Zombies ate my Avengers in Marvel’s What if…?
Episode 5 is an over-the-top dalliance with meaningful character beats.
The Short Take:
Marvel’s take on the zombie apocalypse offers a much more light-hearted episode, delicately juggling cavalier humor with a more emotionally invested survival narrative. It almost gave me tonal whiplash, but ultimately worked.
Image Credit: CNET
The Long Take:
[SPOILER WARNING: There’s not much to spoil since Marvel has released images of zombie Avengers, and the mayhem of a zombie apocalypse could claim anyone at any time. But, if you still want to be surprised by who turns, watch the episode and come back before the horde overtakes you.]
Last week I did wonder: where are they going to go from here? The Doctor Strange-centric episode was so dark, and so lofty, that I wasn’t sure what the show could actually follow it with. Welp, zombies. Zombies was apparently the answer, because this ridiculous romp through a genre sandbox like this neither tries to compete with nor undermines the consequence of episode 4.
Bruce Banner crash lands in the Sanctum Sanctorum just as he does after Thor: Ragnarok (2017), but that’s where the parallel to our MCU ends. He starts to sound the alarm for Thanos’ imminent arrival only to discover that New York — and possibly all of Earth — has been consumed by a zombie apocalypse. What if, instead of saving the planet, Earth’s mightiest heroes wanted to gnaw on everyone in it? Zombies are deadly, but zombies with superpowers might be unstoppable.
The “what if” here isn’t merely Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with a Marvel makeover. I remember being really excited when Seth Grahame-Smith’s parody novel came out because it combined two disparate interests of mine: Jane Austen and pulpy dystopian science fiction. But after a few chapters, my interest faded because the book was too similar to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with zombies inserted in a plug and play fashion. This episode of What if..?, on the other hand, creates a completely new story that mixes and matches different heroes. The endless slew of team-ups and face-offs gives the same joy that playing Marvel vs. Capcom affords. Sharon Carter may have never said two words to Iron Man’s steward, Happy, but here we get to find out what a conversation between them looks like. And what does Winter Soldier v. Scarlet Witch look like? (Hint: Not pretty.)
The stakes are about as low as a video game’s too. In many zombie films, nothing really matters. There’s a casual attitude towards death that allows characters to do really ridiculous things. And there’s a fun in the idea that lots of characters will die, and that’s fine because…well, zombies. The tone of the episode reminded me a lot of the Evil Dead franchise or the more recent Netflix/Zack Snyder collaboration, Army of the Dead (2021), which pays its respects to or at least knowingly borrows from the Sam Raimi series, I think. So this episode is mostly hilarious and not much else.
But there are still moments where the characters’ nobility rapidly shifts the tone and kind of kills the collective buzz. Peter, on the one hand, is over here making youtube videos about how to survive a zombie apocalypse and frequently mentions the “rules” that he learned from watching lots of zombie movies. But then, the next minute, everyone has to somber up and share angst over Hope being a dead wasp flying or over not being able to save Happy. (He repeatedly says “blam blam” while shooting Iron Man’s suit glove when he dies by the way. It’s very funny.) It’s almost as if the episode set out to just have fun, but then at certain moments couldn’t help but slip back into a more classic Marvel, “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good,” and we’re all in this together sentiment. I suppose this kind of tonal dichotomy appears in a lot of stories in the genre. But still, it dampened the mood here ever so slightly.
Regardless of whether or not the episode was joking or serious at any given moment, the character beats from recent shows and films resonated. In some ways this episode is just as much a reminder of where we’ve been in the MCU (and therefore who we should care about) as it is a completely random and isolated thought exercise. Some references to End Game and/or Phase 4 include:
Vision has been harboring zombie Wanda and feeding her T’Challa’s leg, with a shortsightedness and grief similar to what Wanda displays in WandaVision. This made me relive the heartbreak of that show all over again.
Bucky gets to murder zombie Falcon and not be that sad about it, playing off their love/hate relationship from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
The Cloak of Levitation adorably saves everyone, lest we forget my theory about Doctor Strange’s central role in Phase 4.
Peter opens up about Tony Stark, et al’s deaths. If I’m saying that Doctor Strange is the brains behind Phase 4, Spider-Man would be the heart because any sincerity in this episode lies with him.
Okoye owns every situation, just as she did in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
There’s even a callback to episode 3 of What if…? because Hank Pym continues to be a problem, just less directly this time.
So, even though this plot is a lark, familiar relationships and psychological hang ups push through. As I watched this episode and acknowledged its playfulness, I still recognized our heroes as OUR heroes, as they have been developed in the MCU.
You know who’s not on this list? Hope Van Dyne. Why has she been so prominently featured in two What if…? episodes now? I enjoyed her in the Antman films, so I don’t have a problem with this, but she hasn’t really had much reach beyond them so far. Does this mean that we’re going to see a lot more of her (and a lot less of Scott Lang) in the future? Shout out to Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang. The dad jokes and insecurities were entirely predictable, but no less delightful. His zombie-cured severed head in a glass jar, wearing the Cloak of Levitation was a Futurama-esque stroke of wacky genius.
And that last sentence encapsulates what makes this episode worth watching, even if you’re not committed to the series as a whole.