Pretty much does what it says on the tin. To quote the Watcher, ‘that happened.’
SPOILERS AHEAD
After the logo and opening titles, we begin with the Hulk hurtling through space after Heimdall sent him back to Earth via the Bifrost to warn of Thanos’s impending arrival at the beginning of Infinity War, but Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) is about to discover that it’s unrecognisable as the world he left behind.
As in Infinity War, he lands in the Sanctum Santorum only this time it’s empty, the Cloak of Levitation watching from the shadows. After raiding the wardrobe for a pair of purple sorcerer’s robe, Bruce steps outside to find the streets of New York empty too and wonders if he’s already too late. He isn’t, as it turns out, because Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) choose that moment to beam down. Bruce and the Hulk have their internal disagreement and Maw begins his speech, only for a portal to open up behind him and a very familiar gauntleted hand to blast him in the head. Alan Silvestri’s triumphant ‘Avengers’ theme plays as the silhouetted figures of Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Wong walk through. Bruce is happy to see them but we can see that something’s not quite right. They go to town on Obsidian and Maw, and though the fight is partially obscured by dust and lens flares, we can still see and hear how unusually brutal this fight is. Bruce asks if this isn’t overkill, and we have the famous Resident Evil zombie revelation shot, complete with Psycho strings. For those who are unaware, this episode is loosely based on Robert Kirkman’s ‘Marvel Zombies’ comics.
It also seems to be the fastest acting zombie virus ever, as Maw and Obsidian are turned almost instantly. Bruce tries to get away but, like the comics, the zombies are still able to use their powers/technology. He’s saved by the Cloak of Levitation (which causes Wong to literally lose his head) and the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) who beheads Tony and disintegrates the other zombies with a swarm of flying ants. Bruce asks her who she is and Wasp replies ‘all that’s left’, (her name’s Hope and ‘hope’ is all that’s left, get it?) before he’s picked up by Peter Parker (voiced by Hudson Thames, not Tom Holland due to his contract with Sony—possibly the same reason why he’s wearing a slightly different version of his suit which is the Avengers Campus version that Disney owns) introducing himself as ‘your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’, to which Bruce understandably replies, ‘well, then, what the hell happened to the neighbourhood?’
The Watcher (who seems to be getting closer to being an actual character rather than just a narrator/impartial observer with each week, as not only is he much closer to the camera than he’s ever been before but now we can see his mouth moving, skin tone, and facial features) then proceeds to tell us what the hell did happen to the neighbourhood. Two weeks ago (during the events of Ant Man & the Wasp) Hank Pym travelled into the quantum realm to rescue his wife Janet but in this universe she’d contracted a quantum virus that corrupted her brain (presumably after she’d managed to communicate with them unless, in this universe, they located her another way), and the first thing she does after being reunited with her husband is not to pull him in for a romantic smooch but to bite him. Upon returning to the lab, zombie Hank and Janet attack Hope and Scott (Paul Rudd), Hope shrinks and manages to escape but they get Scott—the last thing we see being the classic horror film “hand-slowly-sliding-down-a-pane-of-glass” shot—and within 24 hours the entire Pacific Northwest is infected, which means this is now the second time the Pyms have been responsible for the ensuing disaster. The Avengers— consisting of Ironman, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow (with her Infinity War blonde hair), and Black Panther—arrive almost immediately (nothing like the zombie apocalypse to end a feud), but it’s their heroism that ultimately dooms everyone. Cap is bitten by zombie Hank and the rest are overwhelmed by the horde, and as the Watcher says, once ‘Earth’s mightiest heroes’ became infected no one else stood a chance…
Unless they knew the ‘rules.’ We’re then treated to perhaps the greatest thing the MCU’s ever produced: Peter Parker’s educational “so you wanna survive the zombie apocalypse” orientation video, where with the help of Happy “never actually happy” Hogan (Jon Favreau), “resident weirdo” Kurt (David Dastmalchian), Bucky “silent but deadly” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and Sharon “the blonde bond” Carter (Emily VanCamp), he outlines the rules of surviving a zombie apocalypse, Zombieland-style.
- Wear long sleeves: the infection is passed through saliva so the less skin you’re showing the less there is to bite.
- Hygiene: zombies are attracted to the smell of human flesh so keep clean.
