What If? #5: Night Of the Living Head?

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a The Ticketmaster

I'll say right up front that this week's episode of What If...? is not my favorite. I am a huge fan of the genre on display (I have a whole blog series devoted to it, and I've been working on a novel in the genre for awhile now), but this episode didn't grab me. It didn't have much bite. It didn't make me use my brain. I'm dead serious.

But if you want to let your mind rot before I spill my guts, go cure what ails you on Disney+. The breakdown begins after the image.

The Premise: The episode title (and my collection of bad pun-hints) says it all: "What If...Zombies?" Bruce Banner is Bifrosted to the Sanctum Sanctorum, as he was at the beginning of Infinity War, at odds with the Hulk (though I think the idea of him being traumatized by Thanos would have been more interesting) and at the mercy of the Black Order. But New York is eerily depopulated...and Thanos hasn't done the snap yet! That's because Zombies! The Avengers are zombies! Which makes more zombies faster! Which makes the Black Order zombies! But then Spider-Man, the Wasp, Bucky, Happy Hogan, and Sharon Carter save the day! Oh, and a comic relief side character named Kurt, who I forgot was in one of these movies, is here, too! But one comic-relief character isn't enough! We have to have Spider-Man make a zombie-preparedness video that looks like cutting room leftovers from an early season of Ultimate Spider-Man! And Ant-Man trying to be Futurama Headpool! Even Uatu is getting on the meme-wagon ("Ooh! That happened!"). And the animation!

The Animation: From an action, uninfected character, and landscape perspective, it's more of the What If...? same. If you've been watching the series, reading my blog, or both, you know the basic kind of quality you're in for. But the zombies look like crap. Yes, I know that decaying human bodies are supposed to look like crap, but that's not what I mean. Their skintones are sickly pastels (bases of blue and green, mostly), and their jaws comically unhinge when they growl, making them look like a bad The Smurfs Meet the Snorks fan-mod of Five Nights At Freddy's. The newly infected zombies, and the zombified alien characters, have more realism and texture to them, but when less effort is put into the designs (like with Zombie Cap), it really shows. I just realized that I was so eager to trash the animation that I skipped the voice cast. So....

The Cast: Most of the MCU actors voice their animated counterparts here, including Evangeline Lilly (Hope Van Dyne/Wasp), Paul Rudd (Scott Lang), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Emily VanCamp (Sharon Carter), David Dastmalchian (Kurt, whom I just discovered was a member of Scott's crew in the Ant-Man films...go figure), Danai Gurira (Okoye, channeling Michonne from The Walking Dead in a few badass scenes), Paul Bettany (Vision), and actors who voiced their film characters for previous What If...? episodes. The only two characters not voiced by their screen actors are Josh Keaton (providing the primal noises of Zombie Cap here, after voicing Steve Rogers in the first episode) and actor/musician Hudson Thames (doing a decent Tom Holland affect as Spider-Man).

What Changed: Because sticking "quantum" in front of something doesn't make it as cool as the movie industry thinks it does (just ask Solace), when the events of Ant-Man & the Wasp lead Scott, Hope, and Hank Pym into the Quantum Realm in search of Janet Van Dyne, they discover that she has been infected by a Quantum Virus, which she passes on to Hank and Scott, who then infect the Avengers (minus Black Panther because Vibranium?), and the world is mostly doomed from there. Also from there, the episode proceeds to tick all of the zombie movie tropes, like plot-forced separation of the survivor group that leads to one or more of them getting infected, the usual laundry list of stupid horror movie decisions, heroes in mourning, desolate landscapes, tenuous safe zones (Hope and Spider-Man's hideout is literally hanging by a thread or fifty), a mentally unhinged survivor feeding their guests to an infected loved one (as he is inorganic, Vision fills this role masterfully, channelling his inner Ultron and providing a clever reversal of fortunes to what we saw in WandaVision), a--for now--unfulfilled promise of a cure, and a dramatically triumphant aerial escape that gradually leads to an all-is-lost moment. But what will all of this mean?

