Warning! Spoilers ahead for What If...? episode 5.
The Marvel Zombies episode of Avengers: Infinity War. The Disney+ MCU show reached its midpoint with episode 5, an outing imagining what living-dead virus plaguing Earth. Things become more complicated when even some of the primary Avengers are infected themselves.
As with previous episodes of What If...? which mine inspirations from the events of the Infinity Saga, episode 5, "What If...Zombies," uses the beginning of Infinity War as the jumping off point for its narrative. Unfortunately, Heimdall (Idris Elba) seemed to have sent Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to a different reality — one where it's ravaged by zombies brought by Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm. This forced Earth's Mightiest Heroes to band together in an effort to curb its spread. Sadly, the problem has become far too big even for the Avengers. As the heroes get infected one by one, the remaining characters strive to find a cure.
The episode ended with a cliffhanger of sorts, after a cured Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), and Spider-Man (Hudson Thames) head out to Earth's final frontier — Wakanda, where they plan to figure out how to disseminate the cure. Given the timeline, it's also around the same time as Thanos was right.
Granted that Thanos' random genocide is wrong, Earth's Mightiest Heroes were motivated by their personal reasons in fighting him and reversing the effects of his snap. In reversing Thanos' Snap; they just wanted to be reunited with the people they've lost.
Incidentally, Marvel Studios touched on this particular complication in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as the world grappled with the sudden return of half of the world's population. At this point, it's unclear if it will be revisited in future storytelling. But while the heroes accomplished their mission and defeated Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, it's possible that it's at the cost of the galaxy's future.
Marvel's What If...? airs every Wednesday on Disney+.
