One of the things that stood out most about the first episode of Marvel Zombies was how sprawlingly epic it was. Of course, MCU related animation is hardly known for its minimalist canvases, especially considering the three seasons of What If..? went repeatedly hard with gargantuan world building; but as we follow a batch of rag tag heroes as they travel across a ravaged American landscape, the second episode somehow expands on this in a way that smartly riffs on other zombie media. Temporarily shifting the focus from the desperate attempts of Kamala Kahn to get a piece of world saving tech into space, we zip back to day one of the zombie infection to follow another group from the Marvel back catalogue as they retreat from undead fuckery in San Francisco. As their journey takes them from the sands of the desert to the bottom of the ocean, it seems that the show is dedicated to giving us as many, varied, nightmarish scenarios as it possibly can – and it doesn’t get more nightmarish than a deep sea zombie assault.
Back when the zombie virus first took a busman’s holiday from the Quantum Realm to earth courtesy of Hank Pym, we go back to witness the sheer chaos inflicted on San Francisco from the point of view of a terrified Shang-Chi and his friend Katy. Aside from the usual, standard flesh eaters, there’s also the added danger of giant zombies who have managed to get exposed to Pym Particles, but while the pair are aided by a similarly terrified FBI Agent Jimmy Woo and Shang-Chi’s martial arts prowess, it’s the arrival of Shang’s crimelord father, Wenwu and his crime syndicate, the Ten Rings that temporarily turns the tide and allows them skedaddle, pronto.
Of course, there’s a massive cost. After receiving a potentially fatal zombie bite, Shang is saved from infection when his estranged father passes on the magical ten rings to him at the cost of his own life; but when we zip ahead to the present, we find that the survivors have settled into a Mad Max style existence with the addition of robust sing-alongs. Their goal is to buy sanctuary into The Raft, a former supermax for superpowers that’s been turned into a sub-aquatic city by Helmut Zemo, but while they’re there, they bump into the other group of heroes led by Kamala Kahn. As the two factions slowly bond and the Raft descends into the depths of the ocean, everyone finally starts to relax and feel safe – however, two words will soon rise to make them all crap their collective super-pants: Zombie. Namor.
Near indestructible in the ocean and boasting Hulk levels of strength, if these two teams of heroes don’t work together to slow the fish man’s roll, then earth us surely doomed. It’s once again time for a heroic, tragic, sacrifice before the planet’s last hope gets well and truly Imperius Wrecked.
Aside from the fact that the notion of a zombie Namor is genuinely terrifying, my biggest takeaway from episode of Marvel Zombies is that director Bryan Andrews and writer Zeb Wells seem to have drawn a fair amount of inspiration from World War Z. No, not the movie with Brad Pitt, but the source novel written by Max Brooks that took the form of various essays and eye witness accounts detailing the vastly different types of combat seen during a fictional, global, zombie infestation. With this in mind, with only one episode down, Marvel Zombies has not only shown us life in New York, an never ending superpowered battle between zombies with god-like powers and an army of the dead assaulting a Red Room compound – but adding to this we now have the fall of San Francisco, a Fury Road style battle across the dunes with a Skrull motorcycle gang and a surprisingly tense setpiece that sees the undead, aquatic nation of Talokan launch an assault on the submarine prison known as The Raft.
While the story admittedly may not be super varied (it’s getting slightly attack and repeat), the real gold here is still with the super-expanded world building that’s diligently burrowing into the furthest corners of the MCU to mix and match references to create cool new shit. Take the fact that Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi (who now officially has more animated appearances than live-action ones) now has a necrotic arm that’s been saved by wearing the ten rings, which he shares with Awkwafina so the two can fend off all comers.
Elsewhere, we get a version of Baron Zemo who has co-opted a super-prison to be a floating refuge if you have a resource to buy your passage who is flanked by a henchman in the form of Wyatt Russell’s John Walker. But not all the universe building is huge; we also get a weird little bromance going between Agent Woo and Death Dealer, the silent, Ten Rings assassin, who proves to be a smart foil for Randall Park’s usual, awkward style.
However, both Andrews and Wells totally understand that a big part of the fun of world building comes from also tearing it down and for all the gnarly zombies the concept has given us, zombie Namor proves to be a legitimately intimidating antagonist. Maybe it’s because he’s stalking his prey in dark, claustrophobic surroundings, maybe it’s because Namor in any form hasn’t really had a chance to to be explored by the MCU much beyond his role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but he proves to be quite the engine of destruction here as he literally rips people in half as he screams at them with a set of teeth that looks like they belong in the puss of a killer shark. As the attack continues, it continues in the vein of the show that we’ll seemingly get a noble sacrifice with every installment and the latest to continue the thread of shocking deaths is Florence Pugh’s Yelena who remains behind on the malfunctioning Raft as the Talokanil swarm her control room. David Harbour’s typically emotional Alexei sells the moment well as he screams and bellows his sorrow into the void, bit I for one think that eradicating established favorites is a smart way to go to keep unpredictability alive and well in this world of the dead.
It’s now probably a good time to bring up the gore levels on the show and while recent MCU entries such as Deadpool & Wolverine and Daredevil: Born Again have inserted such eyebrow raising moments as a skinless Human Torch or Kingpin ripping a man’s head apart, the animated angle allows Marvel Zombies to showcase spectacular acts of superpowered dismemberment. During his rampage, Namor literally rips people into pieces like toilet paper and in return, Ms. Marvel uses her hard light powers to pop his head like a zit. But there’s a sense of the grandiose too, with the setpiece of the frenzied opening assault on San Francisco riffing heavily from the beginning of World War Z – the movie version this time.
At the halfway point, we find Marvel Zombies still cooking with gas – corpse gas, to be accurate – and if the show continues to keep offering up complex, messed-up variations of a ghoul infested MCU, it’ll get on just fine. After all, there’s something curiously satisfying about unleashing utter Hell on such well-loved characters.
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