The Marvel Zombies Hero Guaranteed Never To Be In The Animated Series

The world of Marvel Comics is loaded from top to bottom with characters and story arcs that are ripe for adaptation. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe going buck wild with the whole multiverse concept throughout the 2020s, "What If...?" gave the team at Marvel Animation free rein to experiment and play around with stories that don't immediately impact the central canon of Earth-616. One of the show's most surprising episodes came in its first season with "What If...Zombies?," a loose adaptation of Robert Kirkman's "Marvel Zombies" comic metaseries that originated in Issue 21 of "Ultimate Fantastic Four." It posits a scenario where Janet van Dyne got infected in the Quantum Realm with a virus that transformed her (and a significant portion of the Marvel characters) into flesh-eating zombies, with only a select few heroes remaining.

Instead of the "What If...?" episode being a one-off, it ended up becoming the springboard for an animated spin-off called "Marvel Zombies" on Disney+. The key difference between the two is that, while the four-episode event series is a continuation of that story, it's explicitly made for an adult audience, with significantly more gore added to the mix. Among the roster of non-infected heroes are Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), in addition to other members of the Thunderbolts/New Avengers. It largely features a lot of names we've seen before, but that doesn't mean we won't see any new faces.

The behind the scenes issues with Marvel Studios' "Blade" reboot have been so ongoing that the beloved daywalker has been reprised by Wesley Snipes in "Deadpool & Wolverine" and a Moon Knight-inspired variant (Todd Williams) in this show before Mahershala Ali could make his first live-action appearance. The Academy Award-winning actor's brief voice cameo in "Eternals" counts as much as that movie does to the MCU at large (not much). As for the rest of potential superhero appearances in "Marvel Zombies," you have to imagine they're saving any new potential supers in secret until the series comes out. There's at least one candidate from the horror-adjacent comic series, however, that is all but guaranteed to never show up, and I don't think that's very groovy.

That's right, Bruce Campbell's Ashley J. Williams, the boomstick-wielding Deadite slayer from Sam Raimi's beloved "Evil Dead" series, is technically part of the Marvel universe by way of the 2005 comic miniseries "Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness."

Throughout the five-issue run, Ash faces off against all types of Marvel heroes and villains in his seemingly eternal effort to live in a Deadite-free world that doesn't require him to step in and save the day. Seeing the abuse this character's taken across the first three "Evil Dead" films and three seasons worth of television, it's more than understandable. But Campbell's approach to the dimwitted warrior makes him so much fun to watch. If there's one thing this miniseries proves, it's that comics can present a world of opportunities that film and television can't.

Only on the page can you see Earth-2149 Ash get killed by Howard the Duck of all characters, for example. The Marvel Zombies themselves may not be Deadites, but they do play a part in the final issue when Ash negotiates with that Earth's Necronomicon to conjure the mischievous spirits to counterattack the flesh-eating monsters. Sadly, there are a couple of reasons why Ash and this really cool idea won't be seen in the Disney+ series.

On the lower end of things, Universal Pictures owning the rights to "Army of Darkness" would prevent using the name of the miniseries in any capacity. There's such a stranglehold on the 1992 film that the Starz television series "Ash Vs. Evil Dead" did its best to barely even mention it, if at all. The same goes for the main "Evil Dead" series, which is now owned by StudioCanal and New Line Cinema. Additionally, the "Marvel Zombies" television show is only four episodes long and is already following the story from "What If...?" It's already juggling so many characters that adding a loud-mouthed braggart overtaking an already stacked ensemble seems like a good way to lessen their impact in the story Marvel's trying to tell.

Campbell has already made his fair share of appearances in Marvel projects, all in part to Raimi's involvement in the "Spider-Man" trilogy and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." It seems unlikely he would ever return to the character without some form of approval from his longtime buddy. The closest we'll ever come to Ash within the MCU is that time Campbell posted a "leaked page" of the script for "Multiverse of Madness" on April Fools' Day. I wouldn't entirely rule out a non-IP driven nod to the comic, but waiting for Ash to use his trusty chainsaw hand is a fool's errand.

In "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac), otherwise known as Spider-Man 2099, has gathered all numbers of Spidey variants on Earth-928 to form the Spider Society. Together, they protect the integrity of the multiverse surrounding the Marvel webhead and the canon events that could potentially disrupt it. When Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) of Earth-1610 learns that the Spot (Jason Schwartzmann) needs to kill Miles' father (Brian Tyree Henry), Miles rejects Miguel's passive attitude to allow such a tragedy to transpire without pushback. This is when we see just about every member of the Spider-Society rush after him, with a whole bunch of animal variants among them. After encountering both a Spider-Horse and a Spider-Cat, Miles is briefly chased by a Werewolf Spider-Man that actually made his debut in the "Marvel Zombies" miniseries.

The closing pages of the fifth and final issue of "Marvel Zombies vs. the Army of Darkness" sees Ash escaping through Doctor Doom's dimensional portal along with the remaining uninfected humans of Earth-2419. Being the indecisive idiot that he is, Ash is seen peeking inside a number of alternate dimensions to situate himself in. Hilariously enough, one of them is the apocalyptic future seen in the bummer alternate ending of "Army of Darkness," in which the supposed chosen one sleeps way too long. Ash eventually pulls a Homer Simpson and decides to stay in a world that resembles his home world at first glance. In typical Ash fashion, he chose Earth-7085 — otherwise known as the universe in which the Marvel superheroes are all werewolves.

As we've seen in the trailer for the "Marvel Zombies" event series, Spider-Man has enough strength to decapitate numerous zombies all at once with his webbing. It really goes to show how much the character has been holding back in his fights. Ash has proven time and time again across multiple realities that he's relatively able to take care of himself in a fight against monsters, so he should be able to evade the lycanthropic webhead. But just imagine just how ruthless a Werewolf Spider-Man would be in the company of non-boomstick-wielding buttkickers.

All four episodes of "Marvel Zombies" will be made available to stream on Disney+ on September 24, 2025.