Time was, whatever was happening behind the scenes of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), on screen, it moved like a well-oiled machine. Sure, there were hiccups here and there – heck, a scene featuring Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the second MCU movie ever, The Incredible Hulk, made no sense by the time Iron Man 2 came out, a mere two years later. But despite the loose, free-wheeling way a lot of the movies came together, it always seemed like there was a plan in motion.
Since 2019's Avengers: Endgame, though, the "plot" of the MCU has been a constant discussion (to put it kindly) with fans of the franchise. While your mileage may vary as to the actual quality of the shows and movies, nowhere is it clearer how out of sync the rollout of the MCU is right now than the studio's animated output, up to and including the four-episode Disney Plus series Marvel Zombies. And not to get too Doom and Gloomsday about it all, but it points to a greater issue about the next two Avengers movies.
To be clear, we're talking about the MCU or MCU adjacent series, not the preschool programming like Spidey and His Amazing Friends and other spinoffs, which continue apace despite any rockiness with Marvel Studios on the live-action film side of things. Instead, we can address the handful of shows that Marvel Studios Animation has produced since 2019, once (most of) the output was brought under the house Kevin Feige built.
That includes: What If…?, I Am Groot, X-Men '97, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Eyes of Wakanda, and now Marvel Zombies. Each has its own particular quirks, but let's get even more specific and talk about the series that are MCU canon.
False start
What If…? is where Marvel Studios Animation began, and it's also where the cracks started to show. The first two seasons of the series (released in 2021 and 2023, respectively) were a mix of riffs on established MCU movies and new ideas like introducing the character Kahhori (Devery Jacobs) or the Marvel Zombies – though even that started with connections to Ant-Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Infinity War. The issues began with Season 3 (and ended, since it was the final season of the show), which came out in 2024 and suddenly found What If…? running ahead of the live-action MCU, or at least (per the point of this article) out of sync with where the MCU was in live-action at the current time.
There are a number of factors that caused this weird disconnect, including COVID shutting down the entire world and the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes halting productions. There has also been a ton of reported rockiness in Marvel Studios, too complicated to get into here, including firings, visual effects challenges, and a far less uniform response to the movies and TV shows themselves, versus the MCU pre-2019.
Given the differing timeframes required to make an animated series, it stands to reason that what Marvel Animation would be putting out would not quite be running on the same track as Marvel's live-action. But What If…?'s third season was a different animal entirely. An inordinate number of episodes were tied to Eternals, a widely maligned movie that was expected to be the next great thing from Marvel, and turned out to be anything but. Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), aka Ironheart, showed up in a featured role, despite only briefly appearing in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Likely, this was planned to come out after her self-titled Disney Plus series, but with that sitting on the shelf for several years, instead, the What If…? episode came out six months earlier.
Similarly, a version of The Hood, played in Ironheart by Anthony Ramos, showed up in What If…? Season 3. Not a problem for comic book fans, but a bizarre swing that might have made sense to supplant expectations, if only MCU fans knew who the character was. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Kate Bishop/Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld) showed up in the same episode, and neither has had expected follow-ups to their own movie and TV show, respectively.
Missing the mark
Marvel Zombies, similarly, spins off from an episode of What If…? Season 1 and was announced back in 2021. While there are plenty of aspects of the show that do seem right on time, like a focus on Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Red Guardian (David Harbour), who just appeared in Thunderbolts*, there's still plenty that seems to be ahead of the MCU's skis. Specifically, the show starts with a Young Avengers team-up featuring Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Riri, and Kate – something that was briefly teased back in The Marvels, but has yet to appear in any form since.
But strangest of all is that, after a brief vocal cameo in an Eternals end credits scene, Blade finally makes his MCU debut in Marvel Zombies, after multiple delays and pushbacks for the Blade reboot that was first announced in 2019. That's bizarre enough, but this Blade is also Moon Knight, previously played by Oscar Issac – another character that has virtually disappeared since his self-titled TV series. If there had been a Blade movie and a Moon Knight Season 2 since 2019? Less weird. As is, it's jarring rather than triumphant.
Look, there's an argument to be made that what Marvel Animation is doing here is picking up the slack, using discarded ideas that can be good and fun if you give them a chance. But going back to that original idea of it all being one story, rather than buoying up the franchise, it makes the animation feel like it's veering off in its own direction.
Doomsday may spell doom for the MCU
It also points out a glaring problem that has seeped into live-action as well, specifically the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Rather than what seemed like a slow and careful build-up of beloved core characters in Marvel's Infinity Saga, the Multiverse Saga (what the current "story" is called) has been a series of starts and stops, characters introduced and plot points raised but rarely seen again. What the Marvel animated series show us is that when you take those ideas and throw them incongruously on screen years later, rather than a triumphant return, it's a weird record scratch. It's jarring, not cheering.
Who dies in Marvel Zombies? Every hero death listed in order
Take a look at what we know are some of the main pillars of Doomsday. The Fantastic Four was introduced in one movie that came out this past year. The Thunderbolts at least have a previous basis individually in the MCU, but these New Avengers were sold almost entirely on the idea that they shouldn't be a team. And Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) putting his own team of Avengers together has been teased, but we've never seen them in action. That's not even mentioning Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, a character who has thus far appeared in one (1) end credits scene, and we didn't even see his face.
Compare that to the multiple movies most characters appeared in before Avengers: Infinity War shook the toy box, and you have a potential head-scratcher. These are characters we don't really know, on teams we don't really know, and unlike the characters leading into Infinity War and Endgame, don't necessarily care about. Marvel has added the classic X-Men line-up from the Fox movies to Doomsday, but that feels like putting a nostalgia band-aid on a gaping wound.
Looping this back to the animated series, and Marvel Zombies in particular, while it's nice to see some of these characters again on the show, it's more confusing to see others (see: Blade Knight). Amplify that by a 100x the budget, and you've got what could be a similar feeling watching Doomsday as any of the 27 announced cast members (and likely, there are even more) parade across the screen… Not to mention Secret Wars, which is almost definitely going to include an array of multiversal variants of the characters.
To quote the MCU, something like Doomsday needs you to shout like Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in Endgame ("I knew it!") and not Korath (Djimon Hounsou) in Guardians of the Galaxy ("Who?"). If Marvel's animated output is any indication, even die-hard fans might lean towards the latter.
Marvel Zombies is streaming now on Disney Plus. For more, check out our Marvel Zombies review, or if you've seen the streaming series and are still scratching your chin, our Marvel Zombies ending explained will set you straight.
