what we all wanted! Marvel have given us the Call of Duty zombies mode which should be a optional feature on every franchise.
I’ll come straight to the point – for the most part I loved this episode, but there were a few big head scratches I had along the way. I’ll tackle these first and these mainly were to do with my understanding of how the rules on zombies work in the MCU.
After the opening picks things up at the start of the events of The Avengers Infinity War, we see Bruce Banner land in the Sanctum Sanctorum to find he is seemingly alone where as he met Doctor Strange and Wong in the main timeline. Heading outside we see he is confronted by Obsidian and Maw as to be expected, but they are attacked by Wong, Doctor Strange and Iron Man…only to reveal that all three are in fact zombies.
This would be all good expect the Wizards and still competently using their sling rings and Tony Stark is still operating the Iron Man armour without issue.
This is where you just have to take a leap of faith and enjoy the ride, cause literally this makes no sense. How are undead zombies able to use this tech unless they still have enough faculties to do so? And if they do why are they evil?
Add to this that we see a flashback of how the main Avengers were attacked and Iron Man was in full armour when ambushed. How did the zombies penetrate his armour to infect him? And if he is infected why would his on board computer, Friday, continue to allow Stark to operate the suit?
There are so many questions and inconsistencies in this episode that like I said it’s best to accept it for what it is and enjoy the ride!
One of the great things about this episodes of What If is that we get to see team ups that wouldn’t be common in the live action adventures. In this we see the line up of heroes that consist of the likes of Bucky, The Wasp, Brice Banner, Doctor Strange’s Cape, Spider-Man and Happy Hogan.
It’s worth noting that Spider-Man isn’t played or particularly looks like Tom Holland here and that is almost certainly to do with conflicts with the Sony deal. If my understanding is on point I believe Marvel have always been able to produce Spider-Man animations outside of Sony having the film rights to the character so Marvel could use Spidey here to their hearts content, but just have to make it distinctly not Tom Holland. Maybe I’m wrong – put any updates in the comments.
If there is one recurring thing I’ve said throughout the What If reviews it’s that I do feel there is something to be said about how this show is killing off beloved characters like it doesn’t matter. Ultimately I think this is a mistake, as we’ve seen Iron Man killed off at the start of two episodes now and that does take away from his death in the Avengers End Game.
Likewise seeing Vision die again is making him the Kenny of the MCU and will it mean as much if characters like Hope or Bucky die in live action if we’ve already seen them die in What If?
But again I digress because…zombies!!!
This episode could have gone all out horror and certainly some of the included jump scares could be made much scarier if someone wants to edit some horror music on top.
There was lots of creative things done with the zombies crossed with superheroes and perhaps my favourite was The Wasp flying into zombie’s Sharon Carter’s mouth. From there she grew back to normal size and exploded Sharon. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d hope this episode would have, and giant zombie Hope was another highlight.
A slight miss (and only slight) was the Futurama style Ant-Man head in a jar. That Scott would just make dad jokes and not reflect the absolute horror of his predicament didn’t quite land for me. But then again…Futurama reference in the MCU.
It was also cool to hear Peter Parker reference both his parents and name check Uncle Ben, which may be the first time these have been mentioned in the MCU. Interestingly the reference to his parents could link back to the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man films where his parents were a big part of an unresolved mystery.
Chadwick Boseman again reprised his role as T’Challa and it was fortunate that he was one of the surviving heroes in this story, as I should imagine that anything but would have felt uncomfortable with Chadwick’s passing about a year ago.
The episode again showed us a reality where heroes somewhat become villains and this time we get an awful lot of it. Obviously we get lots of zombified Avengers, and for the second time we have Hank Pym as a bad guy – in this instance he brought the infection back form his wife in the Quantum realm.
But the main heel turn comes from Vision who is keeping a zombie Wanda alive. A subtle nod perhaps to WandaVision where Wanda kept Vision alive and was at times shown almost zombie like.
Conclusion
I’m sure many fans will love this episode, but I’m certain there will be detractors too. Either because we had to watch some favourite heroes get killed, or because there was some very hokey logic and plot holes throughout.
My biggest hope is that this may have been a test to see if a Marvel zombie based film or live action series could be viable. There’s a lot to be excited about with the prospect of Zombies vs Superheroes.
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