FULL SPOILERS ahead for Marvel Zombies!
All four episodes of the new limited series Marvel Zombies are now available to watch on Disney+ – read IGN’s Marvel Zombies review – which means we can fully unpack the ending of this What IfI? spin-off.
And what an ending it was. It’s so bleak it makes the ending of Avengers: Infinity War seem upbeat. “Point to the zombie movie that has a happy ending,” as executive producer Brad Winderbaum put it to me in a recent interview. More from him later.
Marvel Zombies picks up after the events depicted in the fifth episode of What If…? Season 1, where Earth is ravaged by a zombie apocalypse just as Thanos arrives looking for the final Infinity Stone. Unlike in Infinity War, though, Thanos – along with most of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes – is turned into a zombie. At the end of that episode, Bruce Banner/Hulk apparently sacrificed himself by remaining behind to battle an evil Wanda Maximoff and her zombie army while the surviving heroes escaped to Wakanda.
But Marvel Zombies reveals that’s not quite what happened…
Marvel Zombies Ending Explained
In Marvel Zombies, Episode 3, Kamala Khan, Blade Knight, Shang-Chi, Katy, Red Guardian, Jimmy Woo, Death Dealer, and Baron Zemo arrive in New Asgard seeking the use of an Asgardian spaceship so that Kamala’s transmitter can send a signal for help to the Nova Corps. Once inside the fortress walls, they discover Wanda, now in her human form despite last being seen as a zombie, is there as a guest of Valkyrie and Thor.
Wanda explains that over time, she used her powers to heal herself and sculpt reality. She says the Wakanda Event – where T’Challa sacrificed his life to destroy Thanos and his Infinity Stones – released massive energies from the destroyed Infinity Stones. Wanda claims she could harness those energies to heal the world, “but someone stole it for themselves. They hoard it.” Kamala has seen this figure in her dreams. Wanda says that she can’t defeat him on her own. She needs an army, “soldiers with the strengths of gods.”
But (shock!) Wanda deceives our heroes, fatally poisoning the Asgardians during a banquet and turning them into the latest members of her zombie horde. “Kamala, don’t be afraid,” Wanda tells the young superhero. “Come with me. Together, we can fix this.”
Kamala thinks Wanda wants the transmitter, but it’s actually Ms. Marvel herself and the power she wields that the Queen of the Dead wants. By the end of the third episode, the only surviving heroes are Kamala, Blade Knight, Valkyrie, Shang-Chi, and Katy. Even the Mighty Thor appears to have perished while holding off Wanda and her zombies long enough for his comrades to escape in a spaceship. Sadly, it turns out the Nova Corps will not help them and have, in fact, quarantined Earth as it poses a threat to the rest of the galaxy.
In the season finale, the surviving Avengers are magically sent to Kamar-Taj where they are greeted by Spider-Man and Scott Lang (now just a floating head in a glass helmet but able to fly thanks to Doctor Strange’s cloak). The sorcerers Rintrah, Sara and the London Master have provided them with shelter.
The sorcerers explain that Bruce Banner isn’t dead. The Hulk was the only being on Earth whose form could withstand and hold all of that Infinity Stone energy and prevent it from destroying all life. He is no longer Banner or Hulk but rather “a cipher, an anchor protecting energies that could make or destroy worlds.”
Wanda finally has an army strong enough to confront Banner and take that infinite power from him. The sorcerers need all the help they can get, so that’s why they brought the Avengers to Kamar-Taj. They know it’s their last stand against Wanda.
During the final battle, Wanda tempts Kamala to join forces with her to help rob (let’s call him) Infinite Hulk of the energy he holds: “Kamala, help me. I’m trying to save you all. Can’t you see? … If you stop me, all this is for nothing. Would you have your friends die for nothing? If you stop me, Kate and Riri would have died for nothing. You are blind to your own salvation. If I can’t convince you, maybe your friends can.”
That’s when a zombified Red Guardian, Kate Bishop and Riri Williams attack Kamala. As this happens, Infinite Hulk kills a zombified Thor. Then Wanda appears before Hulk and touches him, the one thing our heroes had to prevent her from doing. Wanda starts to absorb Hulk’s Infinite Energy. The Avengers and sorcerers perish trying to stop Wanda. Only Kamala remains.