The Implications: Most of the world population is undead. The only possible/known survivors are Spider-Man (who doesn't bother wearing a mask because zombies don't care about secret identities. I could rant about the COVID-related irony of this scenario, but I will restrain myself and leave it to you to ponder), Scott Lang (the Headpool Supreme, Master Of the Mystic Dad Jokes), a one-legged Black Panther, Bucky (maybe; can a Super Soldier survive being magically yeeted past the horizon?), and the Hulk (maybe; it would have been awesome to see how Hulk vs. Zombie Wanda ended). Okoye's fate is unknown but probably bleak, Zombie Wanda is still "alive," Vision's essence is in the Mind Stone (I think that's how it works?) and his body is otherwise intact after ripping the Stone out of his own forehead and giving it to Hulk, who gave it to Peter, and we know Wanda can warp reality, so Zombie Vision is a possibility after all. Yikes. And somehow, a giant purple guy who owned the Hulk and has control over Time, Power, Reality, the Soul, and Space, was turned into a zombie offscreen, and he just happens to be waiting in Wakanda, where Peter, Scott, and T'Challa are headed with the Mind Stone so they can use the country's advanced technology to broadcast the Stone's signal across the globe and cure the Quantum Virus. The appearance of Zombie Thanos is meant to serve as the aforementioned all-is-lost moment, but as the Mind Stone was previously demonstrated to repel zombies (when the team find Vision working in Arnim Zola's abandoned bunker), our heroes may have more of a chance at a happy ending than we are left to believe. Assuming Thanos got infected on Earth, the rest of the Universe (including the Guardians Of the Galaxy, the citizens of Asgard and the other seven realms, and other extraterrestrial MCU characters, are unaffected. One thing I didn't notice on first watch, that NewRockstars pointed out, was that in the "how it changed" sequence where "ooh! That happened!", there are pillars of purple smoke surrounding Janet in the Quantum Realm that weren't there in the original film. And Loki taught us that where there's Quantumness and purple, a Kang is bound to be involved. Maybe Kang created the Quantum Virus? Let me know in the comments what you think, and

"You'll have to speak up; I'm wearing a towel."

The Verdict: Now that I have inserted my obligatory Simpsons meme, this episode was my least favorite so far. It had the bonkers swerve in logic of the Death Of An Idea episode (so don't let Hank Pym anywhere near a What If...?), fake-looking zombies, animation that didn't push the boundaries like the Baron Strange episode, too much comic relief, a denied payoff to what could have been an incredible, chaotic fight (see, Scott? I can make puns, too!), a nonsensical, contrived ending, and a predictable plot. Other episodes had these flaws, too; but this one has them all together. Flaw-vengers, Disassemble!

I would normally put my sign-off here, but as of the time of this writing, this dropped:

and I'm caffeinated, so let's talk about it!

Another thing that content creators like NewRockstars and Heavy Spoilers have drawn to my attention is that Uatu has been getting more and more visible with each episode. Strange was even able to sense him several times, and became powerful enough to engage him in conversation near the end. In the above trailer, it looks like multiversal threats are getting so intense (to the point that, at the 44 second mark, we see fucking Galactus) that Uatu has chosen to break his oath and assemble a multiversal Avengers. The villain lineup looks to be Ego, Zombie Thanos, Ultron, and possibly Peter Quill, Shuma Gorath, Loki, and YellowJacket Hank Pym (though these last are just guesses based on how the first five episodes ended), among others we haven't seen yet. It isn't clear from the trailer what side Killmonger will be on, but the heroes include Captain Carter, Baron Strange, Star Lord T'Challa, some version of Black Panther, Party Thor (whose episode was supposed to be released instead of the "Zombies" story), the Winter Soldier, Titan Gamora, Red Guardian Widow, Hawkeye, and The Watcher himself. Reality-specific B teams could also include Nick Fury, Captain Marvel, HYDRA Stomper, the Ravagers, Wong, and Spider-Man, among others. I am hyped to see where the series goes from here!

Stay tuned for a Just the Ticket on Gunpowder Milkshake, as well as more Marvelous What If...? content, and as usual with this series of reviews, I have been

Ticketmaster the Watcher,

Cannot interfere,

Must not interfere,

(But I probably definitely will interfere...)

So come with me and ponder the question:

Out If?

Goodnight.