- Always aim for the head: it’s the only way to kill them.
The survivors have made their hideout in a bunch of train cars and buses that have been webbed together and then webbed between two buildings, and Okoye (Danai Gurira) is with them too, searching for T’Challa who went missing with the Avengers. Using an Ironman gauntlet, they’ve picked up a signal from another survivor camp that claims to have found a cure. They figure out that the signal’s location is SHIELD’s Camp Lehigh in New Jersey (obviously a part of it that wasn’t blown up in Winter Soldier), to which Happy remarks ‘well, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, we gotta go to Jersey.’ (Nice to see you have your priorities in order there Hap.)
Using the Pym-Tech van (which we realise they’re in when, in a comedic bit of gore, they explode a zombie with it by enlarging) they arrive at Grand Central Station. Okoye wants them to split up, with Hope, Bruce, Peter, and Kurt going to hotwire the train while the rest of them guard the perimeter. Peter states that splitting up is not a good idea, asking if they don’t have horror movies in Wakanda, and Okoye replying they don’t need them as they have American reality shows. As Kurt says, “boom goes the dynamite”, but we of course know that Peter is right. But split up they do.
Hope’s group are unable to get the train started, so Peter gets the idea to use his webs to pull the train to build up thrust (essentially a giant slingshot). Meanwhile, Sharon and Happy get ambushed by zombie Hawkeye, Happy getting turned in the process, while Bucky and Okoye find zombie Falcon. Sharon manages to turn Happy’s palm repulsor on himself before escaping and Okoye literally cuts Falcon in half. Leading to this brilliant exchange: ‘That was your friend. Sorry about that.’ ‘I should be sad, but I’m not.’ Back at the train they’re nearly ready to go. Peter inadvertently backs up into a group zombies but is saved by the Cloak, while Hope saves Bruce and Kurt from the zombies that start to swarm the train. Sharon, Bucky and Okoye make it on board, the brake is released and the built up thrust helps the train to start, and the Cloak gets Peter onto the train. Okoye apologises, acknowledging that they should’ve stayed together.
But they didn’t quite make it out cleanly. Sharon hears something on the train roof before that something falls through the ceiling. Bucky hears her screams and rushes to her aid, only to find her being eaten by zombie Cap (and the fact that it’s Steve Rogers eating Sharon Carter is just several levels of wrong). The two old friends fight. Hope comes to help but ends up in zombie Sharon’s mouth, while Bucky manages to use zombie Cap’s shield to bisect him. Hope escapes zombie Sharon by enlarging and blowing her up from the inside (“guys, I’m covered in Sharon”) but then Bruce notices that Hope’s suit has a tear. Up until now, the zombie infection seemed to be instantaneous, but here we have the obligatory ‘victim-slowly-succumbing-to-the-infection-for-some-emotional-and-dramatic-tension’ trope. Hope argues with them to kill her before she turns, that they can’t afford to take the risk even if they are minutes away from a cure. Peter says it’s not a risk, it’s hope, and anyone who’s seen a zombie movie knows that that’s the key to survival. Hope asks him how he manages to stay so upbeat, and here the mask slips a little, as Peter admits that’s already lost a lot—his parents, his uncle Ben, Tony Stark , Happy and (implicitly) his Aunt May—but that his aunt used to say that ‘if we don’t keep smiling when they can’t, then we might as well just be gone too’ and that they’d want them all to keep going.
But Kurt has some bad news: the train has run out of fuel, and while they’re closer to Camp Lehigh than they were before, to get there they’ll have to go through a zombie horde. Okoye rightly says that they won’t make it through them, to which Hope counters that they can make it over them. Hope blames herself for the whole situation, that she was so fixated on getting her mother back she didn’t stop to consider what her mother could bring back with her, and that if she has to go out, she wants to go out fixing what she started. As the horde rushes the train, Hope turns giant and carries them over, zombies crawling up her like, well, ants. She gets them to Camp Lehigh, asking Peter to keep smiling for her before she’s overwhelmed by the horde and the infection and collapses (with a shot reminiscent of a really sick Gulliver’s Travels).
