Nearly four years after it was first announced during Disney+ Day, Marvel Zombies is almost here. And we have our look at the new show with the official trailer!
The animated miniseries has had a unique kind of anticipation surrounding it over the past few years, both from fans of the hit 2000s comic of the same name, and from fans of the 2021 What If…? episode that first introduced its concept into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The series’ first teaser trailer, which was released by Marvel Animation on Tuesday morning, showcases some of the intense action and tone that fans have been waiting for.
Hearts are ripped out of chests, someone from the Ant-Man family is sliced in half, and Spider-Man uses his webs to decapitate an entire horde of zombies. But the trailer also showcases something else: MCU characters crossing over on a level that we really have not seen since Avengers: Endgame.
Sure, standalone episodes of What If…? have provided the occasional one-off team-up or ensemble story, like Season 3’s Mecha Avengers episode or the unlikely alliance between Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop in the Old West. And Thunderbolts* still might be the MCU’s biggest surprise of 2025 for how effectively and emotionally it brought its team of misfits together. But the MCU’s Multiverse Saga has, by and large, avoided having its new and existing heroes cross paths for more than a scene or two.
Most of the characters on the long-anticipated Young Avengers roster have yet to cross paths onscreen, and we didn’t even get into the status of the actual Avengers roster until this year’s Captain America: Brave New World. While an hours-long livestream of chairs confirmed at least some of the characters who will share the screen in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, some have still mourned the crossovers that we could have gotten across these past few phases.
A crossover we’ve been waiting for
While not set in the MCU’s “Sacred Timeline”, the first footage of Marvel Zombies gives us the best glimpse yet at what that could have looked like, down to having almost all of the live-action actors reprise their roles in the series. In a world where, according to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), “the Avengers are dead”, a disparate crop of heroes have to band together and try to put an end to the zombie outbreak altogether. The heroes who rise to the occasion include some already-beloved characters from the Infinity Saga, including Peter Parker / Spider-Man (Hudson Thames), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), and the severed head of Scott Lang / Ant-Man (Paul Rudd).
The roster also includes a lot of characters who we’ve just fallen in love with since Phase Four, most of whom have been siloed off in their own stories since being introduced. In addition to Yelena, the confirmed cast includes Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker / U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Kate Bishop / Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld), Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Riri Williams / Ironheart (Dominique Thorne), and Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Katy (Awkwafina). We even get an appearance from Eric Brooks / Blade (voiced by Todd Williams), who is given a remix as this universe’s avatar of Khonshu instead of Moon Knight before we fully see him in live-action.
This exact combination of characters isn’t even confirmed for Doomsday or Secret Wars, and there’s no telling if they’d even bump elbows amid the stacked cast of Fantastic Four and 2000s X-Men already confirmed for the cast. But at least in Marvel Zombies, we get to see a version of what their dynamics would be like.
What If…?‘s Bryan Andrews serves as showrunner and director, with Zeb Wells, whose writing credits include Deadpool & Wolverine, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and a years-long run on Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man comic, serving as head writer. All four episodes of Marvel Zombies are set to premiere on Wednesday, September 24th exclusively on Disney+.
(featured image: Disney+)
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