Zombies: the undead trope writers and filmmakers go to whenever they need a quick good horror fix in their established IP. Marvel did it a while back in 2005 after teasing a zombie-filled apocalypse where zombified superheroes really shook things up, all sorted out by Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead fame) and Sean Phillips. It was a breath of fresh R-rated air in a PG superhero universe, and with the Marvel Cinematic Universe still being a thing that’s around, why not apply that classic story onto the TV screen?

Enter the TV series version of Marvel Zombies, where we’re thrown into the thick of things from a What If…? episode back in 2021. But do we need such a callback?

Back From The…

Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) takes the lead as the sole survivor of a trio of superhero teens after her group got swarmed by superpowered zombies. She has to go bring a tracker to space with help from Red Guardian (David Harbour), daywalking vampire Blade (Todd Williams) possessed by Konshu, and Shang Chi (Simu Lu). They also get a few more heroes and whatnot, but they also end up as zombie chow because people need to die in these sort of action horror flicks to fill up the gore quota. You’ll still get your emotional and bonding scenes, particularly with anything involving Ms. Marvel as she’s the glue that holds the flimsy anti-zombie team together.

Marvel Zombies doesn’t shy away from killing key superheroes, anti-villains, and everyone in-between, especially in extended visceral detail. Within four episodes, we’re getting a lot being thrown at us to the point where some plot elements just feel rushed. Thankfully, it does wrap up just fine even if the whole series could use two more episodes. But for what I got throughout all of it was a good slice of entertainment that would fit alongside the MCU canon (or What If? canon if this ended up as a live-action retelling instead), superhero movie comic banter and all. If anything, we get to see Blade and Spider-Man do their best moves in the zombie apocalypse.

Marvel Zombies is a campy and gorey good time, especially when you get to see the more annoying MCU characters bite it through surprise deaths and twists. It’s not high-brow entertainment and is still content getting stuck in the MCU movie canon when it has free reign to experiment and cross over other Marvel properties. However,  it doesn’t need to be especially since most of the recent MCU catalogue post-Avengers Endgame haven’t been up to snuff quality-wise. We’ll take “alright” for now.

Final Score: 70/100