Marvel Zombies has arrived on Disney+, and true to the source material in What If…? it’s a wild, twisted ride. But even more twisted is the shocker ending that might have you scratching your head. So if you’re looking for a Marvel Zombies ending explained? Brother, you’ve come to the right place.
Before we get to the ending proper, though, we’re going to give a recap of what brought us to that point. And the reason for this isn’t just to kill time, it’s because to understand the plot of Marvel Zombies, you actually have to go back to the original episode that spawned it, which streamed back in 2021.
So let’s get to it, shall we? We’ll break down an overview of the plot of all four episodes of Marvel Zombies, followed by an explanation of what likely happened in that relatively ambiguous ending. Oh, and we shouldn’t have to say this, but: spoilers past this point.
Marvel Zombies Recap: What Led To The End Of The MCU?
To start with the 2021 What If…? episode “What If… Zombies?!” basically what happened is that when Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) went to the Quantum Realm to save his wife in Ant-Man and the Wasp, he instead brought back a zombie-infected Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer), meaning the zombie plague started to take over just as Avengers: Infinity War was beginning. A ragtag group of heroes, including Spider-Man (Hudson Thames) traveled to Camp Lehigh, thinking there was a cure for the zombie plague there. Instead, they found Vision (Paul Bettany) feeding people to a zombie Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), as well as the cured severed head of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), which was healed by Vision’s Mind Stone. They also discover that he’s been feeding T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) to Wanda: yuck!
Anyway, thanks to the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) taking on Wanda, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Ant-Man’s head managed to escape with the Mind Stone, taking it to Wakanda to hopefully heal the world. Unbeknownst to them, Zombie Thanos is there, ready to take the final Infinity Stone.
Cut to Marvel Zombies and we discover — three episodes in — that the trio battled Zombie Thanos, and ultimately defeated him thanks to Black Panther, who threw them both in a Vibranium pit. “I heard T’Challa say ‘Wakanda Forever’ quietly, like he knew it was the last time,” says Spider-Man, which is particularly sad once you remember that Boseman passed away between taping that initial What If..? episode and now.
In any case, that led to out-of-control Infinity Stone energy, which the mystics of Kamar Taj contained inside the Hulk — who has been standing watch ever since in what is now called The Wakanda Event.
We’ll come back to that in a bit, but cut to Episode 1, and we’re back in New York with Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). Their world is rocked when they discover a miniaturized signal device that can potentially contact the Nova Corps to come and save the planet. They don’t know all that yet, but the three head off on a cross-country journey to send the signal and save the world.
In the process, a lot of folks die, including Riri and Kate, and Kamala becomes razor-focused on getting the signal out. Meanwhile, we discover that Wanda has evolved in some fashion… She’s now sentient, not a brainless, shambling zombie, calls herself The Red Queen, and is haunting Kamala’s nightmares. She’s also sending an army after them, which Kamala assumes is to stop the signal.
It’s not, and we start to get an inkling of that when it turns out they don’t need the signal… The Nova Corps is already surrounding the Earth, quarantining it.
Kamala isn’t willing to give up, though, and after hooking up with Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and the Kamar Taj folks, the survivors she has tagging along — including Blade Knight (Todd Williams), who is Blade with Moon Knight powers — they face down Wanda in a final battle to protect The Hulk.
Marvel Zombies Ending Explained: Is Kamala Khan Dead? Is Everyone Dead? Am I Dead???
During that fight, a lot happens, but like how the end of Avengers: Endgame was a “keep away the football” game from Thanos, with the Infinity Gauntlet, here the goal is to not let Wanda tag The Hulk.
Guess what? She tags The Hulk. Well, first, she tempts Kamala and tells her that she can put everything back the way it was. The thing is, Wanda wasn’t after them to stop the signal from reaching the Nova Corps… She needs Kamala.
Why does she need Kamala? Great question, and the show doesn’t make it 100% clear. After Wanda does touch The Hulk and begins to steal his Infinity Stone energy, everyone except Kamala horrifically dies, and Kamala relents. She really has nothing left to lose at this point, so she takes Wanda’s hand.
This is what I believe is happening at this moment… As we’ve seen previously in the MCU, using the Infinity Stones takes an enormous amount of energy, and at various times leaves Hulk with a withered arm, scars half of Thanos’ body, and kills Tony Stark. What Wanda does here is use the Infinity Stones’ energy to remake reality the way she wants it, but uses Kamala’s energy powers to protect her as she does. That’s pretty much the whole thing. Maybe there is more to it, like a secret aspect of Kamala’s powers we don’t know about yet… But if so, uh, we don’t know about that yet.
And here’s where things get really weird. “And so the world begins again,” Wanda says, and Kamala wakes up in her bed, at home, in New Jersey. Not only that, but Kate and Riri are alive, and they get boba.
As they’re chatting and catching up, Kamala has a flash and sees Riri fighting zombies. That Riri tells Kamala it’s all fake, and back in the more pleasant world, asks, “Kamala, are you good?” She is not good. We get one last jumpscare from Zombie Wanda, The Red Queen, and that’s it for Marvel Zombies.
Look, is it possible that Kamala has been traumatized by her experiences? For sure. But more likely, all Wanda did was essentially put a coat of paint over the world, so she could keep building her zombie army and rule without having to worry about pesky resistors. The color palette backs this up, too: like in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, when Wanda was giving the illusion of a beautiful orchard when she was in a rotten, red-tinged nightmare orchard, we get the same colors and feel here.
So yeah, Wanda did fix the world… But the way her zombie virus-infected self wanted to, not the way Kamala would have liked. How Riri is alive after seemingly getting overwhelmed, and whether Kamala will break out of this nightmare fully? We may never know, unless there’s a Marvel Zombies 2. There is one other possibility, though… In the 2015 miniseries Secret Wars there’s an area on the patchwork planet of Battleworld called the Deadlands, which is home to the Marvel Zombies from the comics. Could the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars have a similar area? Maybe. And if so, how will the MCU deal with an all-powerful Red Queen?
If these four episodes were any indication… Not very well, Bob.
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