Wanda once again adopts her human guise to make a final plea to Kamala: “We were meant to be here. To end this together. … I’m too strong for you, Kamala. But still not strong enough to save us. I need you. … We can fix this. You can help me bring them all back. Kamala, look around. The suffering. Save them. Take my hand. All will be made whole. You can still save the world, like you always wanted.”
“I’m sorry,” Kamala sobs. “This can’t all be for nothing.” Then she takes Wanda’s hand as the Queen of the Dead declares, “And so the world begins again.”
One massive energy burst later and Kamala awakens back home in New Jersey. Her mother’s voice calls to her that her friends are at the door. Kamala rushes downstairs to find her besties Kate and Riri, alive and well. Kamala is beyond overjoyed to see them, who have no idea why she’s so excited. Only Kamala has memories of the zombie apocalypse.
The three friends go out for boba, where Kamala rattles off all the things she wants to do next. While she’s checking out a guy across the street, Kamala starts to see sudden bursts of zombies pulsing through her perceived reality. The normal people she sees are, in fact, still zombies.
A still-living Riri (remember, she injected herself with an experimental drug earlier in the season before she appeared to perish) is battling zombies, calling out to Kamala, telling her that none of the normal, happy life she’s seeing is real. Yes, it’s all a Wanda-fied illusion.
“Kamala, are you good?,” Kate asks. Kamala’s face is frozen. The screen cuts to black for a moment. The final shot of Marvel Zombies is a close-up of a hissing zombie Wanda.
Kamala Khan – who always wanted to be a superhero like her idol Captain Marvel – has failed her friends and the world. The Queen of the Dead has prevailed.
Why Marvel Zombies Had to End That Way
“I mean, we were making a zombie movie, really. Point to the zombie movie that has a happy ending,” Brad Winderbaum told IGN in a recent interview. Indeed, the works of George A. Romero bear that out, beginning with the grandaddy of all downbeat zombie movie endings, Night of the Living Dead.
Winderbaum said that from his initial conversations with series creators Bryan Andrews and Zeb Wells, it was always the plan for Marvel Zombies to be a journey that ended with the protagonists losing.
“There were two things Bryan, Zeb and I talked about early on, and that was that this was going to be a zombie movie, and that meant kind of a general quest structure at times and a story about survival,” Winderbaum explained. “And not just, will these characters or won't they survive, but also in surviving, will that change them and will it corrupt them? And we pointed to some of our favorite zombie movies where that is a central theme.”
“Also, a lot of John Carpenter movies have that theme as well. They have a survival element, but it's really about, will the person change? It's one thing to survive, but will you survive intact, mentally intact? So that was important to us. So the bleakness of the world, but also the harshness of the ending was something that was always, we were chasing from the beginning.”
Marvel Zombies: Season 2?
But is this really the end of Marvel Zombies? Is there a chance that Kamala, with Riri’s help, could undo the damage she caused and topple Wanda in a potential second season?
“Bryan and I will sometimes just talk casually and start geeking out on the lore of this universe. I think it's bigger than just this story. I think there's more stories to tell. There's certainly characters on the field that we weren't able to pull into this one adventure,” Winderbaum said.
A second season could also answer what exactly that concoction was that Riri injected herself with that allowed her to survive the zombies. “We have ideas about what that is,” Winderbaum hinted.
Winderbaum, who serves as Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Television and Animation at Marvel Studios, was candid about the chances of a second season for Marvel Zombies, leaving it up to the fans and viewers to help make that happen.
“We would love to make a Season Two. We could start right now on a Season Two. But frankly, that depends on people subscribing to Disney+ and watching the series. In success, we will, the next day we'll start working on it. So hopefully people love it as much as we do and they watch it.”
“We created an ending that was less about, ‘Well, you got to see the next one,’” Winderbaum added. “Bryan compares it to the end of John Carpenter's The Thing, where there is an open question still at the end of that story, even though the story is concluded, and that was kind of the vibe we were going for there.”
What did you think of the ending of Marvel Zombies and the season overall? What would you like to see happen in a second season if that happens? Let us know in the comments.
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