Marvel's ‘What If..?’ Episode 5: “What If... Zombies?!” Recap and Review
In a world ravaged by a deadly zombie virus, Earth’s remaining heroes embark on a quest to reverse the disaster.
WARNING: Contains Spoilers
Marvel’s What If..? has already brought audiences to plenty of boldly outlandish universes, but this may just be the craziest yet. Taking place during the events of Avengers: Infinity War, the show’s latest episode is a wildly entertaining imagining of Marvel’s take on a zombie apocalypse, as we follow a disjointed group of heroes on a quest to save the world. In a stark contrast to last week’s emotional and poignant character study, this week’s episode is a much more comedic and lighthearted story, despite its darkly macabre themes. It’s a rapidly paced rollercoaster of bold ideas and daring storylines that’s bound to please any fan of these characters, even if it doesn’t have the same emotional resonance as some other episodes.
The Recap
The opening scene of What If..?’s latest episode should be eerily familiar to those who are familiar with the MCU’s arching narrative, as it details Bruce Banner’s fall to Earth through the dome of the Sanctum Sanctorum. However, this time round, there’s nobody there to welcome him. The entire building is empty, and as Bruce steps out into the streets of New York, he realises that the city is too. When Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian arrive in the city in search of the Time Stone, Bruce finds himself as the only one there to stop them. Thankfully it’s not too long before help arrives for Bruce, but it’s not exactly what he was expecting; Tony Stark, Doctor Strange and Wong, but not as we know them - as zombies. After they defeat the Children of Thanos, the undead trio quickly turn on Bruce in a chilling attempt to share their zombie curse with him. Just as all hope looks lost (pun intended), Hope van Dyne and Peter Parker arrive to escort Bruce to safety, and Hope gives us a little backstory on how this virus came into being. She explains that when her father Hank Pym entered the quantum realm to save his wife, the person that he found there was no longer the person he once knew - she had been infected by a deadly virus which she passed on to Hank, and then Scott Lang, and then the entire Pacific Northwest. The Avengers, of course, were Earth’s last hope at containing this virus, but it was too much even for them. They each became infected, and their powers combined meant that from there, nobody else stood a chance. Bruce, Peter and Hope finally arrive at safety and meet with Wakandan General Okoye, one of the few left who has managed to avoid infection. From there, Peter shows Bruce a hilariously constructed ‘zombie survival tape’, which teaches us everything we need to know about the details of the virus and how to protect yourself from it.
Okoye then directs our heroes into another room, where they meet with Sharon Carter and Bucky Barnes and learn of a message they’ve received from a nearby survival camp with hope of a cure for the virus. Bruce manages to decode the message, and Sharon is able to identify the location of the signal - S.H.I.E.L.D.’s base of operations, Camp Lehigh. The gang is joined by Happy Hogan and Scott Lang’s friend Kurt as they embark on a journey to Grand Central Station, in search of transport to the camp. Of course, making your way through New York in the midst of a zombie apocalypse isn’t exactly easy, and the team is faced with plenty of difficulties along the way. A zombie version of Hawkeye manages to infect Hogan and injure Sharon, and an infected Falcon attacks the remaining members of the team. After several moments of thrilling combat, the zombies are overcome and the team (minus Hogan) make their way to a train and set off. But that’s not where their troubles end, as an infected Captain America makes his way onto the train and manages to ravage Agent Carter before making his way towards Bucky, where Rogers eventually meets his demise. After a touching conversation about keeping optimistic in the face of adversity, the train slams to a halt as the team arrives at Camp Lehigh and realises that they have to cross a hoarde of zombies to reach their destination.
Hope decides that it’s her turn to make the ultimate sacrifice, growing to full size and carrying the other heroes to safety, before falling into the pit of the undead. The remaining heroes make their way into Camp Lehigh and come face to face with a couple of old friends: Vision and Ant-Man. At least, Scott Lang’s revived head living inside a class dome. After discovering that the Mind Stone has been acting as a repellant to the zombies, our heroes realise something much more sinister about the events that have occured at the camp. A quick trip to the basement reveals an injured T’Challa, who informs the team that Vision has been keeping an infected Scarlet Witch downstairs and plans on feeding them all to her. Vision admits to his mistakes and excuses his actions out of love, but it’s too late. Wanda manages to break free from her cage and wreaks havok on the camp. The heroes try to stop her, but after losing Okoye, Bucky, Vision and Bruce in the fight, the remaining team realises that their only option is escape. They retreive the Mind Stone from Vision’s body, hop into a nearby plane and fly away into the distance. As the only remaining heroes, T’Challa, Peter and Scott decide that the only way to save the world is to transport the Mind Stone to Wakanda and attempt to find a way to distribute its power across the planet. This may seem like a good plan to our heroes, but the episode’s final shot of an infected Thanos waiting for them in Wakanda suggests otherwise.
The Review
It’s clear from the size of that recap alone that there’s a lot going on in the latest episode of What If..?. It’s incredibly dense with characters, locations and references to the MCU as a whole that elevate the entertainment value of the story beyond many of the previous episodes. There’s always something happening in the story, and the rapid pacing never allows for any moments of silence or boredom. It’s difficult to look away from, and the unbelievable scale of the story is entirely captivating and engrossing. I mentioned last week that the show is at its best when exploring possibilies that aren’t possible within the central universe of the MCU, and that praise is definitely relevant in this episode too. The narrative isn’t bound by any surrounding stories, and it gives incredible creative freedom to the writers, which they’re entirely making use of. That being said, the episode does admittedly feel very rushed. It’s great to see such a dense and exciting story, but when we’re given no time to mourn characters or think about the stakes of the heroes’ quest, it begins to feel like there’s no purpose to anything. A lot of the story is just action and fight sequences, which look great but ultimately leave you without a real emotional connection to the story. It’s almost certainly due to the short runtime, but the episode doesn’t give you much chance to care about the characters or what happens to them, especially since we know that none of it is ‘real’. The show works much better when it blends these absurd storylines with a deeper, character-focused message, rather than just throwing as many characters on screen as possible.
However, with all those criticisms out the way, I still really enjoyed episode 5 of What If..?. The story is absolutely thrilling, and its great to see all these characters that we know and love interacting with each other. The episode doesn’t have to waste any time on exposition or introductions, since we’re already familiar with this world and prepared to see which bold ideas the show is willing to explore this week. The story is really interesting, and the concept of these side characters having to work together to battle undead versions of the main heroes is really fun to watch. The format of the show is perfectly optimised to house these stories that can’t take place in the main universe for obvious reasons, and it’s great to see the writers taking full advantage of this. All in all, What If..? has been a bit of a mixed bag so far, but episode 5 was definitely one of the show’s highlights and it has me excited to see which weird and wonderful worlds we’ll be exploring next.