Why Marvel Zombies Cut A Major Hero From The First Season's Story

"Marvel Zombies" is an interesting alternate-timeline reimagining in which the Earth has been taken over by a zombie apocalypse, but the Disney+ animated series is conspicuously missing one Marvel Cinematic Universe character who you'd expect to do extremely well in a setting like this. Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, is very good at what he does in the "What If...?" episode "What If... Zombies?!" Despite his proven survival skills, he's nowhere to be seen in the show that the episode inspired.  

There's a reason for that, though: As "Marvel Zombies" showrunner, director, and co-creator Bryan Andrews said during an appearance on Brandon Davis' "Phase Hero" podcast, Bucky isn't present because the character's planned season 1 side story was simply too big and awesome to include in all its glory:  

"We know what's going on with certain people that didn't even appear in this thing. The story we were writing was so big and there was so much that there was no way to put it all in, and we didn't want to short-change some of the cool stuff. So, there is this whole side Bucky thing that I won't go into detail, but we know exactly what's up. [...] We just couldn't get it in there. So instead of short-changing him — because the stuff, I felt, was really cool, it's like we don't want to short-change — it's like maybe it's best if we just move it off to the side." 

Fortunately for Bucky fans, the ending of "Marvel Zombies" is a cliffhanger that's pretty openly angling for a season 2 renewal. Should the show get to continue its story, there's a chance that the Winter Soldier will receive his side arc after all.

With Bucky already being a prominent part of both Captain Americas' (Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie) stories, a rising star politician, and a member of the New Avengers in the mainline MCU, it's understandable that "Marvel Zombies" ultimately opted against handing him yet another hat to wear as a major side quest character on the show. Interestingly, the animated series ended up having almost the exact opposite problem with the character who ultimately did become the resident "Marvel Zombies" season 1 motorbike-riding badass: Blade (recast for the show from Mahershala Ali to Todd Williams). As Andrews described the situation:

"The math looked like ['Marvel Zombies'] will come out after ['Blade' does], so we can stay true to their mantra, right? But then we ran into this thing where we didn't want to — they're trying to figure the movie out and all that type of stuff. And sometimes when that's happening concurrently, it's difficult for us because they're doing their thing over here. We want the character to be like it's going to be in the movie, so we're like, 'Hey guys,' looking over the fence. 'What's going over there? Who's this character actually going to be?'"

The infamously troubled history of the possibly cursed Mahershala Ali-led "Blade" reboot obviously made this situation untenable, especially when it became clear that "Marvel Zombies" would be out well before "Blade." This is why they decided to turn their version of Blade into "Blade Knight," who occupies the same Fist of Khonshu role Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac) does in the main timeline. By branching out like this, "Marvel Zombies" could create its own, very cool take on Blade without worrying too much about the movie side of things.