Bucky notices that the zombies aren’t climbing the fence. Even weirder, the fence has already been breached but they’re all just standing there. Kurt has a bad feeling about the place (‘Baba Yaga nears’) and we get an amusing little jump-scare conga where Peter scares Kurt and they’re then both scared by Vision (Paul Bettany) who it turns out was the one who sent the signal. As an android, Vision’s not on the menu, and the reason the base isn’t overrun by zombies is because the Mind Stone in his forehead emits a sub-frequency that repels them. This leads Bruce to deduce that the virus is a form of encephalopathy (as Peter helpfully explains, ‘brain stuff’). Vision says the virus overloads the brain’s limbic system (the part involved in our behavioural and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviours needed for survival, like feeding) and that once he discovered their aversion to the Mind Stone, he experimented with more targeted exposure to see if that could reverse the condition. And it turns out he was successful, sort of. He managed to with Scott Lang… but just his head, which is now a Futurama-esque head in a jar. He acknowledges that he’s lost weight but that he won’t let it go to his head.
At their unimpressed reaction, he apologises saying that he tends to process traumatic events with Dad jokes, something which he will continue to do for the rest of the episode. But whilst Vision has found a cure, the problem is that the technology required to broadcast the Mind Stone’s frequency worldwide is beyond current human capability. But not in Wakanda, as Okoye points out, and due to their force shields, it’s the last human sanctuary on Earth. Bucky goes to look for transport but Vision rather ominously tells him he won’t find what he’s looking for. And indeed he doesn’t, instead he finds a zombie Wanda Maximoff and a captive T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) with his leg missing as (like in the source material) he’s being used as a source of food. Bruce finds security logs that show they’re not the first ones to respond to Vision’s signal, and it’s revealed that he’s been luring people to the base in order to feed them to Wanda, as her powers resisted the treatment, so his only course of action was to keep her contained and her hunger sated. When asked why he didn’t just kill her, he said that he couldn’t, and that even he still cannot entirely fathom what he’s done. Unfortunately, zombie Wanda chooses this moment to break out, and she hasn’t eaten in days…
She enters with a shot whose composition is worthy of a live-action horror film (seriously, it’s one of the scariest shots I’ve seen in an MCU project) and poor Kurt is her first victim. The Cloak saves Scott from smashing on the floor and the rest fight to keep Wanda contained, but it’s a losing battle. Bruce convinces Vision to help them escape and he uses the Mind Stone to blast a hole in the bunker. They use it to escape (with time for a quick Harry Potter reference from Scott) but Wanda uses her powers to snatch Okoye at the last moment before Vision collapses the bunker completely. He tells them there’s a Quadjet in the hangar as he won’t be going with them, as he needs to atone for what he has done but he cannot bring himself to leave Wanda. He then rips the Mind Stone from his forehead, allowing the zombies already surrounding the base to enter. Zombie Wanda bursts forth from the bunker’s remains and Bucky tells the others to run while he buys them some time. Wanda finds Vision’s lifeless body and, even as a zombie, is still able to express sadness. She uses her powers to stop Bucky’s bullets and hurl him into the distance, his fate unknown. The others make it to the Quadjet but Wanda and the zombie horde are still approaching. Bruce says he can buy them some more time but Peter pleads with him not go, saying that he doesn’t think he can take losing another friend. Bruce gives him the Mind Stone, telling him to avenge them instead. Bruce finally manages to talk the Hulk into emerging and proceeds to fight off Wanda and the other zombies while T’Challa finally manages to start the jet. They take off and, after briefly being accosted by a giant zombie Hope (much to Scott’s dismay), finally make their escape.
On their way to Wakanda, T’Challa asks Peter if he’s alright. Peter replies that last year Tony asked him to join the Avengers and that he turned him down. Now they’re all gone but he’s still here. T’Challa comforts him by telling him that ‘in my culture, death is not the end. They are still with us, as long as we do not forget them.’ Determination renewed, Peter agrees, stating that once they get the Mind Stone to Wakanda they’re going to save the world.
But zombie stories also often have a sting in the tail and, as they approach Wakanda, the Watcher says that ‘even in the darkest of times, humans will give all to save their planet. Even if it might bring an end to the universe.’ Why would it bring an end to the universe, you ask? Because we then see that the zombie infection has already overrun Wakanda and that zombie Thanos is there, Infinity Gauntlet near completion, requiring only the Mind Stone which the heroes are unwittingly bringing right to him.
Hey Marvel, how about something a little less traumatising next time, ‘kay?
