Can’t We All Just (Eat Brains and) Get Along?

Coming out of Marvel Zombies I was struck by one thing. Well, okay, two things. The first was that I really didn’t care about any of the characters. Heroes I’ve seen for years that I had affection for came across decently only by grace of the fact that the people who had been playing them for all those years also voiced the characters and were able add their gravitas and charisma. But the series squandered so many characters, failed to do anything with more, and generally didn’t invest in anyone, using the four episodes more as a festival of cameos than real character development. Even the central star, Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel, barely has an arc.

But the real issue I had (which I guess sort of ties into the point above about Ms. Marvel) is that I’m not even really certain what the plot of the series was. I know the beats, of course. Kamala and her friends (who die off, leaving Kamala on her quest, alone) find a signal probe and need to find a way to activate it (at a SHIELD base, and then launched into space) to save their planet from a zombie horde. All the while, she’s pursued by the zombie army of zombie Wanda Maximoff / Queen of the Dead, who wants Kamala because… reasons.

And it all ties into Wanda trying to steal the power of the Infinity Hulk, who has been protecting the geyser of Infinity energy that has been pouring out of Wakanda ever since the zombie Thanos was blown up by Black Panther. And Wanda wants this energy because… reasons. That’s the part I’m struggling with: why Wanda wants the energy, and how it all ties into Kamala, is never explained, and because of that the plot for the show never actually comes together, leaving it feeling even more flat than it might have otherwise.

The series starts out as a basic, “take item A to point B” adventure, which is fine, especially if it ends up leading up to something important. This is the first failure the series makes. Instead of leading to hope and salvation, all it does is confirm that Kamala’s entire quest was all for naught. They got the beacon which should signal to the Nova Corps. that Earth needs help, but once they get up into space they find a blockade. The Nova Corps. is there, and they’re stopping anyone from leaving Earth and spreading the plague. It’s not a bad twist on its own, but what it means is that Kamala and her friends all gave up their lives for an adventure that meant nothing. What took them multiple days (and three episodes) of travel could have been resolved with the Nova Corps. Making a pronouncement to all of Earth on Day One.

Worse, it effectively means that Kamala is as useful to this story as Indiana JonesTapping into the classic serial adventures of the 1940s, this franchise has gone on to spawn five films, multiple video games, a TV series, and so many novels and books. was in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once she and the remnants of her traveling team come back to Earth from space, they decide the best strategy is to stop Wanda from getting the Infinity energy, a task they fail at. Wanda was too powerful, and there was no way to stop her no matter what. So that means that Kamala and her friends carry a device they didn’t need to carry to a place where it didn’t need to go all to decide to fight a battle they couldn’t win, getting everyone they know killed in the process. Had they stayed home and done nothing there’s nothing about this scenario that would have changed. The end result is the same.

So for Kamala’s side, this is a terrible plotline. You never want your hero to be thrown into a situation where even if they do nothing the plot resolves the same. Some kind of heroic journey needs to happen. Even if she was destined to lose, Kamala needs to learn something from her adventure, but the way Marvel Zombies is written, skimping on character development over cameos and action, Kamala never has time for introspection or learning about herself. She’s already effectively a fully-formed hero, having lived and fought in the zom-poc for five years. All the character development we needed from her happened while we weren’t looking.

As I noted in my review of the series a lot of this could have been resolved if the series had kept her two friends, Riri Williams / Ironheart and Kate Bishop / Hawkeye II, alive for more than fifteen minutes at the start of the series (and yes, I know Riri shows up in the twist ending right at the end, but as far as the story is concerned, she’s functionally dead for the whole series). If this had been a journey of three friends, working together to try and stop a major threat before, in the last episode, one or two of them sacrifice themselves for the greater good, that would have had an impact. It would have meant something. The journey Kamala goes on in the actual series means nothing and effectively does nothing. It’s a waste.

Another way it would have meant something is if we’d understood what Wanda hoped to gain. We know she wants the Infinity power but we’re never told why. She’s a zombie, and she already controls an army of the dead. What does having the power of Infinity actually gain her? Does she plan to move off planet and take her zombie army with her? That would at least parallel what happens in the Marvel Zombies comics series (and spoilers for that) where the Zombie Avengers devour Galactus when he shows up and steal his cosmic power, allowing them to fly off planet and devour other worlds. So if that’s what Wanda wanted… the series needed to explain it.

It all comes down to not explaining things. The series seems to be built on three things: quips, twists, and shocking deaths. The latter is part of the reason why the series simply can’t develop anyone: it has four episodes and a massive, sprawling cast of basically every hero that is still alive and working in the main MCU. All of them need to make appearances here to show fans that, yes, they are still part of the MCU (sorry, Eternals), but the series doesn’t have time to explain to us who they are in this version of reality. So instead of actually developing them as people, or giving them real storylines to pursue, instead they are defined by their voices, what we knew about them from before, and a few quips each of them gets to make.

On this last count, the tone of the series is all over the place. We’ll go from a deep and serious moment between a father and daughter to a sudden joke out of nowhere, and then into a gory death, then back to a joke. Comedy and horror can blend well together (something I have discussed on this site more than once) but you have to find balance and moderation and Marvel Zombies doesn’t have any of that. It’s like the series is afraid to be a dark and horrifying zombie story, despite that being its core concept, so it sticks slavishly to the patented “Marvel Formula” that it can never find its footing.

I get that the original Marvel Zombies comics were silly and shlocky, but there was a certain charm to the comics, along with really gory art, that helped to sell the story. The series lacks that specificity and delight. It wants to be an Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. product first, above all else, and it never finds anything like the charm of the comics it’s based on (likely because Feige and his team don’t want anything that feels “too much like a comic book”). It feels both overly energetic, like it can’t sit still, and yet also incredibly bland because it’s just another MCU story like all the rest (undead fiends and gore notwithstanding).

The four episodes we get in this series end on a cliffhanger, which itself is unsatisfying as well. If the story couldn’t be told in four episodes, why wasn’t it given more episodes then? The feeling is that this was dumped off to burn the episodes so that Marvel can recalibrate and forget that projects like this (and Eyes of Wakanda, and Ironheart) even existed once the universe reboots post-Secret Wars. But if that’s the case, the ending for this series is doubly annoying. It’s both a cliffhanger that doesn’t resolve itself and a one-off series that we won’t see again.

It’s possible this show gets a second season (even if not likely) since it did really well on streaming when it first came out. It soared to the top of the Disney+Disney's answer in the streaming service game, Disney+ features the studio's (nearly) full back catalog, plus new movies and shows from the likes of the MCU and Star Wars. streaming charts, powered in part by its concept as well as good timing around Halloween. But it’s been panned critically (and not just by me) and may never see any further stories. Certainly there’s been no renewal announcement, and every publication calls this a miniseries. So who knows.

End of the day this was an unsatisfying miniseries that didn’t have a clue what it was doing. As a heroic adventure it fails. As a gory zombie romp it fails. As another MCU product meant to keep people interested in the franchise it fails. This was a bad series dumped by Marvel to fulfill an obligation, and it shows. If we get more of the story I seriously hope the creators learn from this and do better. But, really, I just hope we never have to talk about it again. That feels better.