‘Marvel Zombies’ Producers on the Power of Ms. Marvel and the Future of ‘What If… ?’

Marvel Zombies gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “no guts, no glory.” The upcoming miniseries, which is a continuation of the What If… ? Season 1 episode What If… Zombies?!, is Marvel Studios Animation’s first foray into TV-MA territory. At just four bloody episodes long, it’s easily the studio’s most gruesome show to date.

“We knew it had to be authentic and of the genre, so that meant TV-MA,” Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation at Marvel Studios Brad Winderbaum, who serves as co-executive producer on the series, tells The Nerds of Color. “If we were gonna do it, we knew we had to do it right.”

Set during a zombie apocalypse, Marvel Zombies follows a group of survivors who must step up and save the day after the Avengers become infected. There are many familiar faces, including Ironheart (voiced by Dominique Thorne), Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Blade Knight (Todd Williams), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Katy (Awkwafina), and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), among others.

Courtesy Marvel Television

While the series boasts a stacked ensemble cast, there’s one hero who particularly shines throughout: Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). As the first Muslim Marvel superhero to headline her own comic, the Pakistani American teen not only plays a significant role in MCU history, she’s also front and center in Marvel Zombies — a refreshing change within a genre that’s historically been dominated by white male protagonists.

For the creators, it was Khan’s hopeful nature that made her the obvious candidate to lead the way through the zombie apocalypse.

“She’s super young and super hopeful, pushed up against bleak, horrible death nastiness,” director, showrunner, and co-executive producer Bryan Andrews says. “It seemed true to the genre, having a character of that ilk experiencing this, as opposed to following a ‘grizzled badass’ the whole way through. That’s one reason why we partnered her early on with Blade Knight, so we could get a certain amount of, ‘I’ve seen it all, kid,’ and then she’s like, ‘This is insanity.’”

“In zombie movies and survival stories, there’s tension around, ‘Will the characters survive or not?’” Winderbaum says. “But there’s also an added tension: In surviving, will it change who they are? Will it corrupt them? Will that hopeful spirit be tarnished in some way, by having to do what she needs to do to survive in a zombie apocalypse?”

As for the possibility of more What If… ? spin-offs down the road, never say never.

“The Western one that we did in Season 3 would be a great world to explore,” Andrews says. “Take all of Marvel as you know it, but twist it and slam it into a Western. It’s a great genre to play in.”

The director also confirms that Marvel Animation originally had plans to make a What If… ? spin-off about Star-Lord T’Challa, but the concept was scrapped after Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman’s death.

“That would’ve been amazing,” he says. “That would have been so much fun, him going off on different heists and being the good guy, the Robin Hood across the galaxy. But with his passing, it was just not meant to be.”

According to Winderbaum, there’s an entire “lore” behind the Zombies universe — one full of infinite storytelling possibilities — that he and Andrews discuss all the time. “There’s a whole Zombies world that we nerd out on,” he says. “We talk about all the other characters that just didn’t make it into this particular story.”